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TOWARD THE GULF
BY
EDGAR LEE MASTERS
CONTENTS
TOWARD THE GULF
THE LAKE BOATS
CITIES OF THE PLAIN
EXCLUDED MIDDLE
SAMUEL BUTLER, ET AL
JOHNNY APPLESEED
THE LOOM
DIALOGUE AT PERKO'S
SIR GALAHAD
ST. DESERET
HEAVEN IS BUT THE HOUR
VICTOR RAFOLSKI ON ART
THE LANDSCAPE
TO-MORROW IS MY BIRTHDAY
SWEET CLOVER
SOMETHING BEYOND THE HILL
FRONT THE AGES WITH A SMILE
POOR PIERROT
MIRAGE OF THE DESERT
DAHLIAS
THE GRAND RIVER MARSHES
DELILAH
THE WORLD-SAVER
RECESSIONAL
THE AWAKENING
IN THE GARDEN AT THE DAWN HOUR
FRANCE
BERTRAND AND GOURGAUD TALK OVER OLD TIMES
DRAW THE SWORD, O REPUBLIC
DEAR OLD DICK
THE ROOM OF MIRRORS
THE LETTER
CANTICLE OF THE RACE
BLACK EAGLE RETURNS TO ST. JOE
MY LIGHT WITH YOURS
THE BLIND
"I PAY MY DEBT FOR LAFAYETTE AND ROCHAMBEAU"
CHRISTMAS AT INDIAN POINT
WIDOW LA RUE
DR. SCUDDER'S CLINICAL LECTURE
FRIAR YVES
THE EIGHTH CRUSADE
THE BISHOP'S DREAM OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE
NEANDERTHAL
THE END OF THE SEARCH
BOTANICAL GARDENS
TO WILLIAM MARION REEDY
It would have been fitting had I dedicated Spoon River Anthology to
you. Considerations of an intimate nature, not to mention a literary
encouragement which was before yours, crowded you from the page. Yet
you know that it was you who pressed upon my attention in June, 1909,
the Greek Anthology. It was from contemplation of its epitaphs that my
hand unconsciously strayed to the sketches of "Hod Putt," "Serepta The
Scold" ("Serepta Mason" in the book), "Amanda Barker" ("Amanda" in the
book), "Ollie McGee" and "The Unknown," the first written and the
first printed sketches of The Spoon River Anthology. The
_Mirror_ of May 29th, 1914, is their record.
I take one of the epigrams of Meleager with its sad revealment and
touch of irony and turn it from its prose form to a verse form, making
verses according to the breath pauses:
"The holy night and thou, O Lamp, we took as witness of our vows; and
before thee we swore, he that would love me always and I that I would
never leave him. We swore, and thou wert witness of our double
promise. But now he says that our vows were written on the running
waters. And thou, O Lamp, thou seest him in the arms of another."
In verse this epigram is as follows:
The holy night and thou,
O Lamp,
We took as witness of our vows;
And before thee we swore,
He that would love me always
And I that I would never leave him.
We swore,
And thou wert witness of our double promise.
But now he says that our vows were written on the running waters.
And thou, O Lamp,
Thou seest him in the arms of another.
It will be observed that iambic feet prevail in this translation. They
merely become noticeable and imperative when arranged in verses. But
so it is, even in the briefest and starkest rendering of these
epigrams from the Greek the humanism and dignity of the original
transfer themselves, making something, if less than verse, yet more
than prose; as Byron said of Sheridan's speeches, neither poetry nor
oratory, but better than either. It was no difficult matter to pass
from Chase Henry:
"In life I was the town drunkard.
