The Little Review, June-July 1916 (Vol. 3, No. 4)
Date: 2025-04-14T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Literature; Modern -- 20th century -- Periodicals

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Little Review, June-July 1916 (Vol. 3, No. 4)

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 will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The Little Review, June-July 1916 (Vol. 3, No. 4)

Author: Various

Editor: Margaret C. Anderson

Release date: April 14, 2025 [eBook #75854]

Language: English

Original publication: Chicago, New York: Apparently none other than the Editor (see above), 1922

Credits: Jens Sadowski and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. This book was produced from images made available by the Modernist Journal Project, Brown and Tulsa Universities.

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE REVIEW, JUNE-JULY 1916 (VOL. 3, NO. 4) ***

The Little Review

Literature Drama Music Art

MARGARET C. ANDERSON
EDITOR

JUNE-JULY, 1916

Malmaison | Amy Lowell
The Philosopher | Sherwood Anderson
Song of the Killing of Liars | Richard Hunt
Mlle. Poetry Meets Me at the Church | Roscoe Brink
Silhouettes | Harriet Dean
Our Migratory Address |
Psycho-Analysis | Florence Kiper Frank
A Dyptich: | Skipwith Cannell
Wonder Song |
Scorn |
The Deeper Scorn |
Hokku | Edgar Lee Masters
Poems: | Mark Turbyfill
Thin Day |
The Rose Jar |
The Irish Revolutionists | Padraic Colum
Bring Out Your Dead: |
Braithwaites Death-Cart | Mitchell Dawson
Tree’s “Merchant of Venice” | Rollo Peters
Some Imagist Poets, 1916 | Mary Aldis
Three Imagist Poets | John Gould Fletcher
The Reader Critic |
A Vers Libre Prize Contest |

Published Monthly

15 cents a copy

MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher
Montgomery Block
SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.

$1.50 a year

Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, San Francisco, Cal.

The Little Review

VOL. III

JUNE-JULY, 1916

NO. 4

Copyright, 1916, by Margaret C. Anderson

Malmaison

AMY LOWELL

I

How the slates of the roof sparkle in the sun, over there, over there, beyond the high wall! How quietly the Seine runs in loops and windings, over there, over there, sliding through the green countryside! Like ships of the line, stately with canvas, the tall clouds pass along the sky, over the glittering roof, over the trees, over the looped and curving river. A breeze quivers through the linden trees. Roses bloom at Malmaison. Roses! Roses! But the road is dusty. Already the Citoyenne Beauharnais wearies of her walk. Her skin is chalked and powdered with dust, she smells dust, and behind the wall are roses! Roses with smooth open petals, poised above rippling leaves.... Roses.... They have told her so. The Citoyenne Beauharnais shrugs her shoulders and makes a little face. She must mend her pace if she would be back in time for dinner. Roses indeed! The guillotine more likely.

The tiered clouds float over Malmaison, and the slate roof sparkles in the sun.

II

Gallop! Gallop! The General brooks no delay. Make way, good people, and scatter out of his path, you, and your hens, and your dogs, and your children. The General is returned from Egypt, and is come in a calèche and four to visit his new property. Throw open the gates, you, Porter of Malmaison. Pull off your cap, my man, this is your master, the husband of Madame. Faster! Faster! A jerk and a jingle and they are arrived, he and she. Madame has red eyes. Fi! It is for joy at her husband’s return. Learn your place, Porter. A gentleman here for two months? Fi! Fi, then! Since when have you taken to gossiping? Madame may have a brother, I suppose. That—all green, and red, and glitter, with flesh as dark as ebony—that is a slave; a blood-thirsty, stabbing, slashing heathen, come from the hot countries to cure your tongue of idle whispering.

A fine afternoon it is, with tall bright clouds sailing over the trees.

“Bonaparte, mon ami, the trees are golden like my star, the star I pinned to your destiny when I married you. The gypsy, you remember her prophecy. My dear friend, not here, the servants are watching; send them away, and that flashing splendour, Roustan. Superb—Imperial, but.... My dear, your arm is trembling; I faint to feel it touching me! No, no, Bonaparte, not that—spare me that—did we not bury that last night! You hurt me, my friend, you are so hot and strong. Not long, Dear, no, thank God, not long.”

The looped river runs saffron, for the sun is setting. It is getting dark. Dark. Darker. In the moonlight, the slate roof shines palely milkily white.

The roses have faded at Malmaison, nipped by the frost. What need for roses? Smooth, open petals—her arms. Fragrant, outcurved petals—her breasts. He rises like a sun above her, stooping to touch the petals, press them wider. Eagles. Bees. What are they to open roses! A little shivering breeze runs through the linden trees, and the tiered clouds blow across the sky like ships of the line, stately with canvas.

III

The gates stand wide at Malmaison, stand wide all day. The gravel of the avenue glints under the continual rolling of wheels. An officer gallops up with his sabre clicking; a mameluke gallops down with his charger kicking. Valets-de-pied run about in ones, and twos, and groups, like swirled blown leaves. Tramp! Tramp! The guard is changing, and the grenadiers off duty lounge out of sight, ranging along the roads toward Paris.

The slate roof sparkles in the sun, but it sparkles milkily, vaguely, the great glass-houses put out its shining. Glass, stone and onyx now for the sun’s mirror. Much has come to pass at Malmaison. New rocks and fountains, blocks of carven marble, fluted pillars uprearing antique temples, vases and urns in unexpected places, bridges of stone, bridges of wood, arbours and statues, and a flood of flowers everywhere, new flowers, rare flowers, parterre after parterre of flowers. Indeed, the roses bloom at Malmaison. It is youth, youth untrammeled and advancing, trundling a country ahead of it as though it were a hoop. Laughter, and spur janglings in tesselated vestibules. Tripping of clocked and embroidered stockings in little low-heeled shoes over smooth grassplots. India muslins spangled with silver patterns slide through trees—mingle—separate—white day-fireflies flashing moon-brilliance in the shade of foliage.

“The kangeroos! I vow, Captain, I must see the kangeroos.”

“As you please, dear Lady, but I recommend the shady linden alley and feeding the cockatoos.”

“They say that Madame Bonaparte’s breed of sheep is the best in all France.”

“And, oh, have you seen the enchanting little cedar she planted when the First Consul sent home the news of the victory of Marengo?”

Picking, choosing, the chattering company flits to and fro. Over the trees the great clouds go, tiered, stately, like ships of the line bright with canvas.

Prisoner’s-base, and its swooping, veering, racing, giggling, bumping. The First Consul runs plump into M. de Beauharnais and falls. But he picks himself up smartly, and starts after M. Isabey. Too late, M. Le Premier Consul, Mademoiselle Hortense is out after you. Quickly, my dear Sir! Stir your short legs, she is swift and eager, and as graceful as her mother. She is there, that other, playing too, but lightly, warily, bearing herself with care, rather floating out upon the air than running, never far from goal. She is there, borne up above her guests as something indefinably fair, a rose above periwinkles. A blown rose, smooth as satin, reflexed, one loosened petal hanging back and down. A rose that undulates languorously as the breeze takes it, resting upon its leaves in a faintness of perfume.

There are rumours about the First Consul. Malmaison is full of women, and Paris is only two leagues distant. Madame Bonaparte stands on the wooden bridge at sunset, and watches a black swan pushing the pink and silver water in front of him as he swims, crinkling its smoothness into pleats of changing colour with his breast. Madame Bonaparte presses against the parapet of the bridge, and the crushed roses at her belt melt, petal by petal, into the pink water.

IV

A vile day, Porter. But keep your wits about you. The Empress will soon be here. Queer, without the Emperor! It is indeed, but best not consider that. Scratch your head and prick up your ears. Divorce is not for you to debate about. She is late? Ah, well, the roads are muddy. The rain spears are as sharp as whetted knives. They dart down and down, edged and shining. Clop-trop! Clop-trop! A carriage grows out of the mist. Hist, Porter. You can keep on your hat. It is only Her Majesty’s dogs and her parrot. Clop-trop! The Ladies in Waiting, Porter. Clop-trop! It is Her Majesty. At least, I suppose it is, but the blinds are drawn.

“In all the years I have served Her Majesty she never before passed the gate without giving me a smile!”

“You’re a droll fellow, to expect the Empress to put out her head in the pouring rain and salute you. She has affairs of her own to think about.”

Clang the gate, no need for further waiting, nobody else will be coming to Malmaison tonight.

White under her veil, drained and shaking, the woman crosses the antechamber. Empress! Empress! Foolish splendour, perished to dust. Ashes of roses, ashes of youth. Empress forsooth!

Over the glass domes of the hot houses drenches the rain. Behind her a clock ticks—ticks again. The sound knocks upon her thought with the echoing shudder of hollow vases. She places her hands on her ears, but the minutes pass, knocking. Tears in Malmaison. And years to come each knocking by, minute after minute. Years, many years, and tears, and cold pouring rain.

“I feel as though I had died, and the only sensation I have is that I am no more.”

Rain! Heavy, thudding rain!

V

The roses bloom at Malmaison. And not only roses. Tulips, myrtles, geraniums, camellias, rhododendrons, dahlias, double hyacinths. All the year through, under glass, under the sky, flowers bud, expand, die, and give way to others, always others. From distant countries they have been brought, and taught to live in the cool temperateness of France. There is the Bonapartea from Peru; the Napoleone Impériale; the Josephinia Imperatrix, a pearl-white flower, purple-shadowed, the calix pricked out with crimson points. Malmaison wears its flowers as a lady wears her gems, flauntingly, assertively. Malmaison decks herself to hide the hollow within.

The glass-houses grow and grow and every year fling up hotter reflexions to the sailing sun.

The cost runs into millions, but a woman must have something to console herself for a broken heart. One can play backgammon and patience, and then patience and backgammon, and stake gold Napoleons on each game won. Sport truly! It is an unruly spirit which could ask better. With her jewels, her laces, her shawls; her two hundred and twenty dresses, her fichus, her veils; her pictures, her busts, her birds. It is absurd that she cannot be happy. The Emperor smarts under the thought of her ingratitude. What could he do more? And yet she spends, spends as never before. It is ridiculous. Can she not enjoy life at a smaller figure? Was ever monarch plagued with so extravagant an ex-wife? She owes her chocolate-merchant, her candle-merchant, her sweetmeat purveyor; her grocer, her butcher, her poulterer; her architect, and the shopkeeper who sells her rouge; her perfumer, her dressmaker, her merchant of shoes. She owes for fans, plants, engravings, and chairs. She owes masons and carpenters, vintners, lingères. The lady’s affairs are in sad confusion.

