The Little Review

Literature Drama Music Art

MARGARET C. ANDERSON
EDITOR

NOVEMBER, 1915

Published Monthly

15 cents a copy

MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher
Fine Arts Building
CHICAGO

$1.50 a year

Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, Chicago

The Little Review

Vol. II

NOVEMBER, 1915

No. 8

Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson

“Life Itself”

Margaret C. Anderson

I.

“But you don’t know Life,” they are always saying.

I wonder what it is they mean?

They mean humanity and the urge of it:

In the beginning and in the end the soul’s longing to be known, to know itself, and to know others;

And that means, in the beginning and in the end, the quest for love;

It is the ideal of love and the finding of it;

And the magic of it and the drain of disillusionment;

And the luxury of sorrow and the voluptuousness of suffering;

And the vacuum that is beyond death;

And the conviction that ideals are better than reality;

And the decision to live for “art”;

And the pull to new love ...

And the discovery that love is enslavement;

And the breaking from it;

And the courage to contain life;

And the emancipation from something;

And the complacency of first freedom;

And the emptiness of it;

And the pull to new love ...

And the discovery that rapture is not relived;

And the conviction that passion is not love;

And the dedication to “the spiritual”;

And the pull to new love ...

And the deepest agony, which is unrequited love;

And the realization of people;

And the discovery that the world is wrong;

And the glory of rebellion;

And the emancipation for something;

And the pull to new love ...

And the birth of cynicism;

And the conviction that rebellion is futile;

And the discovery of one’s self;

And the dedication to one’s self;

And the discovery that one’s self is not big enough;

And the pull to new love ...

And the knowledge that love includes passion;

And the sense of rich growing;

And the hope of sharing growth;

And the longing to be known;

And the relinquishing of that longing;

And the discovery that perfection does not last;

And the sufficiency of self-direction;

And the completeness of freedom;

And the longing to know the human soul;

And the pull to new love ...

And the relinquishing of that longing;

And the discovery of the peace that is in nature;

And the realization of the unimportance of man;

And the knowledge that only great moments are attainable;

And the hatred of consummations;

And the realization of truths too late to act upon them;

And the acceptance of substitutes;

And the pull to new love ...

And every human being knows these things.

II.

“But you don’t know life itself,” I am always saying.

I wonder what it is I mean.

I think it is something wonderful like color and sound, and something mystical like fragrance and flowers.

And something incredible like air and wind,

And something of grey magic like rain;

It is faded deserts and the unceasing sea;

It is the moving stars;

It is the orange sun stepping through blue curtains of sky,

And the rose sun dropping through black trees;

It is green storms running across greenness,

And gold rose petals spilled by the moon on dark water;

It is snow and mist and clouds of color,

It is tree gardens and painted birds;

It is leaves of autumn and grasses of spring;

It is flower forests and the petals of stars;

It is morning—yellow mornings, green mornings, red mornings, gold mornings, silver mornings, sun mornings, mist mornings, mornings of dew;

It is night—white nights, green nights, grey nights, purple nights, blue nights, moon nights, rain nights, nights that burn;

It is waking in the first of the morning,

It is the deep adventure of sleep;

It is lights on rivers and lights on pavements;

It is boulevards bordered with flowers of stone;

It is poetry and Japanese prints and the actor on a stage;

It is music;

It is dreams that could not happen;

It is emotion for the sake of emotion;

It is life for the sake of living;

It is silence;

It is the unknowable;

It is eternity;

It is death.

And only artists know these things.

The Zeppelins Over London

Richard Aldington

... The war saps all one’s energy. It seems impossible to do any creative work in the midst of all this turmoil and carnage. Of course you know that we had the Zeppelins over London? Let me give you my version of the affair.

