Classic Poem

O Cambridge, Cambridge! O John Harvard's City!
Of thee the song, though I'm no Cantabrigian.
Is there a theme more fruitful for the witty
This side that dolorous water men call Stygian?
Perhaps you'll miss my meaning, more's the pity,
Because I sing of art, which like religion
Is a topic that New England people ought
To dodge as tending to excess of thought.

'Tis a fair city. Many a pillared porch
And many a white-ribbed fan-light there is seen
Along the avenues where students scorch,
Fervid with intellect and gasoline,
Which latter feeds the flame of learning's torch
When Widow Nolen fails to intervene,
For they who seek that Prince of Interveners
Can pass exams like Sidises and Wieners.

'Tis a fair city — half our history hangs
Upon her fate in time past. Still she feels
The thrill of her great forefathers' harangues
Beat in her blood. Her steeples shake to peals
That clamored at our land's deliverance pangs.
And all her ancient beauty she reveals
When the yellow shower of sundown overwhelms
Her avenues of immemorial elms.

On such an evening in a stately chamber
Full of mahogany and sunlight soft,
Beside the window where the roses clamber,
A woman stood, who many a time and oft,
Had watched the golden light pale into amber,
Thence into brown. She touched her lip and coughed,
Not loudly, but as one about to mention
Something deserving somebody's attention.

She was not fair, yet there was something in
Her countenance. There usually is.
Her dress severe and dark matched well her mien
Which was not sad or glad. In Cambridge this
Is not peculiar. Her eyes were grayish green
And full of bottomless simplicities.
Some wrinkles round her mouth betrayed to view
That she was humorous and fifty-two

At least. But never carp at any age.
Though equably her silken bosom heaved,
Her mind might be as passionate a page
As yours or mine. She may have well achieved
Virtue and Victory to have engaged
Our praise, if all her secret we conceived.
But anyhow she said with decorous mien
And softly, " Tea is served, Miss Imogene. "

Parted the portieres, and a crowd came through
Behind the figure of their hostess, which
Showed like a peacock's 'mid a retinue
Of plymouth-rocks and guinea-fowl. An itch
Descriptive here afflicts me, though I do
Not deal in personalities " and sich. "
Nevertheless I rather think I may
Indulge in panegyric by the way.

O Imogene! O graven Imagist!
Was it then thou, grey Fancy's strangest child?
Sweet Anarch, literary Nihilist
Thick warbling thy jaw-breaking woodnotes wild?
Was it then thou, delicious egotist?
Well of soft incoherence undefiled!
It was. It was, indeed. Indeed, it was
She who does nothing whatsoe'er she does,

Imogene herself — no other; and behind
Were half New England, half New Helicon,
Inextricably inwove and intertwined,
Puritan and Poet for the nonce at one,
For both delight in being wined and dined
As much as you and I have ever done.
So there were Russells, Lawrences and Abbots
And eighteen Coolidges and seven Cabots,

Discoursing sweet with them who below Par-
Nassus (far — far below) intone their ditties,
The ungirt children of the Morning Star,
Arensburgs, Kreymborgs, and Giovanittis,
Sandburgs who sing of God and Omaha,
Chicago, Alton and the Central cities,
And Indiana's offspring unsuppressed,
The Middle Classics of the Middle West.

And there Max Eastman came with Edgar Masters,
He the Spoon River Amorist, who vexes
With epigram and epitaph disasters
Such as arise from commerce of the sexes,
And shock the feelings of old maids and pastors,
Who (damn the accent!) suffer from complexes,
And, never having heard of Doctor Freud
Or Havelock Ellis either, are annoyed,

And Harriet Monroe, who would have been in clover,
But a spectrist rose before her like a spectre,
One of the twain who put that sad jest over,
And spilled the gall into her cup of nectar.
No woman wailing for her demon lover
Was sadder then. She could not resurrect her
Drear spirits from their dithyrambic tomb,
But stood there frowning, a prodigious gloom.