And why? Why?

Can a river flow when the spring is dry?

Night. The Empress sits alone, and the clock ticks, one after one. The clock nicks off the edges of her life. She is chipped like an old bit of china; she is frayed like a garment of last year’s wearing. She is soft, crinkled, like a fading rose. And each minute flows by brushing against her, shearing off another and another petal. The Empress crushes her breasts with her hands, and weeps. And the tall clouds sail over Malmaison like a procession of stately ships bound for the moon.

Scarlet, clear-blue, purple epauletted with gold. It is a parade of soldiers sweeping up the avenue. Eight horses, eight Imperial harnesses, four caparisoned postillions, a carriage with the Emperor’s arms on the panels. Ho, Porter, pop out your eyes, and no wonder. Where else under the Heavens could you see such splendour!

They sit on a stone seat. The little man in the green coat of a colonel of Chasseurs, and the lady, beautiful as a satin seedpod, and as pale. The house has memories. The satin seedpod holds his germs of Empire. We will stay here, under the blue sky and the turreted white clouds. She draws him; he feels her faded loveliness urge him to replenish it. Her soft transparent texture woos his nervous fingering. He speaks to her of debts, of resignation; of her children, and his; he promises that she shall see the King of Rome; he says some harsh things and some pleasant. But she is there, close to him, rose toned to amber, white shot with violet, pungent to his nostrils as embalmed rose-leaves in a twilit room.

Suddenly the Emperor calls his carriage and rolls away across the looping Seine.

VI

Crystal-blue brightness over the glass-houses. Crystal-blue streaks and ripples over the lake. A macaw on a gilded perch screams; they have forgotten to take out his dinner. The windows shake. Boom! Boom! It is the rumbling of Prussian cannon beyond Pecq. Roses bloom at Malmaison. Roses! Roses! Swimming above their leaves, rotting beneath them. Fallen flowers strew the unraked walks. Fallen flowers for a fallen Emperor! The General in charge of him draws back and watches. Snatches of music—snarling, sneering music of bagpipes. They say a Scotch regiment is besieging St. Denis. The Emperor wipes his face, or is it his eyes? His tired eyes which see nowhere the grace they long for. Josephine! Somebody asks him a question, he does not answer, somebody else does that. There are voices, but one voice he does not hear, and yet he hears it all the time. Josephine! The Emperor puts up his hand to screen his face. The white light of a bright cloud spears sharply through the linden trees. “Vive l’Empereur!” There are troops passing beyond the wall, troops which sing and call. Boom! A pink rose is jarred off its stem and falls at the Emperor’s feet.

“Very well. I go.” Where! Does it matter? There is no sword to clatter. Nothing but soft brushing gravel and a gate which shuts with a click.

“Quick, fellow, don’t spare your horses.”

A whip cracks, wheels turn, why burn one’s eyes following a fleck of dust.

VII

Over the slate roof tall clouds, like ships of the line, pass along the sky. The glass-houses glitter splotchily, for many of their lights are broken. Roses bloom, fiery cinders quenching under damp weeds. Wreckage and misery, and a trailing of petty deeds smearing over old recollections.

The musty rooms are empty and their shutters are closed, only in the gallery there is a stuffed black swan, covered with dust. When you touch it the feathers come off and float softly to the ground. Through a chink in the shutters one can see the stately clouds crossing the sky toward the Roman arches of the Marley Aqueduct.

The Philosopher

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

He was an old man with a white beard and huge nose and hands. Long before the time during which we will know him he was a doctor, and drove a jaded white horse from house to house through the streets of Winesburg, Ohio. Later he married a girl who had money. She had been left a large fertile farm when her father died. The girl was quiet, tall, and dark, and to many people she seemed very beautiful. Everyone in Winesburg wondered why she married the doctor. Within a year after the marriage she died.

The knuckles of the doctor’s hands were extraordinarily large. When the hands were closed they looked like clusters of unpainted wooden balls as large as walnuts fastened together by steel rods. He smoked a cob pipe, and after his wife’s death sat all day in his empty office close by a window that was covered with cobwebs. He never opened the window. Once, on a hot day in August, he tried but found it stuck fast, and after that he forgot all about it.

Winesburg had forgotten the old man, but in Doctor Reefy there were the seeds of something. Alone in his musty office in the Heffner block, above the Paris Dry Goods Company’s store, he worked ceaselessly, building up something that he himself destroyed. Little pyramids of truth he erected and after erecting knocked them down again that he might have the truths to erect other pyramids.

Doctor Reefy was a tall man who had worn one suit of clothes for ten years. It was frayed at the sleeves and little holes had appeared at the knees and elbows. In the office he wore also a linen duster with huge pockets into which he continually stuffed scraps of paper. After some weeks the scraps of paper became little hard round balls and when the pockets were filled with these he dumped them out upon the floor. For ten years he had but one friend, another old man named John Spaniard, who owned a tree nursery. Sometimes in a playful mood old Doctor Reefy took from his pockets a handful of the paper balls and threw them at the nurseryman. “That is to confound you, you blithering old sentimentalist,” he cried, shaking with laughter.

The story of Doctor Reefy and of his courtship of the tall dark girl, who became his wife and left her money to him, is a very curious story. It is delicious like the twisted little apples that grow in the orchards of Winesburg. In the fall one walks in the orchards and the ground is hard with frost underfoot. The apples have been taken from the trees by the pickers. They have been put in barrels and shipped to the cities where they will be eaten in apartments that are filled with books, magazines, furniture and people. On the trees are only a few knarled apples that the pickers have rejected. They look like the knuckles of Doctor Reefy’s hands. One nibbles at them and they are delicious. Into a little round place at the side of the apple has been gathered all its sweetness. One runs from tree to tree over the frosted ground picking the knarled, twisted apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.

The girl and Doctor Reefy began their courtship on a summer afternoon. He was forty-five then and already he had begun the practice of filling his pockets with the scraps of paper that became hard balls and were thrown away. The habit had been formed as he sat in his buggy behind the jaded gray horse and went slowly along country roads. On the papers were written thoughts, ends of thoughts, beginnings of thoughts.

One by one the mind of Doctor Reefy had made the thoughts. Out of many of them he formed a truth that rose gigantic in his mind. The truth clouded the world. It became terrible and then faded away and the little thoughts began again.

The tall dark girl came to see Doctor Reefy because she was going to have a child and had become frightened. She was in that condition because of a series of circumstances also curious.

The death of her father and mother and the rich acres of land that had come down to her had set a train of suitors on her heels. For two years she saw suitors almost every evening. With the exception of two they were all alike. They talked to her of passion and there was a strained eager quality in their voices and in their eyes when they looked at her. The two who were different were much unlike the others. One of them, a slender young man with white hands, the son of a jeweler in Winesburg, talked continually of virginity. When he was with her he was never off the subject. The other, a black-haired boy with large ears, said nothing at all, but always managed to get her into the darkness where he began to kiss her.

For a time the tall dark girl thought she would marry the jeweler’s son. For hours she sat in silence listening as he talked, and then she began to be afraid of something. Beneath his talk of virginity she began to think there was a lust greater than in all of the others. At times it seemed to her that as he talked he was holding her body in his hands. She imagined him turning it slowly about in the white hands and staring at it. At night she dreamed that he had bitten into her body and that his jaws were dripping. She had the dream three times, then she became pregnant by the one who said nothing at all, but who in the moment of his passion actually did bite her shoulder so that for days the marks of his teeth showed.

After the tall dark girl came to know Doctor Reefy it seemed to her that she never wanted to leave him again. She went into his office in the morning and without her saying anything he seemed to know what had happened to her.

In the office of the doctor there was a woman, the wife of the man who kept the bookstore in Winesburg. Like all old-fashioned country practitioners Doctor Reefy pulled teeth, and the woman who waited held a handkerchief to her teeth and groaned. Her husband was with her and when the tooth was taken out they both screamed and blood ran down on the woman’s white dress. The tall dark girl did not pay any attention. When the woman and the man had gone the doctor smiled. “I will take you driving into the country with me,” he said.

For several weeks the tall dark girl and the doctor were together almost every day. The condition that had brought her to him passed in an illness, but she was like one who has discovered the sweetness of the twisted apples and could not again get her mind fixed again upon the round perfect fruit that is eaten in the apartments. In the fall after the beginning of her acquaintanceship with him she married Doctor Reefy and in the following spring she died. During the winter he read to her all the odds and ends of thoughts he had scribbled on the bits of paper. After he had read them he laughed and stuffed them away in his pockets to become round hard balls.

Song of the Killing of Liars

RICHARD HUNT

My hands have grown strong

Wanting to clutch throats.

I have looked about me, Love,

And you are the only one

I do not want to kill.

They tried to kill me

When I was young and helpless:

They almost did for me,

And I cannot forgive them.

Whom shall I choke first?—

The minister who told me a piece of bread

Was Christ’s body to be chewed weepingly?

Or my father who nearly frightened me to death

Because I dreamed about a girl?

Then there is my old teacher

Who made me write five hundred times,

“A man’s first duty is to his flag.”

Liars!

First I will insult them

And strip them naked of their lies:

Then I will choke them dead,

And burn their institutions.

There will be nothing left

But the clean earth and some children—

Our child, Love, and a child for it to mate with.

The air they breathe will be pure

For the lies will be all dead.

Mlle. Poetry Meets Me at the Church

ROSCOE WILLIAM BRINK

To a New York poetry society one night with a friend of a friend.... I had always wanted to see that society. Long have I listened in awe to the unutterable rhythms of the city itself: the daily ictus of the workward crowds in the morning, the beat again in the homeward evening, lyric activity of the weeks rising to a crest like an Elizabethan sonnet to end in a Saturday-Sunday couplet of application to the heart of man, involved quatrains of the seasons, free verse epochs and tensions, years and decades. As I listened to these bigger canticles of New York City I have wanted to see its poetry society, fancying it some homely cricket on its communal hearth—my pleasant heart-warming dream. You see, also, besides listening in on this great, loud city voice, I once wanted to write poetry myself—but that was long ago before, under penalty of death by starvation, they took me and put me to work and rediscovered vers libre.

As I sat beside the friend of a friend, gazing in glad surmise at an elegant assembly of ladies and gentlemen, the poetry society meeting came to order. Not since I was fourteen-fifteen, and went to prayer-meeting because the girl I adored would be there, have I experienced such emotions as I experienced then.

I don’t suppose you know my particular old white church prayer-meeting. I used to go, rain or shine, every Friday night, and sit where I could watch the door admit the pretty upward toss of curls of my affections’ desire. Sometimes she didn’t come and didn’t come. The opening hymn would be sung and I would hear it not, for my eyes were upon the door. Another hymn and the preacher would begin to speak with a gentle, gushing, splashing sound at the mouth, but the door would remain closed; and knotted, stifling disappointment be clutching at my throat. Another hymn, and the discussion would be thrown open to the congregation. Well, the door was stolid; I would slide back from the edge of my chair and breathe thickly of the resisting air. So late, she would not come now. To be sure, the congregation was some comfort: there were the frisky young lady and the frisky middle-aged lady who would pop to their feet with a squeal of enthusiasm, the deacons and the elders, the sincere girls, the succinct young men with a duty to perform, the conservatives and the infirm—all of them to speak. There came one night when there was rejoicing in heaven’s hour. Somebody had sent a check to pay for a new coat of white paint for the church. The treasurer arose from his chair and lifted up the check for all to see. Then were hymns and glad talks with God and with woman and man. The banks next day refused to honor the check.

In the New York poetry society meeting appeared no novelty for me. I had been there before, so it seemed. Then, as of old, the meeting-room was more charming, the congregation more elegant, but the same, even to the frisky ones, with an exception in the authors’ literary agent I saw just a few feet from me. Otherwise the same—a prayer-meeting, the great American habit, a community impulse boiled down to four-square-wallsful.

As the meeting progressed I knew I had been there before. Absently I looked toward the door for the pretty upward toss of curls again, but I caught myself in time. Notices were read—again I looked toward the door, and stopped. Jokes were made about vers libre; several very interesting recitations were given; restlessly my eyes wandered doorward again. One always forms such bad habits when he is young. Poems now were being read, and criticized. But I had given up: I was looking toward the door and willing to acknowledge it. But she for whom I looked, came not. Then the leader with pleasure read a list of several new members—one of them with the name of a certain rich person, a name I had often seen associated with the millions of commerce but never with the measures of verse. An uncrushed sigh of self-congratulation went up over the room. I took my last look at the stolid door, slid back from the edge of my chair; gave up. I knew She would not come. My heart beat as of old, whimsically and sadly. She would not come.

I took my friend of a friend by the hand and sidled out of the room into the night. A few corners away we came upon a news-stand, full of magazines, upon every magazine a cover, upon every cover a girl, one and the same forever and ever. “If She had come, would She have been so grown that She would have looked like them?” I asked.

“Who come?” asked my friend of a friend.

“The Spirit of Poetry,” says I. “She hadda right, you know.”

American modernity, I bless thee through closed teeth—get thee to thy prayer-meetings or some Billy Sunday will Carl Sanburg thee.

Silhouettes

HARRIET DEAN

Barn-Yarding

I cannot joyously write little things. Perhaps that is why I write none at all. The little people about me fill me with disgust. They are cocksure bantam hens, loose and fertile, laying egg-thoughts carelessly. The crack of shells is loud, but tiny wet chicks roll out, smaller than the rest. God forbid that I am of the same breed! If I must linger in the barn-yard for a few days, studying the swagger of these hens and silently measuring my own, may I in the end fly away to my mountain-top—alone in the night. Strut, if I must, but quite alone.

Their voices are splinters of sound which prick my desolation to shreds. My one great fear is that clumsily they may stumble against my loneliness. What matter if the tongue be unknown to me! These tone arrows beat at my door like undesired rain; they hurl themselves against my tissue walls until I shall go mad with their urgence.

The only true friendliness near me is the blank brick wall of the house next door. I wrap myself in its unresponsiveness and stop up my ears with its cold silence that I may have courage to go on with my work.

Flame curtains flap in my grate and send grey indistinctness shivering and stumbling over my walls.

A dusty mirror in a lonely house waits....

Departure

“And now you, too, must go,” she said to me; I who had already gone, silently, tenderly lest my steps break the stairs of her heart.

Announcements

The Migratory Magazine

We have been invited to spend the summer in San Francisco, so we decided to carry The Little Review along and publish it there until October or November. Then we shall go back to Chicago for a couple of months, and by the first of the year we plan to establish ourselves in New York, where all good things seem to turn at last. Our travels have been so exciting that it was impossible to get out a June issue on the way. (In all honesty I should add that the chronic low state of the treasury had even more to do with it.) So we have combined the June and July issues, as we did last year. Subscriptions will be extended accordingly.

Charles Kinney’s Article

Mr. Kinney’s exposure of conditions at the Chicago Art Institute, which was advertised in the last issue, has not come in time to go in. The court procedures have taken much of Mr. Kinney’s time. It will be published in the August issue.

Psycho-Analysis

Some Random Thoughts Thereon

FLORENCE KIPER FRANK

Why not history rewritten from the researches of the Freudians? We have our economic determinism; why not our psycho-sexual? The tendencies of the individual studied in their relations to world-breaking and world-making! Hannibal and his mother, Queen Elizabeth and her nurse, Frederick the Great and the Oedipus complex!

The priest of the future will be the Inspired Physician. All tendencies seem so to point. The Christian Scientist and New Thought healers are vague and emotional answers to this social demand, the psycho-analytic physician a more sophisticated and precise one. The functions of those who now minister separately to soul and to body will, as in primitive society, again be united. The modern medicine-man shall be the priest of the new order!

To the adolescent, the value of the Inspired Physician can scarcely be over-stated. Jeanne D’Orge has thus written of the sixteen-year-old period:

I wish there were Someone

Who would hear confession:

Not a priest—I do not want to be told of my sins;

Not a mother—I do not want to give sorrow;

Not a friend—she would not know enough;

Not a lover—he would be too partial;

Not God—he is far away;

But Someone that should be friend, lover, mother, priest, God all in one,

And a Stranger besides—who would not condemn nor interfere,

Who when everything is said from beginning to end

Would show the reason of it all

And tell you to go ahead

And work it out your own way.

What of the functions of the physician-priest in marriage! The possibilities are, to say the least, interesting. As substitute for the churchly bunk talked at the average churchly ceremony, an intimate tete-a-tete between, say, the Inspired Physician and the woman. It might do much to validate the “sacredness” of wedlock. And, incidentally, I wonder what data the Freudians are going to contribute during the next ten years to feminism. Ellis states that sexual normality isn’t possible to determine because there isn’t enough material by which to base a norm. Especially, says he, is this true of the sexual psychology of women. Valuable, then, will be the testimony of those who have been hearing confessions!

One of the most powerful functions of the Catholic Church united with modern scientific research! I wonder if the need for the confessional isn’t eternal.

Amazing, isn’t it, that the most remarkable contributions to the study of personality come out of the modern Prussianized Teutonic empires? On the one hand men mowed down by the socialized thousands; on the other this incredibly patient and exhaustive searching into the bewildering complexities of the individual soul.

Break through the crust of any man as he thinks he is, and you are plunged into currents undreamed of. And isn’t one amazed at how much alike we all of us are—and how different!

The Freudian searching into motives is the accredited material of the novelist; the use of dream symbols the very stuff of the poet. The successful psycho-analytic physician ought to combine the adroitness of the fictionist with the imagination of the versifier.

From the standpoint of medical technique Freud and Jung may have diverged importantly—philosophically the younger man builds on the Freudian researches and there is no break in the continuity. Freud is perhaps more valuable to the physician; to the layman Jung opens up a realm of speculation and discovery more fascinating than that of Darwinism.

The old sweet mythos, as friend Browning says, has been rediscovered. We are more wonderful than we thought. We are carrying about in our compassed personalities all dreams and imaginings. What avails the modernity of elevators and skyscrapers! You, betrousered one, walking Michigan Avenue—in your psyche are the ancient Hindus and the dancing sun-worshippers. You with the hand-bag and that 1916 model frock, do you truly think you are thinking in terms of American asphalted Chicago? Indeed! It was the symbolism of the Eleusinian mysteries that was used in the image which flashed into your mind just then. How was it recreated? Heaven knows—or Dr. Jung! And in your dreams, when the censor is quite off guard—how did you, prosaic being, become suddenly the wildest of poets?

The average man—by that I mean the average man of cultivation—is not at all cognizant yet of the large significance of the psycho-analytic studies. He thinks them some libidinous sex-stuff come out of Germany, or perhaps one of the many new methods to be tried on the insane and the neurotic. Their immense import for the normal (whatever he is!) he has not yet understood. It will take perhaps another five years, for the discoveries of psycho-analysis to penetrate the popular consciousness. Perhaps less—for some Augustus Thomas (God save us from such!) may before then write a play about it.

A Dyptich

SKIPWITH CANNELL

Wonder Song

No man who borrows

Should return the exact debt;

Let him return more,

Or let him return less.

I borrowed twelve dollars

From a rich uncle of mine:

I paid him back a hundred’s worth of poetry.

He is not satisfied.

I am not forgotten.

I borrowed from a stranger

An old coat full of lice;

The cloth became strong serge,

The lice became buttons.

The stranger

Wanted his old coat back again,

He got an old joke instead

And went away laughing.

I gave my God some second-hand prayers,

Prayers that were used and fingered and worn;

In return He gave me

My heart’s desire.

I gave my God all the love that’s in me....

He put it in His pocket,

Absently,

With talk of the weather:

He’s a wise God, knowing His own worth.

No one who borrows

Should make exact payment;

If he does as I say

He’ll be remembered forever.

Scorn

I will not lay bricks for the homes of other men;

I prefer to fell trees in the forest,

To fell them and let them lie.

If I go to the forests, I will starve;

If I lay bricks for those others,

They will feed me soup and black bread and onions.

I will fell trees

Angrily,

And I will let them lie.

The Deeper Scorn

I will lay many bricks:

And that I may lay them better,

I will take their bread and their soup ...

Courteously returning thanks

For the wages they offer....

I will lay many bricks,

And in a straight row,

As befits one who has knowledge of his freedom.

Hokku

EDGAR LEE MASTERS

I lift my eyes from the humus

Up the sea-green stalk to the flower.

The base of the petals is red as blood;

But I cannot see the line that divides

The rim of the petals from the sun light.

Poems

MARK TURBYFILL

Thin Day

Bright, alert,

Arise these wild blue buds

Above this crystal jar.

But they have no soul,

And bear no sweetness

On their lips.

Oh pity of azure days

Like these blue flowers!

We cannot endure in their thinness:

Our hearts sink

Through their petal-gauze.

The Rose Jar

O Earth,

You have brought me out too soon!

