Anthology of the poetry of the West Indies

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ANTHOLO Y 0

Of

THE POETRY OF THE VTEST INDIES

Chosen and Edited

By

W. Adolphe Roberts, O.B.E. ,and Wycliffe Bennett

With Introductory Essay and Appendix by 7.ycliffe Bonnett

FOREP7ORI) BY SIR I1AURICE 3O17MA

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ANTHOLOGY OF WEST INDIAN POETRY

CONTENTS

Frontispiece
Foreword
Introductory Essay

Pe euty

J. E. Clare tM-rlc^A
Sir Ma1irice Bowra
Wycliffe Bennett

1. H. S. Bunbury (1843-1920)
(1) The West Indies
2. Henry Dalton (1858- ) f' <
(1) Five Indian Tribes
3. Baron Olivier of Ramsden (1859-1943)
(1) St. Mary's, Northside

/4. Arabel Moulton-Barrett ((C8601953)
(1) The Lost Mate

5. H. C. Bennett (1867-
(1) On a Certain Prospect froet the Hills of Jrmzaaio

y/6. Nellie Olson (1869-1956)
(1) John-to-Whit

7. Tom Redcam (1870-1933)
1 San Gloria (lyric)
2 Extract from San Gloria (play)
3 Spanish Town
4) Cuba (1895)
5) Orange Valley, St, Ann
6) The Legionary of Life
7 Now the Lignum Vitae Blows

/ 8. Lena Kent (1870 )
(1) The Hills of St. Andrew
(2) The Measure

9. Cyril N. King (1872- )
(1) I Saw Limonta Sleeping

10. Arthur Nicholas (1875-1934)
September --t
Arcadia p 4
3) The Gift

12.
C j

Tropica
(1)

(1879- )
When Nature Calls

Clara Naud Garrett (1880-1958)
MI) Dedication
New Born

13. Constance Hollar (1880-1945
1 PFlaming June
S2 The Cup of Life
(3 Yellow

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14, Reginald H!. Hurray (1883- )
(1 Song of the Blue Mounta:
(2) The Road

15.' > W. Adolphe Roberts (1886- '<' )

in Stream

1 The haroon Girl 8o
2. Peacocks L C
3 The Cat Is
4 Morgan
5) On a Honunent to MIarti
6) New York
7) Vieux Carre
(8) La Gloire
(9) Vlaanelle of the Sad P(
(10) Vilanelle of the Livin

v 1, 3 .//)
S' d, C I e

/andh W (l^A^/n 4'^*^ 3/^)
i

oet
g Pan

16. Claude McKay (1890-1948)
-1 I Shall Return
2 America
3 If VUe Hust Die
4 St. Isaacs Church, Petrograd
5 Through Agony
6 The Harlen Dancer
7 Baptism
8 Flame-Heart
9) The Outcast

17. Frank Collynore (1893- .

Beneath'the Casuarlnas
Return
By Lamplight
Portrait of Mr. X
So this is Love

Ti Ce-o (P t^) (

a. rt1'W-, i.; ^ (73 *7
,~ ,, -; (IDj~/~ i 3`7

18. Ernest A. Carr (189 -

A. I. Clarke (189 )
(1) The Rice Planters
VT. T. Barnes (189 )
(1) Song of the Pedlar
Agnes iMoxwell-Hall (1894- )

(1) Jniaica Market "L3"'(
22. V J. E. Clare McFarlane (1894- '/4 2- )

)1 Villanelle of lInortal Love
2 Remember Now
5 Port Royal
4 Quia MIultum Arnavit
5 Extract from Daphne
6 On National Vanity
7 Away to the 7Woodlands
(8 VIlanelle of the Ceasing Shadows

25, H. M. natson (1896- )
(1) How Shall I Sit in Dreamy Indolence
2 Fron out the lonelinebs..

24. W. 0. McDonald (189 -
(1) Let Us Beawre Lest *..
254 Albinia Catherine Hutton (1894-
(1) Up A2ong the Motntain Passes

19.

20.

l 21,

A '

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t7) 2
3
4
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3.

./ 26. Barbara Stephanie Ornsby (1899-
(1) A Certain Beggar, Nancd Lazarus

27. H. A. Vaughan (1901-
1 To the Unborn Leader
2 In Absence
3 Dark Voices
4 The Tree
28. P. H. Sherlock (1902- )

frj.6d C&-14 Lc n-^ (P / 4 */

(1) Jamaican Fisherman
(2 A Beauty Too of Twisted Trees
3 Pocomania u f 9if (I ,0 p 3'
4 Paradise / -
(5 Nightfall, at Sauters
6 A Sword of Flame
7 Sleep Time, Boy
8 Trees His Testament
29. Una Marson (1905-

(1) Nightfall

30.- Roger ais (1905- "i. )

1) The Wind is not a Lyre '
2 A Chorus From George William Gordon (play)
3 1.en of Ideas (chorus from George William Gordon)
4 Orchard
5) All i.en Come to the Hills

31. Gerald Hanilton (1910-

,1 g

(1 Song for a Synthesj
2 Port Royal '~2 /
3) That Summer L :
i

32. Fry Lockett (

(1) Weather in Action
Vivian L. Virtue (1911-

1
2
5 *
()
4
5
6
7
8
9)
10
11)
12)

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Rex Poinciana 37 77) 6,3o Ca
Crickets at Night -
The ',eb 7 ch ,32 )
River and Sea-
Nocturne
Vill.nelle of the Drean
I Have Seen March ...
The Fugitive
Atlantic Moonrise
Beauty
King Solomon and Queen Balkis
Ballade Quem di diligunt adolescons noritur

H. M. Telemaque (1911- )

.()
(2)
(3)

To Those, Hail
Adina .
Roots

35. A. J. Seymour (1914- )
(1) Evensong
23 There Runs A Dream
To a Lady Dead
4 First of August
5 Ovor Guiana, Clouds
6 For Christopher Columbus

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36. George Campbpll (1917- )

1) Release
2 All the tlomen I Have Loved ..
-(3 History Makers
-(4 Litany
5 Magdalene
6 We Tear Our Leaders Down
S(7 Oh! You Build a House
Barbara Ferland (1919-
S1) Expect No Turbulence
2) Ave Maria
Raymond Barrow (1920- ) "aUL o iZ a
(1) Dawn is a Fisherman -
Kenneth Ingram (1921- )
(1) Sheep 3wd ({.^!,p. 3/r)
2) There 7ere Those ...

l a -nu [ 't h

40. H. D. Carberry (1921- ) tqiA fe~ C(i
(1) Nature Ru "U338)
41. U. G. Smith (1921-
(1) Mellow Oboe
2 This Land
(3 Extract from Testament
(4 The Vision Comes and Goes -47
(65 Epstein's "Lucifer"- i/
6 The Harps of Dawn ip
(7) And I will Lift up to the Lips of Life -/70
42. Basil McFarlane (1922-
(1) The Final Man
(2) Elegy, Four O'clock
43. A. L. Hendriks (1922-
1 On this Mountain
2 Old Jamaica Housewife Thinks about the Her
44. Dorothy hitfield (19 -
(1) The Saint
45. Louis Simpson (1923-)
J.amriaica -
2 To the Western World
3) Nine O'clock
46. Geoffrey Drayton (1923-)
1) The Ancient Carib -/77
2 Old Black Beggar
3 The Cobbler
4 Speculations on Uranium
47. Cecil Herbert (1924-
1 The Parrots
2 Song
Lines written on a Train
48, Jan Carew (1924- )
SDrean Spinning
(2 Green Zombies
3) Aiomon Kondi
4) The Charcoal Burner
49. Barnabas Ramon-Fortune (19
(1) The Sea-Reapers

woA Vols .
F 0. ,w & s, .
NW ^^f

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37.

38.

39.

a, 33.)

after

5.

50. ` R. L. C. McFarlane (192 -

(1) The Caterpillar Shears

51.

52< y,

5$.

54.

55.

the Leaf

Hugh Pophan (19 -
(1) U. I.
Neville Dawes (1926 )
Nl3 Acceptance
2) Fugue
E. 1i. Roach (19 -
1' Homnestead .. '
2 To Hy .Mother
53 He Plucked a Burning Stylus... iqj
4) At Grafton Bay tyS
Samuel Selvon (1924 )
(1) Sun
George Lamning (1927-
NI Swans
The Illumined Graves
(3) Forest Hills

0"'56. L..E. Brathwaite (192 -
(1) Machiavelli's Mother
57. Martin Carter (1927 -
(1) WlVords
(2 Weroon VTeroon
(5 Voices
(4 This is the Dark Time My Love
(5) Not Hands Like Mine
58. E. Me G. Keane (19 )
(1 The Palmn
(2 A Carol in 1Minor
*(3 Perhaps Not Now
59. Derek Walcott C(1
1) A Moth and a Firefly
2 A City's Death by Fire
3) The Absolute Sea
(4 Extract front Henri Christophe (play)
5 As John to Patmos --p-J-7
6 Letter to Margaret
.(7) In a green night
60. Denis Scott (1939-
(1) Let Black Hands Grow ...

Appendix

Federation, the Units and their
Culture

WVycliffe Bennett

Acknowledgements

SBiographical Notes

X Index of First Lines

> Index of Authors

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FRONTISPIECE

But thou, 0 Beauty, art .a pledge
That there is purpose in thy mould --
That yet beyond th' horizon's edge
A Summerland that grows not old,
Nor yields to Winter's dread embrace
Its heritage of green and gold --
And thou shalt grow from grace to grace,
Immortal in thy native place.

J. E. Clare McFarlane.

.. .. ..-* "... . ... .. .. ..... ....., .. .. ..-.- .......". i.. ,, .^i +.i + ......... ... ... ....... .. .

The Poetry of the West Indies

Foreword

Sir Hiaurice Bowra

Readers of English poetry have not always paid much attention to its more
alst'.nt manifestations. It took long to persuade our home-bred critics that American poetry
exLsted powerfully in its own right, with its own spirit and its own intonations, and that it
was .ot a pale imitation of the English article but a sturdy, native growth in its own home,
front vhich English writers might well learn profitable lessons. This they now know, and
the., hrve turned their attention elsewhere, to Canada, South Africa, and Australia, to see
tf something similar can be found. Nor have they been disappointed. As the English-
Scaking peoples have developed new ways of life in lands far from their original island, they
have turned to the most English of all arts, poetry, and sought to express in it their
special experiences. Inevitably there are differences between these poems and the home-
bred product differences of spirit, of background, of landscape, of imagery, of speech, -
oita these are to be welcomed because they give new opportunities to a language highly trained
to poetry and open prospects of experiment at a time when at home the standardising grip of
a metropolitan culture has destroyed much of the strength and variety which came from local
idiosyncrasies. No doubt well-informed people have kno-n for some time that poetry was
written in the YTest Indies, but it has not been easy to get hold of it or see it in its true
character or full range. The anthology, edited by Mr. Roberts and !ir. Bennett cannot
strictly be said to meet a need, since such a need was hardly felt to exist, but it does
Something much bettor: it reveals from many angles a scope of imaginative experience, a
constant, devoted, wide-spread effort to put into memorable words the feelings and fancies
and ;houghts of the varied peoples of the islands and coast-lands of the Caribbean Sea.

It would be foolish to expect this poetry to resemble at all points the kind of
youtry that is written in England. It does not, and it should not, and we may be grateful
Vor it. From its beginnings it has reflected a physical setting which is not only very
unlike our own but it its huge sweep from the Bahamas to British Guiana, from the Leeward
Inands to British Honduras, has its own enthralling variety. That holds its many separate
lands together is the sea, and the sea gives to its varied peoples a feeling of unity and a
c imunity of aims. It shapes characters, and outlooks and destinies, brings together the
rost disparate peoples into a common understanding of hopes and risks, and stirs that lively
UZaflreness, so essential to poetry, of man's inescapable dependence on nature and of the part
uhich, in its terrible detachment, it plays in his life. Thoile the sea is the great link
between separate lands, the lands themselves have a brilliance and a luxuriance, a tropical
profusion of colour, that are quite alien to northern countries and provide a setting which
imposes its powerful personality on the themes of poetry. The peoples of the WJest Indies
3iVe in close touch with nature, and with them it is more insistent and more violent than
"ith us. They have no large cities and know what it is to pass long hours under the open
6Lj; their taste for bright colours and vivid effects is fostered by the gorgeous appear-
4nc4a Qf flowers and birds; for the most part their occupations bring them into lively
intimacy with the earth and enrich their sensibilities with all the natural sights and sour-
.w.ich are the oldest and richest source of poetical imagery. The West Indies catch the
imagination of those who know them, and the poetry which they inspire is indeed their own
/its....

its affection for visible splendours and in its response to the unrestrained moods
of tropical nature as it shapes and determines the moods of men.
On this scene, in itself so challenging, human beings have played more than
their ordinary share of drama. Long before Columbus came, what is now British
Honduras was a home of the elaborate 1Iayan civilization, w-hose monuments still rise
above the tangled undergrowth of forests. After the fantastic inruption of the
conquistadors the 'Jest Indies entered on a long career of greedy ambitions and
reckless risk, of merciless rivalries between Spaniards, English, French, and Dutch,
of inhuman savagery to the defenceless aboriginal peoples, of the unforgotten and
unforgiven horrors of the slave trade. Each of these has left its enduring mark
on the memories and the mentality of the inhabitants. It is a mixed world, sprung
from many sources and tested by many brutalities, and yet it is now a single world,
with its o;n characteristics, which have been fashioned in cruel fires and have yet
triumphed over the feuds of centuries, the divisions of caste and class and colour,
the arrogant claims of privilege and the dark resentments of the injured and the
wronged. In the last century the Vost Indies have found peace with themselves and
become conscious that they too have their own place in the scheme of human things.
They can now look around and observe themselves in their own setting and see what
it brings and what it means, and in this spirit they have developed their taste and
their proficiency for poetry. It is their reward and their consolation for what
they have endured, but it is also much more. It. gives a lasting shape to their
visionn of life, enables them to see themselves more clearly, and brings them into
the consciousness of other peoples who have for too long known next to nothing
about them. As the English language has moved to fresh fields..aroud- the.world,
it has kept its old pride and pleasure in itself, and in the West Indies it has
found many new spheres of the consciousness for its exercise and display.
Though the poems in this anthology are all written in English, they have
their onm savour which is truly West Indian and makes itself progressively more
felt as the poets move further away from English models and speak in their own
lively words. Behind them lies the long history of English poetry, with all its
exploitation of forms and themes, its response to European influence, its subtle,
not too self-assertive workmanship. This was the heritage which fell to West
Indian writers, and at first perhaps they were a little too impressed by it, a
little too eager to feel that they must rival English poets in their own field.
Yet from the start they had much that English poets lacked, not merely in their
background but in their relation to literature. They had their own songs and
their own music, which gave them an ear attuned to rhythms beyond the reach of more
formal English songs; they had their connections with other races, each of whom
had its ovm art of words and helped to expand the scope of poetry; they had their .
delightful temperaments, which burst easily into song and, in their ready response
to passing events, are not afraid of the utmost candour about themselves. In
recent years the enormous changes in the technique of poetry and its readiness to
try new methods have encouraged 'West Indians to enjoy the new liberties allowed to
verse, and this deliverance from the stricter methods of the old style has without
doubt enabled them to speak more freely of themselves in their own idiom. They
have found that self-confidence which is indispensable to the practice of the fine
arts, and we may not only enjoy what they write for its own sake but look forward
/t o......

3.

to other developments in a field which is so clearly made for
poetry and, with its rich, unexploited resources, surely promises
advance to new, even more striking successes.

C. II. Bowra

Vadham College
Oxford.

THE POETRY OF THE WEST INDIES

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
by
tWVYCLIFFE BENNETT

.When at the Institute of Jamaica, during the month of June, 1951, The
; ;try League of Jamaica sponsored the first exposition of the poetry of the
Caribbean, they initiated a study of comparative themes, which was soon to be
S:cn up afterwards by other hands. The exhibition demonstrated graphically
that, of all the art forms, poetry afforded the greatest insight into the spiritual
development of the emergent West Indian society. But it did much more than that.
It suggested how fundamentally related West Indian culture was to those of the
. :'-nrh-, Spanish-.,: nd; but;hspeakinladis;and indicated that it was against the
background of the other literatures of the region, and in the full perspective of
world letters, that the literature of each language group could be best studied
and appreciated.

