November 1921

There's too much selfhood in this lake : Though, varying, four streams partake In amber rushes till they break When softening confusions shake Identities into the lake.

I remember well the house in which Marnia lived a large, dark house, with a cupola, and with lightning rods, and looming above the other houses of our neighborhood ; and I remember as well the dark back garden a garden gloomy with the shade of many plum trees, and overgrown with lilies of the valley, and with rank grass.

Courtesy of Galerie Rosenberg - Paris

I did not ask another miracle for my day Than you undressing beside me, White under the sunlight; But, look, also, the scarlet moss Has turned the water to wine In our pool

Lilacs, False blue, White, Purple, Colour of lilac, Your great puffs of flowers Are everywhere in this my New England. Among your heart-shaped leaves Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing Their little weak soft songs ; In the crooks of your branches

Pallid, mis-shapen he stands. The world's grimed thumb, Now hooked securely in his matted hair, Has haled him struggling from his poisonous slum And flung him mute as fish close netted there. His bloodless hands entalon that iron rail He gloats in beastlike trance. His settling eyes From staring face to face rove on—and quail. Justice for carrion pants ; and these the flies.

When everyone was young, and no sorrow had come into the world, and the fairies did not hide in flowers and under stones, there lived in a castle built of shining copper that was always like a lantern in the firwood at night, a king, who had a daughter, and she could not speak, except in whispers. The princess, whose name was Malourisan, after the West wind of that country, and who had black hair like a crow's wing, was never understood, because she could only whisper.

When the first warm days and frosty nights of the spring-thaws usher in the season of maple-sugaring, the Otter-tail Indians pitch camp in their favorite sugar-bush. Before the real work of sugar-making is begun, however, the Indians go through a ceremony. They gather a few buckets of the first rim of the sap and boil the first kettle of sap, down to sugar. At night a feast is spread in honor of Way-nah-bo-zhoo, a mythological guardian spirit of the Chippewas. At the feast one place is left vacant for Way-nah-bo-zhoo who is expected to attend the ceremony in spirit, to eat the first sugar which has been prepared solely for him, and to bless the Indians in the sugar-season. " Maple-Sugar Song " is an interpretation — in no sense a translation or transcription, for no specific words are uttered — of the spirit and the emotional content of the chants sung in this ceremony.

Anthologies, like the poor, we have always with us. And with practically no exceptions, these heterogeneous collections of orthodox and hetero-geniuses, run true to their lifeless form. It has remained for the youngest of American anthologists to achieve a radical departure from the collector's norm. "If one leaves it to a lot of scattered poets one will have nothing more than a lot of scattered verse, " writes Mr. Untermeyer. " Mere editorship, no matter how selective, is not enough. " How then does the author of " The New Adam " expect to accomplish his ends ? Succinctly, by writing the entire anthology himself. And the binding subject, the leitmotif ? Nothing more or less than the Einstein Theory of Relativity ! The following excerpts are what Mr. Untermeyer believes might result if certain outstanding American minnesingers were forced to record their reactions concerning the Weight of Light, Deflection of Solar Rays, Non-Euclidean Warps in Space, Anti-Newtonian Substitutes for Gravitation and Time as a Fourth Dimension. The compiler, it may be well to add, has engaged counsel to defend him in all libel suits that may result.

When you are sweeping us With your cosmic broom Sweeping us out of mouldy ruts Sweeping us clean and sweet- Remember When we're quivering— Sensitive— bare— We shall be grateful For just a few shadows. . .