He whom I love

Still clings upon the branch,

Firm, a slender bud.

But you have spread me wide.

Take these broken leaves,

Now fallen from the core.

(O Earth,

You have brought me out too soon!)

Drop them into your Jar

For him who shall surely pass this way,

At last!

The Irish Revolutionists

PADRAIC COLUM

The British Government, which was quite willing to exploit the sympathy felt here on the premature death of the young English poet, Rupert Brooke, shot to death three Irish poets, Padraic Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, and Joseph Plunkett.

Not only in Ireland, but the whole world is at a loss by the extinction of these three brave, honorable, and distinguished lives.

The English illustrated journals that have just come to New York enable us to estimate by a contrast the world’s loss. They have published the photographs of the Irish revolutionary leaders; and with them they have published the photograph of the man who ordered their execution, General Maxwell. On one side they give you intellectual and spiritual faces—the faces of men who liberate the world. On the other side they give you a heavy, non-intellectual, non-spiritual face—the face of a man who could never liberate himself.

The vision and the aspiration of Pearse, MacDonagh, and Plunkett is on record for the world to know. A man cannot lie when he speaks of his vision or his aspiration in poetry. We know what Padraic Pearse thought of personal life. He has recorded it in his poem To Death, which has been translated from the Irish:

I have not gathered gold;

The fame that I won perished;

In love I found but sorrow

That withered my life.

Of wealth or of glory

I shall leave nothing behind me

(I think it, O God, enough!)

But my name in the heart of a child.

And what vision of life had Thomas MacDonagh? We know, for it is in his poem Wishes For My Son:

But I found no enemy,

No man in a world of wrong,

That Christ’s word of Charity

Did not render clean and strong—

Who was I to judge my kind,

Blindest groper of the blind?

God to you may give the sight

And the clear undoubting strength

Wars to knit for single right,

Freedom’s war to knit at length;

And to win, through wrath and strife,

To the sequel of my life.

But for you, so small and young,

Born of Saint Cecilia’s Day,

I in more harmonious song

Now for nearer joys should pray—

Simple joys: the natural growth

Of your childhood and your youth,

Courage, innocence, and truth:

These for you, so small and young,

In your hand and heart and tongue.

And we know the vision of life that Joseph Plunkett had—it was the same vision that the great mystics and the great religious had. It is in his poem I See His Blood Upon the Roses:

I see his blood upon the rose

And in the stars the glory of his eyes,

His body gleams amid eternal snows,

His tears fall from the skies.

I see his face in every flower;

The thunder and the singing of the birds

Are but his voice—and carven by his power

Rocks are his written words.

All pathways by his feet are worn,

His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,

His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,

His cross is every tree.

These three men had a vision for their country that could not be expressed in a proclamation, no matter how nobly worded that proclamation might be.

Padraic Pearse gave all his thought and all his effort to bring back a chivalry to Ireland—the Heroic Age of Celtic History, when, as he said, “the greatest honor was for the hero with the most childlike heart, for the King who had the largest pity, and for the poet who visioned the truest image of beauty.” The first thing you saw when you entered his school in Cullenswood House was a fresco representing the boy Cuchullain taking arms. The Druid has warned him that the youth who takes arms that day will make his name famous, but will have a short life. And written round the fresco, in the old Irish words, was Cuchullain’s answer, “I care not if my life have only the span of a day and a night if my deeds be spoken of by the men of Ireland.” This was the spirit that Padraic Pearse sought to kindle in his boys—this was the spirit that he tried to bring back again into Ireland.

Thomas MacDonagh strove to create an Ireland that would be free as his intelligence was free, as eager for deeds as he himself was eager. Those who knew MacDonagh in his literary expression thought of him as a poet with a tendency towards abstractions, as a scholar with a bent towards philology. Those who knew him intimately knew him as a man who was the best of comrades. And they knew that there was something in MacDonagh that he never expressed. What was fundamental in him was an eager search for the thing to which he could give the whole devotion of his life. He found it in his vision of the Irish Republic.

Joseph Mary Plunkett strove to bring back the spirit and the defiance of the martyrs. He came of a family whose name has been in Irish history for six hundred years. The proudest memory of his people was the memory of martyrdom. The last priest martyred in England—the Venerable Oliver Plunkett—was of his blood.

These men, with their comrades—the good and brave Connolly, who gave all of his will and all of his ability to the workers of Ireland, the upright Eamonn Ceant, the soldierly O’Rahilly, the adventurous MacBride, Shaun MacDermott, “kindly Irish of the Irish,” and the others—have done a great thing for our country at this great moment of history.

They have made Ireland not a British question but a European question.

They have shown us that the country should be redeemed by the heroic spirit as well as by the political intelligence.

They have belittled danger and death for generations of Irish nationalists.

Bring Out Your Dead

Braithwaite’s Death-Cart

The Poetry Review of America, edited by William Stanley Braithwaite, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The plague being upon us—God knows whence it came—the plague being upon us, poisoning men and women, and turning them into minor and sub-minor poets, and catching some in their youth so that they can never become men and women—the plague being upon us, I suppose there must be men brave enough to fashion death-carts for the corpses. It is a sanitary precaution. The more carts the better. The builders should be commended; the drivers medalled and ultimately pensioned. We should not bother much about the wheels—how they bang and rattle. Let the corpses leer and quarrel. But keep the carts well burdened and speed them to the pyres of oblivion.

This is not criticism, but the exaggeration of bitterness; and you, Mr. Braithwaite, should not complain if our lips writhe back at the cup which you have held out to us and if our tongues are twisted to a sincerity that sounds like malice. When Contemporary Verse issued from Philadelphia like an ancient tumbril reconstructed by children we laughed and said, “God speed you while you last.” But when rumors came of a new poetry magazine in Boston we waited with the wonderful hope of eager youth. Ah, the new Poetry Review! The new Poetry Review! And what have you done? You have given us the old doll without even new tinsel. Do you wonder that I would smash your doll and tear its frayed and tawdry clothing?

“To serve the art we all love,” you say. Does Benjamin R. C. Low serve it with sentimental buncombe like Jack O’Dreams? Does Amelia Josephine Burr serve it with a library tragedy like Vengeance? And you, Mr. Braithwaite, do you serve it by writing a muddled article on The Substance of Poetry? The bad grammar and proofreading can be forgiven, but who can cleave his way through the jungle of incoherent thought? And I may add seriously that Mr. Edwin F. Edgett, with his puerile remarks about Shakespeare, sounds very much like your younger brother.

There is the beginning of service in the competently written criticisms by Messrs. Untermeyer, O’Brien and Colum, and especially in the tantalizing quotations in fine print from Donald Evan’s new book Two Deaths in the Bronx. Amy Lowell contributes a short story in her recent colloquial vein and Sara Teasdale a sincere lyric.

If live men and women have been sand-bagged and put in the death-cart, let them awake and revive the corpses of their companions. Let them turn the cart into a tally-ho and gallop on with daring and exuberance, cracking a whip at critics.

I do not know your age, Mr. Braithwaite, but I feel that I have the wisdom of greater youth. You have not quite killed hope in me, for I know your true devotion to your work. What will you give us in the forthcoming numbers of your magazine?

Mitchell Dawson.

Herbert Tree’s “Merchant of Venice”

Could I invent some acid, bitter-stinging speech, some new tongue far beyond English in sharpness, I might begin to describe the spectacle of incredible vulgarity—of miserable intent and culmination—which is to be viewed upon the New Amsterdam stage this month. English shrinks—becomes the prattled language of babes—at thought of it.

Is the great wind which has blown the dust from the theatres of Germany, bearing Craig and Reinhart and Barker upon its back, echoing even here in America, to be completely discounted, silenced, by this vulgarian, this soulless, thoughtless, casual, shambling buffoon?

To The Merchant of Venice—a rambling, untidy comedy at best, a play for reading, or only to be played by a man of genius—he brings a graceless cast, a marvelous pot-pourri of music (tom-toms for “Morrocco” and Spanish jingles for “Arragon”), a quite distended and “improved” version of the original play, himself (God save us), and a theory of decoration quite incomprehensibly fearful. Brown palaces shaking to the conversation of the players—brown palaces with hangings of decayed green, a sham, paper Venice, elaborately stenciled, a Portia in landlady’s pink, a Jessica (a spirited Cockney girl) in Turkish costume, roysterers garbed with all the delicate art of Timbuctoo, a Shylock in old dressing gown. No detail, no fragment of the picture of vulgarity is lacking—from red-plush curtains to modern rattle-jacks for the Carnival, from mouthed speeches to maudlin groupings—a complete whole.

This to an apparently delighted audience, to a receptive press.

Barker departed from America, a semi-success, embittered towards us. The Weavers, finely played and brilliantly produced, clung to the shadow of an audience at the Garden Theatre, got as far as Chicago and failed completely there. The two great things in the theatre of the past year trodden out of sight of the easy public at the absurd and dolorous prancing, at the loud cajoling of popularity of bourgeois neighbor Tree.

How long is the theatre to cling to ragged precedent; to these mournful gentlemen of a dusty yesterday, raving through their paper and lattice Venices, showing us their entrail-colored Belmonts, barring sun and light and poetry and singing from the song-starved people of America?

Rollo Peters.

Some Imagist Poets, 1916[1]

MARY ALDIS

It is a matter of speculation why six poets of widely dissimilar viewpoints, if similar technique, should choose to band themselves together to publish in a yearly anthology selections from their works.

An examination into the prefaces and poems of the three anthologies sent forth by the Imagists and a study of various articles on the subject by individual members of the group fail to give adequate explanation.

The principle tenets of Imagism, i. e., clear presentation, the abolishing of outworn phrases and extra adjectives, the necessity of rhythm in all poetry, the absence of reflective comment, are those common to most of the modern serious writers of verse; and although the Imagists have done well to lay fresh emphasis on the difficulty and desirability of putting these tenets into practice, this hardly constitutes a new school. As for a definite understanding of the term Imagism, God help the man who thinks he can explain to another its meaning.

The Imagists, all six of them (there were more in the first anthology, but seemingly some fell from grace), write poetry. That they choose to employ a sub-title need not concern us; nor does their exposition of certain theoretical ideals. What does concern us is the quality of the poems they write. If it seems well to these six poets to publish together a collection of chosen poems, let us pay our seventy-five cents for the modest green paper volume, to read and re-read those that please us best; or, let us go our way untroubled, giving our affection to safe and sure collections—Rittenhouse, Braithwaite, or even good Edmund Clarence Stedman.

