Greatly shining, The Autumn moon floats in the thin sky; And the fish-ponds shake their backs and flash their dragon scales As she passes over them.
(Frederic) Ridgely Torrence was born at Xenia, Ohio, November 27, 1875, and was educated at Miami and Princeton University. For several years he was librarian of the Astor Library in New York City (1897-1901) and has been on several editorial staffs since then.
His first volume, _The House of a Hundred Lights_ (1900), bears the grave subtitle “A Psalm of Experience after Reading a Couplet of Bidpai” and is a half-whimsical, half-searching hodge-podge of philosophy, love lyrics, artlessness and impudence. The influence of Omar Khayyám and Richard Hovey is obvious but not too dominant; Torrence saves himself on the very verge of sentimentality and rhetoric by a chuckle, an adroit right-about-face.
Torrence’s subsequent uncollected verses have a deeper force, a more concentrated fire. In “The Bird and the Tree” and “Eye-Witness,” he has caught something more than the colors of certain localities—particularly of the dark belt. They are as eloquent and moving as his _Granny Maumee and Other Plays_ (1917), which owe their power not only to Torrence’s gift as a poet but to his sympathy as a folk-lyrist.
Blackbird, blackbird in the cage, There’s something wrong to-night. Far off the sheriff’s footfall dies, The minutes crawl like last year’s flies Between the bars, and like an age The hours are long to-night.
The sky is like a heavy lid Out here beyond the door to-night. What’s that? A mutter down the street. What’s that? The sound of yells and feet For what you didn’t do or did You’ll pay the score to-night.
No use to reek with reddened sweat, No use to whimper and to sweat. They’ve got the rope; they’ve got the guns, They’ve got the courage and the guns; An’ that’s the reason why to-night No use to ask them any more. They’ll fire the answer through the door— You’re out to die to-night.
There where the lonely cross-road lies, There is no place to make replies; But silence, inch by inch, is there, And the right limb for a lynch is there; And a lean daw waits for both your eyes, Blackbird.
Perhaps you’ll meet again some place. Look for the mask upon the face; That’s the way you’ll know them there— A white mask to hide the face. And you can halt and show them there The things that they are deaf to now, And they can tell you what they meant— To wash the blood with blood. But how If you are innocent?