It was just after eleven. We were sitting in our little flat, which is on the top floor of a building on the slope of Hampstead Hill. We were reading—I was savouring, like a true decadent, that over-sweet honied Latin of the early Renaissance in an edition of 1513! Could anything be more peaceful? Our window was shut—so the silence was absolute. Suddenly there was a Bang! and a shrill wail. “That was pretty close,” said I. Bang—whizz! Bang—whizz! Shrapnel from the anti-aircraft guns which are not five hundred yards from our house! (Of course, like boobies, we thought they were bombs.) I jumped up and got my coat, and grabbed the door-key. It took hours to put out the light! (All the time Bang—whizz!) It seemed interminable, that descent of those four flights of stairs, all the time with the knowledge that any second might see the whole damn place blown to hell. We could see the flashes of the guns and the searchlights as we passed the windows—they were pointed straight at us! That meant that the Zeppelin was either right overhead or coming there! Some excitement, I tell you. I shiver with excitement when I think of it. We stood at the porch for a few seconds—very long seconds—wondering what to do. You are supposed to get into the cellars, but we haven’t got cellars; and it’s very risky in the streets from the flying shrapnel. We could see the long searchlights pointing to a spot almost overhead and the little red pinpricks of bursting shells. A man came down from one of the flats—very calm, with field glasses, to have a look at the animal! Suddenly we saw it, clear over head, with shells from three or four guns making little rose-coloured punctures in the air underneath it. One shell went near, very near, the Zeppelin swerved, tilted—“They’ve got it! It’s coming down!” we all exclaimed. In the distance we could hear faint cheering. But the Zeppelin righted itself, waggled a little, and scenting danger made for the nearest cloud! Apparently a piece of shell had hit the pilot, for there was no apparent damage to be seen through the glasses. There were a few more bangs from the guns, followed by the cat squeals of the shells and the little explosions in the air. Then silence as the Zeppelin got into a cloud; the searchlights looked wildly for it, for ten minutes. Then they all went out and in the resulting darkness we could see the glow of the fires in London.

What rather detracts from our heroism is the fact that the Zeppelin had already dropped all its bombs in the middle of London, but we didn’t know it till afterwards.

I deduce these reflections. 1. That as an engine of frightfulness the Zeppelin is over-rated. And the damage it does is comparatively unimportant. 2. That it is uncultured of the Germans to risk murdering the English Imagists and ruining the only poetic movement in England, for the sake of getting their names into the papers. 3. That I notice I never go to bed now earlier than twelve, and frequently go for a walk about eleven o’clock.

I can’t of course tell you where the bombs fell, as it is strictly forbidden. Still I can say this: that no public building of any kind was touched; that it looks jolly well as if our Teutonic friends made a dead set at St. Paul’s and the British Museum; that, without exception, the bombs fell on the houses of the poor and the very poor—except for a warehouse or so and some offices; that one bomb fell near a block of hospitals, containing paralytics and other cripples and diseased persons, smashed all the hospital windows, and terrified the unhappy patients into hysterics; that, lastly, it is a damned lie to say there are guns on St. Paul’s and the British Museum—the buildings are too old to stand the shock of the recoil. Voilà!

... Remy de Gourmont is dead.... Camille de Saint-Croix also. It is hard to write of friends recently dead....

The experienced artist knows that inspiration is rare and that intelligence is left to complete the work of intuition; he puts his ideas under the press and squeezes out of them the last drop of the divine juices that are in them—(and if need be sometimes he does not shrink from diluting them with clear water).—Romain Rolland.

Portrait of Theodore Dreiser

Arthur Davison Ficke

There were gilded Chinese dragons

And tinkling danglers of glass

And dirty marble-topped tables

Around us, that late night-hour.

You ate steadily and silently

From a huge bowl of chop-suey

Of repellant aspect;

While I,—I, and another,—

Told you that you had the style neither of William Morris

Nor of Walter Pater.

And it was perfectly true ....

But you continued to occupy yourself

With your quarts of chop-suey.

And somehow you reminded me

Of nothing so much as of the knitting women

Who implacably counted stitches while the pride of France

Went up to death.