There is a patient note discernible in the preface of this third volume which seems to say, “Once again we will endeavor to make clear what we are trying to do. Kindly make an effort to understand.” One may question the desirability of any preface, but it is not surprising that the Imagists wish to make clear their aims and purposes. One wonders at the breath expended in attacks on them. There are disadvantages in this banding together: if one of the group makes a misstep the whole six are anathematized; but, after all, it is quite futile, this effort to kill by ridicule. Denunciation, however fierce, has never yet crushed anything which had in it the living flame of beauty, as much Imagist poetry has.

Miss Amy Lowell is represented in this 1916 Anthology by three poems. The first is her Patterns, named by Braithwaite as the first of the five best poems of 1915. It is difficult to quote, as the poem must be taken in its entirety to appreciate its beauty. Here are the first two stanzas:

I walk down the garden paths,

And all the daffodils

Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.

I walk down the patterned garden paths

In my stiff, brocaded gown.

With my powdered hair and jewelled fan.

I too am a rare

Pattern. As I wander down

The garden paths.

My dress is richly figured,

And the train

Makes a pink and silver stain

On the gravel, and the thrift

Of the borders.

Just a plate of current fashion,

Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.

Not a softness anywhere about me,

Only whale-bone and brocade.

Studying it again one finds new beauties—the delicacy of the occasional rhyme, used as a musician uses the flute in an orchestra, the curious “pattern” of the rhythm, which cannot be defined and yet fits the theme with inimitable grace; the unforgettable picture of the garden with its stiff paths, its white fountain, its carelessly gorgeous flowers, and the woman walking down the path with slow and stately tread. Her head is straight and high, pink and silver is her stiff brocaded gown, yet one knows that underneath it throbs a human heart for which there is no place in the pattern. Here is certainly a new way of conveying emotion. We are stirred by the passion of the poem up to its terrible climax—“Christ! what are patterns for?”

A masterpiece this poem, one to learn and repeat and make one’s own. There follows by Miss Lowell A Spring Day in polyphonic prose, a series of word pictures scintillating with color and dancing light. The day has five color divisions: the Bath, where “little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, and their reflections wabble deliciously over the ceiling”; the Breakfast Table, where golden coffee, yellow butter and silver and white make another symphony. Then comes the Walk, with more color, from boys with black and red, amber and blue marbles, “spitting crimson” when they are hit, to a man’s hat careering down the street in front of white dust “jarring the sunlight into spokes of rose-color and green.” Next comes Midday and Afternoon, then Night and Sleep. “Wrap me close, sheets of lavender. Pour your blue and purple dreams into my ears.... Pale blue lavender, you are the color of the sky when it is fresh-washed and fair.”

Miss Lowell also includes her amazing paraphrase of Stravinsky’s Grotesques, too amazing for an unmusical person’s comment.

Richard Aldington has seven poems. The finest is a short Elizabethan lyric named After Two Years. It is a lovely bit, but why it should be published in an “Imagist” collection no man may say. Its delicate beauty is indefinable.

After Two Years

She is all so slight

And tender and white

As a May morning.

She walks without hood

At dusk. It is good

To hear her sing.

It is God’s will

That I shall love her still

As He loves Mary.

And night and day

I will go forth to pray

That she loves me.

She is as gold

Lovely, and far more cold.

Do thou pray with me,

For if I win grace

To kiss twice her face

God has done well to me.

Aldington’s Eros and Psyche has both beauty and distinction, but no one of the seven poems by him can compare with his Choricos in the Anthology of 1915. That is an achievement not easily repeated.

Perhaps H. D. is the purest Imagist of the group. To the uninitiated she is the most obscure because the most abstract. She loves the sea and high, windy places and her poems catch something of the freshness one feels standing on a headland, beaten and buffeted by the wind and the salt spray. Nature is to her as a living presence, sometimes gentle, more often cruel. She vibrates to beauty as sensitively as a Greek dryad, and in reading her poems one has a curious sense of a worshipper offering incense to the gods. Here are some lines from the last one of the four poems she contributes. It is called Temple—The Cliff:

High—high and no hill-goat

Tramples—no mountain-sheep

Has set foot on your fine grass.

You lift, you are the world-edge,

Pillar for the sky-arch.

The world heaved—

We are next to the sky.

Over us, sea-hawks shout,

Gulls sweep past.

The terrible breakers are silent.

Shall I hurl myself from here.

Shall I leap and be nearer you?

Shall I drop, beloved, beloved.

Over me the wind swirls.

I have stood on your portal

And I know—

You are further than this,

Still further on another cliff.

In their passion for clearness, for the exact word, Imagists often use certain words which sound ugly. In this poem of fourteen stanzas, the word “lurch” occurs three times. It is not a pretty word, it does not suggest a graceful action, yet apparently no other will do.

John Gould Fletcher is, first of all, pictorial. His conception of Imagism differs slightly, it would seem, from his confreres. His imagination is so strong he sees significance in every changing image of this changing world. His rhythm is so vague that sometimes it is hardly discoverable. His poetry could be printed about as well in block as in line, as doubtless he would admit. He loves color—revels, glories, riots in color; and he has a way of seeing resemblances to dragons and serpents and other ungodly things in the simplest of natural phenomena—trees or clouds or rain or even sunrise. His vocabulary is astonishing. He plunges into a sea of words and plays with them, tossing them up like jewels to sparkle in the sun, or burying them in pits to see if they will still shine. He loves words, caresses them with a lover’s touch, kisses them for luck, and then hurls them together in such an incredible combination that the critics blink. A serious workman withal, with much to say seething in his mind and a determination to say it in his own way. There is perhaps no line in the six poems in this Anthology equal to the much-quoted “Vermillion pavilion against a jade balustrade.” The Mexican Quarter is a poem of forty-two lines wherein is depicted and symbolized the very spirit of Mexican life and love. It ends with an unexpected little lyric. One can almost hear the twang of the guitar. Here is Fletcher’s picture of An Unquiet Street:

By day and night this street is not still:

Omnibuses with red tail-lamps,

Taxicabs with shiny eyes,

Rumble, shunning its ugliness.

It is corrugated with wheel-ruts,

It is dented and pockmarked with traffic,

If has no time for sleep.

It heaves its old scarred countenance

Skyward between the buildings

And never says a word.

On rainy nights

It dully gleams

Like the cold tarnished scales of a snake:

And over it hang arc-lamps,

Blue-white death-lilies on black stems.

I think only a poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling could see in our municipal arc lamps “blue-white death-lilies on black stems,” but I am going to look more carefully after this.

F. S. Flint has given us more beauty in his earlier work, notably in London My Beautiful and The Swan, than is to be found here, save perhaps in Chalfont Saint Giles, which has simplicity and dignified stateliness. It is a picture of village folk gravely filing into church, past ivy and lilac, as the bell rings. The sadness of England in war-time is in the picture. Here are two stanzas:

Walk quietly
along the mossy paths;
the stones of the humble dead
are hidden behind the blue mantle
of their forget-me-nots;
and before one grave so hidden
a widow kneels, with head bowed,
and the crape falling
over her shoulders.

The bells for evening church are ringing,
and the people come gravely
and with red, sun-burnt faces
through the gates in the wall.

D. H. Lawrence contributes what may be considered, except for Patterns, the most notable poem in the book, Erinnyes, although again why it should be called Imagism is a mystery. It is certainly, however, a poem, and a profound and beautiful one. In its form and its long, slow, melancholy rhythm it suggests Aldington’s Choricos, and the theme is the same—Death. Here are five stanzas:

There are so many dead,

Many have died unconsenting,

Theirs ghosts are angry, unappeased.

They come back, over the white sea, in the mist,

Invisible, trooping home, the unassuaged ghosts

Endlessly returning on the uneasy sea.

What do they want, the ghosts, what is it

They demand as they stand in menace over against us?

How shall we now appease whom we have raised up?

Must we open the doors, and admit them, receive them home,

And in the silence, reverently, welcome them,

And give them place and honour and service meet?

For one year’s space, attend on our angry dead,

Soothe them with service and honour, and silence meet,

Strengthen, prepare them for the journey hence,

Then lead them to the gates of the unknown,

And bid farewell, oh stately travellers,

And wait till they are lost upon our sight.

There is another poem of Lawrence’s called Perfidy that gives an elusive sense of horror and calamity. This effect lies partially in the five-line stanza formation with the first, third, and fourth lines rhyming. There is no particular reason for calling this poem Imagism either; but we have agreed by now, I trust, that is not our first consideration. No less a person than Miss Lowell herself gives us justification in this viewpoint, for in a review of the poems of Aldington and Flint in the June Poetry Review she says, “Let us take these little volumes as poetry pure and simple, forgetting schools and creeds.”

There are thirty-two poems in all in the book. One person will like this one best, another that. Suffice that the book is a valuable contribution to contemporary literature.

[1] Some Imagist Poets, 1916: An Annual Anthology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Three Imagist Poets

JOHN GOULD FLETCHER

(Continued from the May issue)

III

To pass from the poetry of Mr. Aldington to the poetry of H. D. is to pass into another world. For H. D. not only is a modern poet, she is in the best sense of the word a primitive poet. She deals with Greek themes in the same way as the Greeks of the seventh century B. C. might have dealt with them. She is not like Mr. Aldington, a sceptic enamoured of their lost beauty. In a sense she is indifferent to beauty. Something speaks to her in every rock, wave, or pine tree of those sunlit landscapes in which she seems to live. For her the decadence of antiquity, the Middle Ages, the modern world seem never to have existed. She is purely and frankly pagan.

How is it that so many people interested in Imagism seem never to have grasped this essential distinction between her work and Mr. Aldington’s? I must suppose it is because very few people have ever tried to analyze and rank the Imagist poets on any other basis than that of form. But as I have already pointed out, the form of the Imagists is, after all, a matter of lesser importance than the spirit, with which they approach that form. Aldington writes about life: H. D. is almost completely a nature poet. Nature to her is not mere inanimate scenery or beautiful decoration: it is packed with a life and significance which is beyond our individual lives, and all her poems are in a sense acts of worship towards it. Civilization for her does not exist, in our modern sense: she seeks a civilization based only on the complete realization of natural and physical law, without any ethical problems except the need of merging and compounding all one’s desires and emotions in that law. Her poetry is like a series of hymns of some forgotten and primitive religion.

