J O YCE KIL ME R POEMS, ESSAYS AND LETTERS I N TW O VO L U ME S VOLUME ONE : MEMOIR AND POEMS Underwood a nd Underwood JOYCE KI LME R , AGE 30 LAS T CI VI LI AN P ORTRAI T J O YCE KIL ME R E D I T E D W I T H A M E M O IR BY ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY POEMS YORK G EORGE H . DORAN COMPANY ri 4 1 9 1 1918 Copy ght , 19 1 , 7, o r oran Co m an By Ge ge H . D p y PRI NTE D I N THE UNI TE D STATES OF AMERI CA JOYCE KILMER ACKNOWLEDGMENT Many persons have contributed exceedingly of valuable service to the preparation these volumes . wher Credit has been gratefully acknowledged, ever feasible, in the course of the text . To make anything like a full record , however, of the names o f that remarkable society, the ardent and devoted o f friends Joyce Kilmer, would require a chapter . Though particular reference should be made in this ’ place to the invaluable assistance of : Kilmer s life J r . his long friend and lawyer , Louis Bevier, ; espe cial f friend , Thomas Walsh ; and his o fice associate , John Bunker . Permission has been most cordially granted by the editors o f the following magazines for the re ’ printing of the poems from France : S cri bner s Ma azine G d H usekee in The S atu rda g , oo o p g, y E venin P ost A m i ca Th B kman E s er e . g , , and oo l says and miscel aneous pieces have been gathered, with the warm approval o f the editors o f these pub lications : The B kman The , from these sources oo , Nem Y rk Times S unda Ma azine The B ellman o y g , , The Cath lic W orld P etr : A Ma azine Verse o , o y g of , AC KNOWLEDGMENT ’ The S mart S et Munse s Ma azine P u ck , y g and a curiously assorted company, highly expressive of the catholicity o f the mind these pages reflect . on The article Hilaire Belloc , originally one of ’ Am Kilmer s lectures , was first printed in the erican ’ “ edition of Belloc s Verses . The early poems have ’ A been chosen from Kilmer s first book , Summer ” out n of Love, now of pri t, rights to which are held M . by rs. Aline Kilmer Poems not otherwise cred ite d have been reprinted from the volumes already publi shed by George H . Doran Company . R . C . H 1 9 1 8 . New York, CONTENTS VOLUIWE ONE POEMS FROM FRANCE ROUGE BOUQU ET THE PEACEMAKE R PRAYER OF A SO LDIER I N FRANCE E - WHEN TH SI! TY NINTH COMES BACK . MIRAGE DU CANTONMENT POEMS AT HOME HOUSES THE PROUD POET LIONEL JOHNSON FATHER GERAR HOP INS S . J D K , THE ROBE OF CHRIST TH E SINGING GIRL THE ANNUNCIATION TH E VISITATION 153 CONTENTS E IZ B SP S QUEEN L A ETH EAK . I N ME MORY OF RUPERT BROOKE TH E NEW SCHOOL EASTER WEEK . THE CATHEDRAL OF KINGS TH E WHITE SHIPS AND THE RED OLD POETS DELICATESSEN ’ SERVANT GIRL AND GROCER S BOY WEALTH . M R I N A T . THE APARTMENT HOUSE AS WINDS THAT BLOW AGAINST A STAR L ST . AURENCE T Y P KILL HIMS o A OUNG OET WHO ED ELF . THE ROSARY VISION R I P S TO CE TA N OET . POETS CONTENTS PAGE ' To A BLACKB IRD AND HIS MATE WHO DI E D IN THE SPRING 213 THE FO U RTH SH E PH ERD 2 15 2 18 MOUNT HO UVE NKO PF 219 THE HOUSE 220 223 226 227 EARLY POEMS I N A BO OK SLEN ER YO R H N S D U A D . S EEP SONG L . TRANSFIGUR ATION FO R A BI RTH DAY PRINCESS BALLADE LULLABY FOR A BABY FAIRY A DEAD POET TH E MAD FIDDLER E TH GRASS IN MADISON SQUARE . SAID THE ROSE M M RP SIS ETA O HO . FO R A CHI LD THE CLO E S N TO A UD D U ( . THE ’ BEA U TY S HAI R ILLUSTRATIONS PA GE “ FA c- SIMILE OF AUTO GRAPH MANUS CRIPT OF THE PEACEMAKER JOYCE KILMER AGE 21 , MEMOIR T IS the felicity o f these pages that they cannot i l. i s be dul It their merit, pecul ar in such a memoir, that they cannot be sad . It is their novelty that they can be restricted in appeal only by the varieties of the human species . It is their good fortune that they can be extraordinarily frank . It is their virtue that they cannot fail to do u nm e asur A nd . able good . it is their luck to