When I died the priest denied me burial
In holy ground, etc."
to the use of standard measures, or rhythmical arrangements of iambics
or what not, and so to make a book, which for the first third required
a practiced voice or eye to yield the semblance of verse; and for the
last two-thirds, or nearly so, accommodated itself to the less
sensitive conception of the average reader. The prosody was allowed
to take care of itself under the emotional requirements and
inspiration of the moment. But there is nothing new in English
literature for some hundreds of years in combinations of dactyls,
anapests or trochees, and without rhyme. Nor did I discover to the
world that an iambic pentameter can be lopped to a tetrameter without
the verse ceasing to be an iambic; though it be no longer the blank
verse which has so ennobled English poetry. A great deal of unrhymed
poetry is yet to be written in the various standard rhythms and in
carefully fashioned metres.
But obviously a formal resuscitation of the Greek epigrams, ironical
and tender, satirical and sympathetic, as casual experiments in
unrelated themes would scarcely make the same appeal that an epic
rendition of modern life would do, and as it turned out actually
achieved.
The response of the American press to Spoon River Anthology during the
summer of 1914 while it was appearing in the _Mirror_ is my
warrant for saying this. It was quoted and parodied during that time
in the country and in the metropolitan newspapers. _Current
Opinion_ in its issue of September, 1914, reproduced from the
_Mirror_ some of the poems. Though at this time the schematic
effect of the Anthology could not be measured, Edward J. Wheeler, that
devoted patron of the art and discriminating critic of its
manifestations, was attracted, I venture to say, by the substance of
"Griffy, The Cooper," for that is one of the poems from the Anthology
which he set forth in his column "The Voice of Living Poets" in the
issue referred to. _Poetry, A Magazine of Verse_, followed in
its issue of October, 1914, with a reprinting from the _Mirror_.
In a word, the Anthology went the rounds over the country before it
was issued in book form. And a reception was thus prepared for the
complete work not often falling to the lot of a literary production.
I must not omit an expression of my gratitude for the very high praise
which John Cowper Powys bestowed on the Anthology just before it
appeared in book form and the publicity which was given his lecture by
the _New York Times_. Nathan Haskell Dole printed an article in
the Boston _Transcript_ of June 30, 1915, in which he contrasted
the work with the Greek Anthology, pointing in particular to certain
epitaphs by Carphylides, Kallaischros and Pollianos. The critical
testimony of Miss Harriet Monroe in her editorial comments and in her
preface to "The New Poetry" has greatly strengthened the judgment of
to-day against a reversal at the hands of a later criticism.
This response to the Anthology while it was appearing in the
_Mirror_ and afterwards when put in the book was to nothing so
much as to the substance. It was accepted as a picture of our life in
America. It was interpreted as a transcript of the state of mind of
men and women here and elsewhere. You called it a Comedy Humaine in
your announcement of my identity as the author in the _Mirror_ of
November 20, 1914. If the epitaphic form gave added novelty I must
confess that the idea was suggested to me by the Greek Anthology. But
it was rather because of the Greek Anthology than from it that I
evolved the less harmonious epitaphs with which Spoon River Anthology
was commenced. As to metrical epitaphs it is needless to say that I
drew upon the legitimate materials of authentic English versification.
Up to the Spring of 1914, I had never allowed a Spring to pass without
reading Homer; and I feel that this familiarity had its influence both
as to form and spirit; but I shall not take the space now to pursue
this line of confessional.
What is the substance of which I have spoken if it be not the life
around us as we view it through eyes whose vision lies in heredity,
mode of life, understanding of ourselves and of our place and time?
You have lived much. As a critic and a student of the country no one
understands America better than you do. As a denizen of the west, but
as a surveyor of the east and west you have brought to the country's
interpretation a knowledge of its political and literary life as well
as a proficiency in the history of other lands and other times. You
have seen and watched the unfolding of forces that sprang up after the
Civil War. Those forces mounted in the eighties and exploded in free
silver in 1896. They began to hit through the directed marksmanship of
Theodore Roosevelt during his second term. You knew at first hand all
that went with these forces of human hope, futile or valiant endeavor,
articulate or inarticulate expression of the new birth. You saw and
lived, but in greater degree, what I have seen and lived. And with
this back-ground you inspired and instructed me in my analysis.
Standing by you confirmed or corrected my sculpturing of the clay
taken out of the soil from which we both came. You did this with an
eye familiar with the secrets of the last twenty years, familiar also
with the relation of those years to the time which preceded and bore
them.
So it is, that not only because I could not dedicate Spoon River to
you, but for the larger reasons indicated, am I impelled to do you
whatever honor there may be in taking your name for this book. By this
outline confession, sometime perhaps to be filled in, do I make known
what your relation is to these interpretations of mine resulting from
a spirit, life, thought, environment which have similarly come to us
and have similarly affected us.
I call this book "Toward the Gulf," a title importing a continuation
of the attempts of Spoon River and The Great Valley to mirror the age
and the country in which we live. It does not matter which one of
these books carries your name and makes these acknowledgments; so far,
anyway, as the opportunity is concerned for expressing my appreciation
of your friendship and the great esteem and affectionate interest in
which I hold you.
EDGAR LEE MASTERS.
The following poems were first printed in the publications indicated:
Toward the Gulf, The Lake Boats, The Loom, Tomorrow is my
Birthday, Dear Old Dick, The Letter, My Light with Yours, Widow
LaRue, Neanderthal, in Reedy's Mirror.
Draw the Sword, Oh Republic, in the Independent.
Canticle of the Race, in Poetry, a Magazine of Verse.
Friar Yves, in the Cosmopolitan Magazine.
"I pay my debt for Lafayette and Rochambeau," in Fashions of
the Hour.
TOWARD THE GULF
_Dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt_
From the Cordilleran Highlands,
From the Height of Land
Far north.
From the Lake of the Woods,
From Rainy Lake,
From Itasca's springs.
From the snow and the ice
Of the mountains,
Breathed on by the sun,
And given life,
Awakened by kisses of fire,
Moving, gliding as brightest hyaline
Down the cliffs,
Down the hills,
Over the stones.
Trickling as rills;
Swiftly running as mountain brooks;
Swirling through runnels of rock;
Curving in sphered silence
Around the long worn walls of granite gorges;
Storming through chasms;
And flowing for miles in quiet over the Titan basin
To the muddled waters of the mighty river,
Himself obeying the call of the gulf,
And the unfathomed urge of the sea!
* * * * *
Waters of mountain peaks,
Spirits of liberty
Leaving your pure retreats
For work in the world.
Soiling your crystal springs
With the waste that is whirled to your breast as you run,
Until you are foul as the crawling leviathan
That devours you,
And uses you to carry waste and earth
For the making of land at the gulf,
For the conquest of land for the feet of men.
* * * * *
De Soto, Marquette and La Salle
Planting your cross in vain,
Gaining neither gold nor ivory,
Nor tribute
For France or Spain.
Making land alone
For liberty!
You could proclaim in the name of the cross
The dominion of kings over a world that was new.
But the river has altered its course:
There are fertile fields
For a thousand miles where the river flowed that you knew.
And there are liberty and democracy
For thousands of miles
Where in the name of kings, and for the cross
You tramped the tangles for treasure.
* * * * *
The Falls of St. Anthony tumble the waters
In laughter and tumult and roaring of voices,
Swirling, dancing, leaping, foaming,
Spirits of caverns, of canyons and gorges:
Waters tinctured by star-lights, sweetened by breezes
Blown over snows, out of the rosy northlands,
Through forests of pine and hemlock,
Whisperings of the Pacific grown symphonic.
Voices of freedom, restless, unconquered,
Mad with divinity, fearless and free:--
Hunters and choppers, warriors, revelers,
Laughers, dancers, fiddlers, freemen,
Climbing the crests of the Alleghenies,
Singing, chopping, hunting, fighting
Erupting into Kentucky and Tennessee,
Into Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Sweeping away the waste of the Indians,
As the river carries mud for the making of land.
And taking the land of Illinois from kings
And handing its allegiance to the Republic.
What riflemen with Daniel Boone for leader,
And conquerors with Clark for captain
Plunge down like melted snows
The rocks and chasms of forbidden mountains,
And make more land for freemen!
Clear-eyed, hard-muscled, dauntless hunters,
Choppers of forests and tillers of fields
Meet at last in a field of snow-white clover
To make wise laws for states,
And to teach their sons of the new West
That suffrage is the right of freemen.
Until the lion of Tennessee,
Who crushes king-craft near the gulf.
Where La Salle proclaimed the crown,
And the cross,
Is made the ruler of the republic
By freeman suffragans,
And winners of the West!
* * * * *
Father of Waters! Ever recurring symbol of wider freedom,
Even to the ocean girdled earth,
The out-worn rule of Florida rots your domain.
But the lion of Tennessee asks: Would you take from Spain
The land she has lost but in name?
It shall be done in a month if you loose my sword.
It was done as he said.
And the sick and drunken power of Spain that clung,
And sucked at the life of Chile, Peru, Argentina,
Loosened under the blows of San Martin and Bolivar,
Breathing the lightning thrown by Napoleon the Great
On the thrones of Europe.
Father of Waters! 'twas you who made us say:
No kings this side of the earth forever!
One-half of the earth shall be free
By our word and the might that is back of our word!
* * * * *
The falls of St. Anthony tumble the waters
In laughter and tumult and roaring of voices!
And the river moves in its winding channel toward the gulf,
Over the breast of De Soto,
By the swamp grave of La Salle!
The old days sleep, the lion of Tennessee sleeps
With Daniel Boone and the hunters,
The rifle men, the revelers,
The laughers and dancers and choppers
Who climbed the crests of the Alleghenies,
And poured themselves into Tennessee, Ohio,
Kentucky, Illinois, the bountiful West.
But the river never sleeps, the river flows forever,
Making land forever, reclaiming the wastes of the sea.
And the race never sleeps, the race moves on forever.
And wars must come, as the waters must sweep away
Drift-wood, dead wood, choking the strength of the river--
For Liberty never sleeps!
* * * * *
The lion of Tennessee sleeps!
And over the graves of the hunters and choppers
The tramp of troops is heard!
There is war again,
O, Father of Waters!
There is war, O, symbol of freedom!
They have chained your giant strength for the cause
Of trade in men.
But a man of the West, a denizen of your shore,
Wholly American,
Compact, clear-eyed, nerved like a hunter,
Who knew no faster beat of the heart,
Except in charity, forgiveness, peace;
Generous, plain, democratic,
Scarcely appraising himself at full,
A spiritual rifleman and chopper,
Of the breed of Daniel Boone--
This man, your child, O, Father of Waters,
Waked from the winter sleep of a useless day
By the rising sun of a Freedom bright and strong,
Slipped like the loosened snows of your mountain streams
Into a channel of fate as sure as your own--
A fate which said: till the thing be done
Turn not back nor stop.
Ulysses of the great Atlantis,
Wholly American,
Patient, silent, tireless, watchful, undismayed
Grant at Fort Donelson, Grant at Vicksburg,
Leading the sons of choppers and riflemen,
Pushing on as the hunters and farmers
Poured from the mountains into the West,
Freed you, Father of Waters,
To flow to the Gulf and be one
With the earth-engirdled tides of time.
And gave us states made ready for the hands
Wholly American:
Hunters, choppers, tillers, fighters
For epochs vast and new
In Truth, in Liberty,
Posters from land to land and sea to sea
Till all the earth be free!
* * * * *
Ulysses of the great Atlantis,
Dream not of disaster,
Sleep the sleep of the brave
In your couch afar from the Father of Waters!
A new Ulysses arises,
Who turns not back, nor stops
Till the thing is done.
He cuts with one stroke of the sword
The stubborn neck that keeps the Gulf
And the Caribbean
From the luring Pacific.
Roosevelt the hunter, the pioneer,
Wholly American,
Winner of greater wests
Till all the earth be free!
