Cable

To read your tales Is like opening a cedar-box Of ante-bellum days, A box holding the crinoline and fan

And the tortoise-shell diary With flowers pressed between the leaves Belonging to some languid grande dame Of Creole New Orleans.

Benjamin R. C. Low, B.A. 1902, a practising lawyer, has published four or five volumes of poems, including The Sailor who has Sailed (1911), A Wand and Strings (1913) and The House that Was (1915). He is seen at his best in These United States, dedicated to Alan Seeger, which appeared in the Boston Transcript, 7 February, 1917. This is an original, vigorous work, full of the unexpected, and yet seen to be true as soon as expressed. His verses show a constantly increasing grasp of material, and I look for finer things from his pen.

Although Mr. Low seems to be instinctively a romantic poet, he is fond of letting his imaginative sympathy play on common scenes in city streets; as in The Sandwich Man.

The lights of town are pallid yet With winter afternoon; The sullied streets are dank and wet, The halted motors fume and fret, The world turns homeward soon.

There is no kindle in the sky, No cheering sunset flame; I have no help from passers-by,-- They part, and give good-night; but I.... Walk with another's name.

I have no kith, nor kin, nor home Wherein to turn to sleep; No star-lamp sifts me through the gloam, I am the driven, wastrel foam On a subsiding deep.

I do not toil for love, or fame, Or hope of high reward; My path too low for praise or blame, I struggle on, each day the same, My panoply--a board.

Who gave me life I do not know, Nor what that life should be, Or why I live at all; I go, A dead leaf shivering with snow, Under a worn-out tree.

The lights of town are blurred with mist, And pale with afternoon,-- Of gold they are, and amethyst: Dull pain is creeping at my wrist.... The world turns homeward soon.

A poet of national reputation is William Rose Benét, who was graduated in 1907. Mr. Benét came to Yale from Augusta, Georgia, and since his graduation has been connected with the editorial staff of the Century Magazine. At present he is away in service in France, where his adventurous spirit is at home. He may have taken some of his reputation with him, for he is sure to be a favourite over there; but the fame he left behind him is steadily growing. The very splendour of romance glows in his spacious poetry; he loves to let his imagination run riot, as might be guessed merely by reading the names on his books. To every one who has ever been touched by the love of a quest, his title-pages will appeal: The Great White Wall, a tale of "magic adventure, of war and death"; Merchants from Cathay (1913), The Falconer of God (1914), The Burglar of the Zodiac (1917). His verses surge with vitality, as in The Boast of the Tides. He is at his best in long, swinging, passionate rhythms. Unfortunately in the same measures he is also at his worst. His most potent temptation is the love of noise, which makes some of his less artistic verse sound like organized cheering.

But when he gets the right tune for the right words, he is irresistible. There is no space here to quote such a rattling ballad--like a frenzy of snare-drums--as Merchants from Cathay, but it is not mere sound and fury, it is not swollen rhetoric, it is an inspired poem. No one can read or hear it without being violently aroused. Mr. Benét is a happy-hearted poet, singing with gusto of the joy of life.