I like to think that this primitive quality in H. D.’s poetry comes from the fact that she is an American. There can be no doubt that we are an uncultivated, a barbarous people. Our ancestors, by migrating to an immense and utterly undeveloped continent, without traditions, were thrown face to face with nature and lost, in consequence, nearly all feeling for their previous culture. If you take a child of civilized parents and bring him up among savages, he will revert to savagery, and in the same way our forefathers, as soon as they ceased to cling to the Atlantic seaboard, changed, through contact with the immense wilderness of the interior, not only mentally but physically. For example, Washington was physically and mentally an English squire of his period: Lincoln, about a hundred years later, was, in appearance and habits of thought, like a man of another race. The Indian, although conquered, gave to his conquerors the Indian way of thinking; or rather the Indian’s surroundings—the endless forest—produced in the newcomers’ minds something of the same way of thinking as the Indian had before their coming. What a pity it has been for art that we, as a nation, did not admit without shame this return to nature! But instead, we were ashamed of our barbarism, and we have striven and are still striving to outdo Europe on its own grounds, with the result that so much of our art seems merely transplanted, exotic, and false. We might have been the Russians of the western hemisphere; instead of that we were almost the provincial English. Instead of Fenimore Cooper and The Song of Hiawatha, we might have given to the world a new national epic. But the opportunity is now lost and whatever fragments of that epic may be written will have to be very sophisticated and in a sense artificial products.

To make an end of this long digression, I can truly say that I find nothing transplanted in H. D.’s poetry. She has borrowed a few names of gods from the early Greek, but that was because she found herself in complete sympathy with this people, who, if we are to believe the modern school of archaeology, were quite as barbarian themselves in the Homeric period as the Red Indians, and who lived in the closest contact with nature. Let us take an early example:

Hermes of the Ways

The hard sand breaks,

And the grains of it

Are clear as wine.

Far off over the leagues of it,

The wind,

Playing on the wide shore,

Piles little ridges,

And the great waves

Break over it.

But more than the many-foamed ways

Of the sea,

I know him

Of the triple path-ways,

Hermes,

Who awaiteth.

Dubious,

Facing three ways,

Welcoming wayfarers,

He whom the sea-orchard

Shelters from the west,

From the east,

Weathers sea-wind:

Fronts the great dunes.

Wind rushes

Over the dunes,

And the coarse salt-crusted grass

Answers.

Heu,

It whips round my ankles!

This is only one-half of the poem, but it will serve to show this poet’s method. Here Hermes is identified with the yellow barrier of sand dunes which breaks the wind, and splits it into three directions, as it comes in from the sea. The scenery and the feeling are not Greek. In fact, as someone has pointed out, the whole poem might have been called “The Coast of New Jersey.” But just as Coleridge found a way to give a feeling of the emptiness of the sea by narrating the tale of a legendary voyage on it, so H. D. has given us the eternal quality of the New Jersey coast by identifying its savagery with Greek myth.

The difference between H. D.’s poetry and Aldington’s is therefore a difference between an apparent complexity which cannot be analysed, since it is really the simplest synthesis of primitive feeling, and a studied simplicity which on analysis, reveals itself as something very complex and modern. Aldington’s work when studied carefully, raises questions about our life: H. D. goes deeper and offers us an eternal answer. With the single exception of the Choricos, I know of no work of H. D.’s which is not superior to Aldington’s in rhythm, as I know of no work of Aldington’s which does not seem to have more unsolved problems underlying its thought. Aldington is monodic, H. D. is strophaic: Aldington writes on many themes: H. D. on two or three: H. D.’s art is more perfect within its limits; Aldington’s is more interesting because of its very human imperfection.

There is another short thing of H. D.’s which fulfils perfectly the Greek dictum that a picture is a silent poem, a poem a speaking picture:

Whirl up, sea—
whirl your pointed pines,
splash your great pines,
over our rocks.

Hurl your green over us,
cover us with your pools of fir.

A chorus of Oreads might very well have sung that to the wind. Over and over again, H. D. never tires of giving us the sea, the rocks, the pines, the sunlight. There is such a hard brightness of sunlight in some of the poems that it makes us fairly dizzy with its intensity:

O wind,
rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it sideways.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air:

fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat,
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.

These poems are like cries to unknown gods. Some are simply stark in their dramatic magnificence:

The Wind Sleepers

Whiter
than the crust
left by the tide,
we are stung by the hurled sand
and the broken shells.

We no longer sleep,
sleep in the wind,
we awoke and fled
through the Peiraeic gate.

Tear,
tear us an altar,
tug at the cliff-boulders,
pile them with the rough stones.

We no longer
sleep in the wind.

Propitiate us.

Chant in a wail
that never halts;
pace a circle and pay tribute
with a song.

When the roar of a dropped wave
breaks into it,
pour meted words
of sea-hawks and gulls
and sea-birds that cry
discords.

Recently H. D. has been giving us longer and more complex poems—condensed dramas of nature and life. Her style has become broader and deeper, and her thought more weighty. I wish I could quote all of a poem of this nature called Sea-Gods. I can only give a brief analysis of it.

The entire poem is a sort of invocation and service of propitiation to the powers of the sea. In its opening lines the poet cries out:

They say there is no hope—
sand—drift—rocks—rubble of the sea,
the broken hulk of a ship,
hung with shreds of rope,
pallid under the cracked pitch.

They say there is no hope
to conjure you.

In short, the gods are merely broken wrecks of the past. The forces of nature cannot help us, it is useless to cry out to them, for they are

—cut, torn, mangled,
torn by the stress and beat,
no stronger than the strips of sand
along your ragged beach.

But, says the poet, in a beautiful passage:

But we bring violets,
great masses, single, sweet:

wood-violets, stream-violets,
violets from a wet marsh,
violets in clumps from the hills.

Every kind of violet is brought and strewn on the sea. For what reason? Here is the answer:

You will yet come,
you will yet haunt men in ships—
you will thunder along the cliff,
break—retreat—get fresh strength—
gather and pour weight upon the beach.

You will bring myrrh-bark,
and drift laurel wood from hot coasts;
when you hurl, high—high—

We will answer with a shout.

For you will come,
you will answer our taut hearts,
you will break the lie of men’s thoughts,
and shelter us for our trust.

Has the sea, then, in this poem been used in some way as a symbol of the eternal drift, change and reflux of our life which we have tried to conceal under theories of ethics, of progress, of immortality, of civilization? Perhaps it has. And the violets—what, then, are they but simply the recollections of our earlier sea-state, of our endless, unconscious drift with the tides of life?

I do not propose here to examine H. D.’s mystic philosophy. That philosophy cannot be disengaged from its context. But from a quite recent poem of hers—a poem very beautiful and baffling, I may perhaps be permitted to quote these few lines, wrenched from their context, without comment:

Sleepless nights,

I remember the initiates,
their gesture, their calm glance,

I have heard how, in rapt thought,
in vision they speak
with another race

More beautiful, more intense than this—

I reason:

another life holds what this lacks:

a sea, unmoving, quiet,
not forcing our strength
to rise to it, beat on beat,
a hill not set with black violets,
but stones, stones, bare rocks,
dwarf-trees, twisted, no beauty,
to distract—to crowd
madness upon madness.

Only a still place,
and perhaps some outer horror,
some hideousness to stamp beauty—
on our hearts.

IV

The third poet whose work I have to examine, Mr. F. S. Flint, was already an accomplished writer of rhymed vers libre before he joined the Imagist movement. Mr. Flint’s early work is contained in a volume entitled, In the Net of the Stars, a volume which is still worth reading. The Net of the Stars told a love-story in rather uncommon fashion. The poet and his beloved were presented throughout the book, against the background of the starry sky:

Little knots in the net of light

That is held by the infinite Dragon, Night.

This bringing into relation of a quite human love-story, with the impassive and changeless order of the Universe, threw a flavour of supreme irony over the whole book. The work is otherwise remarkable technically. At the date when it was published, 1909, Mr. Flint already revealed that he was an assiduous student of Verhaeren, De Regnier, and other French vers-librists. Hence its importance as a document in the Imagist movement.

But to come to Mr. Flint’s later work which has been assembled under the title of Cadences. We find here a poet, first of all, of sentiment. What, you say, an Imagist who deals with sentiment? My reply to that is, that it is time people understood that an Imagist is free to deal with whatever he chooses, so long as he is sincere and honest about it. Mr. Flint’s sincerity is his finest point. He is in some sense the Paul Verlaine of the Imagist movement. His work gives one the same delicacy of nuance, the same fresh fragrance, the same direct simplicity, the same brooding melancholy. He lacks the strain of coarseness which ruined Verlaine; he has, in place of it, a refined nobility. He has not humour. At times he has attempted irony, but I cannot think he has altogether succeeded in it. He feels life too poignantly to ever mock at life. There remains tenderness, wistful pathos, imaginative beauty.

On reading Mr. Flint one obtains a very distinct impression of Mr. Flint’s personality. One pictures him as a shy, sensitive, lonely dreamer filled with a desire to attain to the noblest and finest life, but somehow kept back from it. Mr. Flint is one of the few poets I know who have preserved intact today a spark of the old lyrical idealism. He is, perhaps, though he may not realize it, even closer to Keats and Shelley than to Verlaine—he might almost be called a modern Shelley. His affiliation with these earlier and greater romantics is more marked because it is an affiliation of spirit, not of form. Mr. Flint’s form has always been his own, and by holding conscientiously to his own form, he has come closer, to my way of thinking, to poets like Keats and Shelley than the innumerable tribe of imitators who have rashly taken the form for the substance.

Here is an early example of Mr. Flint’s work:

London, my beautiful,
it is not the sunset,
nor the pale green sky
shimmering through the curtain
of the silver birch,
nor the quietness;
it is not the hopping
of the little birds
upon the lawn,
nor the darkness
stealing over all things
that moves me.

But as the moon creeps slowly
over the treetops
among the stars;

I think of her,
and the glow her passing
sheds on men.

London, my beautiful,

I will climb
into the branches
to the moonlit treetops
that my blood may be cooled
by the wind.

And here is another, equally beautiful:

Under the lily shadow,
and the gold,
and the blue, and the mauve,
that the whin and the lilac
pour down upon the water,
the fishes quiver.

Over the green cold leaves,
and the rippled silver,
and the tarnished copper
of its neck and beak,
toward the deep black water,
beneath the arches,
the swan floats slowly.

Into the dark of the arch the swan floats,
and the black depths of my sorrow
bears a white rose of flame.

If Mr. Flint had written nothing else but these two poems he would be immortal for their sake, in spite of his disregard—shared by H. D.—of the convenient device which begins each line of a poem with a capital letter, and of the laws of punctuation. They weave a perfect hypnotic spell in my mind, and they fulfill completely a recent definition of Mr. E. A. Robinson, that poetry is a language which expresses through an emotional reaction something which cannot be said in ordinary speech.