A Shelley with St. Vitus Dance and quinsey
Loped to the Hostess while they hesitated.
Then goldenly he spake. 'Twas Vachell Lindsay,
Whose every vowel is electroplated.
Sometimes he gilds, sometimes he merely tins. He
Has been a little overestimated,
But is a poet, I, for one, respect.
He spoke to Imogene to this effect:

" Oh, beautiful in bounty, ere I set
" My mind upon convivial delights,
" Celestial ichor in yon cellaret,
" Pray who is the young Harvard man who writes?
" Who is the Harvard Poet? I forget
" His name, and even the verses he indites.
" You said, if my impression is correct,
" He would tonight make one of the elect. "

" Oh, the new protege, " the dame replied,
" He is a lad of infinite variety,
" Whom I endeavor in the main to guide
" On unknown paths of lettered notoriety.
" He said some function not to be denied,
" Held at his undergraduate society,
" Might make him late. I fear it has delayed
" That brow of ivory, that soul of jade. "

Outspake the Spectrist: " I'm a Harvard man.
" I know the boy. I know where he resides
" On coasts of gold. I'll fetch him, if I can. "
And forth he darted. While like fate he strides
Mount Auburn Street, according to my plan
(There is a plan) which properly provides
A denouement appropriate to my story,
I shall reveal the poet in his glory.

Fast in his club, perhaps the A. D. Phi,
Possibly the Spee, it may be the Porcellian,
The poet stood with murder in his eye
And all the battailous aspect of rebellion.
He had some reasons you'll know bye and bye.
And one of them was better than a million.
Though it may bore you, I will take my chances,
Putting you au courant with the circumstances.

It seems there was a girl at Andover,
Exceeding pretty and exceeding prim.
He was tremendously epris of her.
Her fancy seemed more constant than a whim.
They had a tiff. He had not smoothed her fur,
And she had read the riot act to him.
At any rate they parted with some pain,
She to her room, and he to the Touraine.

There fifteen cocktails in a swift succession
Worked a considerable transformation.
Not that he sorrowed over his transgression.
Not so! his grief grew into irritation,
When suddenly there entered a procession
Of students full of beer and jubilation,
Who bade him forthwith purchase the regalia
Suitable for that evening's saturnalia,

Which was to be one of those costumed riots,
In which a university delights,
And oft the local citizen disquiets
When the huge athlete in a show-girl's tights
Ramps in the hula-hula. I don't deny its
Striking effects — the blaze of strontium lights
Upon barbaric raiment and gay faces
Of hot young devils going their own paces,

Is pleasant to remember. But good Lord!
While it was happening, what infernal bore!
Stupid as rhetoric, or Henry Ford
Upon the Revolutionary War,
Or other topic. Always I abhorred
The crowd, and still like Horace I abhor.
The reason in strict truth I ought to mention.
I find it hard to capture their attention.

The Poet, roused from wrathful ponderings,
Departed swiftly to a Hebrew Jew's
Costume emporium, who dealt in many things,
Nor was long pondering where was much to choose,
But took Dan Cupid's guise, pink tights, gilt wings,
And yellow wig, because they met his views,
The costume by itself was nothing much.
A fig-leaf would have been a graceful touch.

Fast in his club, my hero, as I stated
Five stanzas back, stood or was rather swaying,
For fifteen cocktails duly concentrated
Affect a man, which there is no gainsaying.
He was stripped naked, and he contemplated
Reproachfully the tights he was essaying.
The wig and wings were on, but his mind was centered
Upon the tights, what time the Spectrist entered.

The Spectrist had not in the least expected
A spectacle quite so spectacular.
All things seemed wonderfully unconnected.
He dropped the image of a mild cigar.
His laughter was for once as unaffected
As any drummer's in a smoking-car,
When comrades of two-hour companionships
Swap dirty yarns over the poker-chips.

It's bad to fall into intoxication,
But worse to give a drunken mind direction.
The Spectrist's voice recalled the invitation
Home to the Poet's deadened recollection.
Suddenly to the Spectrist's consternation
Out of the room he ran like an infection,
Or a greyhound, or the Calydonian Boar,
Or the Penn. Limited before the War.

