The San Francisco call., 1910-01-02
"Manhattan"

NldIlIldILdH
By Charles Hansen Towne. Published by
Mitchell Kennerley. New York. Price 81
Charles Hanson Towne has written
Poem-it is even a great poem, and
though several poets have tried this
subject before. none of them has
seemed to really get at the subject.
This book has rested upon the review
ing shelf for near a month and though
II is beautifully printed and attrac-
lively bound, nothing about it urged
experiencing such delight in it, it is as
If new discovery were made and we
forget the slim little pink volume which
half repelled for so long
Mr.. Towne's poem is an absolutely
perfect expression of our great mod
ern Babylon. The spell and the mar
vel, the magnificence and the grimness
Of the great city, all are there and
written with loving and sympathetic
pen. The following fine extract tells
of the citys growth and expansion:
Change, change, unceasing is the city's
Hew down the trees in every sheltered
street,
Build broader avenues and higher
towers.
Stretch out into the bright suburban
ways
And snatch the distant villages and
towns.
A monster centipede that swiftly stirs,
Manhattan, not content with her do
main,
Reaches for far environs greedily.
She filings her bridges over waterways
Magiclike. almost in one brief night,
And, hungering for another tiny
crumb,
She bores beneath the river a mighty
Until she grasps bit OF country side.
Seizing it as spider does fly.
Her ferry boats, like speeding ENJOYS,
keep
Patiently. tirelessly their changeIess
tracks,
And swing into their slips with pune
tual pride,
Those slips that are their hourly des-
tiny.
When viii she cease this terrible de-
sire
For large, power and greater glory?
When
VIII she repent of her incessant greed
And. utterly weary of the sense of
Be quite content TO say, My tasks are
done;
Now will rest awhile for am tired'2
.'oh. never will the city sing
The song of labor done: she prospers
mose
When toiling for the processes OF
growth.
Her doom is to be greater, greater.
still,
Her destiny to lure the country in.
To be a portion of her blood and soul
Her voice is like the ocean's-never
hushed.
Her turbulence the waves'-it must
go on;
She can not root up now the seeds
long sown,
But, driven hard by that same fate she
made.
She must press forward in the endless
race"
The poem is more than pen picture
of the great city; 1T is a picture. If
such a thing can be, of her soul and Of
the charm and fascination she has for
any and all who have dwelt within her
gates. The hnal stanzas OF the poem
must be quoted, too, though in all the
beauty it is difficult to pick and choose:
when sick of all the sorrow and dis
tress
That aourished in the city like foul
weeds,
sought blue rivers and green, opu-
lent meads,
And leagues of unregarded Loneliness.
Whereon no foot of man had seemed to
press
did not know how long had been
my needs.
How wise the woodlands gospel and
her creeds,
How good her faith to one long com
fortress.
But in the silence came a voice to me;
In every Wild 1T murmured. and
knew
II would not cease. though far my
heart might roam,
It called me in the sunrise and the
dew.
Al noon and twilight. sadly. hungrily,
The jealous city, whispering al
ways. "homei"
The lyrics with which the blank
verse is interspersed are OF equal beau
ty and positively clamor for quotation.
II is scarcely possible to be too enthu-
siastic about this great find, and the
work lifts it's author at once from the
rank of ordinary magazine verse writer
to the position of poet with seat in
the hall of fame.
plane and Spherical Trigonometry
with Tables" by Levi l. Conant, pre-
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