The Project Gutenberg EBook of Modern American Poetry, by Louis Untermeyer This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Modern American Poetry Author: Louis Untermeyer Release Date: March 1, 2019 [EBook #58992] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN AMERICAN POETRY *** Produced by Richard Tonsing, David Starner, Stephen Hope and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.) MODERN AMERICAN POETRY (Revised and Enlarged Edition) BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER Author of “Challenge,” “Including Horace,” “The New Era in American Poetry,” etc. NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1921, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY THE QUINN & SODEN COMPANY RAHWAY, N J ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For permission to reprint most of the material in this volume, the editor wishes to thank not only the poets whose coöperation has been of such assistance, but also the publishers, all of whom are holders of the copyright. The indebtedness is alphabetically acknowledged to: Richard G. Badger—for the poems from Sun and Saddle Leather and Grass-Grown Trails by Badger Clark. Bobbs-Merrill Company—for two poems from The Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley. Brentano’s—for two poems from Chanteys and Ballads by Harry Kemp. Nicholas L. Brown—for the poem from Blood of Things by Alfred Kreymborg. The Century Company—for the selections from Merchants from Cathay by William Rose Benét and War and Laughter by James Oppenheim. The Century Magazine—for “Lake Song” by Jean Starr Untermeyer. Dodd, Mead & Company—for the two poems from Lyrics of Lowly Life and one poem from Lyrics of Love and Laughter by Paul Laurence Dunbar. George H. Doran Company—for the selections from Moons of Grandeur by William Rose Benét, Banners by Babette Deutsch, Trees and Other Poems by Joyce Kilmer, and Hide and Seek by Christopher Morley. Doubleday, Page & Company—for the selections from In Other Words and Tobogganning on Parnassus by Franklin P. Adams, The Man with the Hoe and Lincoln and Other Poems by Edwin Markham. E. P. Dutton & Company—for the selections from The Vale of Tempe by Madison Cawein and Lanterns in Gethsemane by Willard Wattles. Four Seas Company—for the quotations from The Charnel Rose, The Jig of Forslin and The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken. Hillacre Bookhouse—for the quotations from Arrows in the Gale by Arturo Giovannitti. Harcourt, Brace & Company—for the selections from A Miscellany of American Poetry—1920; Canzoni and Carmina by T. A. Daly, Piping and Panning by Edwin Meade Robinson, Smoke and Steel by Carl Sandburg, Challenge and The New Adam by Louis Untermeyer, and The Roamer and Other Poems by George Edward Woodberry. Harper & Brothers—for the selections from Fables for the Frivolous by Guy Wetmore Carryl and Dreams and Dust by Don Marquis. Harr Wagner Publishing Co.—for the selections from The Complete Poetical Works of Joaquin Miller. Henry Holt & Company—for the selections from Wilderness Songs by Grace Hazard Conkling, Portraits and Protests by Sarah N. Cleghorn, A Boy’s Will, North of Boston, and Mountain Interval by Robert Frost; Outcasts in Beulah Land by Roy Helton, Chicago Poems and Cornhuskers by Carl Sandburg, These Times by Louis Untermeyer, and Factories by Margaret Widdemer. The selections from The Complete Poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, The Complete Works of Bret Harte, The Shoes That Danced by Anna Hempstead Branch, Davy and the Goblin by Charles E. Carryl, Grimm Tales Made Gay by Guy Wetmore Carryl, Riders of the Stars and Songs of the Trail by Harry Herbert Knibbs, Poems