* * * * *
And forever as long as the river flows toward the Gulf
Ulysses reincarnate shall come
To guard our places of sleep,
Till East and West shall be one in the west of heaven and earth!
* * * * *
In an old print
I see a thicket of masts on the river.
But in the prints to be
There will be lake boats,
With port holes, funnels, rows of decks,
Huddled like swans by the docks,
Under the shadows of cliffs of brick.
And who will know from the prints to be,
When the Albatross and the Golden Eagle,
The flying craft which shall carry the vision
Of impatient lovers wounded by Spring
To the shaded rivers of Michigan,
That it was the Missouri, the Iowa,
And the City of Benton Harbor
Which lay huddled like swans by the docks?
You are not Lake Leman,
Walled in by Mt. Blanc.
One sees the whole world round you,
And beyond you, Lake Michigan.
And when the melodious winds of March
Wrinkle you and drive on the shore
The serpent rifts of sand and snow,
And sway the giant limbs of oaks,
Longing to bud,
The boats put forth for the ports that began to stir,
With the creak of reels unwinding the nets,
And the ring of the caulking wedge.
But in the June days--
The Alabama ploughs through liquid tons
Of sapphire waves.
She sinks from hills to valleys of water,
And rises again,
Like a swimming gull!
I wish a hundred years to come, and forever
All lovers could know the rapture
Of the lake boats sailing the first Spring days
To coverts of hepatica,
With the whole world sphering round you,
And the whole of the sky beyond you.
I knew the captain of the City of Grand Rapids.
He had sailed the seas as a boy.
And he stood on deck against the railing
Puffing a cigar,
Showing in his eyes the cinema flash of the sun on the waves.
It was June and life was easy. ...
One could lie on deck and sleep,
Or sit in the sun and dream.
People were walking the decks and talking,
Children were singing.
And down on the purser's deck
A man was dancing by himself,
Whirling around like a dervish.
And this captain said to me:
"No life is better than this.
I could live forever,
And do nothing but run this boat
From the dock at Chicago to the dock at Holland
And back again."
One time I went to Grand Haven
On the Alabama with Charley Shippey.
It was dawn, but white dawn only,
Under the reign of Leucothea,
As we volplaned, so it seemed, from the lake
Past the lighthouse into the river.
And afterward laughing and talking
Hurried to Van Dreezer's restaurant
For breakfast.
(Charley knew him and talked of things
Unknown to me as he cooked the breakfast.)
Then we fished the mile's length of the pier
In a gale full of warmth and moisture
Which blew the gulls about like confetti,
And flapped like a flag the linen duster
Of a fisherman who paced the pier--
(Charley called him Rip Van Winkle).
The only thing that could be better
Than this day on the pier
Would be its counterpart in heaven,
As Swedenborg would say--
Charley is fishing somewhere now, I think.
There is a grove of oaks on a bluff by the river
At Berrien Springs.
There is a cottage that eyes the lake
Between pines and silver birches
At South Haven.
There is the inviolable wonder of wooded shore
Curving for miles at Saugatuck.
And at Holland a beach like Scheveningen's.
And at Charlevoix the sudden quaintness
Of an old-world place by the sea.
There are the hills around Elk Lake
Where the blue of the sky is so still and clear
It seems it was rubbed above them
By the swipe of a giant thumb.
And beyond these the little Traverse Bay
Where the roar of the breeze goes round
Like a roulette ball in the groove of the wheel,
Circling the bay,
And beyond these Mackinac and the Cheneaux Islands--
And beyond these a great mystery!--
Neither ice floes, nor winter's palsy
Stays the tide in the river.
LAKE BOATS
And under the shadows of cliffs of brick
The lake boats
Huddled like swans
Turn and sigh like sleepers----
They are longing for the Spring!
CITIES OF THE PLAIN
Where are the cabalists, the insidious committees,
The panders who betray the idiot cities
For miles and miles toward the prairie sprawled,
Ignorant, soul-less, rich,
Smothered in fumes of pitch?
