CONTENTS

<table><tbody><tr><td>Introduction</td><td>Page 1</td></tr><tr><td>The Word</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>Songs for Jamaica</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>The Easter Flower</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>Homing Swallows</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td>To One Coming North</td><td>9</td></tr><tr><td>North and South</td><td>10</td></tr><tr><td>Home Thoughts</td><td>11</td></tr><tr><td>My Mother</td><td>12</td></tr><tr><td>December, 1919</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><td>The Spanish Needle</td><td>15</td></tr><tr><td>The Plateau</td><td>16</td></tr><tr><td>Wild May</td><td>17</td></tr><tr><td>Adolescence</td><td>18</td></tr><tr><td>The Wild Goat</td><td>19</td></tr><tr><td>Heritage</td><td>20</td></tr><tr><td>I Shall Return</td><td>21</td></tr><tr><td>After the Winter</td><td>22</td></tr><tr><td>The tropics in New York</td><td>23</td></tr><tr><td>Baptism</td><td>24</td></tr><tr><td>In Bondage</td><td>25</td></tr><tr><td>Africa</td><td>26</td></tr><tr><td>Outcast</td><td>27</td></tr><tr><td>The Lynching</td><td>28</td></tr><tr><td>O Word I Love to Sing</td><td>29</td></tr><tr><td>If We Must Die</td><td>30</td></tr><tr><td>Baptism</td><td>31</td></tr><tr><td>I Turn to God</td><td>32</td></tr><tr><td>Look Within</td><td>33</td></tr></tbody></table>

CONTENTS (continued)

11

Baptism (Continued)

<table><tr><td>Faith</td><td>Page 34</td></tr><tr><td>Truth</td><td>35</td></tr><tr><td>Tiger</td><td>36</td></tr><tr><td>The Wise Men of the East</td><td>37</td></tr><tr><td>Christ Among the Dictators</td><td>38</td></tr><tr><td>The Pagan Isms</td><td>39</td></tr><tr><td>The Negro's Tragedy</td><td>40</td></tr><tr><td>The Negro's Friend</td><td>41</td></tr><tr><td>The New Day</td><td>42</td></tr><tr><td>The Desolate City</td><td>43</td></tr><tr><td>I Know My Soul</td><td>47</td></tr><tr><td>A Prayer</td><td>48</td></tr></table>

Americana 49

<table><tr><td>Harlem Shadows</td><td>50</td></tr><tr><td>The Harlem Dancer</td><td>51</td></tr><tr><td>When Dawn Comes to the City</td><td>52</td></tr><tr><td>On the Road</td><td>54</td></tr><tr><td>Dawn in New York</td><td>55</td></tr><tr><td>America</td><td>56</td></tr><tr><td>The City's Love</td><td>57</td></tr><tr><td>On Broadway</td><td>58</td></tr><tr><td>French Leave</td><td>59</td></tr><tr><td>Morning Joy</td><td>60</td></tr><tr><td>Winter in the Country</td><td>61</td></tr><tr><td>To Winter</td><td>62</td></tr><tr><td>The Castaways</td><td>63</td></tr><tr><td>The White City</td><td>64</td></tr><tr><td>Subway Wind</td><td>65</td></tr><tr><td>Alfonso, Dressing to Wait at Table</td><td>66</td></tr></table>

CONTENTS (continued)

111

Americana (continued)

<table><tr><td>Rest in Peace</td><td>Page 67</td></tr><tr><td>Spring in New Hampshire</td><td>68</td></tr><tr><td>The Tired Worker</td><td>69</td></tr><tr><td>The Barrier</td><td>70</td></tr></table>

Different Places

<table><tr><td>St. Isaac's Church Petrograd</td><td>72</td></tr><tr><td>Moscow</td><td>73</td></tr><tr><td>Barcelona</td><td>74</td></tr><tr><td>Tetuan</td><td>77</td></tr><tr><td>A Farewell to Morocco</td><td>78</td></tr></table>

Amoroso

<table><tr><td>Absence</td><td>82</td></tr><tr><td>Summer Morn in New Hampshire</td><td>83</td></tr><tr><td>A Red Flower</td><td>84</td></tr><tr><td>Garage</td><td>85</td></tr><tr><td>To O.E.A.</td><td>86</td></tr><tr><td>Romance</td><td>88</td></tr><tr><td>Flower of Love</td><td>89</td></tr><tr><td>The Snow Fairy</td><td>90</td></tr><tr><td>A Memory of June</td><td>92</td></tr><tr><td>Flirtation</td><td>93</td></tr><tr><td>Tormented</td><td>94</td></tr><tr><td>Polarity</td><td>95</td></tr><tr><td>Jasmines</td><td>96</td></tr><tr><td>Commemoration</td><td>97</td></tr><tr><td>Memorial</td><td>98</td></tr><tr><td>One Year After</td><td>100</td></tr><tr><td>Futility</td><td>102</td></tr></table>

1

When Claude McKay did me the honor of asking me to write some
introductory words for his volume of poems, I gladly assented. When
I read the poems I felt that there are occasions in the presence of
which silence is the fitting response. I feel that this is one of
those occasions; words of comment are idle, and even words of praise
have something of the quality of impertinence about them. I shall,
at all events, refrain from telling others what they ought to look for
and find in this book of poems, and shall also, I hope, from anything
else that might seem to be assuming the seat of critic and judge. I
shall be more than satisfied if I can tell where and how the poet's
words have deeply touched me.