Tonight I am alone,

A long way from that Chinese restaurant,

A long way from wherever you are.

And I find it difficult to recall to my memory

The image of your large laboring inexpressive face.

For I have just turned the last page

Of a book of yours—

A book large and superficially inexpressive,—like yourself.

It has not, any more than the old ones,

The style of Pater.

But now there are passing before me

Interminable figures in tangled procession—

Proud or cringing, starved with desire or icy,

Hastening toward a dream of triumph or fleeing from a dream of doom,—

Passing—passing—passing

Through a world of shadows,

Through a chaotic and meaningless anarchy,

Under heavy clouds of terrific gloom

Or through ravishing flashes of knife-edged sunlight—

Passing—passing—passing—

Their heads haloed with immortal illusion,—

The terrible and beautiful, cruel and wonder-laden illusion of life.

Theodore Dreiser

John Cowper Powys

In estimating the intrinsic value of a book like The “Genius” and—generally—of a writer like Theodore Dreiser, it is advisable to indulge in a little gentle introspection.

Criticism need not always impose itself as an art; but it must at least conform to some of the principles that govern that form of human activity. The worthlessness of so much energetic modern criticism is that it proceeds—like scum—from the mere surface of the writer’s intelligence. It is true that all criticism resolves itself ultimately into a matter of taste;—but one has to discover what one’s taste really is; and that is not always easy.

Taste is a living thing, an organic thing. It submits to the laws of growth; and its growth is fostered or retarded by many extraneous influences. In regard to the appreciation of new and original works of art, it belongs to the inherent nature of taste that it should be enlarged, transmuted, and undergo the birth-pangs of a species of re-creation. In the presence of a work of art that is really unusual, in an attempt to appreciate a literary effect that has never appeared before, one’s taste necessarily suffers a certain embarrassment and uneasiness. It suffers indeed sometimes a quite extreme discomfort. This is inevitable. This is right. This means that the creative energy in the new thing is getting to work upon us, unloosening our prejudices and enlarging our scope. Such a process is attended by exquisite intellectual excitement. It is also attended by a certain rending and tearing of personal vanity.

One is too apt to confuse the existing synthesis of one’s aesthetic instincts with the totality of one’s being; and this is a fatal blunder; for who can fathom the reach of that circumference? And it is of the nature of all syntheses to change and grow.

Yet, on the other hand, nothing is more ridiculous and ineffective than the kind of hand-to-mouth criticism which attempts to eliminate its own past, and to snatch at the glow and glamour of a work of art, as it were “de vacuo,” and out of misty clouds. If one wishes to catch the secret of true criticism; if one’s criticism is to be something more than a mere howl of senseless condemnation or yawp of still more senseless praise; one must attempt to do what Goethe and Saint-Beuve and Brandes and Pater were always doing: that is to say, to make every use of every tradition, our own, as well as that of classical authority;—and then carry all this a little, just a little, further; giving it the shudder and the thrilling interest of the process of organic growth.

Without tradition, the tradition of our own determined taste and the tradition of classical taste, there can be no growth. Oracles uttered in neglect of these, are oracles “in vacuo,” without meaning or substance; without roots in human experience. Whether we are pleased to acknowledge it or not, our own gradually-evolved taste is linked at a thousand points with the classical taste of the ages. In criticizing new work we can no more afford to neglect such tradition than, in expressing our thoughts, we can afford to neglect language.

Tradition is the language of criticism. It can be carried further: every original work of art, by producing a new reaction upon it, necessarily carries it further. But it cannot be swept aside; or we are reduced to dumbness; to such vague growls and gestures as animals might indulge in. Criticism, to carry any intelligible meaning at all, must use the language provided by the centuries. There is no other language to use; and in default of language we are reduced, as I have said, to inarticulate noises.

The unfortunate thing is, that much of the so-called “criticism” of our day is nothing better than such physiological gesticulation. In criticism, as in life, a certain degree of continuity is necessary, or we become no more than arbitrary puffs of wind, who may shriek one day down the chimney, and another day through a crack in the door, but in neither case with any intelligible meaning for human ears.

In dealing with a creative quality as unusual and striking as that of Theodore Dreiser, it is of absolutely no critical value to content ourselves with a crude physical disturbance on the surface of our minds, whether such disturbance is favourable or unfavourable to the writer. It is, for instance, quite irrelevant to hurl condemnation upon a work like The “Genius” because it is largely preoccupied with sex. It is quite equally irrelevant to lavish enthusiastic laudations upon it because of this preoccupation. A work of art is not good because it speaks daringly and openly about things that shock certain minds. It is not bad because it avoids all mention of such things. An artist has a right to introduce into his work what he pleases and to exclude from his work what he pleases. The question for the critic is, not what subject has he selected, but how has he treated that subject;—has he made out of it an imaginative, suggestive, and convincing work of art, or has he not! There is no other issue before the critic than this; and if he supposes there is,—if he supposes he has the smallest authority to dictate to a writer what his subject shall be;—he is simply making a fool of himself.

There is an absurd tendency among some of us to suppose that a writer is necessarily a great writer because he is daring in his treatment of sex. This is quite as grotesque an illusion as the opposite one, that a great writer must be idealistic and uplifting. There is not the remotest reason why he should concern himself with sex; if he prefers—as did Charles Dickens for instance—to deal with other aspects of life. On the other hand there is not the least reason why he should be “uplifting.” Let him be an artist—an artist—that is the important matter! All these questions concerning “subjects” are tedious and utterly trifling.

In The “Genius” Theodore Dreiser has achieved a very curious and a very original work. In doing it he has once more made it clear how much more interesting the quality of his own genius is than that of any other American novelist of the present age.

The “Genius” is an epic work. It has the epic rather than the dramatic quality; it has the epic rather than the mystic, or symbolic, quality. And strictly speaking, Dreiser’s novels, especially the later ones, are the only novels in America, are the only novels, as a matter of fact, in England or America, which possess this quality. It is quite properly in accordance with the epic attitude of mind, with the epic quality in art, this reduction of the more purely human episodes to a proportionate insignificance compared with the general surge and volume of the life-stream. It is completely in keeping with the epic quality that there should be no far-fetched psychology, no quivering suspensions on the verge of the unknown.

Dreiser is concerned with the mass and weight of the stupendous life-tide; the life-tide as it flows forward, through vast panoramic stretches of cosmic scenery. Both in respect to human beings, and in respect to his treatment of inanimate objects, this is always what most dominatingly interests him. You will not find in Dreiser’s books those fascinating arrests of the onward-sweeping tide, those delicate pauses and expectancies, in back-waters and enclosed gardens, where persons, with diverting twists in their brains, murmur and meander at their ease, protected from the great stream. Nobody in the Dreiser-world is so protected; nobody is so privileged. The great stream sweeps them all forward, sweeps them all away; and not they, but It, must be regarded as the hero of the tale.

It is precisely this quality, this subordination of the individual to the deep waters that carry him, which makes Dreiser so peculiarly the American writer. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why he has had a more profoundly appreciative hearing in England than in the United States. It was so with Walt Whitman in his earlier days. To get the adequate perspective for a work so entirely epical it seems necessary to have the Atlantic as a modifying foreground. Americans—so entirely in it themselves—are naturally, unless they possess the Protean faculty of the editor of Reedy’s Mirror, unable to see the thing in this cosmic light. They are misled by certain outstanding details—the sexual scenes, for instance; or the financial scenes,—and are prevented by these, as by the famous “Catalogues” in Whitman, from getting the proportionate vision.