and Poetic Dramas by William Vaughn Moody, Lyrics of Joy by Frank Dempster Sherman, Poems by Edward Rowland Sill, Sea Garden by “H. D.,” and the quotations from Some Imagist Poets—1916 and Some Imagist Poets—1917 are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers. B. W. Huebsch—for the selections from A Family Album by Alter Brody, The Vaunt of Man by William Ellery Leonard, The Ghetto and Sun-Up by Lola Ridge, Optimos by Horace Traubel, Growing Pains and Dreams out of Darkness by Jean Starr Untermeyer, and The Hesitant Heart by Winifred Welles. Alfred A. Knopf—for the selections from A Canticle of Pan by Witter Bynner, Colors of Life by Max Eastman, Poems by T. S. Eliot, Asphalt and Other Poems by Orrick Johns, Mushrooms by Alfred Kreymborg, Songs for the New Age by James Oppenheim, Lustra by Ezra Pound, Profiles from China and Body and Raiment by Eunice Tietjens. The Laurentian Publishers—for the poem from Motley Measures by Bert Leston Taylor. The Liberator—for a poem by Jean Starr Untermeyer. Little, Brown & Company—for the selections from Poems and Poems—Third Series by Emily Dickinson. The Macmillan Company—for the selections from Poems by Gladys Cromwell, Youth Riding by Mary Carolyn Davies, The Congo and Other Poems and The Chinese Nightingale by Vachel Lindsay, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed and Pictures of the Floating World by Amy Lowell, Spoon River iii iv v Anthology and Songs and Satires by Edgar Lee Masters, The Quest by John G. Neihardt, The Man Against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson, Love Songs and Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale, Bluestone by Marguerite Wilkinson. Robert M. McBride & Company—for the two poems taken from From the Hidden Way by James Branch Cabell. The Manas Press—for the selections from Verse by Adelaide Crapsey. Thomas B. Mosher—for the selections from A Quiet Road and A Wayside Lute by Lizette Woodworth Reese and The Flower from the Ashes by Edith M. Thomas. The New Republic—for a poem by Ridgely Torrence. Pagan Publishing Company—for two poems from Minna and Myself by Maxwell Bodenheim. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse—for the two poems by Edwin Ford Piper and a sonnet by David Morton. A. M. Robertson—for the sonnet from The House of Orchids by George Sterling. Charles Scribner’s Sons—for the selections from Poems by Henry Cuyler Bunner, Poems by Eugene Field, The Bashful Earthquake by Oliver Herford, Poems of Sidney Lanier, The Children of the Night and The Town Down the River by Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Poems by Alan Seeger. Frank Shay—for the quotation from Figs from Thistles by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Sherman, French & Company—for the two poems from The Human Fantasy and The Belovèd Adventure by John Hall Wheelock. Small, Maynard & Company—for the selections from Ballads of Lost Haven by Bliss Carman, Along the Trail by Richard Hovey, Songs from Vagabondia and More Songs from Vagabondia by Richard Hovey and Bliss Carman, and the poem by Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman. The Sonnet—for Frustrate by Leslie Nelson Jennings. F. A. Stokes Company—for the selections from War Is Kind by Stephen Crane, Grenstone Poems by Witter Bynner, and Poems by a Little Girl by Hilda Conkling. Sturgis & Walton Company—for the poem from Monday Morning by James Oppenheim. Vanity Fair—for “Wild Swans” and a sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The Yale University Press—for selections from Young Adventure by Stephen Vincent Benét and The Burglar of the Zodiac by William Rose Benét. The Yale Review—for “The Onset” by Robert Frost. For