Were I to single out one line from the poems to convey what
comes nearest to telling what the poems mean to me I think it would be
from *North and South*, reading

And wonder to life's commonplaces clings.

I realize that the eyes of insensitive readers may linger on
"commonplaces" and less lightly over the wonder that clings to them.
But that wonder which never fails or falters in the case of Claude
McKay's vision is that in which commonplaces are identical with what is
the
common in life of all men since it cannot be escaped and yet is capable
of being expressed only by one who has like McKay the eyes of a poet
and the voice of a singer.

This poem in which the verse quoted is to be found is part of
the first one of the five parts in which the poems are arranged. The
part is entitled *Poems for Jamaica* where, it is evident, the poet spent
his own childhood. All the poems of this part are filled with the most
spontaneous manifestation that I have ever read of the ways in which a
sensitive adult may recover and recreate the life of the child. It is
spontaneous because it is fused with the material of which the poems are
composed; it never stands as a separate element.

-2-

I mention this for two reasons. One of them I have already mentioned. It is the extraordinary way in which almost every poem of the volume expresses that identity of the self with the ever fresh always renewed wonders of living which is the gift of childhood at its happiest. The other reason that while the first section *unites* conveys this identification in the sense of childhood itself, each successive section unites its direct, straightforward quality, as free from artificiality and straining for effect as the spirit of childHOod itself (when free from constraint from without) with that ever-increasing depth and intensity which should be the lot of all men as they mature, but which is usually dulled into finding commonplace the deep things of common human life.

I shall make no attempt to follow this increment in its unfailing expression in the subsequent sections, *Americana*, *Different Places*, *Amoroso*, and *Baptism*. It is there in the poems in its own behalf and in its own terms. About the subject intervening between the first and last sections I shall only say that the five poems of foreign cities and countries that are the *Different Places* reappearing in Claude McKay's vision, although they are by no means the most weighty of the volume, yet reveal with startling vividness his unspoiled and immediately sensitive response to scenes of the world in which the physical and the human blend into an indivisible yet distinctive unity.

The culmination of ever-increasing growth in depth and intensity constitutes the last section, *Baptism*. The religious suggestion of the title is the very color and atmosphere of the poem composing it,

> And so to God I go to make my peace
> Where black nor white can follow to betray.
> My pent-up heart to Him I will release
> And surely He will show the perfect way.

-3-

It is in this section that the sense of being a black man
in a white man's world, which is a recurring undertone of
many poems in the previous parts of the book, comes to its full ex-
pression. (I feel it decidedly out of place to refer to him as the
voice of the Negro people; he is that, but he is so much more than
that) It is deep dyed with hate, but with hate that is clean; never
mean nor spiteful. No white man can do more than express his humi-
liated sympathy. For, in the words of the poet,

There is no white man who could write my book

Though many think the story can be told

Of what the Negro people ought to brook.

Our statesmen roam the world to set things right,

The Negro laughs and prays to God for Light.

John Dewey

THE WORD

The Word was God and God He was the Word!

How beautiful, majestic and sublime!

The Word of Man becomes the Sovereign Lord
Of Earth, of Sea and of Heaven for all time.

Lord of my word, Inventor of all words,
Supreme Creator of the Word, oh God!

Who made the Word to be as free as birds,
To sing and wing and ring when angels nod!

Thy Word, Thy lovely Music that should lift
Men up to see thee grandly magnified,
Oh Lord, Thy wonderful and precious gift,
We have betrayed, ignobly crucified.

Oh spread Thy words like green fields, watered, fresh,
The Word is God and the Word is made flesh!

7

THE EASTER PLOWER

Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground
Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter Lily
Soft-scented in the air for yards around;

Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf!
Just like a fragile bell of silver rime,
It burst the tomb for freedom sweet and brief
In the young pregnant year at Eastertime;

And many thought it was a sacred sign,
And some called it the resurrection flower;
And I, in wonder worshiped at its shrine,
Yielding my heart unto its perfumed power.