The true literary descendants of the author of the Leaves of Grass are undoubtedly Theodore Dreiser and Edgar Masters. These two, and these two alone, though in completely different ways, possess that singular “beyond-good-and-evil” touch which the epic form of art requires. It was just the same with Homer and Vergil, who were as naturally the epic children of aristocratic ages, as these are of a democratic one.

Achilles is not really a very attractive figure—take him all in all; and we remember how scandalously Æneas behaved to Dido. The ancient epic writers, writing for an aristocracy, caught the world-stream from a poetic angle. The modern epic writers, writing for a democracy, catch it from a realistic one. But it is the same world-stream; and in accordance with the epic vision there is the same subordination of the individual to the cosmic tide. This is essentially a dramatic, rather than an epic epoch, and that is why so many of us are bewildered and confused by the Dreiser method.

The “Genius” is a long book. But it might have been three times as long. It might begin anywhere and stop anywhere. It is the Prose-Iliad of the American Scene; and, like that other, it has a right to cut out its segment of the shifting panorama at almost any point.

And so with the style of the thing. It is a ridiculous mis-statement for critics to say that Dreiser has no style. It is a charming irony, on his own part, to belittle his style. He has, as a matter of fact, a very definite and a very effective style. It is a style that lends itself to the huge indifferent piling up of indiscriminate materials, quite as admirably as that gracious poetical one of the old epic-makers lent itself to their haughtier and more aristocratic purpose. One would recognize a page of Dreiser’s writings as infallibly as one would recognize a page of Hardy’s. The former relaxes his medium to the extreme limit and the latter tightens his; but they both have their “manner.” A paragraph written by Dreiser would never be mistaken for anyone else’s. If for no other peculiarity Dreiser’s style is remarkable for the shamelessness with which it adapts itself to the drivel of ordinary conversation. In the Dreiser books—especially in the later ones, where in my humble opinion he is feeling more firmly after his true way,—people are permitted to say those things which they actually do say in real life—things that make you blush and howl, so soaked in banality and ineptitude are they. In the true epic manner Dreiser gravely puts down all these fatuous observations, until you feel inclined to cry aloud for the maddest, the most fantastic, the most affected Osconian wit, to serve as an antidote.

But one knows very well he is right. People don’t in ordinary life—certainly not in ordinary democratic life—talk like Oscar Wilde, or utter deep ironic sayings in the style of Matthew Arnold. They don’t really—let this be well understood—concentrate their feelings in bitter pungent spasmodic outbursts, as those Rabelaisean persons in Guy de Maupassant. They just gabble and gibber and drivel; at least that is what they do in England and America. The extraordinary language which the lovers in Dreiser—we use the term “lovers” in large sense—use to one another might well make an aesthetic-minded person howl with nervous rage. But then,—and who does not know it?—the obsession of the sex-illusion is above everything else a thing that makes idiots of people; a thing that makes them talk like Simple Simons. In real life lovers don’t utter those wonderful pregnant sayings which leap to their lips in our subtle symbolic dramas. They just burble and blather and blurt forth whatever drivelling nonsense comes into their heads. Dreiser is the true master of the modern American Prose-Epic just because he is not afraid of the weariness, the staleness, the flatness, and unprofitableness of actual human conversation. In reading the great ancient poetic epics one is amazed at the “naivete” with which these haughty persons—these gods and demi-gods express their emotional reactions. It is “carried off,” of course, there, by the sublime heightening of the style; but it produces just the same final impression,—of the insignificance of the individual, whether mortal or immortal, compared with the torrent of Fate which sweeps them all along.

And the same thing applies to Dreiser’s attitude towards “good and evil” and towards the problem of the “supernatural.” All other modern writers array themselves on this side or that. They either defend traditional morality or they attack it. They are anxious, at all costs, to give their work dramatic intensity; they struggle to make it ironical, symbolical, mystical—God knows what! But Dreiser neither attacks morality nor defends immorality. In the true Epic manner he puts himself aside, and permits the great mad Hurly-Burly to rush pell-mell past him and write its own whirligig runes at its own careless pleasure. Even Zola himself was not such a realist. Zola had a purpose;—the purpose of showing what a Beast the human animal is! Dreiser’s people are not beasts; and they shock our aesthetic sensibilities quite as often by their human sentiment as they do by their lapses into lechery.

