Part 10 (1/2)

Oh, once I walked in Heaven, all alone Upon the sacred cliffs above the sky.

G.o.d and the angels, and the gleaming saints Had journeyed out into the stars to die.

They had gone forth to win far citizens, Bought at great price, bring happiness for all: By such a harvest make a holier town And put new life within old Zion's wall.

Each chose a far-off planet for his home, Speaking of love and mercy, truth and right, Envied and cursed, thorn-crowned and scourged in time, Each tasted death on his appointed night.

Then resurrection day from sphere to sphere Sped on, with all the POWERS arisen again, While with them came in clouds recruited hosts Of sun-born strangers and of earth-born men.

And on that day gray prophet saints went down And poured atoning blood upon the deep, Till every warrior of old h.e.l.l flew free And all the torture fires were laid asleep.

And h.e.l.l's lost company I saw return Clear-eyed, with plumes of white, the demons bold Climbed with the angels now on Jacob's stair, And built a better Zion than the old.

And yet I walked alone on azure cliffs A lifetime long, and loved each untrimmed vine: The rotted harps, the swords of rusted gold, The jungles of all Heaven then were mine.

Oh mesas and throne-mountains that I found!

Oh strange and shaking thoughts that touched me there, Ere I beheld the bright returning wings That came to spoil my secret, silent lair!

Fifth Section

The Poem Games

An Account of the Poem Games

In the summer of 1916 in the parlor of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody; and in the following winter in the Chicago Little Theatre, under the auspices of Poetry, A Magazine of Verse; and in Mandel Hall, the University of Chicago, under the auspices of the Senior Cla.s.s,--these Poem Games were presented. Miss Eleanor Dougherty was the dancer throughout.The entire undertaking developed through the generous cooperation and advice of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody. The writer is exceedingly grateful to Mrs. Moody and all concerned for making place for the idea. Now comes the test of its vitality. Can it go on in the absence of its initiators?

Mr. Lewellyn Jones, of the Chicago Evening Post, announced the affair as a ”rhythmic picnic”. Mr. Maurice Browne of the Chicago Little Theatre said Miss Dougherty was at the beginning of the old Greek Tragic Dance.

Somewhere between lies the accomplishment.

In the Congo volume, as is indicated in the margins, the meaning of a few of the verses is aided by chanting.

In the Poem Games the English word is still first in importance, the dancer comes second, the chanter third. The marginal directions of King Solomon indicate the spirit in which all the pantomime was developed. Miss Dougherty designed her own costumes, and worked out her own stage business for King Solomon, The Potatoes' Dance, The King of Yellow b.u.t.terflies and Aladdin and the Jinn (The Congo, page 140). In the last, ”'I am your slave,' said the Jinn” was repeated four times at the end of each stanza.

The Poem Game idea was first indorsed in the Wellesley kindergarten, by the children. They improvised pantomime and dance for the Potatoes'

Dance, while the writer chanted it, and while Professor Hamilton C.

Macdougall of the Wellesley musical department followed on the piano the outline of the jingle. Later Professor Macdougall very kindly wrote down his piano rendition. A study of this transcript helps to confirm the idea that when the cadences of a bit of verse are a little exaggerated, they are tunes, yet of a truth they are tunes which can be but vaguely recorded by notation or expressed by an instrument.

The author of this book is now against instrumental music in this type of work. It blurs the English.

Professor Macdougall has in various conversations helped the author toward a Poem Game theory. He agrees that neither the dancing nor the chanting nor any other thing should be allowed to run away with the original intention of the words. The chanting should not be carried to the point where it seeks to rival conventional musical composition. The dancer should be subordinated to the natural rhythms of English speech, and not attempt to incorporate bodily all the precedents of professional dancing.

Speaking generally, poetic ideas can be conveyed word by word, faster than musical feeling. The repet.i.tions in the Poem Games are to keep the singing, the dancing and the ideas at one pace. The repet.i.tions may be varied according to the necessities of the individual dancer.

Dancing is slower than poetry and faster than music in developing the same thoughts. In folk dances and vaudeville, the verse, music, and dancing are on so simple a basis the time elements can be easily combined. Likewise the rhythms and the other elements.

Miss Dougherty is particularly ill.u.s.trative in her pantomime, but there were many verses she looked over and rejected because they could not be rendered without blurring the original intent.

Possibly every poem in the world has its dancer somewhere waiting, who can dance but that one poem. Certainly those poems would be most successful in games, where the tone color is so close to the meaning that any exaggeration of that color by dancing and chanting only makes the story clearer. The writer would like to see some one try Dryden's Alexander's Feast, or Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon.