Young Adventure | Page 4

will. The Muses still reign on
Parnassus, wax the heathen never so furious. Poets who love poetry
better than their own fame in Grub Street will do well to remember The
flame, the noble pageant of our life; The burning seal that stamps man's
high indenture To vain attempt and most forlorn adventure; Romance
and purple seas, and toppling towns, And the wind's valiance crying
o'er the downs.
It is a poor business to find in such words only the illusions of youth
and a new enthusiasm. The desire for novelty, the passion for force and
dirt, and the hankering after freakishness of mood, which many have
attempted to substitute for the older and simpler things, are themselves
the best evidence of disillusion and jaded nerves. There is a weariness
and a disgust in our recent impatience with beauty which indicate too
clearly the exhaustion of our spiritual resources. It may well be that the
rebirth of poetry is to be manifest in a reappearance of the obvious, -- in
a love of the sea and of the beauty of clouds, in the adventure of death
and the yet more amazing adventure of living, in a vital love of colour,
whether of the Orient or the drug-shop, in childlike love of melody, and
the cool cleansing of rain, in strange faces and old memories. This, in
the past, has been poetry, and this will be poetry again. The singer who,
out of a full heart, can offer to the world his vision of its beauty, and
out of a noble mind, his conception of its destiny, will bestow upon his
time the most precious gift which we can now receive, the gift of his
healing power.

C. B. T.

Contents

Dedication Foreword by Chauncey Brewster Tinker
I.
The Drug-Shop, or, Endymion in Edmonstoun
II.
Rain after a Vaudeville Show The City Revisited Going Back to School
Nos Immortales Young Blood The Quality of Courage Campus
Sonnets: 1. Before an Examination 2. Talk 3. May Morning 4. Return --
1917 Alexander VI Dines with the Cardinal of Capua The Breaking
Point Lonely Burial Dinner in a Quick Lunch Room The Hemp Poor
Devil! Ghosts of a Lunatic Asylum The White Peacock Colors A
Minor Poet The Lover in Hell Winged Man Music The Innovator Love
in Twilight The Fiddling Wood Portrait of a Boy Portrait of a Baby The
General Public Road and Hills Elegy for an Enemy

I.
The Drug-Shop, or, Endymion in Edmonstoun
Prefatory Note.
This poem received the nineteenth award of the prize offered by
Professor Albert Stanburrough Cook to Yale University for the best
unpublished verse, the Committee of Award consisting of Professors C.
F. Tucker Brooke, of Yale University, Robert Frost, of Amherst
College, and Charles M. Gayley, of the University of California.

I.
The Drug-Shop, or, Endymion in Edmonstoun
"Oh yes, I went over to Edmonstoun the other day and saw Johnny,
mooning around as usual! He will never make his way." Letter of
George Keats, 18--

Night falls; the great jars glow against the dark, Dark green, dusk red,
and, like a coiling snake, Writhing eternally in smoky gyres, Great

ropes of gorgeous vapor twist and turn Within them. So the Eastern
fisherman Saw the swart genie rise when the lead seal, Scribbled with
charms, was lifted from the jar; And -- well, how went the tale? Like
this, like this? . . .
No herbage broke the barren flats of land, No winds dared loiter within
smiling trees, Nor were there any brooks on either hand, Only the dry,
bright sand, Naked and golden, lay before the seas.
One boat toiled noiselessly along the deep, The thirsty ripples dying
silently Upon its track. Far out the brown nets sweep, And night begins
to creep Across the intolerable mirror of the sea.
Twice the nets rise, a-trail with sea-plants brown, Distorted shells, and
rocks green-mossed with slime, Nought else. The fisher, sick at heart,
kneels down; "Prayer may appease God's frown," He thinks, then,
kneeling, casts for the third time.
And lo! an earthen jar, bound round with brass, Lies tangled in the
cordage of his net. About the bright waves gleam like shattered glass,
And where the sea's rim was The sun dips, flat and red, about to set.
The prow grates on the beach. The fisherman Stoops, tearing at the
cords that bind the seal. Shall pearls roll out, lustrous and white and
wan? Lapis? carnelian? Unheard-of stones that make the sick mind reel
With wonder of their beauty? Rubies, then? Green emeralds, glittering
like the eyes of beasts? Poisonous opals, good to madden men? Gold
bezants, ten and ten? Hard, regal diamonds, like kingly feasts?
He tugged; the seal gave way. A little smoke Curled like a feather