HOMING SWALLOWS

Swift swallows sailing from the Spanish main,
O rain-birds racing merrily away

From hill-tops parched with heat and sultry plain
Of wilting plants and fainting flowers, say --

When at the noon hour from the chapel school
The children dash and scamper down the dale,
Scornful of teacher's rod and binding rule
Forever broken and without avail,

Do they still stop beneath the giant tree
To gather locusts in their childish greed,
And chuckle when they break the pods to see
The golden powder clustered round the seed?

TO ONE COMING NORTH

At first you'll joy to see the playful snow,
Like white moths trembling on the tropic air,
Or waters of the hills that softly flow
Gracefully falling down a shining stair.

And when the fields and streets are covered white
And the wind-worried void is chilly, raw,
Or underneath a spell of heat and light
The cheerless frozen spots begin to thaw,

Like me you'll long for home, where birds's glad song
Means flowering lanes and leas and spaces dry,
And tender thoughts and feelings fine and strong,
Beneath a vivid silver-flecked blue sky.

But oh! more than the changeless southern isles,
When Spring has shed upon the earth her charm,
You'll love the Northland wreathed in golden smiles
By the miraculous sun turned glad and warm.

NORTH AND SOUTH

O sweet are tropic lands for waking dreams!

There time and life move lazily along.

There by the banks of blue-and-silver streams

Grass-sheltered crickets chirp incessant song,

Gay-colored lizards loll all through the day,

Their tongues outstretched for careless little
flies,

And swarthy children in the fields at play,

Look upward laughing at the smiling skies.

A breath of idlesness is in the air

That casts a subtle spell upon all things,

And love and mating-time are everywhere,

The fluttering humming-bird darts through the
trees

And dips his long beak in the big bell-flowers,

The leisured buzzard floats upon the breeze,

Riding a crescent cloud for endless hours,

The sea beats softly on the emerald strands--

O sweet for quiet dreams are tropic lands!

HOME THOUGHTS

Oh something just now must be happening there!
That suddenly and quiveringly here,
Amid the city's noises, I must think
Of mangoes leaning to the river's brink,
And dexterous Davie climbing high above,
The gold fruits ebon-speckled to remove,
And toss them quickly in the tangled mass
Of wis-wis twisted round the guinea grass;
And Cyril coming through the bramble-track
A prize bunch of bananas on his back;
And Georgie -- none could ever dive like him --
Throwing his scanty clothes off for a swim;
And schoolboys, from Bridge-tunnel going home,
Watching the waters downward dash and foam.
This is no daytime dream, there's something in it,
Oh something's happening there this very minute!

MY MOTHER

Reg wished me to go with him to the field,
I paused because I did not want to go;
But in her quiet way she made me yield
Reluctantly, for she was breathing low.
Her hand she slowly lifted from her lap
And, smiling sadly in the old sweet way,
She pointed to the nail where hung my cap.
Her eyes said: I shall last another day.
But scarcely had we reached the distant place,
When over the hills we heard a faint bell ringing;
A boy came running up with frightened face;
We knew the fatal news that he was bringing.
I heard him listlessly, without a moan,
Although the only one I loved was gone.

II

The dawn departs, the morning is begun,
The trades come whispering from off the seas,
The fields of corn are golden in the sun,
The dark-brown tassels fluttering in the breeze;
The bell is sounding and children pass,
Frog-leaping, skipping, shouting, laughing shrill,
Down the red road, over the pasture-grass,

My Mother p. 2

Up to the school-house crumbling on the hill.
The older folk are at their peaceful toil,
Some pulling up the weeds, some plucking corn,
And others breaking up the sun-baked soil.
Float, faintly-scented breeze, at early morn
Over the earth where mortals sow and reap --
Beneath its breast my mother lies asleep.

THE PLATEAU

It was the silver, heart-enveloping view
Of the mysterious sea-line far away,
Seen only on a gleaming gold-white day,
That made it dear and beautiful to you.

And Laura loved it for the little hill,
Where the quartz sparkled fire, barren and dun,
Where in the shadow of the dying sun,
She contemplated Hallow's wooden mill.

While Danny liked the sheltering high grass,
In which he lay upon a clear dry night,
To hear and see, screened skilfully from sight,
The happy lovers of the valley pass.

But oh! I loved it for the big round moon
That swung out of the clouds and swooned aloft,
Burning with passion, gloriously soft,
Lighting the purple flowers of fragrant June.

WILD MAY

Aleta mentions in her tender letters,
Among a chain of quaint and touching things,
That you are feeble, weighted down with fetters,
And given to strange deeds and mutterings.
No longer without trace or thought of fear,
Do you leap to and ride the rebel roan;
But have become the victim of grim care,
With three brown beauties to support alone.
But none the less will you be in my mind,
Wild May that cantered by the risky ways,
With showy head-cloth flirting in the wind,
From market in the glad December days;
Wild May of whom even other girls could rave
Before sex tamed your spirit, made you slave.

