New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1914-12-05

stanza:
Sweet Tdleness. you lnger at the door
To lead me down through meadows
cool with shade
Down TO the brook, over whose peboiy
floor
The fishes, unafraid.
Swim softly, careless of our airy world.
! ] hear you ever singing, calling ever,
l Bidding me sever
/ The chain so close about my spirit
curled.
/ Why do | toll and pore
/ When you are at the door,
Surely Times slave am |, and you Will
shun me;
Surely the delivers OF the dark have
won me
II her stay when you are fed away.
If the verses in Mr. Lindsay's volume
earned. as he ( lis rs, his way from
farmhouse to farmhouse through llli-
nois, Kansas and Missouri. we must
take off our hats II the farmers; their
taste in poetry is certainly superior to
that of our most superior magazines.
OF those poems in which Mr.. Lindsay
has worked out his own peculiar poetic
scheme we shall not attempt TO give n
satisfactory idea. Whoever luckily has
not missed his earlier experiment.
General William Booth Enters Into
Heaven" (for which, by the way, thanks
a. due to Miss Monroe's magazine.
"Poetry'D, will realize how hard It is
to describe the effect of this subli-
mated ragtime. this magnificent higher
vaudeville" to use the inventors own
phrase. Quotation, too, would be OF
no avail. The poems are long, and
they must be read through at a stretch
or the spell H. broken. A bit here or
there (unless one already has the whole
poem at tie back of his mind is apt TO
sound a good deal like nonsense, and
might check rather than rouse curl
osity. We shall content ourselves with
remarking that a poet who has done
such obviously excellent things as the
rest of this volume shows forth may be
presumed TO know what he is about
when he hurls stylistic bombshell.
The child poems, o. which the most
remarkable is THE Master Of the
Dance" are of an exquisite humor and
delicacy. eve cannot refrain from
quarrelling, incidentally. with the pub
Usher, who has used THE Congo" the
title of the Line-page first poem, as a
running head, both left and right.
throughout the book-even over the
little lyric, ain Praise of Glorisna's
Remarkable Golden Hair.") The poems
abe II the pr. sent war seem 10 US some
what dryly argumentative, but many OF
the others on large themes have the
throb of power. Among the best OF
these is:
The Leaden-Eyed.
Let not your souls te smothered out
before
They do quaint deeds and fully
fsunt their pride
II is the worlds one crime its babes
grow dull,
It's poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-
eyed.
Not. that they stsrve, but stsrve so
dreamlessly;
Mt that they sow, but that they sell
dom reap;
Not that they serve, but have no gods
Not that they die, but that they die
like sheep.
II has probably never happened 10
American poetry before TO receive in
one and the same year two such inter
eJting accessions as Nachel Lindsay
and Conrad Aiken. One is inclined at
first to laugh at Mr.. Aiken for the
extraordinary chosen with which he
has followed in the path of Masefeld.
and if one is impatient of limitations
one will probably throw the book
&C oss the floor. If one is at all SEN
sible, however, one will pick it up
again. Imitation is no vice; and If any
one thinks that it is easy to initiate
great poet and do it so that the result
is an imitation and not parody-we
give him leave to try.
Mr.. Aiken himself, it must be said,
is not sufficiently modest in his atti-
tude toward Masefeld. He seems TO
think that he has succeeded in us
attempt see the preface to exci4s all
echoes, and to leave as a basis for
dreaded comparisons only the facts that
these poems, like Maseiield's, are mar
rative, and are written in certain Chau-
cerian forms" In point Of fact, the
three long poems are fairly resonant
with echoes:
And all earth moved
With life of her whom he had loved,
Till she was earth and earth was she,
She was this snow, this brook, this tree;
and then, in another poem
They danced again; the music, like a
sea,
Swept them away, as blind and light
as foam,
They leapt to stars, wind bore them
high and free,
They whirled, they laughed, May
clutched a flying comb.
The music stopped. Jim stared:
'I'm going home;
I'm tired Of you, and all this rutting
crowd!
I'm quit" He smiled, sarcastic, stiff
fly bowed.
And so on, page after page. This is no
mere superficial resemblance; il is the
very voice of Masefeld, though Mr..
Aiken never rises TO the height Of
lyric beauty nor attains his
strength.
At the same time Mr.. Aiken's subject
natter is thoroughly American, and his
outlook upon life direct and individual.
The shorter poems at tire end. especially
Laughter" and youth Penetrant,"
1--WE hope Of high achievement. We
must protest, however, against the
alse emphasis placed upon the lower
spects Of the relations Of sex.