MANDY'S RELIGION Rocking like a lifted boat Swing low, sweet chariot, swing low. Delphy, when my mother died, BETSY'S BOY I'se got religion an' I doan care Who knows that God an' I are square, I wuz carryin' home my mistis' wash When God came an' spoke to me out'n de hush. An' I th'ew de wash up inter de air, Betsy's boy could shuffle and clog, Though you couldn't get him to saw a log, Laziest boy about the place Till he started to dance-and you saw his face! It was all lit up like a mask of bronze Till he fell on the floor like a spun-out top. Like Shiva the Hindu his feet were bound Banjo playin' and de sanded floor, Can't help dancin' though de preacher says Got-ter-keep-dancin',-can't-stop now Got-ter-keep-dancin',-I-doan-know Banjo playin' and de sanded floor, now, Got-ter-keep-dancin',—I—doan-know -how! THE OLD Who dat droppin' froo de crumblin' roof?— Who dat croakin' on de winder-sill?———— Ef yo' doan stop croakin' on de winder-sill! O Lawd, hab mussy! Mah soul am ole, I doan wan' ter lie in de rain an' de cole: LOVE ME AT LAST Love me at last, or if you will not, Leave me; Hard words could never, as these half-words, Grieve me: Love me at last-or leave me. Love me at last, or let the last word uttered Be but your own; Love me or leave me-as a cloud, a vapor, Or a bird flown. Love me at last-I am but sliding water Lola Ridge was born in Dublin, Ireland, leaving there in infancy and spending her childhood in Sydney, Australia. After living some years in New Zealand, she returned to Australia to study art. In 1907, she came to the United States, supporting herself for three years by writing fiction for the popular magazines. She stopped this work only, as she says, “because I found I would have to do so if I wished to survive as an artist." For several years she earned her living in a variety of ways-as organizer for an educational movement, as advertisement writer, as illustrator, artist's model, factory-worker, etc. In 1918, The New Republic published her long poem, The Ghetto, and Miss Ridge, until then totally unknown, became the "discovery" of the year. Her volume, The Ghetto and Other Poems (1918), contains one poem that is brilliant, several that are powerful and none that is mediocre. Her title-poem is its pinnacle; in it Miss Ridge. touches strange heights. It is essentially a poem of the city, of its sodden brutalities, its sudden beauties. Swift figures shine from these lines, like barbaric colors leaping out of darkness; images that are surprising but never strained glow with a condensed clarity. In her other poems—especially in "The Song of Iron," "Faces" and the poignant portrait “Marie"-the same dignity is maintained, though with somewhat less magic. Sun-Up (1920) is less integrated, more frankly experimental. But the same vibrancy and restrained power that distinguished her preceding book are manifest here. Her delineations are sensitive and subtle, her phrases vivid yet natural; she accomplishes the maximum in effects with a minimum of effort. PASSAGES FROM "THE GHETTO” Old Sodos no longer makes saddles. He has forgotten how . ... Time spins like a crazy dial in his brain, And night by night I see the love-gesture of his arm In its green-greasy coat-sleeve Circling the Book, And the candles gleaming starkly On the blotched-paper whiteness of his face, Like a miswritten psalm Night by night I hear his lifted praise, Like a broken whinnying Before the Lord's shut gate. Lights go out And the stark trunks of the factories Melt into the drawn darkness, And mothers take home their babies, Waxen and delicately curled, Like little potted flowers closed under the stars. Lights go out And colors rush together, Fusing and floating away. Pale worn gold like the settings of old jewels . . . Like shimmering auras. They are covering up the pushcarts Now all have gone save an old man with mirrors- He shuffles up a darkened street And the moon burnishes his mirrors till they shine like phosphorus. The moon like a skull, Staring out of eyeless sockets at the old men trundling home the pushcarts. A sallow dawn is in the sky |