* * * * *
Rooms of mahogany in tall sky scrapers
See the unfolding and the folding up
Of ring-clipped papers,
And letters which keep drugged the public cup.
The walls hear whispers and the semi-tones
Of voices in the corner, over telephones
Muffled by Persian padding, gemmed with brass spittoons.
Butts of cigars are on the glass topped table,
And through the smoke, gracing the furtive Babel,
The bishop's picture blesses the picaroons,
Who start or stop the life of millions moving
Unconscious of obedience, the plastic
Yielders to satanic and dynastic
Hands of reproaching and approving.
* * * * *
Here come knights armed,
But with their arms concealed,
And rubber heeled.
Here priests and wavering want are charmed.
And shadows fall here like the shark's
In messages received or sent.
Signals are flying from the battlement.
And every president
Of rail, gas, coal and oil, the parks,
The receipt of custom knows, without a look,
Their meaning as the code is in no book.
The treasonous cracksmen of the city's wealth
Watch for the flags of stealth!
* * * * *
Acres of coal lie fenced along the tracks.
Tracks ribbon the streets, and beneath the streets
Wires for voices, fire, thwart the plebiscites,
And choke the counsels and symposiacs
Of dreamers who have pity for the backs
That bear and bleed.
All things are theirs: tracks, wires, streets and coal,
The church's creed,
The city's soul,
The city's sea girt loveliness,
The merciless and meretricious press.
* * * * *
Far up in a watch-tower, where the news is printed,
Gray faces and bright eyes, weary and cynical
Discuss fresh wonders of the old cabal.
But nothing of its work in type is hinted:
Taxes are high! The mentors of the town
Must keep their taxes down
On buildings, presses, stocks
In gas, oil, coal and docks.
The mahogany rooms conceal a spider man
Who holds the taxing bodies through the church,
And knights with arms concealed. The mentors search
The spider man, the master publican,
And for his friendship silence keep,
Letting him herd the populace like sheep
For self and for the insatiable desires
Of coal and tracks and wires,
Pick judges, legislators,
And tax-gatherers.
Or name his favorites, whom they name:
The slick and sinistral,
Servitors of the cabal,
For praise which seems the equivalent of fame:
Giving to the delicate handed crackers
Of priceless safes, the spiritual slackers,
The flash and thunder of front pages!
And the gulled millions stare and fling their wages
Where they are bidden, helpless and emasculate.
And the unilluminate,
Whose brows are brass,
Who weep on every Sabbath day
For Jesus riding on an ass,
Scarce know the ass is they,
Now ridden by his effigy,
The publican with Jesus' painted mask,
Along a way where fumes of odorless gas
First spur then fell them from the task.
* * * * *
Through the parade runs swift the psychic cackle
Like thorns beneath a boiling pot that crackle.
And the angels say to Yahveh looking down
From the alabaster railing, on the town,
O, cackle, cackle, cackle, crack and crack
We wish we had our little Sodom back!
EXCLUDED MIDDLE
Out of the mercury shimmer of glass
Over these daguerreotypes
The balloon-like spread of a skirt of silk emerges
With its little figure of flowers.
And the enameled glair of parted hair
Lies over the oval brow,
From under which eyes of fiery blackness
Look through you.
And the only repose of spirit shown
Is in the hands
Lying loosely one in the other,
Lightly clasped somewhat below the breast. ...
And in the companion folder of this case
Of gutta percha
Is the shape of a man.
His brow is oval too, but broader.
His nose is long, but thick at the tip.
His eyes are blue
Wherein faith burns her signal lights,
And flashes her convictions.
His mouth is tense, almost a slit.
And his face is a massive Calvinism
Resting on a stock tie.
They were married, you see.
The clasp on this gutta percha case
Locks them together.
They were locked together in life.
And a hasp of brass
Keeps their shadows face to face in the case
Which has been handed down--
(The pictures of noble ancestors,
Showing what strains of gentle blood
Flow in the third generation)--
From Massachusetts to Illinois. ...