Apollo Troubadour

Witter Bynner

Witter Bynner was born at Brooklyn, N. Y., August 10, 1881. He is a graduate of Harvard and has been editor of several leading magazines. He was instructor in English at the University of California in 1918-1919. He has written a number of plays and poems, and contributes to various magazines.

Can you hear the hand-organ through this melody of words? Bring out the music, but let the wildly fantastic pictures steal gently through it all-almost as if the pictures were dimly through a silken veil.

WHEN a wandering Italian

Yesterday at noon

Played upon his hurdy-gurdy

Suddenly a tune,

There was magic in my ear-drums:

Like a baby's cup and spoon

Tinkling time for many sleigh-bells,

Many no-school, rainy-day-bells,
Cow-bells, frog-bells, run-away-bells,
Mingling with an ocean medley
As of elemental people

More emotional than wordy

Mermaids laughing off their tantrums,
Mermen singing loud and sturdy,-
Silver scales and fluting shells,
Popping weeds and gurgles deadly,
Coral chime from coral steeple,
Intermittent deep-sea bells,
Ringing over floating knuckles,
Buried gold and swords and buckles,
And a thousand bubbling chuckles,

seen half

Yesterday at noon

Such a melody as starfish,

And all fish that really are fish.

In a gay remote battalion
Play at midnight to the moon!

Could any playmate on our planet,
Hid in a house of earth's own granite,
Be so devoid of primal fire

That a wind from this wild crated lyre
Should find no spark and fan it?
Would any lady half in tears,
Whose fashion, on a recent day
Over the sea, had been to pay
Vociferous gondoliers,

Beg that the din be sent away

And ask a gentleman, gravely treading
As down the aisle at his own wedding
To toss the foreigner a quarter
Bribing him to leave the street ;
That motor-horns and servants' feet
Familiar might resume, and sweet
To her offended ears,

The money-music of her peers!

Apollo listened, took the quarter
With his hat off to the buyer,
Shrugged his shoulder small and sturdy,

Led away his hurdy-gurdy

Street by street, then turned at last

Toward a likelier piece of earth

Where a stream of chatter passed,
Yesterday at noon;

By a school he stopped and played
Suddenly a tune..

What a melody he made!
Made in all those eager faces,
Feet and hands and fingers!
How they gathered, how they stayed
With smiles and quick grimaces,
Little man and little maid!
How they took their places,
Hopping, skipping, unafraid,
Darting, rioting about,

Squealing, laughing, shouting out!
How, beyond a single doubt,
In my own feet sprang the ardor
(Even now the motion lingers)
To be joining in their paces!
Round and round the handle went,-
Round their hearts went harder;—
Apollo urged the happy rout

And beamed, ten times as well content
With every son and daughter

As though their little hands had lent The gentleman his quarter.

(You would not guess-nor I denyThat that same gentleman was I!)

No gentleman may watch a god
With proper happiness therefrom;
So street by street again I trod

The way that we had come.

He had not seen me following
And yet I think he knew;

For still, the less I heard of it
The more his music grew;

As if he made a bird of it

To sing the distance through . . .
And, O Apollo, how I thrilled,
You liquid-eyed rapscallion,

With every twig and twist of spring,
Because your music rose and filled
Each leafy vein with dew-
With melody of olden sleigh-bells,
Over-the-sea-and-far-away-bells,

And the heart of an Italian,
And the tinkling cup and spoon,-
Such a melody as star-fish,
And all fish that really are fish,
In a gay remote battalion

Play at midnight to the moon!

Reprinted by permission of the author and by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, the publisher of the author's works.

In Blossom Time

Ina Donna Coolbrith

Ina Donna Coolbrith was born in Illinois, but came to California in her early childhood. She is a member of a number of societies and clubs in the West and is the only woman member of the Bohemian Club in San Francisco. She was invested with the poet laureateship of California in 1915. She is the author of a large number of poems, and contributes to the leading magazines of the country.

This poem is almost pure music-the music of delight and freedom. Come as close to singing as you can and yet talk. Develop as beautiful and fitting a melody as you can.

It's O my heart, my heart,

To be out in the sun and sing,

To sing and shout in the fields about,
In the balm and blossoming.

Sing loud, O bird in the tree;

O bird, sing loud in the sky,

And honey-bees, blacken the clover-bed;
There are none of you glad as I.

The leaves laugh low in the wind,
Laugh low with the wind at play;
And the odorous call of the flowers all
Entices my soul away.

For oh, but the world is fair, is fair,
And oh, but the world is sweet;

I will out in the gold of the blossoming mould,
And sit at the Master's feet.

And the love my heart would speak,
I will fold in the lily's rim,