Poems
Storey, Violet Alleyn & Frant-Walsh, Joseph & Kresensky, Raymond & Damon, S. Foster & Roulet, Marie Antoinette de & Ryan, Kathryn White
June 23, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 187 POEM S ...
...Interlude for Harp hotel Lobby If beauty leans unto your face This tragic withering of eyes More sure than roses to a mirror, Is due to lack of exercise ; Be grateful at such fleeting grace, For eyes can only be kept clean But know how sorrowing is nearer...
...Though wishing is not ever done, Then eyes fall from their state as stars, And we are saddened then no less And glow like nearly gone cigars...
...June 23, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 187 POEM S Barbara Goes to School Y'ou Who Give Yourself Wee Barbara, not many little girls When the self-glorifying flowers May walk to school along an elm-aisled street, Rise smothering about your coffin, With trees so very high above their heads Distracting attention to themselves And trees so very near their hands and feet...
...And never want to know them back again ! KATHRYN WHITE RYAN...
...Ind Hands elegy Your heart was at my feet, you said ; (For a girl buried beneath oak trees...
...Not body, but the outward dressThe fact, not the intense ideal- We cannot keep each loveliness, Are taken for the only real...
...RAYMOND KRESENSKY...
...JOSEPH FRANT-WALSH...
...Acorns in the live-forever leaves, Their steps would be stopped...
...For, if you're late, she'll blame it all on meBut sometime, on your way to school, stand still When sacerdotal words press heavily And listen to these elm trees quietly...
...I could not leave it there, If slender feet would care to go And so I stooped to where it lay, Where old and silent oaks have dropped And lifted it with care...
...Across the cloud-flecked summer sky, Without a glance behind And there is pleasanter company, To where I stood with empty hands, As yellow grasses on a hill, Because I had been kind...
...By seeing what we call unseen ; You will be grieved when beauty goes, They grow irrevocably dead To strive remembering will pain...
...And away from your completed face Now, Barbara, don't tell your teacher this, Wearing the smile of long-deferred fulfillment...
...But they, unlike most men, yet much like God, When you slip deeper, deeper in your satin box, Can say wise things by simply keeping still...
...But as I held it in my hands And wondered what to do, But while she sleeps there is the sound It changed into a little bird, Of falling acorns overhead, And far away it flew, Something like summer running on the ground To entertain the dead...
...When the heart does not rule the head ; A mirror does not hold a rose, When habit, and not happiness, But you will look and look in vain...
...Than Israel in Babylon...
...Nor keep her feet still...
...for elm trees are Oh, ever so much wiser than your teacher ! Will you, who give yourself to others, And though they teach you lovely, silent things Your hours and your goods, About the sky and stars and God and men, Sigh in a glad bewilderment: They'll let you keep them always in your head, "This is my own...
...VIOLET ALLEYN STOREY...
...Your delicate feet reaching the silken end, So, stop and listen, and I know you'll hear Your thick bronze hair brushing the final height, Great truths (I shouldn't like this news to reach her)Your generous hands touching the smooth white nearness Yes, greater truths than hers...
...Upon your dead and faithful lips, You think they cannot speak, but oh, they can, Crushing their earthly fragrance Though they don't say a word and never will, Like planks on violets...
...But she would never sleep in such a place MARIE ANTOINETTE DE ROULET...
...S. FOSTER DAMON...
Vol. 4 • June 1926 • No. 7