The club door slammed behind him. Into the street,
Over a fence, and through a little park
He ran. His tinsel pinions flapped and beat
'Neath the blue blaze of the electric arc,
And lightning swift pelted his naked feet.
He gleamed all rose and ivory and stark,
Incomparable for speed, and light as air,
Right into the arms of W-ll--m R-sc-- Th-y-r

And Barrett W-nd-ll, who, through Cambridge mud
Homeward returning from a club, beheld
A portent golden-winged, of flesh and blood,
So real it effectually dispelled
Thought and high converse. Paralysed they stood
So vast a tide of new emotions swelled
Within them silent. Then as sages will,
" My God! " said W-nd-ll, " did you see it, Bill?

" I thought it was the ghost of my dead youth —
" Happily dead perhaps, but still my own —
" Awful with the simplicity of truth,
" And rather high in blood if not in tone,
" When every molar was a dulcet tooth,
" And love rose-crowned sate on his purple throne,
" With more details I shan't elaborate. "
Said Th-y-r: " It was an undergraduate.

" All the Colonial Club shall hear of this,
" And rumor with her thousand tongues run mad.
" Strong men will weep that they this scene did miss,
" And gently grinning show a semblance sad.
" And graceless bards will weave base fantasies
" Concerning that intolerable young cad,
" Of whose expulsion I am quite as sure
" As that I wrote the epic of Cavour. "

Oh that John Masefield's muse who sang Saul Kane
Moved in my soul with preternatural power,
Firing that incombustible my brain
With the glories of the liberated hour.
I cannot sing like that, but won't complain,
And will not even say the grapes are sour.
I should be well enough contented with
Kipling's immortal touch in " Brugglesmith. "

So fearing with the Preacher what is high —
Too high for me — my gadding tale returns
To constellations of a lowlier sky
Whose light with less austere effulgence burns.
Imogene's guests, their throats no longer dry,
Had tilted over conversation's urns.
Words rushed unto the face without control.
There was in fact an overflow of soul.

Sex was the subject they had pitched upon.
With M-st-rs there, of course it had to be.
Lindsay in vain put the soft pedal on.
For he was int'rested in poetry.
They sang of chromosomes in unison,
Like morning-stars of Physiology,
Sex being a theme that fascinates and perplexes,
As Sterne remarks, " old women of both sexes. "

Dispassionately, of course, they spoke of passions,
And without prejudice of prejudices,
Of the insufficiency of sexual rations,
And what abominable injustice this is,
And what's the matter with the moral fashions
That damn a mother who is not a Mrs.,
Though there is sometimes justice in that other
Which damns a Mrs. who is not a mother.

The handmaid whom I introduced at first
Stood where the coffee-urn diffused its fume.
Her intellect was by no means the worst
Of those then present in that stately room.
While ministering to hunger and to thirst,
She felt oppressed by a material gloom,
For nothing else produces such oppression
As lengthy talk on amorous obsession.

The conversation had indeed a savor
That rather set on edge her wisdom teeth.
All told 'twas of the rotten peach's flavor.
She thought how playing on her native heath,
She turned a stone that would have pleased a paver,
And found a thriving colony beneath
Of ordure-colored, slime-engendered slugs,
Many-limbed worms, and little loathsome bugs.

This seemed a lively image to her mind
(It is in fact good imagistic style,
Except that here and there the rhyme-words bind
The thought together every little while,
And that a metre of a certain kind
Is followed by my verses versatile)
I say this worm's nest seemed a lively image
Of what she heard in that oracular scrimmage.

For everything in damp decay that squirms,
Free love, free verse, free bunkum, burgeoned out.
And spirochetae mixed with biosperms
Enflamed the imagination past a doubt,
With rafts of pseudo-scientific terms,
And birth-control, about it and about.
Their talk to her seemed neither neat nor gaudy.
She darkly knew that they were " talking bawdy, "

As a clean country girl on a strange street
Passing by chance a woman of the town,
Painted for piracy, and perfumed sweet
As cheap cologne can make her, with her gown
Cut to the bosom-cleft, to sketch complete
The minor earmarks of her ill renown,
Knows somehow, though experience be but recent,
That the bright stranger's not exactly decent.