ADOLESCENCE

There was a time when in late afternoon
The four-o'clocks would fold up at days close,
Pink-white in prayer. Under the floating moon
I lay with them in calm and sweet repose.

And in the open spaces I could sleep,
Half-naked to the shining worlds above;
Peace came with sleep and sleep was long and deep,
Gained without effort, sweet like early love.

But now no balm - nor drug nor weed nor wine -
Can bring true rest to cool my body's fever,
Nor sweeten in my mouth the acid brine,
That salts my choicest drink and will forever.

APRICA

The sun sought thy dim bed and brought forth light,
The sciences were sucklings at thy breast;
When all the world was young in pregnant night
Thy slaves toiled at thy monumental best.
Thou ancient treasure-land, thou modern prize,
New peoples marvel at thy pyramids!
The years roll on, thy sphinx of riddle eyes
Watches the mad world with immobile lids.
The Hebrews humbled them at Pharaoh's door.
Cradle of Power! Yet all things were in vain!
Honor and Glory, Arrogance and Fame!
They went. The darkness swallowed thee again.
Thou art the harlot, now thy time is done,
Of all the mighty nations of the sun.

LOOK WITHIN

Lord, let me not be silent while we fight
In Europe Germans, Asia Japanese
For setting up a Fascist way of might
While fifteen million Negroes on their knees
Pray for salvation from the Fascist yoke
Of these United States. Remove the beam
(Nearly two thousand years since Jesus spoke)
From your own eyes before the morn you deem
It proper from your neighbor's to extract!
We bathe our lies in vapors of sweet myrrh,
And close our eyes not to perceive the fact!
But Jesus said: You whited sepulchre,
Pretending to be uncorrupt of sin,
While worm-infested, rotten through within!

18

FAITH

"The peace that passeth all understanding,"
Lord I seek not, I need only the voice
Of Thy true Faith authentic as I sing,
In my weak heart, so that I can rejoice
With my soul. For if I can hold on
To Faith in Thee, no other things will count!
I know that I must face my God alone,
Though meddlers think their meddling plans amount

To aught in this new life to which I turn,
Scrambling like kids where angels fear to tread!
Oh Lord, there's yet so vastly much to learn:
For Faith is Knowledge, Truth is just ahead,
And also right behind and present now!
Alive like flowers upon the springtime bough.

CHRIST AMONG THE DICTATORS

38

When the dictators set them up as gods
To solve the riddle of wealth and poverty,
I think of Jesus who was scourged with rods,
Who died so that the whole world might be free
From powers who posed as gods to rule mankind!
I think of Jesus and the Pagan world
To which He said: Can the blind lead the blind?
Bodily the flag of love his life unfurled.

My Lord and Master of the earth to whom
The men of Caesar's line are nothing new,
Who died to break them and above the tomb
Proclaimed the gospel militant and true:--
My Pagan life of arrogance and dross,
I lay down all and humbly at your cross.

THE NEW DAY

Thousands of years ago the Prophet said,
The lion and the lamb in peace will play,
And by a little child they shall be led,
When Jesse's rod has flowered the New Day.
Because a golden child to us is born,
Whose light upon the earth shall never cease,
Whose music rustles in each blade of corn--
The Wonderful, the Mighty Price of Peace.

And shall not all men black and brown and white,
Together work and play in harmony,
In this grand age of universal light,
The Christ Child gave to man to make him free?
His power through the world must penetrate,
Till it is cleansed of cruelty and hate.

THE DESOLATE CITY

My spirit is a pestilential city,
With misery triumphant everywhere,
Glutted with baffled hopes and human pity,
Strange agonies make quiet lodgement there;
Its sewers bursting ooze up from below
And spread their loathsome substance through its lanes,
Flooding all areas with their evil flow
And blocking all the motions of its veins;
Its life is sealed to love or hope or pity,
My spirit is a pestilential city.

Above its walls the air is heavy-wet,
Brooding in fever mood and hanging thick
Round empty tower and broken minaret,
Settling upon the tree tops stricken sick
And withered under its contagious breath.
Their leaves are shrivelled silver, parched decay,
Like wilting creepers trailing underneath
The chalky yellow of atropic way.
Round crumbling tower and leaning minaret,
The air hangs fever-filled and heavy-wet.

44

19a

# The Desolate City

And all its many fountains no more spurt;
Within the damned-up tubes they tide and foam,
Around the drifted sludge and silted dirt,
And weep against the soft and liquid loam.
And so the city's ways are washed no more,
All is neglected and decayed within,
Clean waters beat against its high-walled shore
In furious force, but cannot enter in;
The suffocated fountains cannot spurt,
They foam and rage against the silted dirt.

