H.L. Mencken

Baltimore Evening Sun/January 4, 1911

Yesterday’s paper closed with a reference to Miss Reese’s sonnets. The best of them all, of course, is ‘Tears”—that exquisitely beautiful thing. It has no serious rival in her work—nor in that of any other living poet—but she has done a number of other sonnets which show manifold merits. Here, for example, is one called “A Thought of May”:

All that long, mad March day, in the dull town,

I had a thought of May–alas, alas!

The dogwood boughs made whiteness up and down:

The daffodils were turning in the grass:

And there were bees astir in lane and street,

And scent of lilacs blowing tall and lush:

While hey, the wind that pitched its voice so sweet:

It seemed an angel talked behind each bush!

The west grew very golden, roofs turned black.

I saw one star above the gables bare.

The door flew open. Love, you had come back.

I held my arms: you found the old way there.

In its old place you laid your yellow head,

And at your kiss the mad March weather fled!

A half dozen other sonnets in celebration of the seasons, instinct with the love of nature and rich in music, accompany this one. There is too little space to reprint them in full and partial quotation can scarcely avoid spoiling their beauty. From “A November Afternoon,” however, I risk taking the sestet:

The year, I think, lies drawing of the May.

As old men dream of youth, that loved, lost thing.

A spring-like thrill is in this weather gray.

I wait to hear some thrush begin to sing:

And half expect, as up and down I go

To see my neighbor’s cherry-boughs ablow!

And these lines from “Early September:”

We feel, at times, as we had come unseen

Upon the aging Year, sitting apart.

Grief in his eyes, same ache at his great heart.

In Praise Of Common Things

A noticeable quality of Miss Reese’s verse is its constant dwelling upon common things. A footpath across the fields, an ancient room, a group at boys at play, a slim church-spire against the setting sun, a sumach by the wayside, the scent of mint, a flight of wild geese, the chill rain of an autumn afternoon—such things find their poet in her song. There is a frank expression of this leaning toward the unconsidered joy in “In Praise of Common Things:”

For stock and stone;

For grass and pool: for quince tree blown

A virginal white in spring;

And for the wall beside,

Gray, gentle, wide;

For roof, loaf, everything,

I praise, Thee, Lord;

For toil, and ache, and strife,

And all the commonness of life.

Further on in this poem we come upon a hint or two as to the nature of Miss Reese’s personal philosophy—that blend of native impulse, early impression and conscious thought which colors her view of the world and determines her answer to the great problems of love and living. An optimist she is, but her optimism is not that shallow and preposterous stuff which shines through so much of our current verse. Having intelligence, she is well aware that all is not well with the world. Such a notion, did it seek to enter from without, would be combated and disposed of by her keen perception of the ceaseless agony of life. Until we solve the master riddle, until we learn the meaning of sorrow, we must always fall short of complete happiness. To the small as well as the great come broken hopes, bitter partings, the pains of disillusion. The doubts and torments of Hamlet have their echoes in the life of every man.

An Uplifting Optimism

But though she senses this eternal tragedy and thus avoids the silly optimism which mistakes mere merriment for joy, Miss Reese by no means falls into the opposite bog resignationism—that wallowing place of the overpious and the under-intelligent. She protests against the useless tear, the vain regret, grief for grief’s sake, but she still sees clearly that man, if he is to be saved himself—that even if he can never hope to get at the essential meaning of life, he can at least press the quest, and meanwhile hold up his head. We come upon traces of this doctrine in more than one place. It is most clearly set forth, perhaps, in certain stanzas of a fine poem called “The Wayfarer,” from which I quote:

Life is but a small rainy day

Betwixt two dusks; but in its gray

Enough of light for me, for you

Our something or our naught to do.

And ever is there chance to run

A somewhat nearer to the sun;

Out of our very shames to press

Unto the skirts of righteousness.

Again and again this note is struck—of honest endeavor, high purpose, undaunted courage. It sounds most bravely, perhaps, in one of the sonnets—an apostrophe to art. What are the ends of art? “To idle at the door, the while the wharves call and the ships go by? To sail and drift under an April sky?” The poet answers no. Art must do more than merely reflect; it must also inspire. Reacting upon man, it must awaken in him a passion for effort— “cry through the dark, and drive the world to light”—”strike at the heart of time, and rouse the years.” But I had better give you the whole sonnet. Here it is:

What are the ends? To idle at the door,

The while the wharves call and the ships go by; 

Set sail and drift under an April sky,

A curious mariner from shore to shore?

To strip from woodland pool the pipe of yore.

Bursting with many a high, sweet, ancient air.

And shrilling down the country highways fare?

Son of the gods, and hast thou nothing more!

Storm through the tides, unheeding wreck or night,

Lord of the chart, the track, lord of thy fears.

Fling to the gust the reed of weathers slight;

Blood of our blood, and kin to all our tears.

Cry through the dark, and drive the world to light;

Strike at the heart of time, and rouse the years!

Sustained Flight

And yet there are critics who withhold their verdicts upon this eloquent and arresting poet, on the ground that she has yet to prove her wings in “sustained flight”! Since writing the opening paragraphs of this essay I have come upon that absurd phrase once more—in the writings of a man I had hitherto regarded with great respect as one above such puerilities. “Sustained flight,” forsooth! What empty nonsense! Here is a woman who has written one of the greatest sonnets in the English language, who has given us half a dozen songs of the very first rank, whose whole work is full of an individual and ineffable beauty—and yet we are asked to place her below the manufacturers of tedious blank-verse dramas, endless epics and grandiloquent odes!