A, J. Seymour, the British Guianese poet, described the exhibition as "an
anthology-in-situ".1 It embraced The Greater Antilles, The Lesser Antilles,
Central America and French, Dutch and British Guiana, Poems were displayed in
their original tongues by means of the printed word, lectures and recitals, and
included the conscious literary and folk verse in papiamentu, patois and other
dialects. Language barriers were overcome by English verse translations, dating
back to the American poets, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and William Cullen Bryant.

Obviously, the cultures were more delimited by language, than by race,
the sea or political boundaries. But there were several paradoxes: linguistic
differences aside, there was greater resemblance between the poetry of Spanish-
speaking Cuba and French-speaking Haiti, during the second half of the nineteenth
century, than between that of Cuba and the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic,
during the same period; but for the fact that whereas the bulk of Puerto Rican
verso, which is in Spanish, is oriented towards the sea, and that of Jamaica,
which is in English, towards the hills, there was greater similarity between those
two literatures than between that of Puerto Rico and, say, Costa Rica, which is
Spanish-speaking; also, belated development in the Dutch countries struck- a note
comparable with that of the smaller British West Indian territories.

The literatures, nevertheless, had several features in common. To begin
with, there was a parallel development, though not by any means a uniform one, or
necessarily taking place at the same time. The chief determining forces seemed
to have been, firstly, a dependence upon European influences borne across the
Atlantic upon the trajectory of language, and, secondly, the Caribbean panorama
itself. There were also indications of some likely courses each literature might
have taken earlier in its history, had there been an awareness among writers of
what was happening in the other languages.

/2 ...

"Literature cannot be conceived in a vacuum", says David Daichess,
"since it is the result of a society, of a special way of viewing life at a
particular time and by a particular group of men".2

It will be to my purpose, therefore, briefly to attempt to discover
a synthesis in Caribbean culture; and to show how this synthesis is expressed
in our poetry, while quoting examples from the lands united by English speech.
Also, in view of the growing reputation of West Indian writers at home and
abroad, it might prove useful, at this stage, to show how this literature is
related to the main currents of world letters, while adding a new dimension of
its own. In the words of the Jamaican poet, Gerald Hamilton -

I was salt water, washing all alien shores,
Citizen of the world, calling no land home,
Creature of flux and change.
Burns in my blood the icy fire of Norway
The hot red flame of Africa
The even glow of England.

Now tides compel into this inland sea,
Out of my life, out of this land shall grow
kruit strong with the salt's sharp bitterness,
Rose warm with the sun's red glow,
Song for eternity,
Song for a synthesis.

This anthology of West Indian poetry sets out to be definitive rather
than comprehensive. It forms part of a larger collection, which was started
some ten years ago, embracing the lands represented at the exhibition.

Apart from the considerable corpus of auxiliary poetry in English
translation, by American, English and West Indian authors, there is also some
admirable work originally written in English by bi-lingual poets of the Carib-
bean. (Salomon de la Selva of Nicaragua is perhaps the best known of them).
The fact is mentioned here, but neither the translations nor the original poems
in English by non-West Indian writers fall within the scope of the present
collection. Conversely, Daniel Thaley ofthe British Island of Dominica, who
has published several volumes in French, has been omitted.

The English-speaking Caribbean covers a widely scattered geographical
area. It includes all those lands, printed in red on the-map, that form part
of the great arc of islands, stretching northwest from halfway up the coast of
Florida, in the United States of America, southeast to Trinidad at the mouth of
the Orinoco River, in Venezuela, and embraces the two mainland territories of
British Honduras in Central America and British Guiana on the shoulder of the
South American continent.

Selections have been included from Jamaica; Trinidad; Barbados; The
Leeward Islands; British Guiana; and British Honduras. The last two named are
not part of the official Federation of the West Indies. There are, however,
three good reasons for including them: firstly, they share the colonial history
of the British Caribbean; secondly, "West Indies" is the generic term by which
people outside the region identify the English-speaking lands; and thirdly, from
';he West Indian point of view, culturally they complete the Caribbean scene.
/3...

2.
Language, Habitat, Race and Tradition

In a discussion of West Indian literature some years ago, the English
writer, Phyllis Bottomo, said to me: "It's a pity you haven's got your own
language, isn't it?" To which I, as a Jamaican, replied: "I was born to the
English language".

Her question was spontaneous, but it had an easy subtlety, She was not
necessarily advocating a new language, such as papiamentu, patois or any of the
other dialects in which some of our Caribbean poets have written, but she felt
that West Indians had a good deal to say that could be best said in a West Indian
way. Centuries of use have developed the official languages into highly polish-
ed instruments of expression, with an almost unlimited capacity for communication.
At least three of them, namely English, French and Spanish,- contain great litera-
tures, the immortal works of some of history's greatest writers. The would-be
author is led to believe, and his readers too, that anything he has to say must be
capable of expression in a language through which so many writers before him have
convoyed so much. On the other hand, this is a great challenge: for his work is
automatically judged in terms of what has already been done in the language. Do
the fresh experiences offered by the new habitat to which these European languages
have been transplanted, lose their authenticity when served up in a conventional
European manner? Do the peoples who have emerged, and are emerging, have any-
I thing to add to the already huge store of emotional and intellectual experiences
that they can express' not merely adequately, but inevitably in these tongues?
Or must language be used in a new way, as our poets are doing when they reproduce
local speech habits, write in dialect or introduce aboriginal and African words into
their work?

In historical sequence, the main influences in Caribbean life and
letters are the local and aboriginal, the European, the African and that of
India, the East Indies and China.

In the area's modern history, which began with the Discovery and.the
Conquest, the European languages have been the official languages of the ruling
classes. Some of the minorities still actively preserve their ancient tongues
and customs and worship in the manner of their forefathers; but the Negroes who
make up the bulk of most of the populations, have, in the main, lost their African
languages and dialects, as an active means of everyday communication. As correct
and proper use of the official languages has gone hand in hand with economic
advancement and social distinction, it should not be surprising to find that at
least in form, the great mass of Caribbean literature has been based upon a pre-
cise citationn of European models.

With the European languages, the peoples of the region acquired national
memories, ideas, legends and traditions that pass from generation to generation
through these languages. Our heterogeneous populations formed societies essen-
tially European in character, and shared with Western Europe the classics of

/4.

W' .. ... .. .. ..

.4.

Groeco and Rome and the translations of the Bible. The knowledge and wisdom
S accumulatedd in these languages is part of the Caribbean tradition. The corollary
is that in so far as Caribbean writers are able to make fresh and original use of
already existing models, European literature is not merely an influence, but a
legitimate artistic tradition.
It is a phenomenon of Caribbean society that in general the peoples of

The Greater Antilles are ethnologically an admixture, in varying degrees, of
African, European and Asian types imported into the region, and have very little
in their culture that is recognisably indigenous. Consequently, the word
"native" has little or no real aboriginal significance. This is not true of
the mainland countries, however, where the populations contain large percentages
of descendants of the Indians found by the conquistadors. Anthropologists
believe that the great trek of man up through Asia, across the Bering Strait,
and down into the Americas may well have taken place between ten and twenty
thousand years ago. What, therefore, of the local tradition, the tradition
indigenous to the region?

In a true sense, this tradition derives from the aboriginees the
Aztccs, the Mayas, the Caribs, the Arawaks. Like other peoples in similar
stages of development, they had their communal poetry. The Aztecs, for example,
as Garci'a Icazbalcet,-puts it, had their ritual chants dealing with historical
episodes and the study of hieroglyphics. In the words of Padre Jose de Acosta:

In the province of Yucatan, where the bishopric
of Honduras is located, there were certain books
in which the native scholars had noted down their
calendar system and their ancient customs. All
were things which indicated great inquisitiveness
and diligence. But it seemed to one of our priests
that they were tokens of sorcery and magic, and he
decided that they should be burned, a deed that was
later lamented, not only by the Indians, but also by
the Spaniards, who wanted to learn the secrets of
the land. 2

It cannot be stated with any certainty, however, that poetry as a con-
scious literary effort existed among the natives. According to Professor Arturo
Torres-Rioseco, scholars who have been trying to establish the authenticity of
the poems of Netzahualcoyotl in Mexico and the Quechua origin of Ollanta, are
unable to formulate any assured pronouncement, because it is an accepted fact that
some of the missionaries wrote plays and poetry in the native tongues. What we
can say is that certain oral traditions were incorporated into the compositions
written by sixteenth century poets; and that these legends stimulated the
writers to exercise their own imagination, thus initiating what has been called
the nativist cycle of New World literature.3

This nativist cycle continues down to the present day. Originally, it
rade use of local colour, folkloric elements, and celebrated famous battles and
the exploits and personalities of heroes and heroines. Because it often dealt
with the aboriginal Indian, it is sometimes referred to as the Indianist cycle.

..... ... *

i *5.

S: soe50 South American countries, namely Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, it has been
i ., the more comprehensive terminology of indigenism. There is a good deal of
hiS typo of verse in Latin American literature, the most famous poem being per-
S.. the gauchesque epic, martin Fierro by by Jose Hernandez, published in Buenos
I :3s in 1872. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow may have been moved to write his
S1,:.. th. by his knowledge of Chateaubriand or by his frequent excursions into
a rnic American letters. In the Antilles, this body of indigenist literature is
S -,: very great, but we may mention The Maroon Girl by T7. Adolphe Roberts of Jamaica;
". ;: ancient Carib by Geoffrey Drayton of Barbados; and Aretos (an Arawak poem) by
i I lo Roumer of Haiti. There are also some poems dealing with or alluding to
i :n::, the legendary Arawak chieftainess of Hispaniola, among which may be noted
S.s33C by Jose Joaquin Perez and Salome Ureha de Henriquez of the Dominican Republic,
.... Luc Grimard of Haiti.

Critics have written.of a specific Indian melancholy and mystical resigna-
Stion in nativist literature, but as R.H. Hays has observed, melancholy is also a
:y.bolist characteristic, and perhaps more truly Indian qualities can be found in
S cts of mixed blood who do not profess to be indigenists at all.4 In this context,
it might also be useful to consider the quality of mystical resignation with its
S..rcr core of irony, which one finds in the poem, Conceptio del estudiante nuevo,
by the Cuban poet of Chinese extraction, Regino Pedroso; or the melancholy lyricism
Sv:dch informs the novel, A Brighter Sun, by the Trinidadian, Samuel Selvon, whose
S;.cstors came directly from India.

j The aboriginal tongues have been furnishing European vocabularies with
r.=cs and words proper to new world experience; and overtones of Mayan and Arawak
j ltures are traceable in such contemporary mainland poets as Raymond Barrow of
i;ish Honduras, and A. J. Seymour, Martin Carter and Ian Carew of British Guiana.
:"n Indianism becomes more evolved, and ceases to be concerned principally-with
S:c picturesque and topographical, aboriginal mythology might assist Nature to
S c a now cosmic dimension to Caribbean poetry. Perhaps Ian Carew is suggesting
S'-. possibility in his poem Aiomon Kondi :

S/ Aimon Kondi, dweller in the heights
saw with his condor eye
} a blue, buck-crab sky
and white sun blazing untamed
like fury or pain in a jaguar,
white sun lashing like Llancro whip,
White sun stewing jungles green
blinding the hunter's trail,
white sun stalking like an ocelot
arched and indolent with hunger,
white sun lying on black rivers like a lover,
White sun silvering the rain...
and night drowning starlight
and tinamous singing, singing
and wind strumming liana vines.
Aiomon Kondi, sculptor with crude hands
Carved godheads on Roraima of the red rock
and when Kabo Tano, Thunder God promised no rain,
harvested clouds with scythes of lightning
that he might sit for ever in the heights
with Arawidi, spirit of the white sun.

/6. .

SV7With the development of national consciousness and the accompanying
desire to vindicate the masses as a creative force, indigenism has become a
S raCscrtion of the cultural heritage of both the Indian and Negro elements of
S C.ribbean society. Adolphe Roberts' sonnet, The Maroon Girl, clearly,has this
z:-F;ivation: ,

S' I see her on a lonely forest track,
Her level brows made salient by the sheen
| Of flesh the hue of cinnamon. The clean
Blood of the hunted, vanished Arawak
i Flows in her veins with blood of white and black.
S. Maternal, noble-breasted is her mien;
She is a peasant, yet she is a queen.
She is Jamaica poised against attack.
I 'Her woods are hung with orchids; the still flame
Of red hibiscus lights her path, and starred
J ,With orange and coffee blossoms is her yard.
Fabulous, pitted mountains close the frame.
She stands on ground for which her fathers died;
Figure of savage beauty, figure of pride.

Indigenism springs from geographical compulsion. It represents both a
conscious and sub-conscious effort on the part of creative artists to be in con-
Stct with their environment. It fires the imagination of poet, novelist and
I: drnatist; painter, sculptor, choreographer and musician. It appears in all
types of poetry-narrative, descriptive, epic and romantic; parnassian, symbolist,
v_.nguardist, lyrico-dramatic. Because it is either a direct or an oblique treat-
Szcnt of environment, it is often a manifestation of popular regionalism. In the
cyvlution of New World letters, it has been given such names as nativism, Indianism,
I r .ucho literature, new worldism, Negro poetry or Afro-Antilleanism; and lastly,
i cst Indianism.

It is in the Afro-Antillean movement that indigenism comes nearest to
I rating a new artistic modality. Whereas Indianism was hardly ever influenced
j .y Indian folk-song, in Afro-Antilleanisn an attempt has boon made to recapture
.'frican rhythms and speech patterns handed do;:n by oral tradition, and to introduce
i-,to formal poetry such dance-lyric forms as the rumba and the son. The founder of
School, Nicolas Guillen, the Cuban mulatto poet, has had many followers, both
S.. the Caribbean and on the South American continent. Among his more famous poems
|'. ScnsenmayW (an adaptation of a traditional magical incantation to protect a man
lin a snake), Balada de los dos abuelos and Diana. I have heard Sensemaya, in
SEnglish verse translation by the North American poet, Langston Hughes, performed
'-h brilliant results by speaking choirs in Speech Festivals in Jamaica.

Guilldn's work is not far removed in spirit and purpose from that of Lang-
': Hughes. The North American bard has a similar deep disquiet and social aware-
5, has made comparable use of such indigenous American forms as the blues and
i"' succssfully reproduced in his verse the speech patterns of the ordinary Amri-

So long daddy, aint you heard
The boogie woogie rumble of a dream deferred?

/7... .

7.

I named Nicols Guillen's racial origin, in order to say that many of
hi3 alDmost equally well-known followers have no Negro blood in their veins.
.ut whereas many of these poets, among them Emilio Ballagas of Cuba and Luis
2..lMs Matos of Puerto Rico almost made a cult of the picturesque, of Negro sen-
ality and eroticism, Nicolas Guillen abandoned the movement and began writi.
t .llds somewhat in the Spanish tradition, perhaps as a more developed instrument
fr expressing the soul and anguish of his race.

George Campbell, the Jamaican poet, would have been familiar with the
,rk of Langston Hughes, but the English-speaking territories have been so
1latedc from the intellectual and social life of the other linguistic groups in
t;l. past, that I would hazard that Mir. Campbell was unaware of the existence of
the Afro-Antillean school, when he published his First Poems in 1945. There is
primitive, often athletic quality in Campbell's verses; and in these national-
i:t days of heated controversy for and against West Indianism in art, one might
:.; fullyy re-state that all art asks is that form should be married to content.
".Thre is. economy, compression and selection in his History Makers. Punctuation
::arks would be redundant. It is not even necessary to have had previous know-
egdoe of what he is writing about: the imagery is authentic -

Women stone breakers
Hammers and rocks
Tired child makers
Haphazard frocks
SStrong thigh
SRigin head
Bent nigh
Hard white piles
of stone
Under hot sky
In the gully bed.
11.
No smiles
No sigh
No moan.
111.
Women child bearers
Pregnant frocks
k Wilful toil sharers
History makers
Hammers and rocks.

3.
I: Independence, Ronanticism and After

From our examination of the interaction between language, habitat, race
..& tradition, it seems possible to make the following observations:

(1) Writers inherit at once the freedom and bondage of language.
This paradox is the creative writer's eternal challenge; but
in the Caribbean and other territories, to which colonialism
has brought languages from overseas, the problem is not only
one of creating a new stylisation- a thirL which the great
artist always considers when he has something new and 3. :t,;nt

8.

to say- but also one of adapting language to give
organiclexpression to the new habitat.

i (11) Creative artists can neither escape their environment nor
repudiate their past. Hore particularly, their past is
contained in the history of their community, and in a more
general sense, in the language that contains that history.