To a European mind there is something incredibly absurd in the notion that these Dreiser books are immoral.

Unlike the majority of French and Russian writers Dreiser is not interested in the pathology of vice. He is too deeply imbued with the great naive epic spirit to stop and linger in these curious bye-paths. He holds Nature—in her normal moods—to be sufficiently remarkable.

It is the same with his attitude towards the “supernatural.” The American Prose-Epic were obviously false to reality if the presence of the supernatural were not felt. It is felt and felt very powerfully; but it is kept in its place. Like Walt Whitman’s stellar constellations, it suffices for those who belong to it, it is right enough where it is—we do not want it any nearer!

Because the much-tossed wanderer, Eugene Witla, draws a certain consolation, at the last, from Christian Science, only a very literal person would accuse the author of The “Genius” of being a convert to the faith. To omit Christian Science from any prose-epic of American life would be to falsify the picture out of personal prejudice. Dreiser has no prejudices except the prejudice of finding the normal man and the normal woman, shuffled to and fro by the normal forces of life, an interesting and arresting spectacle. To some among us such a spectacle is not interesting. We must have the excitement of the unusual, the shock of the abnormal. Well! There are plenty of European writers ready to gratify this taste. Dreiser is not a European writer. He is an American writer. The life that interests him, and interests him passionately, is the life of America. It remains to be seen whether the life of America interests Americans!

It is really quite important to get the correct point of view with regard to Dreiser’s “style.” The negative qualities in this style of his are indeed as important as the positive ones. He is so epical, so objective, so concrete and indifferent, that he is quite content when the great blocked-out masses of his work lift themselves from the obscure womb of being and take shape before him. When they have done this,—when these piled-up materials and portentous groups of people have limned themselves against the grey background,—he himself stands aside, like some dim demiurgic forger in the cosmic blast-furnace, and mutters queer commentaries upon what he sees. He utters these commentaries through the lips of his characters—Cowperwood, say, or Witla—or even some of the less important ones;—and broken and incoherent enough they are!

But what matter! The huge epic canvas is stretched out there before us. The vast cyclopean edifice lifts its shadowy bulk towards the grey sky. The thing has been achieved. The creative spirit has breathed upon the waters. Resting from his titanic labor, what matter if this Demiurge drowses, and with an immense humorous indifference permits his characters to nod too, and utter strange words in their dreams!

The carelessness of Dreiser’s style, its large indolence, its contempt for epigrammatic point, its relaxed strength, is not really a defect at all when you regard his work from the epic view-point.

There must be something in a great cosmic picture to take the place of the sand and silt and rubbish and rubble which we know so well in life, under the grey sky! And these stammered incoherences, these broken mutterings, fill in this gap. They give the picture that drab patience, that monotonous spaciousness which is required. Symbolic drama or psychological fiction can dispense with these blank surfaces. The prose-epic of America cannot afford to do without them. They suggest that curious sadness—the sadness of large, flat, featureless scenery, which visitors from Europe find so depressing.

Well! Thus it remains. If one is interested in the “urge—urge—urge,” as Whitman calls it, of the normal life-stream as it goes upon its way, in these American States, one reads Dreiser with a strange pleasure. He is no more moral than the normal life-stream is moral; and he is no more immoral. It is true the normal life-stream does not cover quite the whole field. There are back-waters and there are enclosed gardens.

There was a Europe once. But the American prose-epic is the American prose-epic.

“So We Grew Together”[1]

Edgar Lee Masters

Reading over your letters I find you wrote me

“My dear boy,” or at times “dear boy,” and the envelope

Said “master”—all as I had been your very son,

And not the orphan whom you adopted.