Beneath the ebon gloom of mounting rocks
The little pools lie poisonously still,
And birds come to the edge in forlorn flocks,
And utter sudden, plaintive notes and shrill,
Pecking at strangely gray-green substances;
But never do they dip their bills and drink.
They twitter, sad beneath the mournful trees,
And fretfully flit to and from the brnk,
I, little gray-brown, green-and-purpole flocks,
Beneath the jet-gloom of the mounting rocks.

The Desolate City

And green-eyed moths of curious design,
With gold-black wings and rarely silver-dotted,
On nests of flowers among those rocks recline,
Bold, burning blossoms, strangely leopard-spotted,
But breathing deadly poison from their lips.
And every lovely moth that wanders by,
And of the blossoms fatal nectar sips,
Is doomed to drooping stupor, there to die;
All green-eyed moths of curious design
That on the fiercely-burning blooms recline.

Oh cold as death is all the loveliness,
That breathes out of the strangeness of the scene,
And sickening like a skeleton's caress,
Of clammy clinging fingers, long and lean.
Above it float a host of yellow flies,
Circling in changeless motion in their place,
That came down snow-thick from the freighted skies,
Swarming across the gluey floor of space:
Oh cold as death is all the loveliness,
And sickening like a skeleton's caress.

46

19c

The Desolate City

There was a time, when, happy with the birds,
The little children clapped their hands and laughed;
And midst the clouds the glad winds heard their words
And blew down all the merry ways to waft
The music through the scented fields of flowers.
Oh sweet were children's voices in those days,
Before the fall of pestilential showers,
That drove them forth far from the city's ways:
Now never, nevermore their silver words
Will mingle with the golden of the birds.

Gone, gone forever the familiar forms
To which the city once so dearly clung,
Blown worlds beyond by the destroying storms
And lost away like lovely songs unsung.
Yet life still longers, questioningly strange,
Timid and quivering, naked and alone,
Against the cycle of disruptive change,
Though all the fond familiar forms are gone,
Forever gone, the fond familiar forms;
Blown worlds beyond by the destroying storms.

A PRAYER

'Mid the discordant noises of the day I hear thee
calling;
I stumble as I fare along Earth's way; keep me
from falling.

Mine eyes are open but they cannot see for gloom
of night;
I can no more than lift my heart to thee for in-
ward light.

The wild and fiery passion of my youth consumes
my soul;
In agony I turn to thee for truth and self-control

For passion and all the pleasures it can give will
die the death;
But this of me eternally must live, thy borrowed
breath.

THE HARLEM DANCER

Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes
And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway;
Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes
Blown by black players upon a picnic day.
She sang and danced on gracefully and calm,
The light gauze hanging loose about her form;
To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm
Grown lovelier for passing through a storm.
Upon her swarthy neck black shiny curls
Luxuriant fell; and tossing coins in praise,
The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the
girls,
Devoured her shape with eager, passionate gaze;
But looking at her falsely-smiling face,
I knew her self was not in that strange place.

WHEN DAWN COMES TO THE CITY

The tired cars go grumbling by,
The moaning, groaning cars,
And the old milk carts go rumbling by
Under the same dull stars.
Out of the tenements, cold as tone,
Dark figures start for work;
I watch them sadly shuffle on,
'Tis dawn, dawn in New York.

But I would be on the island of the sea;
In the heart of the island of the sea,
Where the cocks are crowing, crowing, crowing,
And the hens are cackling in the rose-apple tree,
Where the old draft-horse is neighing, neighing,
neighing
Out on the brown dew-silvered lawn,
And the tethered oow is lowing, lowing lowing,
And dear old Ned is braying, braying braying,
And the shaggy Nannie goat is calling, calling,
calling
From her little trampled corner of the long
wide lea
That stretches to the waters of the hill-stream
falling

When Dawn Comes to the City, p. 2

Sheer upon the flat rocks joyously!

There, oh there! on the island of the sea,
There I would be at dawn.

The crazy, lazy cars,

And the same milk carts go rumbling by

Under the dying stars.

A lonely newsboy hurries by,

Humming a recent ditty;

Red streaks strike through the gray of the sky,

The dawn comes to the city.

But I would be on the island of the sea,

neighing

And the tethered cow is lowing, lowing, lowing,

calling

wide lea

FRENCH LEAVE

No servile little fear shall daunt my will
This morning, I have courage steeled to say
I will be lazy, conqueringly still,
I will not lose the hours in toil this day.

The roaring world without, careless of souls,
Shall leave me to my placid dream of rest,
My four walls shield me from its shouting ghouls,
And all its hates have fled my quiet breast.

And I will loll here resting, wide awake,
Dead to the world of work, the world of love,
I laze contented just for dreaming's sake
With not the slightest urge to think or move.

How tired unto death, how tired I was!
Now for a day I put my burdens by,
And like a child amidst the meadow grass
Under the southern sun, I languid lie

And feel the bed about me kindly deep,
My strength ooze gently from my hollow bones,
My worried brain drift aimlessly to sleep,
Like softening to a song of tuneful tones.