ITo confine our attention, therefore, to the purely indigenous aspects
cf our literary growth, would be to over-simplify our discussion, and to ignore
the bifurcation, which has been the main structure in the development of Carib-
bean literature. At any time in any society there may be more than one litera-
ture existing side by side; and, in addition to what we have variously described
| indigenism, there is another branch of development the development condi-
tioncd by our attachment to the sources of Western Civilisation- a development
that has been part of the story of Western man.

In the first place, there has been the long apprenticeship, the colonial
period, during which writers copied the models of the metropolitan masters with
zcticulous care- and even wrote in Latin during the earlier period as was at
that time the fashion in Western Europe. Some of these early efforts in Latin
showed competence in versification, but Time has consigned them to the category
of museum pieces. Students of West Indian history will have read, in Gardner's
historyy of Jamaica, the extract from the poem in Latin by Francis Williams the
son of two free Negroes, who was sent by the Duke of Ibntague to England for a
S first-rate education (including Cambridge University)....

It seems an open secret that literatures are plagiaristic, that they
I must cross-breed or die. Early Latin borrowed from early Greek. The English
S morality play, Everyman, which appeared towards the end of the fiftheenth century
= ay have formed the original of, or itself may have been taken from the corros-
; ending Dutch play of Elckerlijk? The Faust legend appears in Calderon's El
S !ligco Prodigioso, Marlowe's Tragical History of Dr. Faustus and Goethe's Faust.
\ I tendal's La Chartreuse de Parme fired Tolstoy to write his great War and Peace.3
Scholars have written volumes on this subject.

j Chauvinists might be tempted to dismiss the beginnings of Caribbean
Literature with a metaphorical shrug of the shoulder, but they represent a
S ".i cipline through which the whole body of our creative literature had to pass;
: : ', in any case, the colonial period is not devoid of distinguished verse of
Sun.versal significance..

Scholars are agreed, however, that in a more accurate sense, the poetic
history of the region opens up with the era of Independence and the beginnings
of a nominally autonomous life. The movement for independence had been gather-
I1: nz-c-ntun from the sixteenth century. Colonialism by is very nature contains
t'4 seeds of its own decay. Some of the more obvious causes of revolt may be
Zln"tioned; commercial monopoly, political absolutism, the evils of slavery, and

/9...

*11

i -f tho times, and re-inforced by man's inborn desire to be free, produced the
vccnt that was to bring inJ,.:p_::,-n-.: eo to the Haitian people. The white Haitians,
..iny of them educated in Europe, could have helped to provide the country with
| h intellectual leadership so badly needed after 1804, but they were annihilated
y Dossalines in an orgy of blood, which drew the rebuke from Toussaint L'Ouver-
S 're: "I said to prune the tree, not to cut it down".7 The blood-thirsty barren-
.'ess of Haitian life during the period has been set forth by the St. Lucian poet,
S;;r-k Walcott, in his chronicle play, Henri Christophe-
Christophe speaks:

I I am a friend of the people.
J You must avoid opportunities of separation;
You kill offenders because of their complexion;
.Where is the ultimate direction of this nation,
An abbatoir of war?

SDessalines replies:

I who was a slave, am now a King,
t And being a king, remember I was a slave;
What shall I live as now, a slave or king?
Being this king chains me to public breath
SWorse than chains. I cannot have a masque
Before some slave scoops up a gutter tale
To fling into my face; I cannot drink
SRed wine, unless the linen rustless blood; I cannot
break bread
Before an archbishop canonizes a body
Broken, stuck like an albatross on the hill of skulls.
Well, I will not listen.
White men are here; for every scar (baring his tunic)
SRaw on my unforgiving stomach, I'll murder children,
I'll riot. I have not grown lunatic, I'll do it,
t I'll do it.
You think I'm not aware of your intrigues,
SMulattoes nnd whites, Brelle and Petion;
I am asking: Argue with history.
Ask history and the white cruelties
SWho broke Boukman, Ogd, Chavannes; ask Rochambeau.
If you will not comply, I'll go.

(Exit)

I :.Tis lack of literate leadership in part explains why the best Haitian antholo-
:, C's are barren of any worthwhile poetry until after 1850, when Oswald Durand
SI.:o0-1906) began to write his verses. Durand wrote in French and in patois
the dialect spoken by some ninety per cent of the Haitian population. Mainly
a was a romantic, but he occasionally struck the parnassian note. He is per-
..-p3 best known today as the author of the patois poem, Choucouno, an English
'.trse translation of which has been given tremendous vougue recently by the
'-.ican and American singer, Harry Belafonte. It is perhaps because of this
1 se in time between independence and the resurgence of normal intellectual
ife that the main body of Haitian poetry during the nineteenth century, as
".-lified in the works of Louise Borno (who served for two terms as President),
.hond Laforest, Seymour Pradel, Damocles Vieux and others has been parnassian
r:ther than romantic in form and sensibility.

/12....

12.

The pro-romantic period of Spanish-Caribbean literature produced, among
r outstanding writers, the Cuban civic poet, Jose Maria Heredia who, in his
..,. poems, En el Teocalli de Cholula (1820) and Canto al Niagara (1824.) was to
S:icipato romanticism in Spain by more than ten years.

The Hispanic American revolution ventured forth upon an ideological base,
S;:, wore mnn of action, but there were also thebricians, scholars, philosophers
ooets. There were Simon Bolivar, Sucre, Hidalgo, San Martn and other magic-
:,-:.rcs to conjure with, and there was Jose Julian Marti, who had two fatherlands,
S .-r. in one of his poems, Cuba and the night. Hispanic American writers grew
.spise the literary dictatorship of Luzan and the Royal Academy as much as
*.,: repudiated the tyrannical policies of Ferdinand VII, In the opinion of the
'r~:fnfine polemist, Sarmiento, Spain could boast neither mathematics, physics,
:.:ry, nor philosophy. Such was the profound hatred against all things Spanish
-:,ri the first half the he nineteenth century, that writers were beginning to
Sfl that the Soanish' language was incapable of expressing modern thought. The
Sr.ticn that helped to cristalise his idea of freedom was also to provide the His-
.-.: American with new literary models. He grappled the French authors to his
1 with hoops of steel Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Lamartine and others, and read
S:r writers in the original in order to reach primary sources of inspiration,
.hcr than come into contact with them at second hand via Spain. According to
S rA:fessor Arturo Torres-Rioseco, "He willingly entered into a cultural vassalage
r, i France, and this was to impart an elegance, a sophistication and technical
t sources to Hispanic American writing, which have become enduring characteristics
I f tht literature".

'7When towards the end of the nineteenth century, romanticism had degenerated
I-to a pose, a reaction began to set in against the wild exuberance and orgiastic
n:a~strosities of the disciples of Victor Hugo and Lamartine. Theophile Gautier
.itiatcd the parnassian school, and this was brought to a flowering under Leconte
| Lisle and Jose Maria de Heredia. As M. Sully Prudhomme sums it up, "it was a
S "-libcrate conspiracy against the excessively facile line, the line which is
`-le and flabby, fluid as water, and as formless". The parnassian has a passion
S r order, harmony, organisation and clarity of idea. Another critic describes
St':'s.-sian as the dialect of the great poet when he lacks the divine, authentic
I '-piration. And in the transition from romanticism'to parnassianism, the
''1icisation of whole generation of Hispanic American writers was complete.

The general level of competence which one finds in late nineteenth and
S-ly twentieth century French-Caribbean poetry, and in the poetry of the same
S:"liod in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, notably in Hojas al viento, by the Cuban
S: Julian del Casal, and in Ruben Dario's Azul and Prosas profanas, is due in
:- s211l measure to the exacting parnassian discipline. If as some authorities
SVlieve, there is a strong element of tropicalism in the French parnassian move-
t it should be remarked that Jose lMaria de Herodia came from Cuba, and was
S"in of his namesake, the author of Canto al Nii agara.

/13....

13.

Born in Santiago de Cuba in 1842, the younger Heredia went to France at
.goc of sixteen., He adopted the French language, and was later to become a
-cr of the Academie Francaise and one of the great stylists of the parnassian
-nt. Here is a translation of one of his sonnets, Le Recif de Corail, by
J.aican poet, Vivian Virtue:
The Coral Reef

The sun discovers, probing the shingled sea,
+ A lurking dawn in the coral woods below
That merge, through hollows where the warm waves flow,
With bloom-like beast and flower pulsating free.
And all that the brine gives colour-anemone,
Moss, and dischevelled week, arn echinus, glow
Rich-patterned, chequering with indigo
The wrinkled roots of the madrepore's pale tree.

SIn splendid mail dimming the living tints
A monstrous figure against the branching glints,
Warding the limpid gloom with indolent sweep;
Then, flashing suddenly a phosphorent fin.
Kindles the crystal depths with exquisite thin
Fires that in gold and pearl and emerald leap.

cannot conclude our references to the Hispanic writing of the Caribbean, with-
Ssaying a few words about the Nicaraguan, Rub'n Dario (1867-1916). Dario is
..r; supreme poet of the region. He is regarded as one of the great poets of the
; 2nish language. In addition to the two publications already mentioned, his
I -rks include Cantos de vida y esperanza (1905), El Canto Errante (1907), El Poema
'Otzio (1910), and Canto a la Argentina (1910). Dari'o introduced symbolism into
;mnish poetry, and from his time on Spanish America challenges Spain for leader-
h5ip in poetry. The fact that Dariio has been discussed as romantic, parnassian,
a~ rrnist, poet of America etc., and that so many aspects of his work are being
S discovered or claimed to be discovered, may be taken as an indication of his essen-
t i universality.

The literary development of the Dutch- and English-speaking Caribbean
a been in the nature of a delayed action.

I hThe bulk of such poetic literature as there exists in the Dutch terri-
S.-:ics has been achieved by two generations of writers: the first began writing
I:z before and after the beginning of the present century, and the second around
S .0. Of the first generation, J. S. Corsen, David Chumaceiro, Darlo Salas and
S'oolschoon of Curacao are the better known. They all wrote in Spanish, the
'u~age of the neighboring republics. J.S. Corsen did some of his best work
S imentu, the language of his well known Atardi (Evening). Of the second
ration, mention must be made of Pierre Lauffer, Rene de Rooy, Nicolds Pina
1. Cha-rles Corsen, grandson of J.S. Corsen. Those poets, some of whom were
tEd in Holland, write both in Dutch and in papiamentu. The basic sensibili-
*f this body of literature has been that of an awakening people- romantic.

Dr. Cola Debrot, the Curacaon writer, sent me the following note some
r'-s ago:

Papiamentu probably started as a means of
communication-'a linu. franca- between
People from different parts of the world.
It was a Jesuit priest, named Schabel, who
gave the first known definition of
papiamentu. In 1704 he wrote about it and
called it a broken Spanish, Papiamentu is
built up from words out of many languages,
mostly Spanish, Dutch, English, French and
Portuguese. Its rhythm shows most resemblance
to Spanish.

It is with the abolition of slavery and the advent of romanticism that
*h:e formal poetry of the English-speaking Caribbean begins. We have been dis-
Sssing this poetry against the parallel developments in the other language
Troups, and in the larger context of world letters. We must now pin our dis-
S;:.: :,s down to the geographical area, which for purposes of this anthology we
:.ve called the West Indies. A brief break-down of the social and cultural back-
-round of the units is given in an appendix. It will now be to our purpose,,
-ith the symbols which we have defined, in Caribbean terms, to indicate the
S development and evolution of the body of verse presented in this anthology.

IV.

SThe Selections and their Authors

Oh, Captain of wide western seas,
J YWhere now thy great soul lives, dost thou
SRecall San Gloria's spice-censed breeze?

1 -White-sandied curves where serried trees
Filed backward as thy sharpened prow
Sheared into foan the racing seas?

| San Gloria's wood-carved mountain frieze
Inthe blue bay is mirrored now,
j As when thy white sail wooed the breeze.

The thunder of insurgent seas
Beats yet the rough reef's ragged brow,
o Roaring by green, far-stretching leas;

Yet through the wood the peony flees,
SAnd frets with gold the night-dark bough
Down the long avenue of trees.

Still flowering guineps tempt the bees,
The yellow guava ripens now,
Rich-hearted ipomea please.

Dost thou remember things like these,
Hear yet the dark-robed woodlandss sough,
Oh, Captain of wide western seas,
Dost thou remember things like these
..here thy great soul inhabits now?

.:oe of my colleagues, in the Poetry League of Jamaica, have often cited the
rogoing poem, Sn Gloria, addressed to Christopher Columbus, as one of the
ctinpts by Tom Redcma to help span the gap between the Discovery and the
i:'s in which he lived. Redcam has had a stronger and profounder historical
I'sc than most other West Indian bards. His poetic drama, also called an

/15 ....

-. .. a'nd such chronicle poems as his Orange ValleJ St. Ann and The Cathedral
S ..i help to substantiate this claim. Born in 1870, he was crowned posthumously
S .his peers, in 1933, the first Poet Laureate df Jamaica. His nephew-in-law,
I .. P. Jacobs, has told ne of references to such things as "Federation" or
I C-cnfedoration" in the Laureate's rough work book, which, I regret to say, I
S hQ never seen. There is a good deal in his writings, apart from the few
i -cccs included in this volume, which show how deeply he understood the West
I ..i'c.n society that was emerging. He was one of the "early Victorian perceivers".
E ; ..as disturbed at the apathetic attitude of the great mass of Jamaicans towards
1 ,-heir country's past. Because he believed that this was the only sure founda-
I ton upon which a vigorous and healthy social life could be built, in his poems
r.l from his editorial chair at The Jamraica i maes, which he occupied from 1900 to
i, i2, he sought to imbue his people with respect for their history. He combined
j the strength of a patriot and the intellectual balance of a philosopher with the
S-pture and wonder of a child. Of the timeless nature of the poem I have just
i quoted, Mr. J. E. Clare McFarlane, Founder and President of the Poetry League of
Jeaaica, writes:

I The mood is one of contemplation, touched with the
strange and sweet melancholy that surrounds a dead
Romance, yet aware of the challenge of the unchanging
scene to sight and smell and hearing. And the effect
is considerably heightened by the appeal to the memory
of one so far removed in time, but so intimately
connected with the present circumstances. In seeking
to invest with permanence the thought and emotion of
the great Discoverer, the poet has succeeded in adding
dignity and memorableness to his verse.1

I Few people brought up in England or in the Colonies during the
S second half of the last century can have escaped the sententious'moralisings of
S the Victorian era, and Tom Redcan was no exception. But in the same way as Lord
ennyson, that great craftsman, within the bounds of his escapist philosophy,
i would d be carried away by his subject matter and produce lines of great moment,
S o was Redcam (unhappily not so often) in his Legionary of Life.

...true to the great host
Of sea and sky, of stars and tides and streams,
Existence's Grand Army, Hosts of Life,
Soldiers of some great purpose that moves on,
I Through evolutions and developments
I To some supreme far triumph yet to be.

When just over thirty years ago, in 1929, Mr. Clare McFarlane
S;blished Voices from Summerland, which was one of the first anthologies of
S:etry from the West Indies to be read in other parts of the world, the Liter-
-y Supplement of the London Times observed:

I We are surprised whenever the far-flung sowing of our
language and thought results in a vigorous literary
growth anywhere except in the accepted centres of English
culture.... Voices from Sinumerland suggests that the canon
of "Dominions" will not be finally made up even when India
and Burma are added to it....

In no other field of cultural and artistic endeavour is the spiritual
development of the West Indies revealed as clearly as in our literature. And
rIthough following the appearance in London in 1948, of the Jamaican and West
in:ian numbers of Life and Letters (and the London Mercury), it is the novelists,
S. to a lesser extent the playwrights, who have been holding the centre of the
stage, and attracting the attention of critics on both sides of the Atlantic, it
shouldd be remembered that it has been the poets who, sometimes with earnest
.zbling beginnings, laid the foundations for the development of West Indian
literature.

Unlike the Spaniards, the English conquerors did not attempt to settle
their colonies and develop a home from home: rather they regarded their Carib-
p cen possessions as large plantations, on which they posted agents to supervise
tho slaves and their work2 It would appear, therefore, that it was not until
after the Abolition of Slavery in 1838, that the conditions were set in train to
-roduce a body of conscious literature; but in trying to analyse the West Indian 4
identity, to understand the West Indian ethos, one finds that one must go much
farther back in time back to the Discovery and the Conquest of the New World by
the Western Europeans. Indeed, from the vantage point of the present, the follow-
ing would seem to be the main determining factors:

1. The Age of Discovery and the Conquest, beginning in 1492, with its
imposition of European upon the aboriginal cultures, and in some
instances the annihilation of the original Indian populations.

