104 God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies: And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea Look how the grace of the sea doth go About and about through the intricate channels that flow Everywhere, Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes, And the marsh is meshed with a million veins, That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow In the rose-and-silver evening glow. Farewell, my lord Sun! The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run 'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir; Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr; Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run; And the sea and the marsh are one. How still the plains of the waters be! The tide in his ecstasy. The tide is at his highest height: And it is night. 1 And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep Roll in on the souls of men, But who will reveal to our waking ken The forms that swim and the shapes that creep Under the waters of sleep? And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in On the length and breadth of the marvelous marshes of Glynn. JAMES James Whitcomb Riley AMES WHITCOMB RILEY, possibly the most widely read native poet of his day, was born October 7, 1849, in Greenfield, Indiana, a small town twenty miles from Indianapolis, where he spent his later years. Contrary to popular belief, Riley was not, as many have gathered from his bucolic poems, a struggling child of the soil; his father was a lawyer in comfortable circumstances, and Riley was given not only a good education, but was prepared for the law. His temperament, however, craved something more adventurous. At eighteen he shut the pages of Blackstone, slipped out of the office and joined a traveling troupe of actors who sold patent medicines during the intermissions. Riley's functions were varied: he beat the bass-drum, painted their flaring banners, wrote local versions of old songs, coached the actors and, when occasion arose, took part in the performance himself. Even before this time, Riley had begun to send verses to the newspapers, young experiments, bits of homely sentiment, simple snatches and elaborate hoaxes-the poem "Leonainie," published over the initials "E. A. P.," being accepted in many quarters as a newly discovered poem by Poe. In 1882, when he was on the staff of the Indianapolis Journal, he began printing the series of dialect poems which he claimed were by a rude and unlettered farmer, one "Benj. F. Johnson, of Boone, the Hoosier poet.” A collection of these rustic verses appeared, in 1883, as The Ole Swimmin' Hole, and Riley leaped into widespread popularity. Other collections followed rapidly: Afterwhiles (1887), Old-Fashioned Roses (1888), Pipes o' Pan at Zekesbury (1889), Rhymes of Childhood (1890). All met an instant response; Riley endeared himself, by his homely idiom and his ingenuity, to a countryful of readers, adolescent and adult. But Riley's simplicity is seldom as artless as it seems. Time and again, one can watch him trading wantonly on the emotions of his unsophisticated readers. He sees them about to smile—and broadens the point of his joke; he observes them on the point of tears—and pulls out the sobbing tremolo stop. In many respects he is patently the most artificial of those poets who claim to give us the stuff of the soil. He is the poet of obtrusive sentiment rather than of quiet convictions, the poet of lulling assurance, of philosophies that never disturb his readers, of sweet truisms rather than searching truths. His influence has given rise to an entire school of "cheerful philosophy" versifiers; its lowest ebb may be seen in the newspaper columns of the "A Smile a Day" variety and the syndicated syrup of Edgar A. Guest. That work of his which may endure will survive because of the personal flavor that Riley often gave it. Such poems as "When the Frost Is on the Punkin," and "The Raggedy Man," seem part of American folk-literature; "Little Orphant Annie" was read wherever there was a schoolhouse or, for that matter, a nursery. Riley died in his little house in Lockerbie Street, Indianapolis, July 22, 1916. WHEN THE FROST IS ON THE PUNKIN When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock, With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest, They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn, And the raspin' of the tangled leaves as golden as the morn; Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps And your cider-makin's over, and your wimmern-folks is through As the angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around on me I'd want to 'commodate 'em-all the whole-indurin' flock— When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock. A PARTING GUEST What delightful hosts are they- Lingeringly I turn away, This late hour, yet glad enough They have not withheld from me So, with face lit with delight And all gratitude, I stay Yet to press their hands and say, "Thanks. So fine a time! Good night." A Eugene Field LTHOUGH Eugene Field was born September 2, 1850, in St. Louis, Missouri, his work belongs to the literature of the West. Colorado and the Rocky Mountain region claimed him as their own and Field never repudiated the allegiance; he even called most of his poetry "Western Verse.” Field's area of education embraced New England, Missouri, and what European territory he could cover in six months. At twenty-three he became a reporter on the St. Louis Evening Journal; the rest of his life was given, with a dogged devotion, to journalism. Driven by the demands of his unique daily columns (those on the Denver Tribune [1881-1883] and the Chicago Daily News [1883-1895] were widely copied), Field first capitalized and then standardized his high spirits, his erudition, his whimsicality, his fondness for children. He wrote so often with his tongue in his cheek that it is difficult to say where true sentiment stops and where exaggerated sentimentality begins. "Field," says Fred Lewis Pattee, in his detailed study of American Literature Since 1870, "more than any other writer of the period, illustrates the way the old type of literary scholar was to be modified and changed by the newspaper. Every scrap of Field's voluminous product was written for immediate newspaper consumption. He was a pioneer in a peculiar province: he stands for the journalization of literature, a process that, if carried to its logical extreme, will make of the man of letters a mere newspaper reporter." ... Though Field was overrated by his confrères, some of his child lyrics, his homely philosophic ballads (in the vein which Harte and Riley popularized) and his bur lesques won him, for the time, a conspicuous place. Readers of all tastes found much to delight them in A Little Book of Western Verse (1889), With Trumpet and Drum (1892), A Second Book of Verse (1893) and those remarkable versions (and perversions) of Horace, Echoes from the Sabine Farm (1893), written in collabo ration with his equally adroit though practically unknown brother, Roswell M Field. A complete one-volume edition of his verse was issued in 1910. Field died in Chicago, Illinois, November 4, 1895. |