ALFONSO, DRESSING TO WAIT AT TABLE

Alfonso is a handsome bronze-hued lad
Of subtly-changing and surprising parts;
His moods are storms that frighten and make glad,
His eyes were made to capture women's hearts.

Down in the glory-hole Alfonso sings
An olden song of wine and clinking glasses
And routous rakes; magnificently flings
Gay kisses to imaginary lasses.

Alfonso's voice of mellow music thrills
Our swaying forms and steals our hearts with joy;
And when he soars, his fine falsetto trills
Are rarest notes of gold without alloy.

But, O Alfonso! wherefore do you sing
Dream-songs of carefree men and ancient places?
Soon we shall be beset by clamouring
Of hungry and importunate palefaces.

REST IN PEACE

No more for you the city's thorny ways,
The ugly corners of the Negro belt;
The miseries and pains of those harsh days
By you will never, never again be felt.

No more, if still you wander, will you meet
With nights of unabating bitterness;
They cannot reach you in your safe retreat,
The city's hate, the city's prejudice!

'Twas sudden--but your menial task is done,
The dawn now breaks on you, the dark is over,
The sea is crossed, the longed-for port is won;
Farewell, oh, fare you well! My friend and
lover.

18

68

SPRING IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

(To J. L. J. F. E.)

Too green the springing April grass,
Too blue the silver-speckled sky,
For me to linger here, alas,
While happy winds go laughing by,
Wasting the golden hours indoors,
Washing windows and scrubbing floors.

Too wonderful the April night,
Too faintly sweet the first May flowers,
The stars too gloriously bright,
For me to spend the evening hours,
When fields are fresh and streams are leaping,
Wearied, exhausted, dully sleeping.

THE BARRIER

I must not gaze at them although
Your eyes are dawning day;
I must not watch you as you go
Your sun-illumined way;

I hear but I must never heed
The fascinating note,
Which, fluting like a raver reed,
Comes from your trembling throat;

I must not see upon your face
Love's softly glowing spark;
For there's the barrier of race,
You're fair and I am dark.

72

ST. ISAAC'S CHURCH PETROGRAD

Bow down my soul in worship very low
And in the holy silences be lost.
Bow down before the marble Man of Woe,
Bow down before the singing angel host.
What jewelled glory fills my spirit's eye,
What golden grandeur moves the depths of me!
The soaring arches lift me up on high,
Taking my breath with their rare symmetry.

Bow down my soul and let the wondrous light
Of beauty bathe thee from her lofty throne,
Bow down before the wonder of man's might.
Bow down in worship, humble and alone,
Bow lowly down before the sacred sight
Of man's Divinity alive in stone.

3

74

BARGELONA

I

In Barcelona city they dance the nights
Along the streets. The folk, erecting stands
Upon the people's pavements, come together
From pueblo, barrio, in families,
Lured by the lilting playing of the bands,
Rejoicing in the balmy summer weather,
In spreading rings they weave fine fantasies
Like rare mosaics of many-colored lights.

Kindled, it glows, the magical Sardana,
And sweeps the city in a glorious blaze.
The garrison, the sailors from the ships,
The workers join and block the city's ways,
Ripe laughter ringing from intriguing lips,
Crescending like a wonderful hosanna.

II

Oh admirable city from every range!
Whether I stand upon your natural towers, -
With your blue carpet spreading to their feet,
Its patterns undulate between the bars, -
Watching until the tender twilight hours,

Barcelona, p. 2

Its motion cradling soft a silver fleet;
Or far descend from underneath the stars.

Down - to your bottoms sinister and strange:
The nights eccentric of the Barrio Chino,
The creatures of the shadows of the walls,
Gray like the savage caricatures of Goya,
The chulos of the abysmal dancing halls,
And in the garish lights of La Criolla,
The feminine flamenco of El Nitro.

III

Oh Barcelona, queen of Europe's cities,
From dulcet thoughts of you my guts are twisted
With bitter pain of longing for your sights,
And for your hills, your picturesque glory singing,
My feet are mutinous, mine eyes are misted.
Upon my happy thoughts your harbor lights
Are shimmering like bells melodious ringing
With sweet cadenzas of flamenco ditties.

I see your movement flashing like a knife,
Reeling my senses, drunk upon the hues

5

78

A FAREWELL TO MOROCCO

Oh wistful and heartrending earth, oh land
Of colors singing symphonies of life!
Myself is like a stone upon my spirit,
Reluctant, passing from your sunny shore.

Oh native colors,
Pure colors aglow
With magic light.

Mysterious atmosphere whose elements,
Like hands inspired by a magnetic force,
Touched so caressingly my inmost chords,
How strangely I was brought beneath your spell!

But willingly
A captive I
Remained to be.

Oh friends, my friends! When Ramadan returns
And daily fast and feasting through the night,
With chants and music honey-dripping sweets,
And fatmahs shaking their flamenco feet,

My thoughts will wing
The waves of air
To be with you.

Morocco p. 3

When liquid-eyed Habeeb draws from the lute
A murmur golden like a thousand bees,
Embowelled in a sheltering tropic tree,
With honey brimming in the honeycomb,
The tuneful air
Will waft the sound
Across to me.

Notes soaked with the dear odor of your soil
And like its water cooling to my tongue,
Haunting me always like a splendid dream,
Of vistas opening to an infinite way
Of perfect love
That angels make
In Paradise.

Habeeb, Habeeba, I may never return
Another sacred fast to keep with you,
But when your Prince of months inaugurates
Our year, my thoughts will turn to Ramadan,
Forgetting never
Its tokens
Unforgettable.

- Mektoub.

ABSENCE

Your words dropped into my heart like pebbles
into a pool,

Ripping around my breast and leaving it melting
cool.

Your kisses fell sharp on my flesh like dawn-dews
from the limb,

Of a fruit-filled lemon tree when the day is young
and dim.

Like soft rain-christened sunshine, as fragile as
rare gold lace,

Your breath, sweet-scented and warm, has kindled
my tranquil face.

But a silence vasty-deep, oh deeper than all these
ties

Now, through the menacing miles, brooding be-
tween us lies.

And more than the songs I sing, I await your
written word,

To stir my fluent blood as never your presence
stirred.

SUMMER MORN IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

All yesterday it poured, and all night long
I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat
Upon the shingled roof like a weird song,
Upon the grass like running children's feet.
And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed,
Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,
Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist,
And nestled soft against the earth's wet breast.

But lo, there was a miracle at dawn!

The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze,
The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn,
The songsters twittered in the rustling trees.
And all things were transfigured in the day,
But me whom radiant beauty could not move;
For you, more wonderful, were far away,
And I was blind with hunger for your love.

A RED FLOWER

Your lips are like a southern lily red,
Wet with the soft rain-kisses of the night,
In which the brown bee buries deep its head,
When still the dawn's a silver sea of light.

Your lips betray the secret of your soul,
The dark delicious essence that is you,
A mystery of life, the flaming goal
I seek through many pathways strange and new.

Your lips are the red symbol of a dream.
What visions of warm lilies they impart,
That line the green bank of a fair blue stream,
With butterflies and bees close to each heart!

Brown bees that murmur sounds of music rare,
That softly fall upon the languorous breeze,
Wafting them gently on the quiet air
Among untended avenues of trees.

O were I hovering, a bee, to probe
Deep down within your scented heart, fair flower,
Enfolded by your soft vermilion robe,
Amorous of sweets, for but one perfect hour!

COURAGE

O lonely heart so timid of approach,
Like the shy tropic flower that shuts its lips
To the faint touch of tender finger tips:
What is your word? What question would you broach?

Your lustrous-warm eyes are too sadly kind
To mask the meaning of your dreamy tale,
Your guarded life too exquisitely frail
Against the daggers of my warring mind.

There is no part of the unyielding earth,
Even bare rocks where the eagles build their nest,
Will give us undisturbed and friendly rest.
No dewfall softens this vast belt of dearth.

But in the socket-chiseled teeth of strife,
That gleam in serried files in all the lands,
We may join hungry, understanding hands,
And drink our share of ardent love and life.

TO O.E.A.

Your voice is the color of a robin's breast,
And there's a sweet sob in it like rain--still
rain in the night.

Among the leaves of the trumpet-tree, close to his
nest,

The pea-dove sings, and each note thrills me
with strange delight

Like the words, wet with music, that well from
your trembling throat.

I'm afraid of your eyes, they're so bold,
Searching me through, reading my thoughts,
shining like gold.

But sometimes they are gentle and soft like the
dew on the lips of the eucharis

Before the sun comes warm with his lover's kiss.

You are sea-foam, pure with the star's love-
liness,

Not mortal, a flower, a fairy, too fair for the
beauty-shorn earth.

All wonderful things, all beautiful things, gave of
their wealth to your birth.

Oh I love you so much, not recking of passion,
that I feel it is wrong!

ROMANCE

To clasp you now and feel your head close-pressed,
Scented and warm against my beating breast;

To whisper soft and quivering your name,
And drink the passion burning in your frame;

To lie at full length, taut, with cheek to cheek,
And tease your mouth with kisses till you speak

Love words, mad words, dream words, sweet senseless
words,
Melodious like notes of mating birds;

To hear you ask if I shall love always,
And myself answer: Till the end of days;

To feel your easeful sigh of happiness
When on your trembling lips I murmur: Yes;

It is so sweet. We know it is not true.
What matters it? The night must shed her dew.