abide many days With their subject how could it be otherwise ? hr They make not a wreath , but a c onicle , and in t heir assembled facts tell a bright chapter in the his o o i one tory f ur t me . If there is word which more than any other should be linked with the name of this gallant figure now claimed ( and rightly) by so certaml is many elements of the nation, that word y “Am ” . a so erican A char cter and a career racy, typical of all that everybody likes t o beli eve that at h our best we are, can hardly be matched, I t ink, out side of stories . I Joyce Kilmer was reported in the papers as hav ing said, just before he sailed for France, that he “ ” was was half Irish, and that why he belonged with l 17 l MEMOIR - i the boys of the Sixty n nth . His birth was not ex tl . ac y eloquent of this fact Though , indeed, he was , as will appear, a much more ardent Irishman than — many an Irishman born that is , in the sense of keenly savouring those things which are fine in the t Irish character , and with charac eristic gusto feel in f n . gwithin himself an a fi ity with them Later, in a letter from France to his wife , he was more ex pli cit on this point : As to the matter o f my own blood (you men tioned this in a previous letter ) I did indeed tell a good friend of mine who edits the book-review page “ ” o f a Chicago paper that I was half Irish . But I have never been a mathematician . The point I wished to mak e was that a large percentage—which — I have a perfect right to call half o f my ancestry o f ou to was Irish . For proof this , y have only refer to the volumes containing the histories o f my moth ’ ’ r e s and my father s families . Of course I am one Am American, but cannot be pure erican in ne blood unless o is an Indian . And I have the good fortune to be able to claim , largely because of the wise matrimonial selections o f my progenitors o n ’ both sides , Irish blood . And don t let anyone pub c to lish a statement ontrary this . in He also, a letter from France , quoted with s ar r D ufi much reli h the rem k of Fathe Francis P . y [ 1 8] MEMOIR that he was half German and half human . English and S cotch st rains made up another half t or three quar ers . The English goes straight back Kilb urne to one Thomas , church warden at Wood dilton, near Newmarket , in Cambridgeshire, who “ ” 1 63 8 was came to Connecticut in . The e lost apparently in Massachusetts , and the word became, ’ as in his mother s maiden name , Kilburn . di - Sol er blood, too , flowed in his veins though it is likely that this fact for the first tim e occurred to r - him , if at all, when his natu e rose white hot to was so sa on arms . He , to y, a Colonial Dame both ’ as o f sides , members both his father s and his moth ’ er s family fought in the American Revolution ; and ’ members of his father s family in the French and Indian wars . Alfred Joyce Kilmer ( as he was christened) was 6 born at New Brunswick , New Jersey, December , 1 886 son o f , Annie Kilburn and Frederick Kilmer . Though he seems always to have been, in familiar l address and allusion , called Joyce , the A fred did not disappear from his address and signature until o f he began , as more or less a professional writer, of to publish his work , when it went the way the i ’ Newton in Mr . Tark ngton s name , and the Enoch ’ “ ” . r in Mr Bennett s . Then Joyce Kilmer acqui ed a [1 9 ] MEMOIR fine hum orous disdain for what he regarded as the of h or florid note in literary signatures t ree words ( , o f worse still to his mind, the A . Joyce kind thing) and he enj oyed handing down , with much relish of o f the final and judicial character his utterance, the opinion that the proper sort of a trademark, so to sa f or y, success in letters was something short, sa t o pointed , easy to y and remember, such as Rud 0 yard Kipling, Mark Twain, .