New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1919-02-09
A Week of Verse
AT Sycamore Hill
BY Edgar Lee Masters
From The Chicago Evening Post


stocky frame, curtains of skin on cheeks
Drained slightly of their fat; cash in the
neck
Where pus was cmptied lately; one eye dim,
And growing DINNER; almost blind in that
And when he walks he rolls little like
man whose youth is fading, like cart
That rolls when springs old. He is
moose,
stones;
Some finest tips of antlers broken off,
And eyes where images of ancient things
Fit back and forth across them, keeping
still
certain slumberous indifference
Or wisdom, it may be.
But then the talk
Bronzs dolphins in a fountain cannot spout
More streams at once: Of course the war,
the Emperor,
America in the war, his sons in France,
The dangers, separation, let them gol
The fate has been appointed-to our task,
Live full our lives with duty, go to slecpi
"For say" he exclaims, "the man who fears
To die should not be born, nor left to live"
It's Celtic poetry, free verse; he says
you nobly celebrate in your Spoon River
The pioneers, the soldiers of the past;
Why do you fout our Philippine advent
ure?"
"No difference, Colonel, in the stocky tbs
difference
Lies in the causes well, another stream:
Mark Hanna, Quay and others. What
hate
He says to me, els the Pharisee-I can stand
All other men, And you will find the mer
SO much malgned had gentle qualities,
And noble dreams Poor Quay, he loved the
Indians.
Sent for when he lay there dying, said,
Look after such tribe when am dead
want to crawl upon sunny rock
And die there like a wolf" did he say
that,
Colonel, to you?" "Yesi and you know n
Who says thing like that has in his soul
An orb of light to fash that meaning forth
OF heroisn nature
The rail fence by the corn
Is good to lean stand and talk
OF farming, cattle, country life. We turn,
Sit for some moments in garden house
On which rose vine chambers all in bloom.
And from this billy place look at the strips
OF water from the bay mile beyond,
Below some several terraces of hills
Where frs and pines are growing This
resembles
A scene in Milton that I've read. He knows
Catches the "reminiscences, quotes the lines
and then
Something of country silence, look of grass
Where the wind stirs it, mystical littls
breaths
| Coming between the roses; something, too,
In Vulcan's figure; he is Vulcan, too,
Deprived his shop, great bellows, hammer,
anvil,
Sitting quietly beside me. hands
Spread knees; something of thaAa
evokes
pathos, and Immediately in key
With all of this he says: 81 have achieved
By labor, concentration; not at all
BY gifts of genius, being commonplace
In all my faculties"
"Not ALL" | say.
Zone faculty is not-your over-mind,
Eyed front and back to all faculties,
Govern and watch them. If we let you state
Your case against you, timid born, you sag,
Becoming brave; asthmatic growing strong;
! No marksman, yet becoming skilled with
guns;
No gift oa speech, yet winning golden
speech;
No gift Of writing, writing books, no less
OF our America to thrill and live
IT, as l say, we let you state your
Against you you do, there yet remains
This cver-mind, and that is what-a gift
! Of genius Of WHAT"
by George" he says,
What are you, theosophist?"
~ don't know.
| know some men achieve single thing,
Like courage, charity, in this incarnation;
You have achieved some twenty things.
think
That this is going some for man whose
gifts
Are commonplace and nothing else"
Master of Properties, you stage the scene
! And let US speak and pass into the wings,
One thing was ftting-dying in your sleep.
A touch of Nature, Colonel. You who loved
And were beloved of Nature, felt her hand
Upon your brow at last to give TO you
A bit of sleep, and after sleep-perhaps
Rest and rejuvenation- will wake
To newer labors, fresher victories
Over those faculties not disciplined
AS you desired them in these sixty years
For Poets Slain in War
(Fron Ainslee's)
HAPPY the poets who fell in magnificent
l. L ways.
Gayly they went in the pride of their bios
soming days
Each with his vision of Liberty, chanting
its praise.