Well, you were father to me! And I can recall

The things you did for me or gave me:

One time we rode in a box-car to Springfield

To see the greatest show on earth;

And one time you gave me red-top boots,

And one time a watch, and one time a gun.

Well, I grew to gawkiness with a voice

Like a rooster trying to crow in August

Hatched in April, we’ll say.

And you went about wrapped up in silence

With eyes aflame, and I heard little rumors

Of what they were doing to you, and how

They wronged you—and we were poor—so poor!

And I could not understand why you failed,

And why if you did good things for the people

The people did not sustain you.

And why you loved another woman than Aunt Susan,

So it was whispered at school, and what could be baser,

Or so little to be forgiven?.....

They crowded you hard in those days.

But you fought like a wounded lion

For yourself I know, but for us, for me.

At last you fell ill, and for months you tottered

Around the streets as thin as death,

Trying to earn our bread, your great eyes glowing

And the silence around you like a shawl!

But something in you kept you up.

You grew well again and rosy with cheeks

Like an Indian peach almost, and eyes

Full of moonlight and sunlight, and a voice

That sang, and a humor that warded

The arrows off. But still between us

There was reticence; you kept me away

With a glittering hardness; perhaps you thought

I kept you away—for I was moving

In spheres you knew not, living through

Beliefs you believed in no more, and ideals

That were just mirrors of unrealities.

As a boy can be I was critical of you.

And reasons for your failures began to arise

In my mind—I saw specific facts here and there

With no philosophy at hand to weld them

And synthesize them into one truth—

And a rush of the strength of youth

Deluded me into thinking the world

Was something so easily understood and managed

While I knew it not at all in truth.

And an adolescent egotism

Made me feel you did not know me

Or comprehend the all that I was.

All this you divined.......

So it went. And when I left you and passed

To the world, the city—still I see you

With eyes averted, and feel your hand

Limp with sorrow—you could not speak.

You thought of what I might be, and where

Life would take me, and how it would end—

There was longer silence. A year or two

Brought me closer to you. I saw the play now

And the game somewhat and understood your fights

And enmities, and hardnesses and silences,

And wild humor that had kept you whole—

For your soul had made it as an antitoxin

To the world’s infections. And you swung to me

Closer than before—and a chumship began

Between us......

What vital power was yours!

You never tired, or needed sleep, or had a pain,

Or refused a delight. I loved the things now

You had always loved, a winning horse,

A roulette wheel, a contest of skill

In games or sports ... long talks on the corner

With men who have lived and tell you

Things with a rich flavor of old wisdom or humor;

A woman, a glass of whisky at a table

Where the fatigue of life falls, and our reserves

That wait for happiness come up in smiles,

Laughter, gentle confidences. Here you were

A man with youth, and I a youth was a man,

Exulting in your braveries and delight in life.

How you knocked that scamp over at Harry Varnell’s

When he tried to take your chips! And how I,

Who had thought the devil in cards as a boy,

Loved to play with you now and watch you play;

And watch the subtle mathematics of your mind

Prophecy, divine the plays. Who was it

In your ancestry that you harked back to

And reproduced with such various gifts

Of flesh and spirit, Anglo-Saxon, Celt?—

You with such rapid wit and powerful skill

For catching illogic and whipping Error’s

Fangéd head from the body?.....

I was really ahead of you

At this stage, with more self-consciousness

Of what man is, and what life is at last,

And how the spirit works, and by what laws,

With what inevitable force. But still I was

Behind you in that strength which in our youth,

If ever we have it, squeezes all the nectar

From the grapes. It seemed you’d never lose

This power and sense of joy, but yet at times

I saw another phase of you......

There was the day

We rode together north of the old town,

Past the old farm houses that I knew—

Past maple groves, and fields of corn in the shock,

And fields of wheat with the fall green.