several suggestions toward the preparation of this revised edition I am especially indebted to Professors Percy H. Boynton, John Livingston Lowes, Fred Lewis Pattee and Floyd Dell. This acknowledgment is a slight expression of my gratitude as well as a record of my obligation. vi CONTENTS PAGE Preface xvii Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) Chartless 4 Indian Summer 4 Suspense 5 The Railway Train 6 A Cemetery 6 Beclouded 7 Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) Memory 8 “Enamored Architect of Airy Rhyme” 9 Two Quatrains: Maple Leaves 9 Pessimist and Optimist 10 John Hay (1838–1905) Jim Bludso 11 Banty Tim 13 Bret Harte (1839–1902) “Jim” 16 Plain Language from Truthful James 19 Joaquin Miller (1841–1913) By the Pacific Ocean 23 Crossing the Plains 24 From “Byron” 25 Edward Rowland Sill (1841–1887) Solitude 26 Dare You? 26 Sidney Lanier (1842–1881) Song of the Chattahoochee 29 Night and Day 31 From “The Marshes of Glynn” 32 Charles Edward Carryl (1842–1920) The Plaint of the Camel 34 Robinson Crusoe’s Story 35 James Whitcomb Riley (1849–1916) “When the Frost is on the Punkin” 39 A Parting Guest 41 Eugene Field (1850–1895) Our Two Opinions 43 Little Boy Blue 44 Seein’ Things 45 Edwin Markham (1852– ) Outwitted 48 The Man with the Hoe 49 Preparedness 51 Lincoln, The Man of the People 51 vii viii C. E. S. Wood (1852– ) Sunrise 53 The Desert 54 Irwin Russell (1853–1879) Blessing the Dance 56 De Fust Banjo 58 Edith M. Thomas (1854– ) “Frost To-Night” 61 George Edward Woodberry (1855– ) Immortal Love 62 A Song of Sunrise 63 H. C. Bunner (1855–1896) Shake, Mulleary and Go-ethe 64 Behold the Deeds 66 A Pitcher of Mignonette 68 Lizette Woodworth Reese (1856– ) Tears 69 The Dust 70 Spicewood 70 Horace Traubel (1858–1919) How Are You, Dear World, This Morning? 72 O My Dead Comrade 74 Frank Dempster Sherman (1860–1917) At Midnight 76 Bacchus 76 Two Quatrains: Ivy 77 Dawn 78 Charlotte P. S. Gilman (1860– ) A Conservative 78 Louise Imogen Guiney (1861–1920) The Wild Ride 80 Bliss Carman (1861– ) A Vagabond Song 83 The Gravedigger 83 Hem and Haw 86 Daisies 87 Richard Burton (1861– ) Black Sheep 88 Oliver Herford (1863– ) Earth 89 The Elf and the Dormouse 90 Richard Hovey (1864–1900) At the Crossroads 92 Unmanifest Destiny 94 Love in the Winds 95 A Stein Song 95 ix Madison Cawein (1865–1914) Snow 98 The Man Hunt 98 Penury 100 Deserted 100 Bert Leston Taylor (1866–1921) Canopus 101 William Vaughn Moody (1869–1910) From “Jetsam” 103 Pandora’s Song 104 On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines 105 George Sterling (1869– ) The Black Vulture 107 The Master Mariner 108 Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869– ) Miniver Cheevy 111 The Gift of God 112 The Master 114 An Old Story 117 Richard Cory 117 Vain Gratuities 118 The Dark Hills 119 Edgar Lee Masters (1869– ) Petit, The Poet 121 Lucinda Matlock 122 Anne Rutledge 123 Silence 123 Stephen Crane (1871–1900) I Saw a Man 127 The Wayfarer 128 Hymn 128 The Blades of Grass 129 Edwin Ford Piper (1871– ) Bindlestiff 130 Sweetgrass Range 132 T. A. Daly (1871– ) The Song of the Thrush 134 Mia Carlotta 135 Between Two Loves 136 Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906) The Turning of the Babies in the Bed 138 A Coquette Conquered 140 Discovered 141 Guy Wetmore Carryl (1873–1904) How Jack Found that Beans May Go Back on a Chap 143 The Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven 145 How a Cat Was Annoyed and a Poet Was Booted 147 H. H. Knibbs (1874– ) The Valley That God Forgot 151 Roll a Rock Down 153 x The Trail-Makers 155 Anna Hempstead Branch The Monk in the Kitchen 158 While Loveliness Goes By 162 Amy Lowell (1874– ) Solitaire 165 