The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems [14]
found the heavenly stair.
Perhaps we must be strangers.
I confess
My soul this hour is Dante's,
And your care
Should be for dolls
Whose painted hands caress
Your marvellous dark hair.
Romance, with moonflower face
And morning eyes,
And lips whose thread of scarlet prophesies
The canticles of a coming king unknown,
Remember, when you join him
On his throne,
Even me, your far off troubadour,
And wear
For me some trifling rose
Beneath your veil,
Dying a royal death,
Happy and pale,
Choked by the passion,
The wonder and the snare,
The glory and despair
That still will haunt and own
Your marvellous dark hair.
How I Walked Alone in the Jungles of Heaven
Oh, once I walked in Heaven, all alone
Upon the sacred cliffs above the sky.
God and the angels, and the gleaming saints
Had journeyed out into the stars to die.
They had gone forth to win far citizens,
Bought at great price, bring happiness for all:
By such a harvest make a holier town
And put new life within old Zion's wall.
Each chose a far-off planet for his home,
Speaking of love and mercy, truth and right,
Envied and cursed, thorn-crowned and scourged in time,
Each tasted death on his appointed night.
Then resurrection day from sphere to sphere
Sped on, with all the POWERS arisen again,
While with them came in clouds recruited hosts
Of sun-born strangers and of earth-born men.
And on that day gray prophet saints went down
And poured atoning blood upon the deep,
Till every warrior of old Hell flew free
And all the torture fires were laid asleep.
And Hell's lost company I saw return
Clear-eyed, with plumes of white, the demons bold
Climbed with the angels now on Jacob's stair,
And built a better Zion than the old.
. . . . .
And yet I walked alone on azure cliffs
A lifetime long, and loved each untrimmed vine:
The rotted harps, the swords of rusted gold,
The jungles of all Heaven then were mine.
Oh mesas and throne-mountains that I found!
Oh strange and shaking thoughts that touched me there,
Ere I beheld the bright returning wings
That came to spoil my secret, silent lair!
Fifth Section
The Poem Games
An Account of the Poem Games
In the summer of 1916 in the parlor of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody;
and in the following winter in the Chicago Little Theatre,
under the auspices of Poetry, A Magazine of Verse; and in Mandel Hall,
the University of Chicago, under the auspices of the Senior Class, --
these Poem Games were presented. Miss Eleanor Dougherty
was the dancer throughout. The entire undertaking developed
through the generous cooperation and advice of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody.
The writer is exceedingly grateful to Mrs. Moody and all concerned
for making place for the idea. Now comes the test of its vitality.
Can it go on in the absence of its initiators?
Mr. Lewellyn Jones, of the Chicago Evening Post, announced the affair
as a "rhythmic picnic". Mr. Maurice Browne of the Chicago Little Theatre
said Miss Dougherty was at the beginning of the old Greek Tragic Dance.
Somewhere between lies the accomplishment.
In the Congo volume, as is indicated in the margins,
the meaning of a few of the verses is aided by chanting.
In the Poem Games the English word is still first in importance,
the dancer comes second, the chanter third. The marginal directions
of King Solomon indicate the spirit in which all the pantomime was developed.
Miss Dougherty designed her own costumes, and worked out
her own stage business for King Solomon, The Potatoes' Dance,
The King of Yellow Butterflies and Aladdin and the Jinn (The Congo, page 140).
In the last, "`I am your slave,' said the Jinn" was repeated four times
at the end of each stanza.
The Poem Game idea was first indorsed in the Wellesley kindergarten,
by the children. They improvised pantomime and dance for the Potatoes' Dance,
while the writer chanted it, and while Professor Hamilton C. Macdougall
of the Wellesley musical department followed on the piano
the outline
Perhaps we must be strangers.
I confess
My soul this hour is Dante's,
And your care
Should be for dolls
Whose painted hands caress
Your marvellous dark hair.
Romance, with moonflower face
And morning eyes,
And lips whose thread of scarlet prophesies
The canticles of a coming king unknown,
Remember, when you join him
On his throne,
Even me, your far off troubadour,
And wear
For me some trifling rose
Beneath your veil,
Dying a royal death,
Happy and pale,
Choked by the passion,
The wonder and the snare,
The glory and despair
That still will haunt and own
Your marvellous dark hair.
How I Walked Alone in the Jungles of Heaven
Oh, once I walked in Heaven, all alone
Upon the sacred cliffs above the sky.
God and the angels, and the gleaming saints
Had journeyed out into the stars to die.
They had gone forth to win far citizens,
Bought at great price, bring happiness for all:
By such a harvest make a holier town
And put new life within old Zion's wall.
Each chose a far-off planet for his home,
Speaking of love and mercy, truth and right,
Envied and cursed, thorn-crowned and scourged in time,
Each tasted death on his appointed night.
Then resurrection day from sphere to sphere
Sped on, with all the POWERS arisen again,
While with them came in clouds recruited hosts
Of sun-born strangers and of earth-born men.
And on that day gray prophet saints went down
And poured atoning blood upon the deep,
Till every warrior of old Hell flew free
And all the torture fires were laid asleep.
And Hell's lost company I saw return
Clear-eyed, with plumes of white, the demons bold
Climbed with the angels now on Jacob's stair,
And built a better Zion than the old.
. . . . .
And yet I walked alone on azure cliffs
A lifetime long, and loved each untrimmed vine:
The rotted harps, the swords of rusted gold,
The jungles of all Heaven then were mine.
Oh mesas and throne-mountains that I found!
Oh strange and shaking thoughts that touched me there,
Ere I beheld the bright returning wings
That came to spoil my secret, silent lair!
Fifth Section
The Poem Games
An Account of the Poem Games
In the summer of 1916 in the parlor of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody;
and in the following winter in the Chicago Little Theatre,
under the auspices of Poetry, A Magazine of Verse; and in Mandel Hall,
the University of Chicago, under the auspices of the Senior Class, --
these Poem Games were presented. Miss Eleanor Dougherty
was the dancer throughout. The entire undertaking developed
through the generous cooperation and advice of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody.
The writer is exceedingly grateful to Mrs. Moody and all concerned
for making place for the idea. Now comes the test of its vitality.
Can it go on in the absence of its initiators?
Mr. Lewellyn Jones, of the Chicago Evening Post, announced the affair
as a "rhythmic picnic". Mr. Maurice Browne of the Chicago Little Theatre
said Miss Dougherty was at the beginning of the old Greek Tragic Dance.
Somewhere between lies the accomplishment.
In the Congo volume, as is indicated in the margins,
the meaning of a few of the verses is aided by chanting.
In the Poem Games the English word is still first in importance,
the dancer comes second, the chanter third. The marginal directions
of King Solomon indicate the spirit in which all the pantomime was developed.
Miss Dougherty designed her own costumes, and worked out
her own stage business for King Solomon, The Potatoes' Dance,
The King of Yellow Butterflies and Aladdin and the Jinn (The Congo, page 140).
In the last, "`I am your slave,' said the Jinn" was repeated four times
at the end of each stanza.
The Poem Game idea was first indorsed in the Wellesley kindergarten,
by the children. They improvised pantomime and dance for the Potatoes' Dance,
while the writer chanted it, and while Professor Hamilton C. Macdougall
of the Wellesley musical department followed on the piano
the outline