My heroine was nursed in old beliefs
That, it may be, have quite played out their part.
The kind of book she read was " Scottish Chiefs. "
" Lucile " to her was the high pitch of art.
Her favorites dealt in obvious joys and griefs.
She knew a lot of Thomas Moore by heart.
Compared with Cubist bards, it may be stated
That she was rather highly educated.

And hence it was she found the conversation
Not only quite unprofitable but dull
As Doctor Nordau on degeneration,
Or Bosanquet upon the Beautiful,
Or the " Jew Republic, " or the " German Nation "
Which weekly strive the public leg to pull.
Briefly my handmaid heroine was fed up,
But still she passed the tarts and held her head up.

A Birth-Controller, getting half the floor
With much ado away from a free-verser
Who had occupied the better part before,
Announced herself the prophet and precursor
Of a new age when cant should be no more,
And cheated nature at last should reimburse her
Self for the loss of her peculiar treasure
By long, long draughts against the bank of pleasure.

" Clothes gave us shame, " said she, " unnatural shame.
" We must destroy the tyranny of clothes.
" Carlyle was right. Trousers are much to blame,
" As also skirts, the which our nature loathes.
" Let us redeem the perfect human frame,
" Swearing to set it free with mighty oathes. "
She beat her bosom, which appeared to be
Flat as the level of democracy.

But e'er she could continue, from the throng
Up in rebuttal sprang Professor Lowes.
" Although your arguments, " he said, " are strong
" Still polyphonic prose is simply — prose.
" Free verse is but the shadow of a song,
" Though sham sham sham and pose repose on pose,
" Though Greenwich Village pillage still in gutters,
" Though Arensburg believe what Kreymborg utters.

" Not Gods, not men, not literary column
" Can e'er eternize the poetic cootie.
" But I opine Miss Lowell's latest volume
" Has elements of an enduring beauty.
" The bare perusal always makes me solemn. "
(The publishers have made his phrase do duty.
The advertised it with consummate art
In the Nation's only interesting part.)

The Birth-Controller cried: " For liberty
" Against tradition's moral usurpation
" The time has come to make a plangent plea.
" There must be a campaign of education,
" Aimed full at overbearing modesty,
" And clothes, and their indecent occultation.
" Wipe out the infamy, which means the prude.
" Sartor Resartus — nudity renewed! "

The handmaid heard these things her place commanding
That " sea of eloquence " from shore to shore.
Further she heard swift feet upon the landing
That lay beyond. The glass knob of the door
Turned with great vigor, and her understanding
Reeled as with mal de mer, for right before,
Against the outer darkness of the hall
A figure stood with no clothes on at all,

Bright-winged and yellow-haired. A kind of spell
Held her an instant. Could these be realities?
She looked again. Again she saw him well —
Youth with eyes full of powers and principalities
And thrones and lesser attributes of Hell,
Rebel desires and hackneyed bestialities.
In short he was the very symbol of
Anything that's free, verse, alcohol, or love.

She shrieked. All turned. The poet, with a yell
Like that which tore Hell's concave, onward sprang.
With emphasis on every syllable,
" I'm a drunken angel, " he bellowed and he sang,
" I'm a fa-fallen angel, " and he fell
Face down on the waxed walnut with a bang.
Falling he caught the Birth-Controller's gown,
And in a common ruin dragged her down.

The rest is silence more or less, I'm told.
Next day the waiting maid whom I admire
Gave up her place. She said she was too old
To learn new tricks — she couldn't play with fire
With any comfort. She would be so bold
As to think she had been worthy of her hire.
She hoped Miss Imogene wouldn't take offence,
And would perhaps give her a reference.

The poet was expelled and nothing said.
Mount Auburn Street that joins two burial-grounds,
One for the quick and the other for the dead,
Knew him no more upon his casual rounds.
The dust of Harvard from his feet he shed.
Westward he went where energy abounds,
And speculators sell to you and me
Town lots at the bottom of the Salton Sea.

But I have seen him at the fall of night
When purple mountains heighten in the gloam,
And the summits glare with amethystine light,
And rattling tractors yank the gangplows home,
In the room where he is used to read and write
Pluck from the wall a polyphonic tome,
And smile at lines devoid of sense or scansion
With a gay air of — shall I say expansion?