Lady of gray, wise hours! come back to me: Voice of the sighing sea, ΙΟ Voice of the ancient wind, infinite voice! Thine austere chaunts rejoice Mine heart, thine anthems cool me: I grow strong, Drinking thy bitter song, Rich with true tears and medicinal dews, 15 O thou Uranian Muse! Come, vestal Lady! in my vain heart light Thy flame, divinely white! Come, Lady of the Lilies; blaunch to snow Come thou, through whom I hold in memory 20 Moonlit Gethsemani: Come, make a vesper silence round my ways, And mortify my days: O Sorrow! come, through whom alone I keep 25 Through whom I count the world a barren loss, And beautiful the Cross: Come, Sorrow! lest in surging joy I drown, To lose both Cross and Crown. 30 JOYCE KILMER 1886-1918 Joyce Kilmer, convert, teacher, journalist, soldier, and poet, was born in New Jersey in 1886. Obtaining his early education in the public schools, he attended first Rutgers College and later Columbia University, from which he graduated in 1906. After graduation he engaged in a variety of pursuits, seeking an outlet for the talents with which he was richly endowed, but unfortunately his death occurred before he had had time to find himself. His entrance into the Church helped him somewhat to focus his gift of poetry and brought him the degree of concentration necessary for the sustained flights of imagery with which his verse is replete. But his life was all too short for full development. The war, into which he plunged with the fervor characteristic of everything he undertook, cut short a career which would, in all likelihood, have ripened into one of high distinction. He produced in all three volumes of verse, Summer of Love, Trees and Other Poems, and Main Street and Other Poems, and one volume of essays, The Circus and Other Essays. O THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS1 F COURSE, people still ride on the elevated railways. But not the people who used to be taken over by their mothers from Jersey City on the Cortlandt Street Ferry about once every month, and then up Sixth Avenue by the elevated en route for the shops. These people now know the swift and monotonous tube train instead of the rakish ferryboat, the dull subway instead of the stimulating elevated railway. And even if they knelt upon the seats of the subway car, their rubbers projecting into the aisles and their faces pressed against the windows, they would see only blank walls and dismal stations instead. of other people's Christmas trees. 1Reprinted from The Circus and Other Essays by permission of, and arrangement with, the George H. Doran Company, owners of the copyright. These evanescent bits of glory lent special delight to aërial journeyings for weeks after Christmas. For, in defiance of the Twelfth Night convention, certain citizens were wont to keep their Christmas trees in place until February. And, in the opinion of the tenants of the third stories of the tenements (apartment houses is the more courteous word) which bordered the elevated, the place of the Christmas tree was close up against the front window, where all the world could enjoy its green and gold and red. Like nearly all genuine vulgar customs (vulgar is used in its most honorable sense) this habit of showing the public the home's chief splendor was (or is, for undoubtedly firs dressed for holiday still brighten some lower Sixth Avenue windows) based on generous courtesy. It was not possible for Mr. Tenement to keep open flat, so to speak, at Christmas time; to summon all Sixth Avenue in to partake of a bowl of wassail that steamed upon his gas range. But he performed all the hospitality that his ungentle residence allowed; he placed his bit of greenwood with its cardboard angel, its red paper bells, and its strings of tinsel, where it would give to the greatest possible number the same delight that it gave to its owner. It is, you observe, in your own psychological way, the Rogers Group principle. Your grandmother put "Going for the Cows," you remember, on the marble top of the walnut table by the window in the front parlor. The Nottingham lace curtains were parted just above the head of the boy who was urging the dog after the woodchuck. And everybody who went up or down Maple Avenue got a good view of that masterpiece of realism. Therein your grandmother showed truer courtesy than did you when you put Rodin's "Le Baiser" in that niche above the second landing of your stairway. The same quality of almost quixotic generosity is suggested by the composition of the oldfashioned holly wreaths, which hung in the windows, showed to passers-by lustrous green leaves and scarlet berries, and to those who hung them only a circlet of pale stems and wire. Even the lithographers maintain this courteous tradition; they stamp their cardboard holly wreaths on only one side. And this is the side which is to face the street. Well, these fenestral firs and hollies exist, and they are among the numerous joys of the days that follow Christmas. These postChristmas days shine with a light softer, but perhaps more comfortable, than that of the great feast itself. Particularly is this true of the first day after Christmas-especially when that day is Sunday. In England, of course, as in the time of the late Samuel Pickwick, Esq., who brought about the renascence of Christmas, this is called Boxing Day, not because it is the occasion of fistic counters, but because it is the time appointed for the distribution of those more or less spontaneous expressions of good will which are called Christmas boxes. Its more orthodox title is Saint Stephen's Day; it is, you know, the day on which the illustrious King Wenceslaus, with the assistance of his page, did his noble almoning. Says the old carol: Good King Wenceslaus looked out On the feast of Stephen, When the snow lay round about, Though the frost was cruel; "Hither, page, and stand by me, Where and what his dwelling?" Underneath the mountain, Over by the forest fence, By Saint Agnes fountain." "Bring me flesh and bring me wine, Bring me pine logs hither; Thou and I will see him dine, When we bear them thither." Page and monarch forth they went Forth they went together Through the night wind's wild lament And the wintry weather. We are not old English Kings, so instead of having our page bring flesh and wine to the poor man on Saint Stephen's Day, we give a dollar to the youth from the still vexed Bermuthes who chaperons the elevator in our apartment house, and for weeks before Christmas we affix to the flaps of the envelopes containing our letters little stamps bearing libelous caricatures of Saint Nicholas of Bari. Theoretically this last process provides a modicum of Christmas cheer for certain carefully selected and organized poor people. However this may be, the fact remains that the day after Christmas is a very good day, indeed. The excitement of giving and receiving has passed away; there remains the quieter joy of contemplation. And since this year the day after Christmas is Sunday, this contemplation will not be disturbed by the arrival of the postman, who, a relentless bill-bringer, is, like the Greeks, to be feared even when bearing gifts. And, in spite of the remarks of every humorist who ever bcrrowed from his mother-in-law two cents to put on an envelope which should carry a joke about her to an editor, this post-Christmas meditation nearly always is pleasant. It is assisted by the consumption of wife-bestowed cigars, which (again despite the humorists!) are better than those a man buys for himself. It is a pleasant meditation, for its subjects are things given and things received, good deeds done and good deeds experienced. It also contains, this day-after-Christmas feeling, a quality of reconciliation. Not of reconciliation with ancient enemies-this was all orthodoxly attended to on Christmas Eve-but of reconciliation with affairs, of readjustment. a ❖. On Christmas Day there may have been some slight disappointment, some fly in the ointment, or, worse still, in the punch. Forgetting for moment that you were just now pictured smoking cigars presented to you by your wife, let us consider you to be, as you probably are, a young woman of some eighteen summers and perhaps an equal number of winters. It is the day after Christmas; it is (although you are unaware of the fact) Saint Stephen's Day. Yesterday, although you endeavored to conceal the fact, only revealing it in the unnecessary viciousness with which you scrubbed the remains of a red and white striped candy basket from the countenance of your infant brother-yesterday, I repeat, you were annoyed. And the cause of your annoyance was that you received from the amorous Theophilus a paltry dozen, instead of twenty-four or thirty-six, American Beauties. Now, however, |