We know it is not true, but it is sweet--
The poem with this music is complete.

FLOWER OF LOVE

The perfume of your body dulls my sense.
I want nor wine nor weed; your breath alone
Suffices. In this moment rare and tense
I worship at your breast. The flower is blown,
the saffron petals tempt my amorous mouth,

The yellow heart is radiant now with dew
Soft-scented, redolent of my loved South;
O flower of love! I give myself to you.
Uncovered on your couch of figured green,
Here let us linger indivisible.

The petals of your sanctuary unseen
Receive my offering, yielding unto me.
Oh, with our love the night is warm and deep!
The air is sweet, my flower, and sweet the flute
Whose music lulls our burning brain to sleep,
While we lie loving, passionate and mute.

THE SNOW FAIRY

I

Throughout the afternoon I watched them there,
Snow-fairies falling, falling from the sky,
Whirling fantastic in the misty air,
Contending fierce for space supremacy.
And they flew down a mightier force at night,
As though in heaven there was revolt and riot,
And they, frail things had taken panic flight
Down to the calm earth seeking peace and quiet.
I went to bed and rose at early dawn
To see them huddled together in a heap,
Each merged into the other upon the lawn,
Worn out by the sharp struggle, fast asleep.
The sun shone brightly on them half the day,
By night they stealthily had stol'n away.

II

And suddenly my thought then turned to you
Who came to me upon a winter's night,
When snow-schemas round my attic window flew,
Your hair disheveled, eyes aglow with light.
My heart was like the weather when you came,
The wanton winds were blowing loud and long;
But you, with hoy and passion all aflame,
You danced and sang a lilting summer song.

JASMINES

Your scent is in the room.

Swiftly it overwhelms and conquers me!

Jasmines, night jasmines, perfect of perfume,
Heavy with dew before the dawn of day!

Your face was in the mirror. I could see
You smile and vanish suddenly away,

Leaving behind the vestige of a tear.

Sad suffering face, from parting rown so dear!
Night jasmines cannot bloom in this cold place;
Without the street is wet and weird with snow;

The cold nude trees are tossing to and fro;
Too stormy is the night for your fond face;

For your low voice too loud the wind's mad roar.

But oh, your scent is here--jasmines that grow
Luxuriant, clustered round your cottage door!

COMMEMORATION

When first your glory shone upon my face
My body kindled to a mighty flame,
And burnt you yielding in my hot embrace
Until you swooned to love, breathing my name.

And wonder came and filled our night of sleep,
Like a new comet crimsoning the sky;
And stillness like the stillness of the deep
Suspended lay as an unuttered sigh.

I never again shall feel your warm heart flushed,
Panting with passion, naked unto mine,
Until the throbbing world around is hushed
To quiet worship at our scented shrine.

Nor will your glory seek my swarthy face,
To kindle and to change my jaded frame
Into a miracle of godlike grace,
Transfigured, bathed in your immortal flame.

MEMORIAL

Your body was a sacred cell always,
A jewel that grew dull in garish light,
An opal which beneath my wondering gaze
Gleamed rarely, softly throbbing in the night.

I touched your flesh with reverential hands,
For you were sweet and timid like a flower
That blossoms out of barren tropic sands,
Shedding its perfume in one golden hour.

You yielded to my touch with gentle grace,
And though my passion was a mighty wave
That buried you beneath its strong embrace,
You were yet happy in the moment's grave.

Still more than passion consummate to me,
More than the nuptials immemorial sung,
Was the warm thrill that melted me to see
Your clean brown body, beautiful and young;

The joy in your maturity at length,
The peace that filled my soul like cooling wine,
When you responded to my tender strength,
And pressed your heart exulting into mine.

FUTILITY

Oh, I have tried to laugh the pain away,
Let new flames brush my love-springs like a
feather.

But the old fever seizes me to-day,
As sickness grips a soul in wretched weather.
I have given up myself to every urge,
With not a care of precious powers spent,
Have bared my body to the strangest scourge,
To soothe and deaden my heart's unhealing rent.
But you have torn a nerve out of my frame,
A gut that no physician can replace,
And reft my life of happiness and aim.
Oh what new purpose shall I now embrace?
What substance hold, what lovely form pursue,
When my thought burns through everything to
you?

THIRST

My spirit walls for water, water now!

My tongue is aching dry, my throat is hot

For water, fresh rain shaken from a bough,

Or dawn dews heavy in some leafy spot.

My hungry body's burning for a swim

In sunlit water where the air is cool,

As in Trout Valley where upon a limb

The golden finch sings sweetly to the pool.

Oh water, water, when the night is done,

When day steals gray-white through the window-
pane,

Clear silver water when I wake, alone,

All impotent of parts, of fevered brain;

Pure water from a forest fountain first,

To wash me, cleanse me, and to quench my thirst!