Mr. Flint has given us other poems not less beautiful, but with a strain of greater pathos:

Tired faces,
eyes that have never seen the world,
bodies that have never lived in air,
lips that have never minted speech;
they are the clipped and garbled
blocking the highway.

They swarm and eddy
between the banks of glowing shops
towards the red meat,
the potherbs,
the cheapjacks,
or surge in
before the swift rush of the charging teams;
pitiful, ugly, mean,
encumbering.

Immortal?

In a wood
watching the shadow of a bird,
leap from frond to frond of bracken,

I am immortal,
perhaps.

But these?

Their souls are naphtha lamps,
guttering in an odour of carious teeth,
and I die with them.

Perhaps the last poem in Mr. Flint’s book will give the most complete exposition of his art and vision:

The Star

Bright Star of Life,

Who shattered creeds at Bethlehem,

And saw

In the irradiance of your vision shining,

Children and maidens, youths and men and women,

Dancing barefoot among the grasses, singing,

Dancing,

Over the waving flowery meadows;

So calmly watched the universe and men,

And yet

So fiery was the heart behind the light;

The creeds have been re-made by men

Who followed as you walked abroad,

And gathered up their shattered shards;

Then with a wax of sticky zeal,

Each little piece unto its fellow joined;

But over the meadows comes the wind

Remembering your voice:

O my love,

O my golden-haired, my golden-hearted,

I will sing this song to you of Him,

This golden afternoon.

This song of you;

For where love is, is He,

Whose name has echoed in the halls of Time,

Who caught the wise eternal music, ay,

And passed it on—

For men to sing it since

In false and shifting keys—

Who hears it now?

But the hearts of those who have heard it rightly,

Grew great;

And behind the walls and barriers of the world,

Their voices have gone up in sweetness

Unheeded,

Yet imminent in the wings and flight of change;

Comes there a time when men shall shout it,

And say to Life:

You have the strength of the seas,

And the glory of the vine;

You shall have the wisdom of the hills,

The daring of the eagle’s wings,

The yearning of the swallow’s quest.

And, in the mighty organ of the world,

Great men shall be as pipes and nations stops

To harmonize your Song.

O my love,

Like a cornfield in summer

Is your body to me;

Golden and bending with the wind,

And on the tallest ear a bird is piping

The lonely song.

And scarlet poppies thread the golden ways.

Out of the purple haze of the sea behind it

Appears a white ship sailing,

And its passengers are harvesters.

But who dares sing of love?

The jackals howl; the vultures gorge dead flesh.

In despite of the last line, which is undoubtedly true, and, under the present circumstances, certainly necessary to the context of all that precedes it, yet I feel I cannot share Mr. Flint’s despair of this world. For as long as there is any poet who can have such visions as this is, in such a world as ours, the earth cannot be altogether given over to crime and slaughter. Which one of the Imagists could have given us with so direct and poignant sincerity—scorning all artifice—such a vision of beauty? Or, for that matter, which one of the poets of today?

The Reader Critic

What Is Anarchy?

Alan Adair, London:

In the March number of The Little Review, Miss Alice Groff criticises Anarchy. She criticises it badly and unfairly. She writes as though she did not understand what anarchy is. Have you room in your paper for me to tell her?

Anarchy is the name given to those periods in the life of a people during which the principle of domination is held in abeyance and men are no longer accountable to any magistracy. It is properly a political word. It has no philosophical significance. All it means is absence of material government. It is in that sense that Milton uses it and Swift uses it. It is in that sense that writers of history books employ it. It is a term, and the only correct term, for a certain condition of society. That condition has occurred in the past and will doubtless occur in the future. It is the result of an equality of strength among the different elements, or “social-egos” that make up a community. There is Anarchy only so long as these forces remain equal. Once they cease to be equal, so soon as one begins to tend towards dominance, so soon does the Anarchy end. According to the “social-ego” that has triumphed, the changed commonwealth becomes an oligarchy or a kingdom; a military republic, an ochlocracy or a federation of communes. But until then, while there is still absence of supreme coercive power, while there is still no dominant “social-ego,” so long is the community correctly termed an Anarchy.

Between this, the Anarchy of fact and of history, and the Anarchy of theory and modern revolutionists, there is no substantial difference. The anarchist, in any age, is simply and without qualification, a man who desires an end put to the political power under which he lives. The reason why he desires such a thing does not matter. He may think government to be eternally an evil or only presently an evil. He may be egoist or communist. What makes him an anarchist is that he hates the social order around him and would precipitate its destruction by paralyzing the centers of its administrative and legislative authority.

The theoretical case against government has little part in the mind of the modern anarchist. Miss Groff altogether overestimates the importance that he attaches to it. The war against authority as authority is past. We are beyond that kind of mysticism. Scepticism is a big ingredient of Anarchy and the anarchist knows only too well that we know too little of psychology and too little of philosophy to judge the worth of abstractions like justice or liberty or the principle of domination. We can only fix temporary, conditional values to such things. Actual, modern authority is the only sphinx that troubles the contemporary anarchist. He has no desire to control the destinies of his people and, as anarchist, he has no theories about the future form of its political institutions. His business is solely with present facts. His task is simply destruction. It may be that he does not start from a “basis of reason.” He has seen and thought too much to trouble greatly about reason. He knows too many books to have much optimism. He sees sprawled across the earth a tragic and incoherent civilization and he sees the most virile of the races of man lose under its influence the spontaneity of their actions and the region of their instincts. That, possibly more than the desire to “complete a circuit of reason,” is at the root of his attitude to society. The question of the moral significance of archist or an-archist is beyond the answering of Miss Groff or any one else. The question of whether it is well to endure the present order; to be dwarfed and poisoned by its ideals; to be devoted by its economy to contemptible pursuits; to be forced to conjunction with base influences by every circumstance that past power has created for the control of present humanity; that is at least an answerable question. Of the value of the anarchist answer there may be many opinions, but that it is an intelligible answer is not to be denied. It is simple and coherent. Society is sick of its many counsellors and rulers. Its sources of spiritual vitality are dried up. It is full of confusion; bereft of consistent purpose; continuing only in mechanical existence. To precipitate its decay is the one wise action possible to mankind. All things are grown fatigued; without simplicity of soul or rigour of desire. Religions, institutions and codes of law are no longer animated; solely the dead weight of the past holds them in position. Of what use to plan, meditate or invent, to conquer elements or to evoke from the earth new, fantastic and wonder-working metals, when that which has custody of all such things, that which alone can give continuity to the works and achievements of man our mother civilization itself is in dissolution?

To the mind of the anarchist, there are but two courses open to humanity. First: there may be a continuance of the present conditions: a society stratified as now, stupidified as now, completely organized, of antique institutions, growing perpetually enfeebled in spirit, the current of its vitality becoming attenuated until lost in the morass of an enormous racial degeneracy. Or else, secondly, the mechanism of civilization may break and a period of administrative and moral chaos not easily distinguishable from barbarism supervene upon dilatory decadence. It is this second course that commends itself to the anarchist. Only in a partial cessation of its continuity, only in a barbaric forgetfulness of its eternal problems and speculations can an exhausted humanity come once more to a zest for existence and the will to achievement.

And an Anarchy is commonly an epoch of such confusion and recovery.

Impressions of the Loop

A Boy Reader, Chicago:

Is the following good enough for you to print?

As I walk through the streets of the Loop,

Big, fat, double-chinned women fan by;

They reek of Melba perfume:

They might have used some other kind,

But they like Melba: fat women, I mean.

Then there are whining old ladies;

They look disdainfully at the gay styles,

Whining, because they are disgusted—

(Envious disgust).

They are old, you know, and can’t do such things.

And drunken men tumble from the corner saloons;

I envy them, for they are very happy.

Miserable, begging men and women sit in comfort

On every corner.

Some have an arm, some a leg,

But they had another once.

Why don’t the rich people take care of them?

They might lose their arms and legs!

Big limousines glide by;

Painted blonde ladies sit on soft cushions.

They must sit there!

What would the jewelry stores do without them!

Diamonds glitter on their perfumed hands;

They cannot smile, for the paint would crack

And fall from their faces. Besides, they are select.

Ragamuffins weave in and out.

They hop cars, scream, and envy the blossoming windows

Of cheap Delicatessens.

Flip stenographers flit by;

Their ankles are gay with many-colored stilty shoes,

But their stockings are full of holes and Jacob’s ladders

Under it all.

Terrible odors fill the air:

Fish, gasoline, booze, sachet-powder (lots of Melba),

Gas, cheap roses, and peanuts; coffee, smoke,

And other things.

Dirty men, clean men, dudes, street mashers,

Cheap Musicians and Artists....

This is life!

Statement of Ownership, Management, Circulation, Etc., Required by the Act of Congress of August 24, 1912

Of The Little Review, published monthly at Chicago, Ill., for April 1st, 1916.

State of Illinois, County of Cook—ss:

Before me, a Notary Public in and for the State and county aforesaid, personally appeared Margaret C. Anderson, who, having been duly sworn according to law, deposes and says that she is the Editor of The Little Review, and that the following is, to the best of her knowledge and belief, a true statement of the ownership, management (and if a daily paper, the circulation), etc., of the aforesaid publication for the date shown in the above caption, required by the Act of August 24, 1912, embodied in section 443, Postal Laws and Regulations, printed on the reverse of this form, to wit:

1. That the names and addresses of the publisher, editor, managing editor, and business managers are:

Publisher, Margaret C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts Building; Editor, Margaret C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts Building; Managing editor, Margaret C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts Building; Business manager, Margaret C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts Building.

2. That the owners are: (Give names and addresses of individual owners, or, if a corporation, give its name and the names and addresses of stockholders owning or holding 1 per cent or more of the total amount of stock.)

Margaret C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts Building.

3. That the known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owning or holding 1 per cent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities are: (If there are none, so state.) None.

4. That the two paragraphs next above, giving the names of the owners, stockholders, and security holders, if any, contain not only the list of stockholders and security holders as they appear upon the books of the company but also, in cases where the stockholders or security holder appears upon the books of the company as trustee or in any other fiduciary relation, the name of the person or corporation for whom such trustee is acting, is given; also that the said two paragraphs contain statements embracing affiant’s full knowledge and belief as to the circumstances and conditions under which stockholders and security holders who do not appear upon the books of the company as trustee, hold stock and securities in a capacity other than that of a bona fide owner; and this affiant has no reason to believe that any other person, association, or corporation has any interest direct or indirect in the said stock, bonds, or other securities than as so stated by him.

