Poems 1924-1933 (Paperback) - Taschenbuch

POEMS 1924-1933 POEMS, 1924-1933 BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY Cfje lUfeetttoe Cambtfoge FOREWORD THIS book is not a collected edition of my poems nor does it purport to trace my development as a poet. My development as a poet is of no interest to me and of even less interest, I should suppose, to anyone else. What I have done here has been to se lect from poems already published and from poems not yet pub lished, those pieces I can now reread without embarrassment. The test has, I confess, no objective value. But it has the ad vantages of practicality and honesty. The truth is that all artists who continue to be engaged in the practice of their arts resent and dislike their past accomplishments. Only those who have completed their work will stand, with as much complacency as they can find, upon the record. To the rest, because their minds are upon new work with new problems and new technique, old work with its stale problems and its abandoned technique is distasteful. The moral may well be that the poet should not make his own selection. But if he is to make it, I know no test he can apply, short of the pomposities of the critical canon, which will serve him as well as his own uneasiness. Such a method of selection does not, of course, justify the publication of a book. The justification in this case is the fact that most of the volumes from which these poems have been taken are not now, or will soon cease to be, available. Rather than reprint a number of small books, some of them containing work I do not wish to see reprinted, it has seemed best to make a single book. ARCHIBALD MACL. EISH CONWAY, MASSACHUSETTS, 1933 CONTENTS THE HAMLET OF A. MACLEISH 3 SEAFARER 33 LINESFOR A PROLOGUE 34 CINEMA OF A MAN 36 THE TOO-LATE BORN 39 LAN TRENTIESME DE MON EAGE 40 LE SECRET HUMAIN 42 VOYAGE 44 THE NIGHT DREAM 45 MEMORY GREEN 47 NOT MARBLE NOR THE GILDED MONUMENTS 48 UNFINISHED HISTORY 50 BROKEN PROMISE 52 BEFORE MARCH 53 DE VOTRE BONHEUR IL NE RESTE QUE VOS PHOTOS 55 1892-19 56 RETURN 57 You, ANDREW MARVELL 58 THE REVENANT 60 INTERROGATE THE STONES 61 INSOMNIA 63 SALUTE 64 EINSTEIN 67 SENTIMENTS FOR A DEDICATION 76 YACHT FOR SALE 78 FORTY-SECOND STREET 80 IMMORTAL HELIX 82 VERSES FOR A CENTENNIAL 83 MOTHER GOOSES GARLAND 85 MARCH 86 CORPORATE ENTITY 87 CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS 88 MEN OF MY CENTURY LOVED MOZART 89 AETERNA POETAE MEMORIA 91 AGAINST ILLUMINATIONS 92 THE END OF THE WORLD 93 THE POT OF EARTH 95 ARS POETICA 122 IMMORTAL AUTUMN 124 PONY ROCK 126 THE FARM 127 ELEVEN 130 COOK COUNTY 132 MEMORIAL RAIN 134 TOURIST DEATH 137 WAY-STATION 139 CHARTRES 140 EPISTLE TO LEON-PAUL FARGUB 141 LANDS END 143 REPROACH TO DEAD POETS 149 SIGNATURE FOR TEMPO 151 NOCTURNE 153 MEN 155 SELENE AFTERWARDS 157 EPISTLE TO BE LEFT IN THE EARTH 159 AMERICAN LETTER 161 INVOCATION TO THE SOCIAL MUSE 166 LINES FOR AN INTERMENT 169 FRESCOES 171 1933 186 CONQUISTADOR 195 POEMS 1924-1933 POEMS 1924-1933 THE HAMLET OF A. MAcLEISH No man living but has seen the king his fathers ghost. None alive that have had words with it. Nevertheless the knowledge of ill is among us and the obligation to revenge, and the natural world is convicted of that enormity. . . In the old time men spoke and were answered and the thing was done clean in the daylight. Now it is not so. 1 FROM these night fields and waters do men raise, Sailors from ship, sleepers from their bed, Elsinore. - r i 11 i . i i . A i Aplatform Born, mortal men and haunted with brief days, fojore Hie Their eyes to that vast silence overhead. castie. They see the moon walk slowly in her ways And the grave stars and all the dark outspread. They raise their mortal eyelids from this ground Question it... What art thou... And no sound. 2 Ha, but the sun among us... a Ha, but the great sun Shouts in the shouldering leaves and the grasshoppers Scatter before him. Ho, but his brass Voice is the voice of the beater of horses...