PAGE Edwin Markham 5 Witter Bynner 6 Carl Sandburg 15 Margaret Widdemer 25 Conrad Aiken 31 The Benets 39 Lola Ridge 43 Edna St. Vincent Millay 47 Leonora Speyer 55 Edgar Guest 73 Don Marquis and Christopher Morley 77 Vachel Lindsay 87
(She steps brightly forward with an air of soprano introduction.)
I look from out my window, Beloved, and I see A bird upon a pear bough, But what is that to me?
Because the thought comes icy; That bird you never knew-- It's not your bird or pear tree, And what is it to you?
(who, though he had to lay a cornerstone, unveil a bust of somebody, give two lectures and write encouraging introductions to the works of five young poets before catching the three-ten for Staten Island, offered his reaction in a benevolent and unhurried manner.)
Poets to men a curious sight afford; Still they will sing, though all around are bored; But this wise grackle does a kinder thing; Silent he's bored, while all around him sing!
(Prefaced by a short baritone talk on Chinese architecture.)
Celia, have you been to China? There upon a mystic tree Sits a bird who murmurs Chinese Of the Me in Thee.
'Neath that tree of willow-pattern Twice seven thousand scornful go Paraphrasers and translators Of the long-deceased Li-Po:
Chinese feelings swift discerning Without all this time and fuss Let us eat that bird, thus learning Of the Him in Us!
(Fixing her glasses firmly on the rest of the Poetry Society in a way which makes them with difficulty refrain from writhing.)
Glunk! I toss my heels up to my head ... That was a bird I heard say glunk As I walked statelily through my extensive, expensive English country estate In a pink brocade with silver buttons, a purple passementerie cut with panniers, a train, and faced with watered silk:
But it Is dead now! (The bird) Probably putrescent And green....
(Making a statement which you may take or leave, but convincing you entirely.)
I was a shock-headed boy bringing in the laundry; Why did I try for that damn bird, anyway? I suppose I had been in the habit of aiming for the pears. But I chucked a stone, anyhow, And it ricocheted and hit my head, And as it hadn't any brains inside the stone busted it And there I was, dead. And dead with me were all the improper things I'd got out of the servants about their employers Bringing in the laundry; But the grackle sings on. Sing forever, O grackle! I died, knowing lots of things _you_ don't know!