Meeting-House Hill 165 A Lady 166 Free Fantasia on Japanese Themes 167 Madonna of the Evening Flowers 169 Wind and Silver 170 Ridgely Torrence (1875– ) The Bird and the Tree 171 The Son 173 Robert Frost (1875– ) Mending Wall 177 The Tuft of Flowers 178 The Death of the Hired Man 181 Good-Bye and Keep Cold 187 The Runaway 188 Birches 189 Fragmentary Blue 191 The Onset 192 William Ellery Leonard (1876– ) The Image of Delight 193 To the Victor 194 Sarah N. Cleghorn (1876– ) The Survival of the Fittest 195 The Incentive 195 Carl Sandburg (1878– ) Cool Tombs 198 Fog 199 From “Smoke and Steel” 199 Blue Island Intersection 202 Clean Curtains 203 A. E. F. 204 Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard 205 Grass 205 Adelaide Crapsey (1878–1914) Three Cinquains: November Night 206 Triad 207 The Warning 207 On Seeing Weather-Beaten Trees 207 Grace Hazard Conkling (1878– ) The Whole Duty of Berkshire Brooks 208 Frost on a Window 208 Amelia Josephine Burr (1878– ) Battle-Song of Failure 209 Don Marquis (1878– ) xi Unrest 211 John Erskine (1879– ) Dedication 213 James Branch Cabell (1879– ) Sea-Scapes 214 One End of Love 215 Vachel Lindsay (1879– ) The Eagle That Is Forgotten 219 The Congo 221 To a Golden Haired Girl in a Louisiana Town 229 The Traveller 229 A Negro Sermon:—Simon Legree 230 Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight 232 Edwin Meade Robinson (1879– ) How He Turned Out 234 “Halcyon Days” 236 Franklin P. Adams (1881– ) War and Peace 238 The Rich Man 238 Those Two Boys 239 John G. Neihardt (1881– ) When I Am Dead 241 Cry of the People 241 Let Me Live Out My Years 242 Witter Bynner (1881– ) Grass-Tops 244 Voices 244 A Farmer Remembers Lincoln 245 Train-Mates 246 James Oppenheim (1882– ) The Runner in the Skies 250 The Slave 250 Tasting the Earth 251 The Lincoln Child 252 Night Note 257 Alice Corbin Echoes of Childhood 258 Lola Ridge Passages from “The Ghetto” 262 New Orleans 265 Wind in the Alleys 265 Wallace Stevens Peter Quince at the Clavier 266 Alfred Kreymborg (1883– ) Old Manuscript 270 Dawns 271 Her Eyes 272 Improvisation 272 xii xiii Arthur Davison Ficke (1883– ) Portrait of an Old Woman 274 The Three Sisters 275 Sonnet 275 Badger Clark (1883– ) The Glory Trail 276 The Coyote 279 Marguerite Wilkinson (1883– ) Before Dawn in the Woods 280 Harry Kemp (1883– ) Street Lamps 282 A Phantasy of Heaven 282 Max Eastman (1883– ) Coming to Port 284 Hours 285 At the Aquarium 285 Arturo Giovannitti (1884– ) From “The Walker” 287 Eunice Tietjens (1884– ) The Most-Sacred Mountain 290 The Drug Clerk 291 Sara Teasdale (1884– ) Night Song at Amalfi 294 Spring Night 295 I Shall Not Care 296 The Long Hill 296 Water Lilies 297 Tired 298 Gladys Cromwell (1885–1919) The Crowning Gift 299 The Mould 300 Ezra Pound (1885– ) A Girl 302 A Virginal 303 Ballad for Gloom 303 Δωρια 305 In a Station of the Metro 305 Louis Untermeyer (1885– ) Summons 307 Caliban in the Coal Mines 309 Swimmers 309 Hands 312 A Side Street 312 Jean Starr Untermeyer (1886– ) High Tide 315 Autumn 316 Sinfonia Domestica 317 Lake Song 318 John Gould Fletcher (1886– ) xiv The Swan 320 London Nightfall 321 Dawn 322 Lincoln 323 The Skaters 327 “H. D.” (1886– ) Oread 328 Pear Tree 329 Heat 329 Lethe 330 William Rose Benét (1886– ) Merchants from Cathay 331 Night 335 How to Catch Unicorns 336 John Hall Wheelock (1886– ) Sunday Evening in the Common 338 Beauty 339 Love and Liberation 339 Nirvana 340 Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918) Trees 341 Martin 342 Shaemas O Sheel (1886– ) They Went Forth to Battle, But They Always Fell 344 Roy Helton (1886– ) In Passing 346 David Morton (1886– ) Symbols 347 Old Ships 347 Orrick Johns (1887– ) The Interpreter 348 Little