Her first volume, For Eager Lovers, was published in 1922. In spite of the banal title, Miss Taggard's lines are unaffected and her general statements have almost personal definiteness. It is always a sensitive artist speaking through such melodies as "The Enamel Girl," and "With Child." Hawaiian Hilltop, a leaflet of poems about her childhood in the tropics, was published in 1923. It proved that Miss Taggard was at her best in the more extended lyric; such a poem as "Solar Myth" is more vivid, more richly delineated than most of her shorter melodies.

Words for the Chisel (1926) is notable for the long narrative "Poppy Juice" which opens the volume. Two years later Miss Taggard made a selection from her previously published volumes and, after ten years' work, retained exactly twentyeight poems for Travelling Standing Still (1928). The title is more appropriate than the one immediately preceding it in date of publication, for Miss Taggard's manner is far from stony. Such poems as "With Child" and "Dilemma of the Elm” proceed from experiences which are common and yet freshly observed.

Not Mine to Finish (1934) is as undetermined as its title. It is a curious mixture, or, rather, a contradiction of moods, styles, and effects. Such a poem as "Try Tropic" is both sensuous and scrupulous; many of the other verses are either careless or shrill. The poet seems unhappily split, shifting, as Louise Bogan wrote, "between the high romantic desire to be struck dead by delight and the high revolutionary ambition to write songs for the people." Calling Western Union (1936), another interim book, was followed by a representative Collected Poems: 1918-1938, a fully rounded volume.

In 1936 Miss Taggard became greatly interested in the problem of writing for music; such modern American composers as Aaron Copland and Roy Harris have collaborated with her. Circumference, a collection exhibiting "varieties of metaphysical verse" from Donne to E. E. Cummings, was edited by Miss Taggard and published in a distinguished format in 1930. She is also author of The Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson (1930), a sensitive if somewhat too fanciful combination of biography and speculation.

LONG VIEW

Never heard happier laughter.

Where did you hear it?

Somewhere in the future.

Very far in the future?

Oh no. It was natural. It sounded

Just like our own, American, sweet and easy.

People were talking together. They sat on the ground.
It was summer.

And the old told stories of struggle.

The young listened. I overheard

Our own story, retold. They looked up at the stars

Hearing the serious words. Someone sang.

They loved us who had passed away.

They forgot all our errors. Our names were mixed. The story was long.
The young people danced. They brought down

New boughs for the flame. They said, Go on with the story now.
What happened next?

For us there was silence

Something like pain or tears. But they took us with them.

Their laughter was peace. I never heard happier.

Their children large and beautiful. Like us, but new-born.
This was in the mountains of the west.

They were resting. They knew each other well.
The trees and rivers are on the map, but the time

Is not yet. I listened again. Their talk was ours

With many favorite words. I heard us all speaking.

But they spoke of better things, soberly. They were wise

And learned. They sang not only of us.

They remembered thousands, and many countries, far away.

One poet who sat there with them began to talk of the future.

Then they were silent again. And they looked at the sky.

And then in the light of the stars they banked their fire as we do,
Scuffing the ground, and said goodnight.

Knowing that you

This poem I bring back to you wonder often, that you want

Word of these people.

Robert Hillyer

OBERT (SILLIMAN) HILLYER was born in East Orange, New Jersey, June 3, 1895. He attended Kent School and Harvard College. After graduating from the latter, he was an ambulance driver with the French army from 1917 to 1919, was at Copenhagen as Fellow of the American-Scandinavian foundation in 1921, and since that time has been Assistant Professor of English at Trinity College (from which he received the honorary degree of A.M.), and Professor of English at Harvard.

Hillyer's first book was as innocuous as its title, Sonnets and Other Lyrics (1917), following which came six volumes of varying merit. Hillyer's seventh, entitled with an appropriateness suspiciously like a pun The Seventh Hill (1928), is one of his best. On the surface the verse seems to lack that sense of discovery which distinguishes poetry from versification. But this is only because Hillyer's technique and idiom are traditional. Possibly because there is nothing local in his subject-matter or treatment, Hillyer's work found more favor in England than in America. The Halt in the Garden (1925) had a foreword by Arthur Machen and elicited high praise from Middleton Murry. Though the contours of this poetry are delicate to the point of elegance, the spirit upholding them has a sustaining strength. “Prothalamion," which is the peak of the volume, is typical. Upon a theme which has done duty since the beginning of art, in a form which is uncompromisingly classical, Hillyer has constructed twenty-six stanzas, not one of which falls below a high seriousness.

The Collected Verse of Robert Hillyer (1933) confirms the praise of those critics who found Hillyer's poetry conventional in form but "colored by something from within." It received the Pulitzer Prize in 1934, and the award drew attention to the longer poems as well as to the shorter lyrics. One of his most recent works, “Variations on a Theme," reveals (as Hillyer wrote of Santayana) "dignity and sumptuousness of phrasing" and sureness of technique. In the version printed here, the last section (the recapitulation) has been omitted.

A Letter to Robert Frost and Others (1937) contains the best writing and thinking that Hillyer has done. The measures are disciplined, even "classical," the rhymes are precise, the couplets are as polished as Pope's. But the tone is the tone of the twentieth century with its abrupt address and its edged disposals of current shibboleths and frauds. Pattern of a Day (1940) is a further advance, a book of unpretentious but pointed connections. Hillyer's idiom is not startling, but he wears it with a difference. His is a deceptively quiet voice; beneath its suavity he says things which are quick and keen and far from soothing. Such a poem as “The Assassination" is skilfully modulated and dramatically surprising. The limitations of Hillyer's work are implicit in his training, in his deliberate cultivation of tradition. But the best of his work avoids argument and surpasses fashion, being not only clear but clairvoyant.

AS ONE WHO BEARS BENEATH HIS NEIGHBOR'S ROOF

As one who bears beneath his neighbor's roof

Some thrust that staggers his unready wit
And brooding through the night on such reproof
Too late conceives the apt reply to it,

So all our life is but an afterthought,

A puzzle solved long past the time of need,
And tardy wisdom that one failure bought
Finds no occasion to be used in deed.

Fate harries us; we answer not a word,
Or answering too late, we waste our breath;
Not even a belated quip is heard

From those who bore the final taunt of death;