I would experience new emotions, Bizarre, exotic, Fresh with burgeoning. I would climb a sacred mountain, Struggle with other pilgrims up a steep path through pine-trees, Above to the smooth, treeless slopes, And prostrate myself before a painted shrine, I would recline upon a balcony In purple curving folds of silk, And my dress should be silvered with a pattern Of butterflies and swallows, And the black band of my obi Should flash with gold circular threads, And glitter when I moved. I would lean against the railing While you sang to me of wars Past and to come Sang, and played the samisen. Perhaps I would beat a little hand drum. In time to your singing; Perhaps I would only watch the play of light Upon the hilt of your two swords, I would sit in a covered boat, Rocking slowly to the narrow waves of a river, A hiss of gold Blooming out of darkness, Rockets exploded, And died in a soft dripping of colored stars. Until the rockets flared soundless, And their falling stars hung silent in the sky, a temple. I would anything Rather than this cold paper; With outside, the quiet sun on the sides of burgeon But there is only the oak tree rustling in the wind. The sun shines in on your books, 1 1 Reprinted by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company, from Pictures of the Floating World by Amy Lowell. On your scissors and thimble just put down, Suddenly I am lonely: I go about searching. Then I see you, Standing under a spire of pale blue larkspur, You are cool, like silver, And you smile. I think the Canterbury bells are playing little tunes, You tell me that the peonies need spraying, That the columbines have overrun all bounds, That the pyrus japonica should be cut back and rounded. You tell me these things. But I look at you, heart of silver, White heart-flame of polished silver, Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur, And I long to kneel instantly at your feet, While all about us peal the loud, sweet Te Deums of the Canterbury bells. WIND AND SILVER Greatly shining, The Autumn moon floats in the thin sky; And the fish-ponds shake their backs and flash their dragon scales As she passes over them. (Frederic) Ridgely Torrence was born at Xenia, Ohio, November 27, 1875, and was educated at Miami and Princeton University. For several years he was librarian of the Astor Library in New York City (1897-1901) and has been on several editorial staffs since then. His first volume, The House of a Hundred Lights (1900), bears the grave subtitle A Psalm of Experience after Reading a Couplet of Bidpai" and is a half-whimsical, half-searching hodge-podge of philosophy, love lyrics, artlessness and impudence. The influence of Omar Khayyám and Richard Hovey is obvious but not too dominant; Torrence saves himself on the very verge of sentimentality and rhetoric by a chuckle, an adroit right-about-face. Torrence's subsequent uncollected verses have a deeper force, a more concentrated fire. In "The Bird and the Tree" and "Eye-Witness," he has caught something more than the colors of certain localities-particularly of the dark belt. They are as eloquent and moving as his Granny Maumee and Other Plays (1917), which owe their power not only to Torrence's gift as a poet but to his sympathy as a folk-lyrist. THE BIRD AND THE TREE The sky is like a heavy lid Out here beyond the door to-night. What's that? A mutter down the street. No use to reek with reddened sweat, They've got the rope; they've got the guns, They'll fire the answer through the door- There where the lonely cross-road lies, And the right limb for a lynch is there; Perhaps you'll meet again some place. And you can halt and show them there ་ |