MARGARET C. ANDERSON.

Sworn to and subscribed before me this 31st day of March, 1916.

(SEAL)

MITCHELL DAWSON, Notary Public.
(My commission expires December 20, 1917.)

A Vers Libre Prize Contest

Through the generosity of a friend, The Little Review is enabled to offer an unusual prize for poetry—possibly the first prize extended to free verse. The giver is “interested in all experiments, and has followed the poetry published in The Little Review with keen appreciation and a growing admiration for the poetic form known as vers libre.”

The conditions are as follows:

Contributions must be received by August 15th.

They must not be longer than twenty-five lines.

They must be sent anonymously with stamps for return.

The name and address of the author must be fixed to the manuscript in a sealed envelope.

It should be borne in mind that free verse is wanted—verse having beauty of rhythm, not merely prose separated into lines.

There will be three judges: William Carlos Williams, Zoë Aikens and Helen Hoyt.

There will be two prizes of $25 each. They are offered not as a first and second prize, but for “the two best short poems in free verse form.”

As there will probably be a large number of poems to read, we suggest that contributors adhere closely to the conditions of the contest.

THE NEW POETRY SERIES

A successful attempt to give the best of contemporary verse a wide reading in its own generation.

NEW VOLUMES NOW READY

SOME IMAGIST POETS, 1916

A new collection of the work of this interesting group of poets—Richard Aldington, “H. D.”, John Gould Fletcher, F. S. Flint, D. H. Lawrence, and Amy Lowell—showing increased scope and power and confirming their important position in modern poetry. The volume includes Miss Lowell’s “Patterns” and “Spring Day,” and Mr. Fletcher’s Arizona poems.

GOBLINS AND PAGODAS
By JOHN GOULD FLETCHER

This volume includes “Ghosts of an Old House” and ten “Symphonies” interpreting in terms of color the inner life of a poet. In originality of conception, in sheer tonal beauty, and in the subtlety with which moods are evoked, these poems mark a distinct advance in the development of the art of poetry.

ROADS
By GRACE FALLOW NORTON

The author of “The Little Gray Songs from St. Joseph’s” writes in the old metres but with all the artistic vitality of the newer school of poets. The poems of this volume represent the best work she has yet done.

TURNS AND MOVIES
By CONRAD AIKEN

“Most remarkable of all recent free verse.”—Reedy’s St. Louis Mirror.

A SONG OF THE GUNS
By GILBERT FRANKAU

Wonderfully vivid pictures of modern war written to the roar of guns on the western front by a son of Frank Danby, the novelist. These are the war poems the world has been waiting for.

IDOLS
By WALTER CONRAD ARENSBERG

Contains many interesting experiments in new metres and reflective verse of much beauty as well as novel and effective renderings of Mallarmé’s “Afternoon of a Faun,” and of Dante’s Fifth Canto.

Each 75 cents Net, except “A Song of the Guns,” which is 50 cents Net.

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN CO.
At all Bookstores 4 Park Street, Boston

READ THE MISCELLANY

An Illustrated QUARTERLY for
Connoisseurs of the Book-Beautiful

Occasional Book Reviews and Articles on
Prints, Etchings and Fine
Engraving

THE OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF
THE AMERICAN BOOKPLATE SOCIETY

$1.00 a Year 25 Cents a Copy

Address
EDITOR, THE MISCELLANY
1010 Euclid Avenue Cleveland, Ohio

Are you really opposed to the war and are you anxious to
do anti-military propaganda? Then help spread

ANTI-MILITARY LITERATURE

Preparedness, the Road to Universal Slaughter
By Emma Goldman, 5c each, $2.50 a hundred

Patriotism, a Menace to Liberty
By Emma Goldman, 5c each, $2.50 a hundred

War and Capitalism
By Peter Kropotkin, 5c each

The Last War
By George Barrett, 5c each

For sale by MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION
20 EAST 125th STREET, NEW YORK CITY

“Et j’ai voulu la paix”

POÈMES

Par ANDRÉ SPIRE Author of “Versets,” “Vers les Routes Absurdes,” &c.

A little book of unpublished poems written just before and during the war. M. Spire has been in Nancy, within a few kilometres of the firing-line, since August, 1914.

THE EGOIST, in publishing these poems by as well known an author as M. Spire, hopes to reach that fairly numerous public in England which reads French, and hopes also to follow up this book with other small collections of new French poetry by the younger poets.

Copies may be obtained from
THE EGOIST, or from RICHARD ALDINGTON, 7 Christchurch Place, Hampstead, N. W.

Price 6d net. Postage 1d

EDITION LIMITED TO 750 COPIES

A List of Interesting Papers to Appear in Early Issues of

THE QUARTERLY NOTEBOOK

Homage to Watteau*
By W. G. Blaikie-Murdoch

Seventeenth Century Type-Making*
By Dard Hunter

The Centenary of Charlotte Brontë
By E. Basil Lupton

Synge and Borrow: A Contrast in Method
By Miriam Allen deFord

Dickens as a Student of Scott
By E. Basil Lupton

Ivories
By N. Tourneur

*Illustrated

The Little Review

Literature, Drama, Music, Art

MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Editor

The monthly that has been called “the most unique journal in existence.”

THE LITTLE REVIEW is a magazine that believes in Life for Art’s sake, in the Individual rather than in Incomplete People, in an Age of Imagination rather than of Reasonableness; a magazine interested in Past, Present, and Future, but particularly in the New Hellenism; a magazine written for Intelligent People who can Feel, whose philosophy is Applied Anarchism, whose policy is a Will to Splendour of Life, and whose function is—to express itself.

One Year, U.S.A., $1.50; Canada, $1.65; Great Britain, 7/-

The Little Review

THE FLAME

A JOURNAL FOR THE NEW AGE

Irwin Granich and Van K. Allison, Editors.
3 Bellingham Place, Boston, Mass.

“The Flame” is to be a monthly journal of revolution, soon to take life. It is to burn against oppression and authority everywhere, and is to be as pure and merciless as the flower of light after which it is named.

We want you to help us make “The Flame.” It is not to be one of those vehicles for the delivery of the vast thoughts of an unrecognized “genius,” but a little forum where every revolutionist of high heart and purpose can speak. We can pay nothing, of course. Cartoons, poems, stories, sketches, tracts, philosophies, news reports—all will be welcomed.

No creed or philosophy will be barred from our columns if only its devotee writes in a beautiful and furious and yes-saying gesture. The editorials will be flavored by the anarchy of the publishers.

INVITATION
TO
MEMBERSHIP

SOCIETY OF MODERN ART

Every copy of M. A. C. (Modern Art Collector) is spreading the new form of art throughout America, is adding the law of recognition to these hard-working, self-sacrificing, unselfish artists.

Support of the Collector is a direct and potent method of manifesting your interest in Modern Art and of aiding its advance in the betterment of the Modern Artist.

A fee of eighteen dollars will be charged by the publishers of the Modern Art Collector to those desiring to lend support to the Modern Art Movement. The payment of the fee will be acknowledged by an engraved certificate signed by the Society’s officers and will entitle the contributor to copies of M. A. C., containing collections of Modern Artists’ work for the period of two years.

Those who have previously subscribed to M. A. C. may procure the same advantages by paying the difference between the subscription rate and the membership fee.

EMMA
GOLDMAN

THE NOTED ANARCHIST

Will Lecture in San Francisco, Cal.,
at Fillmore Street Averill Hall

1861 Fillmore St., Bet. Sutter and Bush

SUNDAY, JULY 16th, 8 P. M.
“Anarchism and Human Nature—Do they harmonize?”

TUESDAY, JULY 18th, 8 P. M.
“The Family—Its Enslaving Effect upon Parents and Children”

WEDNESDAY, JULY 19th, 8 P. M.
“Art For Life”

THURSDAY, JULY 20th, 8 P. M.
“Preparedness, The Road to Universal Slaughter”

FRIDAY, JULY 21st, 8 P. M.
“Friedrich Nietzsche and the German Kaiser”

SATURDAY, JULY 22nd, 8 P. M.
“The Educational and Sexual Mutilation of the Child”
(The Gary System Discussed)

SUNDAY, JULY 23rd, 8 P. M.
“The Philosophy of Atheism”
(The Lecture delivered before the Congress of Religious Philosophies held at San Francisco during the Exposition)

Questions and Discussions at all Lectures

Admission 25 Cents

Transcriber’s Notes

Advertisements were collected at the end of the text.

The table of contents on the title page was adjusted in order to reflect correctly the headings in this issue of The Little Review.

The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical errors were silently corrected. All other changes are shown here (before/after):

- ... when the First Consul sent home the news of the victory of Merengo?” ...
... when the First Consul sent home the news of the victory of Marengo?” ...

- ... in landlady’s pink, a Jessicca (a spirited Cockney girl) in Turkish costume, ...
... in landlady’s pink, a Jessica (a spirited Cockney girl) in Turkish costume, ...

- ... if similar technique, should chose to band themselves together ...
... if similar technique, should choose to band themselves together ...

- ... And, in the mightly organ of the world, ...
... And, in the mighty organ of the world, ...

- ... now, stupified as now, completely organized, of antique institutions, growing perpetually ...
... now, stupidified as now, completely organized, of antique institutions, growing perpetually ...

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE REVIEW, JUNE-JULY 1916 (VOL. 3, NO. 4) ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™ electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™ works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

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 will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works provided that:

- • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

- • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

- • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.

- • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™

Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

Table of Contents

- The Little Review

- Malmaison

- I
- II
- III
- IV
- V
- VI
- VII

- The Philosopher
- Song of the Killing of Liars
- Mlle. Poetry Meets Me at the Church

- Silhouettes

- Barn-Yarding

- Departure

- Announcements

- The Migratory Magazine

- Charles Kinney’s Article

- Psycho-Analysis

- A Dyptich

- Wonder Song
- Scorn
- The Deeper Scorn

- Hokku

- Poems

- Thin Day

- The Rose Jar

- The Irish Revolutionists

- Bring Out Your Dead

- Braithwaite’s Death-Cart

- Herbert Tree’s “Merchant of Venice”

- Some Imagist Poets, 1916[1]

- After Two Years

- Three Imagist Poets

- III

- Hermes of the Ways

- The Wind Sleepers

- IV

- The Star

- The Reader Critic

- What Is Anarchy?

- Impressions of the Loop

- A Vers Libre Prize Contest

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE