I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent,
Watching the future come and the present go-
And the little shifting pictures of people rushing
In tiny self-importance to and fro.

AUGUST NIGHT

On a midsummer night, on a night that was eerie with stars,
In a wood too deep for a single star to look through,
You led down a path whose turnings you knew in the darkness,
But the scent of the dew-dripping cedars was all that I knew.

I drank of the darkness, I was fed with the honey of fragrance,
I was glad of my life, the drawing of breath was sweet;
I heard your voice, you said, "Look down, see the glow-worm!"
It was there before me, a small star white at my feet.

We watched while it brightened as though it were breathed on and burning, This tiny creature moving over earth's floor

"L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle,"

You said, and no more.

EFFIGY OF A NUN

(Sixteenth Century)

Infinite gentleness, infinite irony

Are in this face with fast-sealed eyes,

And round this mouth that learned in loneliness
How useless their wisdom is to the wise.

In her nun's habit carved, patiently, lovingly,

By one who knew the ways of womankind,

This woman's face still keeps, in its cold wistful calm,
All of the subtle pride of her mind.

These long patrician hands, clasping the crucifix,
Show she had weighed the world, her will was set;
These pale curved lips of hers, holding their hidden smile
Once having made their choice, knew no regret.

She was of those who hoard their own thoughts carefully,
Feeling them far too dear to give away,

Content to look at life with the high, insolent
Air of an audience watching a play.

If she was curious, if she was passionate

She must have told herself that love was great, But that the lacking it might be as great a thing If she held fast to it, challenging fate.

She who so loved herself and her own warring thoughts,
Watching their humorous, tragic rebound,

In her thick habit's fold, sleeping, sleeping,
Is she amused at dreams she has found?

Infinite tenderness, infinite irony

Are hidden forever in her closed eyes,

Who must have learned too well in her long loneliness
How empty wisdom is, even to the wise.

THE FLIGHT

We are two eagles
Flying together,
Under the heavens,
Over the mountains,
Stretched on the wind.
Sunlight heartens us,
Blind snow baffles us,
Clouds wheel after us,
Raveled and thinned.

We are like eagles;

But when Death harries us,
Human and humbled
When one of us goes,
Let the other follow-
Let the flight be ended,
Let the fire blacken,
Let the book close.

E

Elizabeth Madox Roberts

LIZABETH MADOX ROBERTS was born in 1885, at Perryville, near Springfield, Kentucky, and attended the University of Chicago, where she received her Ph.B. in 1921. Except when obliged to travel for health or warmth, she lived in the Salt River country of Kentucky, twenty-eight miles from Harrodsburg, old Fort Harrod, the first settlement in the state. Suffering from anemia she died March 13, 1941.

As an undergraduate she won the local Fiske Prize with a group of poems which later appeared in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. An amplification of these verses appeared as Under the Tree (1922) and critics were quick to recognize the unusually fresh accents in this first volume. Under the Tree spoke directly to the young, for it was written, not so much for children, but as a sensitive child might write. The observation is precise, the reflections are candidly clear, the humor delicate, never simpering or archly beribboned. Here is a simplicity which is straightforward without being shrill or mincing. The verse is graceful where grace commands the gesture, but Miss Roberts' unforced naïveté allows her to be gauche whenever awkwardness is natural.

After this volume Miss Roberts returned to her native state, and spent much of her time studying the archaic English speech still spoken in the remote parts of Kentucky. "Orpheus," although written later than her first book, is a highly interesting use of her early idiom, localizing as well as vitalizing the old myth. "Stranger" is more definitely indigenous; it has something of the flavor of the Lonesome Tunes collected by Howard Brockway and Loraine Wyman. Concerning this poem, Miss Roberts writes, "In these verses I have used material from the old ballads—or suggestions from them, material which may be found abundantly in Kentucky, together with modern syncopation and a refrain designed to call up banjo notes." "A Ballet Song of Mary," which won the John Reed Memorial Prize in Poetry (1928), is an "artificial" piece-using the adjective in the best sense—founded on ancient archaic words and uses. Here, as in her prose, Miss Roberts writes with an ear always tuned to local phrase and feeling.

In 1925 Miss Roberts turned to the prose for which she has been so widely celebrated. The Time of Man (1926), one of the most moving novels of the period, is an epic of the Appalachians in which every chapter has the effect of a poem. My Heart and My Flesh (1927), a darker and more difficult exploration, discloses less local and more universal regions of the spirit. Jingling in the Wind (1928) is a less successful experiment, a light farce which tries but fails to be a satire on industrial civilization. All three are characterized by a lyrical charm and an inscrutability which set Miss Roberts apart from the competent writers of easy fiction.

The Great Meadow (1930) is an exploration of the material uncovered in her first novel. Placed in the Kentucky meadow-lands against the heroic backgrounds of early American history, it is a pioneering panorama. Native to the least grass-blade, it is much more than a narrative of the soil; it is a widening saga of the men and women who imposed themselves and their pattern on the unshaped wilderness. Thus The Great Meadow acts both as the preparation for and the rich completion of The Time of Man. A novel He Sent Forth a Raven (1935) combines her early

individual diction with the later restrained mysticism, a combination that is curiously lilting and intense.

Valentine worked all day in the brush,

He grubbed out stumps and he chopped with his ax,
He chopped a clear road up out of the branch;
Their wheels made all the tracks.

And all they could see out doors were the trees,
And all the night they could hear the wolves go;
But one cold time when the dark came on
A man's voice said, "Hello, there, hello!”

He stood away by the black oak tree

When they opened the door in the halfway light;
He stood away by the buttonwood stump,
And Valentine said, "Won't you stay all night?"

He sat by the fire and warmed his bones.
He had something hidden down deep in a sack,
And Polly watched close while she baked her pones;
He felt of it once when she turned her back-

Polly had a fear of his sack.

Nobody lived this way or there,

And the night came down and the woods came dark,

A thin man sat by the fire that night,

And the cabin pane was one red spark.