Things 349 Margaret Widdemer Factories 350 The Two Dyings 351 The Modern Woman to Her Lover 352 Alan Seeger (1888–1916) “I Have a Rendezvous with Death” 353 Willard Wattles (1888– ) The Builder 355 Creeds 356 T. S. Eliot (1888– ) Morning at the Window 357 From “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” 357 Prelude 358 Conrad Aiken (1889– ) Chance Meetings 360 The Fulfilled Dream 360 Miracles 363 xv Morning Song from “Senlin” 364 Christopher Morley (1890– ) Quickening 367 Leslie Nelson Jennings (1891– ) Frustrate 368 Maxwell Bodenheim (1892– ) Poet to His Love 369 Old Age 370 Death 370 Edwin Curran (1892– ) Autumn 372 The Painted Hills of Arizona 372 Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892– ) God’s World 374 Renascence 375 Pity Me Not 382 I Shall Go Back 382 The Pear Tree 383 Wild Swans 383 Mary Carolyn Davies The Day Before April 384 The Apple Tree Said 385 Winifred Welles (1893– ) From a Chinese Vase 386 Humiliation 386 Love Song from New England 387 Herbert S. Gorman (1893– ) The Fanatic 388 Babette Deutsch (1895– ) The Death of a Child 389 In a Museum 390 Alter Brody (1895– ) A City Park 391 Searchlights 391 Ghetto Twilight 392 Stephen Vincent Benét (1898– ) Portrait of a Boy 393 Hilda Conkling (1910– ) Water 395 Hay-Cock 396 The Old Bridge 396 I Keep Wondering 397 A Selected Bibliography 399 Index of Authors and Poems 401 xvi PREFACE The Civil War—and After The end of the Civil War marked the end of a literary epoch. The New England group, containing (if Poe could be added) all the great names of the ante-bellum period, began to disintegrate. The poets had outsung themselves; it was a time of surrender and swansongs. Unable to respond to the new forces of political nationalism and industrial reconstruction, the Brahmins (that famous group of intellectuals who dominated literary America) withdrew into their libraries. Poets like Longfellow, Bryant, Taylor, turned their eyes away from the native scene, rhapsodized endlessly about Europe, echoed the “parlor poetry” of England, or left creative writing altogether and occupied themselves with translations. “They had been borne into an era in which they had no part,” writes Fred Lewis Pattee (A History of American Literature Since 1870), “and they contented themselves with reëchoings of the old music.” ... Within a single period of six years, from 1867 to 1872, there appeared Longfellow’s Divina Commedia, C. E. Norton’s Vita Nuova, T. W. Parson’s Inferno, William Cullen Bryant’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Bayard Taylor’s Faust. Suddenly the break came. America developed a national consciousness; the West discovered itself, and the East discovered the West. Grudgingly at first, the aristocratic leaders made way for a new expression; crude, jangling, vigorously democratic. The old order was changing with a vengeance. All the preceding writers—poets like Emerson, Thoreau, Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes—were not only products of the New England colleges, but typically “Boston gentlemen of the early Renaissance.” To them the new men must have seemed like a regiment recruited from the ranks of vulgarity. Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, John Hay, Joaquin Miller, Joel Chandler Harris, James Whitcomb Riley—these were men who had graduated from the farm, the frontier, the mine, the pilot-house, the printer’s shop! For a while, the movement seemed of little consequence; the impact of Whitman and the Westerners was averted. The poets of the transition, with a deliberate art, ignored the surge of a spontaneous national expression. They were even successful in holding it back. But it was gathering force. xvii xviii