2. The introduction into the region of Negroes, Chinese and Indians
and people of other nationalities.

3. The Abolition of Slavery in 1838.

4. The colonial apprenticeship, and the gradual liberalisation of
educational facilities.

5. The years of Unrest or 1930s, and the development of national
consciousness.

6. Commencement of advanced constitutions for the colonies during the
1940s, leading to full internal self-government for some, and the
Federation of the West Indies in 1958.

We have already referred to the difficulties confronting scholars, who
have been trying to establish the Indian origins of poems and plays in the aborigi-
nal tongues. There have been isolated examples of formal poetry by Negroes who
were free before Emancipation: there was the Jamaican, Francis Williams, who was
sent to Cambridge to be educated; in Guianese Poetry, compiled by Mr. N. E. Cameron,
thcre are two poems, Demeraral Farewell and Lines for First of August, 1838, by
Sicon Christian Oliver, another Negro, who died in 1848. However, as in the
United States of America, the vital'contribution of the slave society to New
World literature and music lay'in the Negro Spirituals. They are a commentary on
their times; their other-worldliness provided a spiritual escape from the conti-
tions under which the slaves lived. Some of these spirituals have been reproduced
in Mr. Edric Connor's Songs from Trinidad, arranged for voices, guitar, drum and
b'as by 1r, Gareth Walters, and issued in 1958 by the Oxford University Press. Mr.
Connor's book also contains calypsos, work songs and other folk songs. Calypsos

6I rc now enjoying considerable vogue as a tourist attraction, and are being ex-
.1citcd by singers from other lands, sometimes, alas, not so much for their
intrinsic, artistic value, but as a commercial proposition. It should be
pointed out that the calypso is of Trinidadian origin, and that although the genree
hs been taken up in recent years by entertainers all over the region, particularly
1n the fabulous Jamaican North Coast, it should not be confused with other West
-Indian folk songs, such as the mento, which is proper to Jamaica.

A collection of Jamaican folk songs was made by Mr. Tom Murray, a British
Council Officer, with the assistance of Miss Louise Bennett, and was published in
1951 under the imprimatur of the Oxford University Press.

It was the French writer, Chateaubriand, who pointed out that the natural
song of man is sad. The Jamaican peasant usually laughs at his own troubles.
Whon he sings of them, his attitude is not plaintive but ironic. The subject
matter is usually treated allusively and elliptically, so that it is sometimes
intelligible only to 'the initiated. Effect is gained by repetitive increments,
which stress the dominant emotion.3 One of the most beautiful and straightfcr-.-:rd
of those songs is Linstead Market:

Carr' me ackee go a Linstead Market
Not a quattie wo't' sell
Lawdl not a light, not a bite
Not a quattie wo't' sell
Lawd! not a light, not a bite
'What a Saturday night.

Mr. H. P. Jacobs very kindly invited my attention some years ago to The
Bo_.tsong of St. Thomas (in the Virgin Islands), entered in the West Indian Scrap
Book No. 1 page 21 1 circa 1822-
Hurra, my jolly boys,
Fine time o'day
We pull for San Thamas, boys
Fine time o'day
San Thamas hab de fine girl,
Fine time o'day
Nancy Gibbs and Betsy Braid,
Fine time o'day
Massa cum fra London Town,
Fine time o'day
Massa is a hansome man
Fine time o'day
Massa is a dandy man,
Fine time o'day
Him hab de dollar, plenty too
Fine time o'day
-Massa lub a pretty girl
Fine time o'day
Him hunt 'om round de guaba bush
Fine time o'day
Him catch 'em in do cane piece
Fine time o'day.

It is impossible to miss the pull of the boatman's oar on the first syllable of
the refrain, an effect which immediately recalls to mind the later conscious
effortt in The Boatman's Sonn in Thomas Hardy's Thle LDysts.

/18 ...

Folk songs give an insight into the philosophy of the work-a-day world
of the peasant; their rhythms are earthy, because they are the rhythms of
daily physical toil., They have a tradition that goes far back into antiquity,
Their history is various.

There was a time (within my own memory) w.hen with accelerated education
(and education meant European education), the 1Test Indian turned his back upon
his folk art. However, w-ith the growth of national consciousness, those treasures
are being rediscovered. That there is now a -conscious knowledge and appreciation
among all classes is due, in no small measure, to the emergence of arts festivals
throughout the region. The modern West Indian is, also indebted to those scholars
and amateurs of letters English, American and Y'est Indian who wrote about our
folk songs and recorded what they could. It was with the patronage of Wa.ter
Jekyll, an Englishman, that Claude 1cKay published, his Constab Ballads, a collec-
tion of dialect verses, in London in 1912,

HlcKay's publication is one of the first conscious efforts by creative
writers to link the formal literature of the 'est Indies with the folk traditions
of the people; and those folk traditions are as much a treatment of subject matter
as they are a mode of expression. Several West Indian writers have been writing
in dialect since, particularly during the last two decades. Dialects delimit
societies. They vary from territory to territory, and sometimes within each unit.
As yet they have no settled orthography. In the works of writers of the present
generation, what is recorded is not necessarily the speech as spoken by the peo-
ple. An approximation is made in which the rhythms and phrases are reproduced.
In this respect each work is often a stylization of the author. Viewed as a
body of literature these w-orks are adding a now dimension to the English tongue.
Notable examples of this new writing are to be found in the novels ..:: Day, by
Vic Reid and A Brighter Sun by Samuel Selvon, and in the plays, Moon Over the
Rainbow Sha~ul by Errol John and Under the Sun by Sylvia Yfynter. Mr. John's
drama was awarded first prize in the Play-writing Competition sponsored by 1he_
Observer newspaper in London in 1958. Then in the same year Mr. Vie Reid pub-
lished his second novel, The Leopard (this time in Standard English), the critic
in the London Times said: "Mr. Reid uses words as if no one had ever used them
before and his prose is as fresh as spring buds unfolding". The English Stage
Company accepted liiss 'Wynter's play for production at the Royal Court in London
three years ago, but their failure with Flesh to a Tiger by Barry Reckord,
another Jamaican, and the financial climate, .forced them to postpone staging it.
It has, however, been broadcast in the B.B.C.'s Third Programne. The pervading
quality of these works is a distinctive West Indianism, a regional view of life
(oven when the subject matter is taken from overseas as in the case of The
Leopard), an artistic form of scale patterned or established European practice,
4 language at once fresh, poetic, earthy and spontaneous, and yet a treatment and
composite style that could not havc been produced anywhere else. Here then is
one of the traditions of Mest Indian literature, a tradition that is indigenous
in utterance and yet universal in appeal.

/19....

It becomes obvious from a study of the objective, historical structure
of our national life, that'the majority of the first Anglo-Caribbean writers
;cre not lWst Indians in the sense of having been born in the region.

In introducing his Guianese Poetry, IMr. N. E. Cameron writes of a col-
lection of verses entitled Midnight :'.-in;:: in Demerara, by one "Colonist",
printed in the Courier Office, Demerara, British Guiana, in 1832. Mr. Cameron
s.ys that there is not a single composition of purely local interest in the book;
rnd that the author defends his position by saying -
that the Colony, though fertile in everything else, is barren
in incidents for poetical display not having the haze of an-
tiquity to shroud, and yet to beautify, the records of past
generations; and not possessing the novelty of a lately dis-
covered country, on the present beauty or prospects of which,
the mind would delight to expatiate.

"Colonist" was not the only one with this point of view. VThat he wrote was the
literary answer to a question deep-rooted in the social conditions of the times.
::ost "colonists", who could make sufficient money offtheir sugar plantations,
lived in great style in London, where they exercised a not inconsiderable influence
on the British Parliament, in such matters of trade as directly affected their
interests. Those who were forced to remain in the Caribbean, looked forward to
the day when their fortunes would permit them to return home

There were some, however, who were settlers in the better sense of the
word; they never turned their backs upon their native land, but they were willing
to let down their buckets where they were. They had immigrated as missionaries,
or to start a now life; a few held government appointments. They were for the
nost part gentlemen of education identified with the impulses of their own
culture. Some of them versified, and although they were Englishmen, Irishmen and
Scotsmen often writing English, Irish or Scottish verse in the West Indies, they
nevertheless wrote. :icst of this activity took place in Jamaica. Prominent among
those who threw themselves whole-heartedly into the educational and-cultural life
of the island cwre the Reverend John Radcliffe, born in Ireland in 1815, and
,'illiam Morrison, educator and journalist, born in Scotland in 1832. They were
soon joined by other writers, both immigrant and native-born, that is to say of
European stock or mixed, born in the Caribbean. When the shackles of slavery were
buried in 1838, a great creative force was released; and towards the close of the
century, there were poets white, black and coloured singing of the Caribbean
scene. On the South American mainland, Henry Dalton, a medical doctor, born in
Eritish Guiana in 1858, was the first to celebrate the aboriginal Indians and
"rite on other local themes. Other poets in both territories followed: H. S.
Bunbury, Leo, Arabel Moulton Barrett, Lena Kent, Cyril King, Arthur Nicholas,
Clara Maud Garrctt, Constance Hollar and a host of others. The Negro and mission-
cry elements carried over into formal poetry the religious fervour of the times and
its vision of paradise. If we do not miss the syncopation, there is more than an
echo from the Negro Spiritual, All God's Chillun, in Thomas Don's Pious Effusions,
published in 1873 -

20.

lThen shall he clothed in a robe
Hold a palm in his hand
And wearing on his head a crown
Entor the Fromis'd Land !!'

Ioaturp, religion and imperial themes were among the prime sources of inspiration.
Since the English tongue had not contained much that was descriptive of the Carib-
bean before, the poets sang as if the land were being discovered for the first time.
"June has cone to Kingston, Planing June", Constance Hollar exulted like a child,
while in her Yellow, we have a sustained observation of colour, which I have never
not in the language before ........-*----..-.-...
----- ill sing a song of yellow on this yellow day
All the loveliness of yellow passes in a swift array:
Yellow of bright buttercups in Kingston's dazzling fields -
Yellow of chrysanthemums that Autumn lavish yields,
Sunflowers and primroses sparkling in the sun.....

Nature pomcs varied from the purely topographical to the' nostalgic strains of Lena
Kent in her Hills 6f St. Andrc~., to the lyric out-pouring of Arabel M.6ul-fin-Bre tt
(a niece of Elizabeth Barrett Bro;:ning) in The Lo'st hate -

Oh, could I sing to thee
Song of the sun;
Song of the singing star,'
Wandering on;
Vagabond worlds that go
Carolling through -
Would I could sing of then,
Woo thee anew.
Song of the seraphim
Deep in the sky;
Straight would I gather it,
Loitering by;
Then should I sing to thee,
Speed to thee, wing to thee,
Song should I bring to thee,
Glorious still.
Waters should roar to thee
Blosscms should fill
All the sweet path of thee,
Pasture and hill.

Luch of this verse was as spontaneous as bird song. But what models were on hand
when these poets began writing? There was the Bible, the source of many themes, and
there were the hymns, which even the great mass of people who could not read would
sing by heart. Forerunners like John Radcliffe and William aorrison had arrived
( ith university training; others like Dalton and Arabel Moulton Barrett were sent
tounircrsity or finishing school in England; many who could not afford to go
a-broad wore given a good grammar school education in the West Indies. Also, books
ecre being bought and privately circulated; and the newspapers would publish the
odd comniemorative piece. As happened in Australia and in Canada, the nineteenth-
century West Indian poets wrote in the manner of nineteenth century a fact that
has often boon sneered at by many young West Indians of my oun generation. (They
do not object that twentieth century Jest Indians have written in the manner of the
tw;entieth'.) Mr. Ralph Gustafson says in his introduction to The Ponigin Book of
Canadian Verse:

/21....

Valid Canadian poets, immigrant or native-born, started
where they had to: with the traditions of imaginative
attack and conventions of technique of their immediate
predecessors or contemporaries elsewhere.

.- words "West Indian" could have been substituted for "Canadian". Since English
.as the language spoken, the English bards Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson
1-nd Arnold became the great exemplars. In this context, there are three points
that should be re-stated: firstly, Emancipation had given new meaning to the free-
dom of the individual; secondly, romanticism had emphasised the importance of the
-ast and man's oneness with nature; and thirdly, because the European writers
,ere in consonance with the new spirit that was abroad, the 7-:t Indians took to
these models as naturally as ducks to water.

We may ask with Walter Pater: "In whom did the stir, the genius, the senti-
cent of the period find itself? Where was the receptable of its refinement, its
elevation, its taste?" Tom Redcam has long been regarded as the "father of Jamaican
poetry". Because, from the.vantage point of the present, we can see that he,
core than any other writer of his generation, embodied and expressed the spirit of
the awakening West Indianism, we may justly re-christen him "the father of West:
Indian poetry".

In the West indies poetry seems to have become a talisman of long life.
Nearly all the practitioners have lived beyond the age of sixty. Arabel Moulton-
Barrett, who was born in 1860, died at ninety-three; and Lena Kent, who was born
in 1870, the same year as Tom Redcam, is still alive and writing. The result is
that in Jamaica, and to a lesser extent in British Guiana, there has been opportunity
to consolidate the gains of the past; and to.create the climate in which poetic
activity may thrive. The fact that in Jamaica there was more than a score of
practising poets at the time led to the founding of the Poetry League of Jamaica in
1923. Towards the end of this decade a similar association was launched by Mr.
Cameron in British Guiana, and during the late 1930s another small group of writers
J began meeting in Trinidad, under the sponsorship of Judge Hallinan described by
George Lamming in his Pleasures of Exile as a "connoisseur of the arts". Edgar
Hittelholzer, who was born in British Guiana in 1909 and has now published some
fifteen novels, went to Trinidad in 1941, and was a practising member of Judge
Iallinan's coterie before leaving to settle in England.

A good deal of the fin de siecle and early twentieth-century poetry was bad-
in fact, execrably bad. Because of the difference in social context, because from
the very beginning the Spaniards had tried to create a home from home in the Carib-
bean, it was possible in Cuba, for instance, for Jose Maria Heredia (1803-1839) to
anticipate Spanish romanticism by more than ten years. When the world-wide move-
rent reached the English-speaking Caribbean, the English prophets had already been
dead, V wodsworth poetically so, for some time. Edmund Blunden in his easay on
:-.tth.u, Arnold said:
A great many young men and women of the necessary fineness of spirit
existed d and wrote; but over them seemed to hang the shadow of their
inefficacy. Greatness had flourished. For them, the after-comers,
the day of little though dcliCghtful things; and if they attcmptod big
things, they wero inclined to avoid the main roads of style and subject
and to rro:. fa ntacsical.

22.

'nis is one point of view, .Another is that the structure of English. society was
being radically altered, and that as a consequence the area of poetical sensibili-
ty was being enlarged. As Professor C.H. Herford has put it, "poetry was to give
expression not only to the elemental emotions of men, Earth's common growth of
0irth and tears, but to the complexities of the cultivated intellect, and its
infinitely varied modes of impressing its own rhythm upon the dance of plastic
circumstance, in art and science, in statecraft and citizenship, in philosophy
rd religion",6

Romanticism persisted in the West Indies well up to the nineteen-thirties,
but in the rather thread-bare form of Victorianism and in the Georgian cult of
rt-spectability. It took the unrest of the 'thirties, the period which more than any
other marked the development of national consciousness, to give birth to the authen-
tic new voices that could proclaim 1West Indian nationhood, individuality and
significance.

Before we discuss those new writers, however, there are four names which
rerit more than a passing reference, not only because two of them have achieved
international reputation, but because of the resonance they bring to the main body
of our poetic literature. I refer to Arthur Nicholas, born in 1875, and to Claude
;:cKay, 1890, both of whom are no longer alive, and to W. Adolphe Roberts, born in
1."6, and to J. E. Clare .cFarlane, 1894. They are four very strong and highly
contrasting personalities. They help to typify the diverse patterns of culture,
which before 1930, were converging to create the new West Indies.

The picture one gets of Arthur Nicholas is that he was one of the last Vic-
torians, English or colonial., Although a Negro, his loyalties were decidedly Anglo-
Saxon, and he saw his Tropic land through Northern eyes. However, he had a wonder-
ful ear and often transmuted magic, even though his verbal equipment was not always
equal .to the demands of his message. His poems, particularly The Gift and rcadia,
sho a preoccupation with the vertical relationship between man and his Maker, and
.is own mission as a poet. September, which is in a profound sense, the most
English of his poems, invites comparison with Keats' Ode to Autumn, the latter an
adventurous foraging into nature by a young man at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, the former a spiritual stock-taking by a man mellowed by the years at the
1rnd of the Victorian era. In the following lines from The Gift we come into com-
-nr.ion with what was undoubtedly a great soul:
I hear deep organ notes
Ring through the diapason of the storm;
And many a high celestial sonnet floats
Upon my ear'as tempest-breezes form.
And more-than-mortal music fills my soul
As o'er the rugged beach the billows roll.

Claude licKay left Jamaica in 1912, the year in which his Constab Ballads
'*: published in England. Defiant, often rebellious, "the Bobby Burns of Jamaica"
-; has been called, "his genius was rooted in the manners and emotional qualities
. the cormon people". He became widely known in the United States of America as
i'ovelist, follow.:ing the publication of Home to Harlem, a national best seller, in

Hoe never returned to Jiic. c, but his native land never failed to inspire
/23....

23.

is mus3c. His nostalgic lyric, Flame-heart, is one of the gems of West Indian
citing LK.. Eastman, in a biographical appendix to the posthumous publication
of his Selected Poems, describes him as "the first great lyric genius of his race".
His challenging lines
If we must die let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot
represent a point of transition in the poetry of the American Negro, in the words
of jlain Locke, "from the anti-slavery appeal to the radical threat". His sonnet
Th Lynching is a searching indictment of the race-riots in that great democracy:
All night a bright and solitary star
Hung pitifully o'er the swinging char.
Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view
The ghastly body swaying in the sun:
The women thronged to look but never a one
Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue;
And little lads, lynchers that were to be
Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee,

Almost thirty years before the University College of the West Indies was
established in 1948, in fact long before any of the present voices was heard,
J. E. Clare McFarlane was preaching the doctrine of literary nationalism. He was
a real missionary and his position in West Indian letters was unique. He had for
nany years been the only authority on Jamaican poetry, and in addition to launch-
ing the Poetry League, he went up and down the island lecturing. He edited the
only two "full" anthologies of Jamaican poetry Voices from Summerland, which we
have already noticed, and A Treasury of Jamaican Poetry (1949).

Although today some of his opinions as expressed in his critical essays,
A Literature in the Saking, appear somewhat dated, he is a man of uncommon perci-
pionoe, and he is the first literary critic and essayist of any importance that
the West Indies has produced.

Of his poetry, Daphne and The Magdalene are his major works. They are
both long philosophical pieces, and we can do no more than mention them here. He
fashioned his poetry closely on the artistic credo of Wordsworth. He often achieves
fine passages of lyricism, but like his master, he has also been accused of long
Passages of dullness. His sonnet On National Vanity, shows him at his best: it
combines clarity of idea with sureness of diction -
Slowly we learn; the oft repeated line
Lingers a little moment and is gone;
Nation on nation follows, Sun on Sun;
With empire's dust fate builds her great design,
But we are blind and see not; in our pride
We strain toward the petrifying mound
To sit above our fellows, and we ride
The slow and luckless toiler to the ground.
Fools are we for our pains; whom we despise,
Last cone, shall mount our withered vanities,
Topmost to sit upon the vast decay
Of tine and temporal things for, last or first,
The proud array of pictured bubbles burst,
Mirages of their glory pass away.

/24....

24.

:Ir1. Roberts is one of the first West Indian "men of letters", that is to
say, in the meaning of the term as set forth by Alexandre Beljame in his Men of
Letters of the Eighteenth Century: a man who makes his living by his pen alone,
and by his pen alone achieves distinction. His reputation rests on his histories,
his novels and his poetry in that order; but it is as a poet, first and foremost
I think, that posterity will remember him. I have already quoted one of his son-
nets in part (ii) of this essay. He has an admirable command of English, French
and Spanish, and is perhaps as fluent in French as he is in English. The most un-
English of West Indian poets, he is Gallic,in sensibility and republican in senti-
ment. He may be described as the father of the independence movement in Jamaica.8

He served in France as a war correspondent during the First World War.
He is deeply read in French literature, and is also an authority on the other
literatures of the Caribbean. He was not to he satisfied with the work of Austin
Dobson, W. E. Henley, Lang and others, who in the 1870s and after re-introduced
early French forms into English verse: he went to the primary sources of inspiration.

A parnassian, he is in poetical succession to Leconte de Lisle and Jose
Maria de Heredia.

He rendered a particular' service when he introduced the villanelle into
the Caribbean. He went back to the works of Jean Passerat, whodied in 1602, and
whose posthumous poems included several villanelles which became popular, especial-
ly his J'ai perdu ma tourterelle, that set the standard for subsequent writers.
Whereas the English used it to convey light and often frivolous sentiment, in the
Caribbean it has been employed as a vehicle for more serious poetry Mr. Roberts'
Villanelle of the Living Pan and his Villanelle of the Sad Poet and Mr. Vivian
Virtue's Villanelle Sequence King Solomon and Queen Balkis represent the high water
mark of achievement in this verse form in English.

C/ The transition from Victorianism to West Indianism has been clearly marked
in the collective works of writers, who were born during the first two decades of
this century, and who began publishing, let us say, just before and after 1930.
There is also a distinction between the collective spirit of these poets and the
orientation of those, who were born after the 1914-18 World War, and whose poems
began to appear just before or after 1950. (My classification is, of course, a
matter of convenience, for the human spirit may not be fitted into rigid chronolo-
gical compartments).

Those who belong to the generation born before 1920 include H. A. Vaughan,
SPhilip Sherlock, Una Harson, Roger Mais, Gerald Hamilton, Vivian Virtue, A.J. Sey-
mour and H. M. Telemaque. Although he was born in 1893, a year before J. E.
Clare McFarlane, Frank Collymore's work belongs in spirit to this group.

/ The post 1914-18 group includes M.G. Smith, George Campbell, Geoffrey
Drayton, E. M. Roach, H.D. Carberry, Basil McFarlane, C.L. Herbert, Ian Carew,
George Lamming, E. McG. Keane, Kenneth Ingram, Martin Carter and Derek Walcott.

Individual collections were published invariably at the poet's own expense,
but several outlets began opening up. We have already noted that the newspapers

/25....

nn-~~.--. .~..-.--~--p-~,.. .~. rr~9il--~ri.- I.--l.r-~~~iii.-~' .---lr.l--ri(l~~~r.r ~-r .-~^rl-r--- ----^- -I--i--~l'llr-- --

iould publish pieces from tine to time. When Tom Redcam edited The Jamaica Times,
he gave considerable space to creative writing and started a literary supplement.
Una Marson bore Vivian Virtue, Gerald Hamilton and others into print 5n her month-
ly Cosmopolitan, which ran in Jamaica for three years, 1928- 31. Then other media
followed, periodicals, year books, anthologies and radio programmers the Year Books
of the Poetry League of Jamaica, compiled by Archie Lindo, from 1939-1943; the
B.B.C.'s Caribbean Voices Programme, started by Una Harson during the Second World --
yar; Bi, edited by Frank Collynore and W. T. Barnes in Barbados since 1942;
Focus, an anthology of contemporary writing compiled by Edna Manley since 1943;
Kykoveral, edited by A. J. Seymour in British Guiana since 1945; Best Poems from
Trinidad (anthology) chosen and published by A.M. Clarke in 1943; and the several
issues of Caribbean Quarterly sponsored by the Extra Mural Department of the Uni-
versity College of the West Indies. In addition there has been a number of overseas
publications, including Overseas Anthology collected in England in 1924 by the
Empire Poetry League (now defunct); Robert Herring's Jamaican and West Indian
numbers of Life and Letters issued in London in 1948; The Caribbean section of
The Poetry of the Negro, compiled by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps in the
United States of America in 1949; and the West Indian collection of The Tamarack
Review (1959) published in Ontario, Canada, on the recommendation of Mr. V.S. Reid.

It is with the appearance of Bim, Focus and Kykoveral that the new West
.h. Indianism began to gather momentum.

The world had been shaken by the 1914-18 World War, when the first genera-
tion of poets of this century began writing, but the beliefs which their Victorian
fathers had handed on to them were not shaken. Britain had won the war, as every-
body had righteously expected, and the foundations of Western civilization had thus
been preserved. The return from active service overseas of many West Indian sons
had helped to develop a consciousness of the existence of lands other than Britain
outside the Caribbean; and many had gone to seek fame and fortune in the neigh-
bouring Caribbean Republics and in the United States of America. World events
were making a greater impact upon West Indian thought. There was now a greater
tendency to examine things for one's self, and the field of subject matter available
for poetic treatment was consequently being extended.

Other factors were also at work. The West Indian was developing pride
in his ancestry, whether that ancestry was European, African or Asian, or a mixing
and blending of these races. The acceptance of self, for the Negro at first
tentative, became, in the oratorical flights of Marcus Garvey, a bold and positive
assertion, Things were now sorting themselves out. It was no; longer a matter
of transplanting the seeds of decay from other lands, but rather a selective use
and blending of such strands of culture as our writers could make inevitably their
own. The masses were being liberated as a creative force; the West Indian intel-
lectual was now discovering'the West Indies, and identifying himself with legitimate
aspirations of his community. The riots and mass demonstrations that began in St.
Yitts in 1935 and spread like fire in a cane piece to other parts of the Caribbean,
"ore symptomatic of the changes in political thinking that had been percolating
down to the masses. The dramatic conversion of the intellectuals that followed,
/26....

was to provide the movement for the rectification of economic ills with the philoso-
phical basis of self government.

The new dynamic produced voices that formal West Indian poetry had not
known before voices that were immediate and urgent, and more in consonance with
the emotional qualities of the common poeple. If there was new melodic power,
there was also greater spiritual compulsion. A. J. Seymour took a contemporary
view of the continental landscape in his Over Guiana, Clouds. In A Beauty Too of
7Tisted Trees, Philip Sherlock gave symbolic treatment to the Crufixion, and in
Jamaica Fishermen he sang of the nobility of the black man. Una Marson wrote on.
the subject of love in a.manner that West Indian womanhood had not dared before.
H.M. Telemaque praised Adina, the peasant girl, and spoke of
examining the island in his hands.
H.A. Vaughan, with a classical eye, saw new beauty in Dark Voices. All Men come to
the Hills, finally, said Roger Mais, as he acknowledged the orientation of the bulk
of Jamaican poetry to the hills. Gerald Hamilton explored afresh the depths of
Port Royal, and fashioned a new Song for a Synthesis. Frank Collymore walked
Beneath the Casuarinas and wrote his nocturne By Lamplight. Vivian Virtue continued
his experimentation in verse forms, old and new, and translated into English verse
from the Spanish and French of such poets as Ruben Dario of Nicaragua and Josd Maria
de Heredia of France.

In the works of these writers, particularly in that of Mr. Vivian Virtue,
the close observation of nature, which we discussed earlier in Constance Hollar,
has been carried further. When one compares Virtue's I have seen Uarch, for
instance, with Constance Hollar's Flaming June or her Yellow, one feels that Virtue
could have been present when the Divine Artist was mixing the pigments to paint the
trees with their particular colours. Is it not by virtue of the particularity of
their observation that poets are able to write for the generality of manf And how
else could Mr. Martin Carter, writing a generation later, have-saluted his comrade
in I am No Soldier:
I am my poem, I come to you in particular gladness.

When the second generation began writing after World War II, a revolt had
already been started against the tradition established by Tom Redcem and the earlier
.school of poets; and the novel was now increasingly to claim the attention of some
of the best literary talents. I think that some of the novelists Roger Mais,
V. S. Reid, John Hearne, Ian Carew, Samuel Selvon and George Lamming are really
poets writing in prose. Which explains in part why there is so much lyricism in
the contemporary West Indian novel. It is of especial signi-icance, that one of
them, Mr. John Hearne, should have said: "The greatest novelist is only the tomb
of a poet sacrificed".

In the years following the conflict, some of the most radical changes in
Vest Indian society were to take place. Coinciding with the development of nation-
al consciousness, the Industrial Revolution, which had begun in Europe over a
century and half before, was now gathering momentum in the Anglo-Caribbean; and
the constitutional advances, which were to bring independence, were now in train.

/27....

The geographical constants of time and space wore to be altered further by
the technological advances of the war.

Hoest.lities had taken the flower of West Indian youth to the Front.
When following the Peace many sons and daughters returned home, some of
them felt that they had been displaced, but, nevertheless, went back to
Europe "to a wider indifference".

At home the work of the literary societies and other cultural groups
was being reinforced and widened by the founding of the University College
of the West Indies. Dr. G. R. Coulthard of the Department of Iodern Langua-
ges collaborated with Wycliffe Bennett, then Secretary of the Poetry League
of Jamaica, to organise the first exhibition of the poetry of the English-,
French-, Spanish- and Dutch-speaking Caribbean. Poets of different genera-
tions did some of the translations. It is significant that when Dr. Coult-
hard, an Englishman, wrote his first book on the Caribbean, it was entitled
Raza y Color en la Literatura Antillana ( ), written not in English, as
might have been expected, but in Spanish. It is also noteworthy that when
Dr. J. H. Parry and Dr. P.M. Sherlock, Professor of History and Vice Principal
respectively of the same University, wrote their Short History of the West
Indies (1957), they found it necessary to include in their study the parallel
developments in the other language groups of the region.

I have followed this comparative treatment in discussing the poetry of
the West Indies, and have tried to trace its development in the context of
world letters. There are many short-comings, which only the leisured ampli-
tude of a full book can rectify. I have taken the view that, in all the cir-
cumstances, an introduction to the first definitive anthology of the poetry of
the West Indies required even the beginnings of such a study. I am confident
that the subject will be taken up by more competent hands than mine.

Since this is principally an essay on West Indian poetry, important
writers like H.G. DeLisser, author of Jane, Susan Proudleigh and The White
Witch of Rosehall, and Mr. C.L.R. James, who wrote 1iinty Alloy, have not been
discussed. Along with W. Adolphe Roberts they are among the first West
Indian novelists.

The writer born after the 1914-18 World War is more conscious of his'
position in the Caribbean as a whole than any of his predecessors could have
been. I have avoided discussing this group at any length. I belong to this
generation, and need more time for an objective assessment. I hope too that
I have not yielded to the temptation of pointing a didactic finger at the
way I think West Indian poetry ought to develop: for the creative mind has
its own laws, whose application will vary from writer to writer. Suffice it
to say that in so far as its development is concerned, the present period
shows many signs and portents. It awaits a meteor.

w i

H. S. Bunbury
(1843 1920)

THE VIEST INDIES

In waters of purple and gold
Lie the islands beloved of the sun,
And he touches them one by one,
As the beads of a rosary told,
When the glow of the dawn has begun
And when to eternity's fold
Time gathers the day that is done.

No rosary, Isles of the West,
Isles of Antillean agleam,
But a necklace strung out on the breast
Of the seas breathing low in a dream;
In the trance of a passionate rest,
A rainbow afloat in its gleam.

000 000 000

i -

Henry Dalton
(1858 )

FIVE INDIAN TRIBES

Five tribes dwell on this sunny land*
Each Chieftain rules his own small band;
The Arawak,/ or tiger men,
Chase that wild beast from don to den,
. Known to the rest by bearing bold,
Free in their life, to vice unsold;
Unfetter'd limbs, and painted face,
Bear yet of savage art the trace.

The Caribee, a dwindling clan,
c- Still show the marks of savage man,
Once noted as a warlike race,
Yet scarcely showing now a trace
Of what in former times they were,
The lords of the creation here
Of cunning habits prone to learn,
Their bosoms yet with freedom burn,
They quit the towns and civil strife,
To lead a roaming, careless life.

The Accawai, of warlike name,
-'Are men of strength, and stouter frame;
A slender thread round ankle worn,
Is by each male and warrior borne;
No artificial vestments grace
The woman's form and modest face.

5 Next comes the wild iiacusi tribe --
Their simple minds receive no bribe;
No promised gift, or stern command,
Can tempt them from their mountain land,
For where Piara's plains are met,
)-There dwell they in their freedom yet,

Last of the tribes, the dark Warrow
Lives by the streams and marches low;
He builds the boat, and seeks the wave,
And, like the rest, is bold and brave;
~.Amid the marsh his hut he'll place,
And live the sailor of his race.
Such the chief tribes which here are shewn,
But minor tribes are likewise known.

The Guianas
/ The Guianose Arawaks are now of mixed blood. The
poet portrays them as being radically different
from the pacific Arawaks of the islands.

30

Baron Olivier of Ramsden*
ST. MARY'S, NORTH SIDE (1859 1943)

away South-westerly, four thousand miles and more away,
corals ridge the strand to frot the ceaseless surf;
wind-shorn commons there Green Castle looks on Robin's Bay
empty ruins stare across the tawny turf.

Son mile of moving blue that thunders ineffectually;
on jet of dazzling sprays that lash the reefs imperiously;
Sand hiss of broken waves whose smoke goes up perpetually,
deep through hidden caves and whispering out mysteriously&

the terraced limestone bluff that lifts into the rushing air
of black pimento-bays to battle with the trade-wind's blow,
There walks the ghost of one that ate his heart in exile here,
Cristoforo Colon -- four hundred shameful years ago.

and East the watchful headlands question an unaltering heaven,
Lilac distances of mountain faint into a sail-less sea:-
Out of those great emptinesses ohile'ssly the sean.uind presses
SColumbus heard it calling -- calling as it calls to me.

You and I were here together -- long before the Earth had age --
Loved them and could not forget them -- reefs and commons, hills and skies;
Born not yet of Adam's race, uncumbered of Eve's heritage,
Ve were happy in this place, when all the world was Paradise.

Long before the Spaniards' Devil taught the Arawck good and evil --
Long before these slave-built ruins built their builder's own undoings -
Long ere you for twice-born pilgrims hallowed this enchanted level --
Long ere clumsy mortal lovers scared your soul with turbid wooings,

Used I to lie here and watch you -- poised above the bitten ledges --
Hear the babble of the sea-nymphs round their hidden tables sitting,
Watch, like drifting thistle down, between the Earth's and Ocean's edges
Sapphire-bliie and russet-brown, your slender, shining figure flitting?

Did you bend above the caverns, where the prisoned waves were straying?
Listen close against the crannies, hear their stifled sighings issue?
Leaning outward from the verges, arms uplifted, body swaying,
Did you lure the laughing surges, till they leapt, with shouts, to kiss you?

las it then that something seen through the rainbows of the spray --
Freedom of your flying hair, -- swiftness of immortal eyes --
Flashed into transfiguration soul and body's interplay --
Dared no to the immense migration, the unending enterprise?

Down away South-westerly, four thousand miles and more away,
Rocky ledges ribbed the sand to sift the rustling surf;
Under drifts incarnadined Green Castle flamed on Robin's Bay;
Swifts and rain-birds wheeled and whined along the shadowy turf:-

Past the blackening western ranges shafts of farewell splendour driven
Laced the skies with rose and scarlet; mute we lay, and watched together,
Till across tht conflagration, league on league along the heavens,
Every dove in all Creation laid a gold and purple feather:-
Down away South-westerly -- Oh! countless years of years agot

Sydney COivier, the noted Fabian, was Colonial Secretary
( ) and Governor of Jamaica, W.I. ( )

.... ... .. .. ...... .
3/

Arabel Moulton-Barrett
(1860-1953)

THE LOST MATE

Two singing birds have come flying across the sea;
but only one has reached land. He mourns his mate:

Answer me, sing to me,
Mate of my heart,
Tho' I call out to thee,
Silent thou art.
Leaves of the forest tree
Leap to thy song;
Rock of the mountain-side
Echoing on.
God of the summer storm,
Sunny and wild!
God of the singing stream,
God undefiled!
Sing to me, turn to me,
So I may learn of thee;
Song-god I yearn to be,
Song to regain.
Give to me, tell to me,
Sing me again
Song of the running brook
Song of the rain.

"\ Oh, could I sing to thee
Song of the sun;
Song of the singing star,
Wandering on:
Vagabond worlds that go
Caroling through -
Would I could sing of them,
Woo thee anew.
Song of the seraphim,
Deep in the sky;
Straight would I gather it,
Loitering by;
Then should I sing to thee,
Speed to thee, wing to thee;
Song should I bring to thee:
Glorious still.
Waters should roar to thee:
Blossoms should fill
All the sweet path of thee,
Pasture and hill.

Lost to me, lost to me,
Witherward fled?
Gone from me, gone from me,
.Shadow-ward sped,
Hearing thy voice, to me
Echoing still;
Seeing the flight of thee,
Will of my will.
Beat of thy -flying wing,
Flashing of blue;
Throb of thy eager breast
Dipt in the dew.
Lost the wild song of me,
Notes that belong to thee;
Love-torn and strong, to be
Mute in the sun.
Shame to me, shame to me
Summer is run;
Silent thou art to mp
Singing is done.

3.2

H. C. Bennett
(1867 )

ON A CERTAIN PROSPECT FROM THE HILLS OF
JAMAICA

Wonderful, yea, beyond all thought,
Wonderful are ye, 0 Lines of Beauty!
To the East and the West, before me
And beneath, far-streaming.
Lines majestical, rhythmic, bold yet lovely.

Lines, though with uttermost strength abounding,
Etched minute, multitudinous; speechless
With a last refinement;
Thro' innumerable grades of distance wavering
Far, far to the South, and away
Leagues on, to the round sea-rim of this Earthball.
And each step
Of thy gradual infinite glory -
That play of white gold fire
Mid the limbs and the green hair of the hills
As they dance flowing down
To the locked calms of the plains and the waters
Flecked afar, afar and along,
By the ivory lace of the reef-foam -

Each step
Of that gradual infinite glory
Melts as with the light of a rose, plucked
Before noon, and the dew upon it;
Shines with the radiance of That
Which shapeth: then
Dies to be born again
Hour by hour, morn after morn,
Ever new, ever renewing.

000 000 000

*

33

Nellie Olson
(1869 1956)

LIKE JOHN TO-WHIT

Hear him practise John-to-whit,
"Sweet John to-whit!"
At bright dawn he pipes his lay,
And through sunny summer day
Hear his cherry roundelay!
"Sweet John, John to-whit,
Sweet John to-whit!"

Does he tire John to-whit?
"Sweet John, John to-whit!"
O'er and o'er right merrily;
Piping oh, so cheerily!
Singing oh, so airily!
"Sweet John, John to-whit,
Sweet; sweet guinep!"

Love your music, too. like John,
"Sweet John, John to-whit!"
Love your music, girl and boy,
Practise cheerily, gifts employ;
Fill like John, your world with joy!
"Sweet John, sweet guinep,
Sweet, sweet guinepi"

000 000 000

Tom Redcam
(1870-1933)

SAN GLORIA *

Oh, Captain of wide western seas,
Where now thy great soul lives, dost thou
Recall San Gloria's spicc-consod breeze?

White-sanded curves whore serried trees
Filed backward as thy sharpened prow
Sheared into foam the racing seas?

San Gloria's wood-carved mountain frieze
In the blue bay is mirrored now,
As when thy white sail wooed the breeze.

The thunder of insurgent seas
Beats yet the rough reef's ragged brow,
Roaring by green, far stretching leas;

Yet through the wood the peony flees,
And frets with gold the night-dark bough
Down the long avenue of trees.

Still flowering gyneps tempt the bees,
The yellow guava ripens now,
Rich-hearted ipomea please.

Dost thou remember things like these,
Hear yet the dark-robed woodlands sough,
Oh, Captain of wide western seas,
Dost thou remember things like those
Where thy great soul inhabits now?

Columbus was ship-wrecked at St. Ann's Bay,
the Santa Gloria of the Spaniards.

35

Tom Redcam
(1870-1933)

EXTRACT FROM SAN GLORIA

(Act 3, Scene 1).

On the shore as before, Columbus soliloquises:

Moans on the reef the deep sea's hated voice;
Surging and sapping on the rough reef's rim;
It speaks of death, dead faces and of woes,
Unnumbered, past and sorrows yet to be;
It is the pulse of sad eternity;
It is the prophet voice of grief and pain;
It is the judgment voice of things to come,
When, at high heaven's throne, the dead shall meet,
And, small and great, make answer for their deeds;
In those sad meanings come the widow's tears,
The orphans anguish and the hopeless hope
Of watchers, from the white sands, far to sea.
Hendez, what fate is thine? Perchance, now, now
The body that enhoused thy soul is flung,
And tumbled o'er and o'er, amid the wrack
And slime of ocean's bottomless abyss.
Here, it was here, on such a day as this,
The sea-surge sounding in the self-same way
Through these wind-whispering trees, that your young heart
Leapt to the service; once did you essay
The perilous passage, and were driven back
All but yourself killed by the silent hate
Of staring suns upon a stirless sea;
So thirst to fury grew; to frenzy past;
And madness whirled to death. Again you tried,
Then, from the sea swept back by storms, you came,
But yet, undaunted, for the third time dared
To cross that sea of lurking death; long weeks
Have dragged their slow way towards Eternity.
The sea smiles, moans, and keeps its secret.
Where art thou?
My heart misgives me, dead; there is a dirge
In the soft whisper of these moving trees;
The sun gleams cynic unconcern, and the sad reef
Sends its deep murmur flooding through my mind,
As if there crept a shadow slowly on,
And dark-robed mourners trod through Memory's halls.
Suddenly I feel old; the weary body lags;
Pain closes on the brain; thought foot-sore goes;
The long, long way trails backward into gloom;
Dies into darkness there; 'tis night before.

(Through the drowsy stillness of the day the sound of the reef comes
monotonously; doves in the wood coo now and again plaintively; there is
the sudden sharp scream of a hawk wheeling over-head).

I see a vision of those savage men
In fury rushing on us, trampling dark
By their brute numbers, Life, Killing its flame,
Each spark of evidence that in this place
We suffered; so our story, it will pass
Like clouds that aimless sink in shapeless air.
A dark foreboding haunts me lest I die
Amid the careless beauty of this isle,
And these great heights, blue, forest-garmented.

/That..

-,.^ .-. - - - -- --

EXTRACT FROM SAN GLORIA (Cont'd.)

That wave slow signals to the mighty deep,
Callous to smaller things, across my grave
Stare.; while the green things tangle on the plain;
While the soft waters lip the sandy shore;
VWhile dawns, arriving, spread their crimson flags;
And passing day gives all her tents to fire,
Seeking a new encampment; doves will coo
When, into deep oblivion sunk, my grave
Lies in the flood of life that blots out all,
While the great hills stare on, o'er shrub and vine,
Heeding my resting-place and me no more
Than slow grey lichens heed the rock they stain,
Or this huge trunk they moisten to decay.

(He rises and paces slowly, then stooping picks up the body of a
small dead bird.)

Then will I not be in the world of men
Worth more than is this little silent frame,
This empty hut of feathers, whence hath life
Evicted been by some chance flick of Fate.
True' 'tis an empty house, its tenant gone,
My tent of flesh, yet would I have it lie
In some dear, well-loved and familiar spot
On earth's vast amplitude.

37

Tom Redcam
(1870-1933)
SPANISH TOWN

Beloved ancient town, by Cobre's stream,
Where in thy dim Cathedral's central peace
His glory Effingham hath laid aside
And stormy Modyford hath found release

From plot and battle, and where, pure of soul
And ever looking up in faith's deep calm,
Elgin's girl wife waits for the whitening dawn
Of day eternal, past death's dark alarm.

War-darkening skies, the tramp of armed men;
See the stout regiments march through the town.
Death: in the funeral majesty.of woe,
In long-drawn pomp, Trelawny lays him down.

There priest and lawyer, sailor, king's viceroy,
About thine altar-stone have lain them prone,
Pilgrims that slumber round a bivouac fire,
Till night be spent and God's good pleasure known.

Death is life's bivouac round the fires of faith.
Grey town and time-worn church, we come to thee,
Shrine of our history; about thy tombs
The patriot's spirit lingers reverently.

361

Tom Redcam
k (1870-1933)

CUBA (1895)

Sister! the sundering Sea
Divides us not from thee,
The Ocean's homeless roar
May sever shore from shore:
Beneath the bitter brine,
Our hand is locked in thine.
Cold Custom chides us down
And stills us with a frovn;
But we like lovers twain
Are one in joy and pain,
Whose mutual love is known
But may not yet be shown.
With clasped hands we convey
The love we may not say.

Tom Redcam
(1870-1933)

ORANGE VALLEY, ST. ANN

In front a mighty Ceiba halts
To sentinel the land.
Far as dim, distant muted tides
Wash round a silent strand'
Like clouds in dreams the white foam grows
Faint on the far-off reef;
Sound founders in this space of air,
Freighted with Ocean's grief;
And all is silent, save the wind's
Soft sighing harp of trees,
And some-wayfaring village shout,
A vagrant on the breeze.

By grass-fields gold-entinctured green
The darker Guangos tread,
The forest ranks enmarshalled sweep
O'er yonder mountain head.
The westering sun, a shivered lance
Hath struck through quivering leaves,
Where a wide grove of Cocoa Palms,
With shimmering impulse heaves.
Ackees flaunt garish, gypsy gems,
Dark-robed Pimentos gloom,
Crimson through feathery leafage gleams
The Poincianas' bloom.

The billowing tides of Life outpour,
The generations pass;
Made -oid by time, the woodland fails
As dies the bladed grass.
Gray walls are here, amid green boughs
Lush, long-stretched Creepers climb;
Great Cedars and the wind-worn Palms,
Their body-guard through time.
Gray walls where dragging shadows mark
The Year's low-swooping wing;
Quaint roofs, along whose shingled slopes
The moss and lichen cling.
As one clear foot-print marked beside
a gray,lone-sounding main
Declares a presence on that strand
By naught besides made plain:
Gray walls, amid the greening boughs,
A foot-print on Time's shore,
An unseen Presence round you steals
Of days that are no more.

For, brave, with flag and pennon spread,
Hath History passed this way,
While yonder coast re-echoing spake
The Privateer's affray;
This loop-hole, wide in angle-room,
Speaks spacious Spanish days,
When the brown Arawak went by
On leaf-dark forest ways;
And stately Dons, in languorous case
Looked northward to that shore,
Saw, o'er the cane-fields' varied green
The Hawk, strong-pinioned, soar,
Heard Mocking-birds' melodious not.es
Fuse with the moonlit hour;
Great beetles, mailed in shining black,
Boom round the Corcus flower.
Slow for the labouring feet of Toil
White roadways crossed the plain,
Nature's sweet-fluting solitude
Throbbed to the T)U naii.

2.

The Spaniards pass, the Indians die
Like mists that fade afar,
And Britain's blood-dyed battle flag
Breaks through the storms of war.
A sterner pulse from Cromwell's band,
The British soldier came,
And on this pleasant northern land
Graved doop-onduring claim.
And many a summons found him here
To Council and to Board,
With sudden mandates of command
That bade him bare the sword
To meet the corsair at the Bay,
The rebel in the night,
Or follow where the fierce Maroon
Haunted the mountain height.
Between these walls, now rough with ago
Mon talked of Benbow's fight,
And Rodney's fame the courier told
Who crossed Diablo's height,
And at the Tavern quaffed a glass,
And hard by.Huntley spurred,
Till far .Trnoy from', hiaS' lip
'Th news of Vitpor' heard"'

v'rom this grpoen -fibice" eye's once watched,
And brriht with faith they shone,
Wh e through Morn's silver port.copa
Came the gold-armoured Sun.
jHa faith been lost? to emptiness
Pasp not a country's brave;
The pure, the noble and the true,
Their home is not the grave.
I:yisibly with us they toil,
Jhen perils round us sway;
The unseen spirits of'our dead,
They shape their country's way.
0 changing years. unchanging life '
From age to age the same,
Through a wild future's storm-filled gloom
The soul's clear torch shall flame.
The valour of the silent Past
The Faith, the gallant pride,
With unseen tributaries feed
Strength to that radiant Guide.

Gray walls, quaint roofed, amid green boughs,
A foot-print on Time's shore,
The unseen Presence of the Past
Lives round you evermore.

000 000 000

!^ ;

Tom Redcam
(1870-1933)

A LEGIONARY OF LIFE

Where with green fields St. Ann the ocean meets
And barrier reefs roar white with plunging foam,
Upon the shore hard by the river's mouth
Stands a poor fisher's weather-ridden hut.
S'Tis placed beneath the Palms, the tall grey Palms,
Whose strong and sinuous trunks, uplifted high,
Battle and bend before the'blustering breeze,
Swaying and stiffening, sloping, then erect;
With curve, obeisance, stately courtesy;
10oBut still their stations keeping, aye upborne
Against the impetuous impulse of the wind;
Like men, goodhearted, patient, resolute,
Gracious in kindliness but firm of will,
Who, with all pleasant custom meet the foe, I
i$ Yielding and pliant in life's frip and frap, I
But never budging when the issue joins,
And when the stake is final victory.

Earth's patrol, set upon her farthest verge,
Day after day dawn finds them clustered here
pThrough dewy hours when perfect stillness soothes
Both air and sea, and when the reef is heard
But in faint far-off moaning, sad and low;
While, from the white sand, northward, lies the bay
Smooth as a maiden's cheek and still as thought
That stands in meditative mood entranced.
Then as the sun to Day's young manhood grows,
Swept o'er that glassy surface, stirs the wind;
The depths are roughened and with boisterous might
Spring the strong Sea Breeze, rushing on the Palms
5OAll day the contest lasts, till golden stars,
As evening gathers shadow, gleam on high,
And see the western avenues to Night
Resplendent burn, with far-flung crimson sheen,
Deep amber, blue intense, and bars of silver light,
SThen motionless they stand, the tall grey Palms,
Save that aloft the long-ribbed leaflets purl
And slowly whisper in the ear of Night
Secrets too subtle for man's clumsy wit.
Blazes the South's great Cross, Orion's blade
OGlows from the Zenith and his jewelled belt.
As Night's magnificent procession moves,
Silence the ocean holds, stillness the wind;
Then, slow subsiding into rest complete,
The grey boles move not, nor the leaflets stir.

qSUpon the sudden, bellowing from the deep,
Booms the bud thunder, savage as Death's eye,
Glares the red lightning as the storm puts forth;
But these grey folk, with their strong pliant height,
And graceful crown of leaves receive the shock,
0OUnshrinking, bending but not flinching, fearless all;
Earth's steadfast patrol at her farthest bound.
Mid myriad empty husks and withered leaves,
The hut stands, brown as these, with roof of straw,
Mud walls with stones embedded, wattle-veined,
65[Window and door rough board, on clumsy hinge;
This was a home and here there dwelt a man
To whom life brought sudden, insistent doom.
In a high post he dwelt, comfort secure;
Secure, he thought, nor dreamed at his right hand
L6Invisible but imminent the hour of Fate was nighi
It came, demanded answer; swift the call;

0

No room for aught but act, or failure, then;
Never from his imperishable self,
Never from memory's mystic discs withdrew
G(The scene and deed. The river dark and swift;
Deep, voiceless power; Bamboo and HIango there
With shade o'er-hanging darker made the stream,
Beside him want his child, a beam of life,
A flash of sunshine from the mind of God;
It Upon the bank she sought the pure white bloom
Of the slow-flowering Dagger; from its leaf
Stripped off the thin transparent outer skin,
Filled to her lips with joy, unrippled joy
That lives with those whose mortal years are few.

l5 Her years were seven, and she was his all,
His all on earth. How was his eye withdrawn
The instant when Fate closed and struck her blow?
A plaintive Ground Dove cooed its soft, sad note.
This drew his gaze. That instant was his doom.
OToo near the edge of the steep bank she pressed;
Downward she slipped, "My dadda," as she fell,
This was the baby cry that -with the swish
And whirr of hurrying water smote his ear.
Forward he sprang, from the bank's edge beheld
8SThe troublcdsurface, dimly saw his child;
Then for a second paused. Fear drove him back;
He dared not plunge; that instant triumphed Death.
Shattering the pause, he leapt, too late, he knew,
Too late it was, and he had failed his child.
JoThe deadly current seized him; hard he fought
And long he battled; his blood-bursting heart
And blinded eye his deep exhaustion told.
In that swift silent stream his child was gone,
And he at last, but dimly conscious then,
Wtas flung, he know not when, like river drift
The roots among of '7ild Calladiums, huge,
That, vine-entangled, barred in part the stream,
Each sight and every soul let into thoughts
That entered Hemory's alloys, focused all
1On that one scone, that deadly point in time,
The fraction of a minute's pause when, fear enchained,
He dared not act.

WXhy sought
From Death, whose ever open-standing door
Offers forever rest to those who grieve,
6(SAnd whose deep, awful eyes invite with lure
Of sleep eternal and oblivion's calm?
His was a frame corporeal charged with health;
No scanty tide of blood his veins possessed,
Or fed his brain and nerves with beggar's fare;
l(oSo no distortion veiled his view of Death.
He was convinood that whereso'or he fled,
Though down he laid his flesh for evermore,
His being survived, and with survival went
Remembrance of that instant's shameful pause.
II Out from his comrades, from his rank in life,
He came, to this poor level where his paid
Ached on and ever, but, he thought, ached loss
Than it had done in grander spheres of being.

he not relief

The slow delivery of the river's flood
(l~To the great ocean, near his mud-built hut,
The reef's unending sorrow, and the lap
Of brimming tides on the white-sanded shore;
These, with the Palm Trees' struggling and the shriek
Of wheeling sea-birds brought him no release
psFrom that one memory; but to him it seemed
Here did he find the place in all the world
Where his great agony could best be borne.

/3..

3.

So was his home the fisher's humble cot;
So were his comrades the grey sinuous Palms;
13oSo camped he here with lonely skies above,
Groat star-eyes peering through the night's profound.
Ever, above, the bonding Palm leaves swayed,
Shivered and whispered, while the supple boles
Bowed to the Sea Breeze, bade obeisance low,
ISAnd held their patrol post with flinchloss faith.

Persistent through his life's monotony,
One variation only reappeared;
A dim assurance that since life he chose
-nd Death's temptation to her dark embrace
ILORefused, its promised peace and rest,
He was no final traitor to the world.
So far he yet was true to the groat host
Of sea and sky, of stars and tides.and streams,
Existence's Grand army, Hosts of Life,
1R5Soldicrs of some Great Purpose that moves on,
Through evolutions and developments
To some supreme far triumph yet to be.
So with the palms, Earth's Patrol on her shore,
He tabernacled, and his lonely soul
@SbFound there no happiness, no joy, indeed;
But for its deathless pain vague soothing had.

000 000 000

-

Tom Redcam
(1870-1933)

"NOW THE LIGNU:I VITAE BLOT"S"

No:' the Lignum Vitae blows;
Fair-brovocd April enters here,
In her hand a crimson rose,
In her eye youth's crystal tear;
Moonlit nights serenely clear,
Rock the lilac-purpled bloom:
Robes the Lignum Vitae wear,
Fashioned at some mystic loom.

And the brown Bee comes and goes,
And his murmurous song I hear,
Like a dosing stream that flows,
To a drowsy unseen mere,
Deeply hid, but very near.
Rare the robes the trees assume;
Robes the Lignum Vitae wear,
Fashioned at some mystic loom.

The grey Mocking Bird he knows
Music's mazes for the ear;
O'or the tinted petal snows,
He, of Spring th' inspired Seer,
Sings melodiously clear;
Rare as souls of soft perfume,
Robes the Lignum Vitae wear,
Fashioned at some mystic loom.

L'Envoi

Of all April's fancy gear,
None excels thee, fold or plume,
Flowers the Lignum Vitae wear,
Fashioned at some mystic loom.

*i

* ... ,* "i c i '

Lena Kent
(1870- )

THE HILLS OF ST. ANDREW

St. Androw's hills, St. Andrew's hills,
..hat happy, happy hours
y childhood knew, among your rills,
'our unforgotten flowers
o:thinks once more I hear the roar
?f rushing ilammeo River,
.s down the rocks its torrents pour,
carrying g on forever.

nec solitaire's wild plaintive cry
: hear, and in the distance
Par off, her mate's long low reply,
"ith tender, soft insistence
Each calling each, (How Iemory keeps
That interval entrancing!)
The awesome Blue Hole's dangerous deeps,
The sunbeams o'er it glancing,

I see as though weree yesterday
7r played there in the wildwood,
.nd watched the waters haste away
(As hasted happy childhood!)
Can I forgot the bamboo bowers
Yherein .wa laodedoto-isndBtbas?
..nd laugh away the lightsome hours
Ero yet life's cares oppressed us?

St. Andrew's hills, St. Andrew's hills!
'Tis there the gold fern growth,
The silver fern beside the rills;
'Tis there the dog rose bloveth.
The star fern and the filmy rare
Deck glades and dells, bird-haunted,
*There blackberry boughs droop low, and where
The blue quits build undaunted.

bank beside the Coratoe
i see at my desire,
There scarlet achemencs blow,
:And yellow faschias, higher.
.borea bells o'erhang the stream;
I hear the gurgling water
?low down the gorge; as in a dream
I hear.our gleeful laughter.

St. Andrew's hills, St. Andrew's hills!
Should not dwell among you.
1our very name my being thrills
or memories sweet that haunt you.
'Tould wake those happy days again,
1o07 dead and gone forever.
*:h! no, it would be too much pain,
0ho roar of Hammee River.

0

I ~ -- ---.---.a_-..-- ----------k- ----WLL-Y-L -I_- -- -

II

Lena Kent
(1870 )

THE ihESURE

iHosure thy moral worth not by the dream
But by the deed; not by the high desire,
The beautiful intent, the lofty fire
That lights thy spirit with a fitful gleam.
Take hoed lest thou deceive thyself,and doom
The duty done because thou didst aspire
Unto the doing. Be life whole, entire;
The drean subservient, the deed supreme.

Nevertheless, drean on, dear heart; dream deep.
Acres of roses yield one drop alone
Of precious attar, and to one poor deed
A thousand dreams conspired. heoreforc heep
Thy spirit-roses; thou canst spare not one.
Keep thou thy dreams -- but follow where they load.

O4

Cyril N. King
(1872 -

I SAVT LIODNTA SLEEPING

I saw Limonta sleeping,
And one dim sail below,
'White as a phantom, creeping
Up from Bellagio.

I thought, "Though evening borrows
Por other lands the light,
All things on endless borrows
Return to lake and height;

"Gliznnr of surf and shingle,
Whon day is newly born;
The gold and green that mingle
On mulberry and corn;

"Silver of olives ranging
In clouds along the hill;
Where paths, their courses changing,
"rind upward, upward still."

But though 'tis summer weather
On all the heights again,
We'll seek no more together
The small red cyclamen,

Nor watch for beauty burning
At dawn's first overflow,
Nor see a sail returning
Down to Bollagio.

Arthur Nicholas
(1875-1934)

SEPTEiBER

Hfonth of the tinted leaf -
The year's sure warning of the ending 'day;
An ciblen, thou, of glories passed away -
Of passion faded into coning grief.
).And in thy mellowncss of form and face
iThe hectic beauty of decay shines bright -
Like spurts of speed in a near-ended race,
Or dying candle, flick'ring in the night.

Deep in the silent glade
t1-I seek f-on human company a rest,
And breathe in sacred solitude so blest,
'Iid scenes that watched strong August's manhood fade.
I sit and see the golden noon-tide sun
In tracery delicate fall through the trees,
i..':hile wanton sophyrs, as in gentle fun,
Pile the dead leaves to form my couch of ease.

Oft, at thine eventide,
Thy tender rlory ;ill awake ny muse;
And with the coming of the night's soft dew-s,
o.Call wraiths to rise and gather at my side;
Dear, gentle ghosts of the long-buried years,
Brought from their graves to noot my raptured gaze,
That multiplies then through a mist of tears -
Those ghosts of long-forgot September days.

(. And to my tortured heart
They bring relief by their own tender caln,
And for my soul provide a healing bali
Unknown to all the skill of earthly art.
They tell, in tones unheard of grosser ears
o.-Than those of spiritual and finer sense,
That Grief is useless, and nore useless. Tears,
That Pride is nought, and Greatness hurries hence!

They tell that earthly power -
Which can front longing souls their joys withhold,
iS. And crush their dreams of bliss, nore prized than gold -
Is an ophomera of life's short hour!
77rock'd aspirations, precious hopes delayed,
While Time flies onward on relentless feet
To life's Septeobor, sere-loafed and decayed -
hI All, all, may find a solace fit and neet.

And my soul upward flies
To range the Ether at its own sweet will,
Strong, on the wings of Faith, unshaken still -
A radiant spirit of the darkling skies,
*S. Hope springs again within my gladdened breast -
There is no roon within my heart for fear;
And these dear ghosts of other years sock rest,
And with the failing twilight, disappear.

Arthur Nicholas
(10875-1934)

cARADIA

Beneath the midnight moon silent I stand,
Bath'd in the tender silver of its beans;
; quaint, fantastic being -- such as dreams
Portray to infant ninds; by faory warnd
5. Fashion'd of light -- unpalpable, unreal,
Like the di. hero of a ghostly tale.

0 mystic Hour' ho more mysterious thou,
When front Night's Queen descends her fullest ray,
And, night no norc, a softer holier day
ro-Broods o'er a world, silent and sleeping now;
And exquisite, the lights and shadows fall
A glorious mantle, beautifying all.

In yonder cot, do not bright spirits dwell?
That stately mansion -- what but aerial things
i5.Could e'er inhabit? 7'ho but facry kings
Tread that white road, silent as neathh a spell?
Nay, these arc common in the glaring noon;
But oh! how beautiful beneath the moon!

Eid such a scene, what mortal nan is groat?
.o-TWhat head that bends not to a higher Pow'r?
Vho doth not feel the influence of the hour,
oThn none is poor, and none of high estate?
.hon, for the nonce, ends man's ephemeral strife
In peace like Death, but fairer far than Life.

5. 'Tis then I love to nuse and ponder long
On this existence, and on that to cone;
Then, borne to some eternal, changeless hone,
Some other unresisting souls anrong,
I pass the gates whence nan returneth not
o0. "Thu world forgetting, by the world forgot".

I ask not that Life's river flowing on,
That boars me helpless to that soundless Sea,
Should have no shoals or ever smooth should be --
Its course eventless and unruffled run:
v>-Be nine the thrills that other men must feel
In alternations of their woe and ecal.

But oh' when to the "darkest shades" I cone
'Tis not for noon-tide brilliance I shall pine --
Give me a region of soft light divine,
0-A noon-lit land for my perpetual hone.
Sweeter for no that Eden's bowers shall bloon
Seen through the noon-boczrs -- robed in light and gloom.

'ith kin'reod spirits, 'nidst celestial groves
There may I wonder 'noath eternal trees:
I4-.The niumur of the soft spice-laodn bronze
To mako sweet music for our holy loves;
And the high l.oon its tender boeas to pour,
A gentle light, on us for ever nore.

Arthur Nicholas
(1875-1934)

THE SIFT

Lord, let Thy Gift not diet
Uhore'er Thy Hand Thy Servant's path nay lead --
On breezy upland, opulent and high,
Within the vale, or in the lowly nead;:
~- Oh! never may these living eyes behold
The grave wherein Thy Gift lies dead and co3d.

Brief is the life of earth,
And faintly gloans the golden hope afar
Of that blest after-life, that second birth,
io And that fair land beyond the farthest star --
Yet, with Thy Gift, a~id the toil and strife,
There comes sweet foretaste of that other life.

And to the Poet's heart
Each season brings its offering of joy;
(53 The tender travail of a soul, apart
Front all the cares that earth-born peace destroy:
That soul dwells in a country all its own --
To earth-bound sight and hearing all unknown.

SOht may I never uiss
pO- The sweet communings at the mid-night hour
With unseen hosts or lose th' ecstatic bliss
Of angel-voices, heard when storn-clouds lower,
To which I listen at the window-pane,
Amid the soughing of the falling rain.

b. I hear deep organ-notes
Ring through the diapason of the storm;
And nany a high celestial sonnet floats
Upon my ear as tempest-breezes form.
And more-than-nortal music fills my soul,
S.-As o'er the rugged beach the billdws roll.

'Reft of Thy Gift, I were
A wild-bird straying from the woodland choirs,
Amidst the city's dust, and din and glare,
Its brick, and stone and mass of tangled wires --
3- Until, with fluttering wing and glazing eye,
It falls upon the stony street to die.

Still let Thy Gift be mine,
The solace of the days that yet remain,
Pain to assuage and pleasure to refine,
4.- Though bringing nought of earthly fano or gain;
Till, in the Great Beyond, my eyes I lift,
To see the Glorious Donor of the Gift.

i~ ~. Jeai j i SA.

j

VIHEN NATURE COLLS
(A Rondeau of the Early Morning)

"Tropica"

VEhen Nature calls, at dawn of some bright day,
-,nd gives the invitation -- "Come and play"
With sweet imperious cadence, felt and heard
In cool blue skies, wet grass, and fresh-voiced bird,
We leave all else her summons to obey!

For as of old the Piper's witching lay
Charmed every child from Hamelin town away,
/ So Nature's children heed the first soft word
When Nature calls.
Green woods cry "Come!" and distant sea-notes say:
"The waves are warm, the Yhite ships dance and sway!"
By some vague longing is the spirit stirred;
The room grows close, the book's dull page is blurred;
All -out-door becknns, and we cannot stay --
When Nature Calls.

CLARJMA AUDE GilRPTTT
(1880-1958)

DEDICATION
To !iy Island, Jamaica

By the flowers that unfold
Far front hunan touch or hold,
Tine that never mortal. knows
breathing g into red or rose,
Lilies where no vulgar gaze
Breaks the perfume of their praise;
SLittle Island of my birth,
Here upon your Shrine I heap
All the petals that I keep
17oven of your cdrCeaful earth.
awr
By your due-veiled vestal hills
v.here a mystic Presence thrills,
7ihere no footfall ever goes
To disturb the droeaing rose,
And no song is ever hoard
Save the chant of hidden bird*
Little Island of my heart,
Here I consecrate aneo
11 ny being unto you,
Born of you, of you a part.

By your woods untrod by man
That primordial ages span,
By your secret springs that rise
Innocent of mortal eyes:
'"here unharmed the mullet runs/
Silver neathh the golden suns;
Island of the deathless days,
To your altars now I bring
All ny spirit's offering
Spices, attars, front your ways.

By your Arawvaks who found
Xemos in each trooi each sound;
All your ancient sons who heard
God in every singing bird;
By the flaming sword of Spain
Scourging but to pass again;
Island of the mystic past,
I too felt the frou of wings
Fron your far-off, scarco-sensed things,
You my first love and my last.

Not your loveliness that's know
But the god behind the stone:
Not the treasure that we hold
But the glean beyond the gold,
Beauty that unseen -ze see
Shining through futurity;
Island, another of my soul,
I but give you back your own,
I your flesh, and I your bone -
Ro-absorb and nake no whole.

Hidden bird: the solitaire of the high mountains.

"ullot runs: the mountain mullet is found in many streams in Jamaica.
"Runs" is used in British North Anorica for fish hurrying through water.

Xces: semi-divinities like the Greek nynphs, etc., to '.ho-'i the XAr-aaks
P)rayod rather th.n to t:'iir Chi-f C zd.

53

Clara Maude Garrett
(1880-1958)

NEV BORN

When I would shrive ny soul of sins
I seek no nortal priest;
But where the cay in dawn begins
I climb front out the beast,

As lifts the dawn so lifts my thought
To colour with the sky;
Till where the rose of day is wrought
Fades out my tainted I.

There, in that glorious burst of sun
Upon the night-washed world,
IHy infant soul is newly spun
From virgin air impearled.

I an the blossom freshly blowm;
I an the half-furled leaf;
I am the spear of grass that's grown
Front out the withered sheaf.

And with the bird I take the air
All earth, all heaven, is nine:
My soul is but a shining prayer
Fresh front the press divine.

Constance Hollar
(1880-1945)

FLAMING JUNE

June has come to Kingston,
Flaming June!
And the hot, white noon
Has become a scarlet poppy;
whilee the night, a silver moth,
Sleeps beneath the moon
Of Flaming June.
June has come to Kingston
In a sun-rod car,.
Scatt'ring petals far;
Every street a carnival,
Every day a Festival
In Flaming June.
Like a red Venetian glass
Trined with gold: like a gipsy lass
I have seen her pass.
On the trees she swings
And her mantle flings
On the cloud-birds' wings.
You can see its rich folds clear,
On land and sky and air.
aThile a flaming prayer,
Like a banner bright unfurled
From the red heart of the world,
Throbs amidst the glare
?7hile her tapers flare,
On the Earth's broad altar old,
With its frontal red and gold.

She has tied the blue-bells of the see
With silver ribbons: and each tree
Draped with Gobolin tapestry,
In the grass her carpet she has laid
Of amber velvet shot with jade;
All the swift-winged winds have flown
As her heralds and their trumpets blown
In merry tune
For Flaming June!
'Tis a royal progress day by day:
Like a Queen she passes on her way;
Like a Persian bride's her bright array;
And her steeds in rainbow housings gay,
Prance and curvet to the magic tune
Of Flaming June.

All her red wine overflows the brim
Of her jasper bowl. Its rim
Beset with golden butterflies
Who sip its honeyed sweetness,
And with langourous fleetness
Through the scented gardens skim,
To tell the insect choir
Y"ho in places dim
Hide from Day's insistent fire,
To tune its many stringed lyre
To hymn the song of June,
Flaming June!
Underneath the moon
She has made her bed
In a pool of stars!
while Red M ars
Flames overhead
And soft breezes croon
To June -
Flaming June.

Consta-n= f", t
(l8-8 ^)

THE CUP OF LIFE

I shall drink deep of the Horning -
My cup all blue
And pearl-cnwrought;
The water from a rock-hewn grot -
Its springs high in some Morning-land,
A strand
Untouched by sun's caress,
The water rich with tenderness,
So cold and crystal clear;
No wine was ever quite so rare;
An azure cup to pledge the day
I'll'drink then take the open way.

SI shall drink deep of the Noon-tide; -
My cup all rod
And coral bright
Shall glisten in the strong white blaze
Of Noon's effulgent rays:-
Hy heart, a flame of lustre high
Shall leap beneath the blazon d sky;
A royal draught,
Press'd from the red grapes of rich life,
I'll *drink,
Amidst the din and strife,
Thero. trumpets rend the startled air
And banners blush; and, still more fair,
Dream- faces half-divine
In sudden beauty shine:-
With hand within
The bridle, I shall drink full deep,
\ Then in the saddle leap.

Shall drink deep of the Evening -
le My .cup soft gray
And, rose entwined,
With silver memories lined:
The water front some deep, cool stream
Of fair forgetfulness
Shall be a soft caress,
A grateful boon for perched lip;
Deep in the full-brirmed stream
I'll dip
l1y cup with ease
And drink to star-eyed Peace.

I shall drink deep of the Night;,
No cup
But flagon bright,
And golden as a drean
That fades with Morning's bean,
Shall hold this draught.
Fair set, it gloems with many a gem
That formed in day a diaden
To tempt my eager feet.
But now they rest upon the flagon's bring,
And strong desire grows weak and dim.
A draught for sleep,
Fair, soft and very deep:-
I'll drink a stirrup-cup to tender night;
For in the East -
There cometh Light.

L : ..__....." -

Constance Hollar
(1880-1945)

YELLOW

I will sing a song of yellow on this yellow day
All the loveliness of yellow passes in a swift array:
Yellow of bright buttercups in Kingston's dazzling fields --
Yellow of chrysanthemums that Autumn lavish yields,
Sun-flowers and primroses sparkling in the sun --
The sheen of children's hair like sunbeams golden ,pun,
I can sing of fyelv almost endless the refrain
But best of all are alamandas dripping in the rain.

I will sing of butter in the dairy clean and cool --
I will sing of gold-fish in the crystal pool --
Or of amber in a necklace carved, of beauty rare
Or topaz shining, with a light, deep, soft and clear.
Of honey in a jar that lots the daylight through,
Of oranges and limes and brilliant mangoes too.
There seems no end to all the rapturous yellow train
But best of all are alamandas dripping in the rain.

Sulphur and saffron light the drug-store that I pass. ,
Canaries flit and sing -- this gold-finch gleams like glass
The pumpkin is so rich and luscious in a pie;
The paw-paws, with their black seeds, with golden apples vie --
Siena Marble is a golden glory I dare not compare
Tlith any other yellow -- I but name it here.
Yellows flame on yellows -- Cockatoo and crane --
But best of all are alamandas dripping in the rain

I can sing of fairy cassia and cosmos in a ring,
Of "Little Pages" in the sand -- of cowslips in the Spring --
Of cheese and cream and shining yellow corn --
Of ficus blossoms -- sweet potatoes -- sunshine in the morn.
The yellow jewel of the egg set in its crystal band
And all the vyller bonuty of English sea-shore sand.
Bring all your yellow glories; not one will I disdain
But best of all are alamandas dripping in the rain.

Yellow Poincianas light this dew-wet glade
Holding yellow black-eyed Susans in their shade.
Like candy is this vase of deep Venctial gold,
And yellow gleams this feather-robe of chieftains old.
I dream of yellow yacca, ivories and shells
Of Temple music and of mellow wedding bells.
I know not what is loss or what men count as gain
But best of all are alamandas dripping in the rain.

For alamanda gathers up the yellow of each living thing
And stores it in its golden cups for glad remembering.
It is no hoarding miser -- it spills it far and wide --
It pours it on the garden and on the bleak hill-side.
So deeply yellow are the flowers, their chalices held up
I often wonder that the rain does not drip yellow from each cup.
Yellow is a golden bounty, vast I know -- but still maintain
All yollovs live in alamandas dripping in the rain.

Reginald 11. I1urray.
(1883 )

THE SONG OF A BLUE MOUNTAIN STREA'I

In a cleft remote
Vthere white mists float
Around Blue NIountain's Peak,
.I rise unseen
Beneath the screen
Of fog-clouds dank and bleak;
I trickle, I flow
To the hills below
And vales that lie far under,
From babblings low
I louder grow,
I shout, I roar, I thunder.

I fall with a rush
In the morning hush
7While the mountain sleeping lies,
There swift I sweep -
Here slow I creep,
Till the sound of my motion dies:
Oh! I rejoice
In the night-wind's voice
As soft it kisses my stream,
And dance and glimmer
And glance and shimmer
IThero moonlit reaches gleam.

With ice-cold wave
I gently lave
The flowers as I wander,
I gloom and glide
'Noeth M.ountain Riidc,
I murmur and meander
Thro' fern-arched dells
ihore fairy-bells
And violets scent the air,
7hile calls above
The soft blue dove
Or lone-voiced Solitaire.

And here I crash
7ith silver flash
Over a mighty crag,
And the echoes sing
As I headlong fling
The trees I downward drag -
Till last I pour
"7ith deafening roar,
A mountain stream no longer,
O'cr plains below,
And seawards flow
A river broad and stronger.

1 .... .. ..

Reginald M. Murray
(1883 )

THE ROAD

The moon sails o'cr Long Mountain, and lights a sand-strip lone,
There surf swims, silver shimmering, and shoreward breakers drone:
Along the forlorn stretches the night winds sweep and moan:
A shadow moves, slow creeping, athwart the whiteness thrown:
It speeds, it stops, and peers: a lance uplifts and stabs:
An Indian, silent, naked, hunting and spearing crabs.

A brigantine rides dipping, beneath the tropic moon,
With Spanish loot full laden, mantilla and doubloon,
For Morgan makes Port Royal, and bottles cliik and clash,
And sailormen are cheering to see the shore-lights flash,
Carina, dark eyes glittering, bedecked with jingling rings,
Flutters to greet a gallant lad who many a moidore brings.

The self-same moon is lamping that gleaming arm to-night
Fanned by Caribbean breezes and curved for heart's delight,
But with the salt wind's sighing the sounds of laughter come
From dance-hall and from night-club, and motors throb and hum.
For man has built a roadway, a thoroughfare, you know,
Where Indian chevied scuttling crab a mort of years ago.

000 ooo 000

Page 59
Missing
From
Original

WFctcr Adolphe Roberts.
(1886 )

PEACOCKS

They cane from Persic to the Sacred '.ay
*n. rode in Ponpoy's triumph, side by side
Yith odalisques and idols, plunges flung -ido,
. flamo of gens in the chill Ronan day.
They that wore brought as captives cnme to say
To flaunt in beauty, mystery and pride,
To preen before the enporors deified,
Synbols of their magnificent decay.

Then there was madness and a scourge of swords;
Imperial purple noulderod into dust.
But the immortal peacocks stung noew lords
To furies of insatiable lust.
Contemptuous, they loitered on parade -
Live opals, rubies, sardonyx and jade.

I, ., ...... ... .... .... ... .

S/

Yr. Adolphe Roberts
(1886 )

THE CAT

Pleasures, that I most enviously sense,
Pass in long ripples dovn her flanks and stir
The pluno that is her tail. She deigns to purr
And tako crosses. But her p,-,s '.ould tense
To flashing wocpons at the least offence.
Hunbly, I bond to stroke her silken fur,
I am content to be a slave to her.
I an enchanted by her insolence.

No one of .all the women I have knomr
Has been so beautiful, or proud, or wise
As this angora with her amber eyes.
She nakes her chosen cushion seen a throne,
And wears the same voluptuous, slow smile
She wore when she was worshipped by the Nile.

,T Adolphe Roberts
(1886 )

MORGAN

"NAME of Harry Morgan," said the bold -'elsh freenan,
Signing at Tortuga with a cutthroat crew,
Done with plantation toil, wild to be a seaman
And carve his way to glory a'sailing of the blue.

Young Captain Morgan, swaggering at Port Royal.
Pricing of his cargo on the Halfmoon Beach,
Roaring for a keg of rum, to share it with the loyal
And drink damnation to the rogues beyond his reach.

Henry Morgan, high admiral of the buccaneers,
Ravishing with fury the island and the Main;
Conqueror of Panama, home to a storm of cheers,
His fists full of emeralds, and beauties in his train.

Gorgeous Sir Henry' Egad, it is the same man'
Governor of Jamaica in a broidered coat,
Swearing loud and hearty to show he's not a tame man,
And pouring kill-devil down his thirsty throat.

.. .....

3(3

VW. Adolphe Roberts
(1886 )

ON A MONUI.MENT TO ILA.RTI

Cuba, dishevelled, naked to the waist,
Springs up erect from the dark earth and screams
Her joy in liberty. The metal gleams
Where her chains broke. Magnificent her haste
To charge into the battle and to taste
Revenge on the oppressor. Thus she seems.
But she were powerless without the dreams
Of him who stands above, unsmiling, chaste.

Yes, over Cuba on her jubilant way
Broods the Apostle, Jose Julian Ilarti.
He shaped her course of glory, and the day
The guns first spoke he died to make her free.
That night a meteor flamed in splendid loss
Between the North Star and the Southern Cross.

W. Adolphe Roberts
(1886- )

NEW YORK

She the young despot, the prodigious jade,
Has she not builded her a proper throne!
In miracles of steel and glass and stone,
It looms above the.world. The thunder made
By wings and engines is her accolade.
They that have wooed her overlong have grown
Wroth at her adamantine flesh and bone.
She knows her beauty and she flaunts unswayed.
Though they should die with mockery on their lips,
Saying it is not true that they adored
Her city of the towers and the ships
Or sought to revel in her golden hoard,
She is the one inexorable lust
Her worshippers take with them to the dust.

L_.

I5-

W. Adolphe Roberts
(1886 )

VIEUX CARE '

This city is the child of France and Spain,
That once lived nobly, ardent as the heat
in which it came to birth. Alas, how fleet
The years of love and arms! There now remain,
Bleached by the sun and mouldered by the rain,
Impassive fronts that guard some rare retreat,
Some dim, arched salon, or some patio sweet
Where dreams persist and the past lives again.

The braided iron of the balconies
Is like locked hands fastidiously set
To bar the world. But the proud mysteries
Showed me a glamour I could not forget:
Your face, camellia-white upon the stair,
Framed in the midnight thicket of your hair.

In New Orleans

W. Adblphe Roberts
(1886 )

LA GLOIRE
(1914)

That spring we lived in Paris and adored
Beauty and love as one. A magic room
With windows on the Seine. A magic loom
Of poetry to spin the dreams we stored
Forever in our hearts, a precious hoard.
Little we cared when chestnuts were abloom
That on the right hand soared Napoleon's tomb,
And on the left the Arc de Triomphe soared.

But we knew Paris deeper on the day
When the old challengetouched the far frontiers
As summer died. Along the Elysees
Ghosts of the armies marching down the years
And muted in the blue autumnal haze
A golden rumour of the Marseillaise.

W. Adolphe Roberts
(1886 )

VILLANELLE OF THE SAD POET

He who has held so many springs in fief
Is lonely under this November sky.
Autumn has crept upon him like a thief

He mourns the flower falling, and the leaf,
And all old pomps that march away to die!
He who has held so many springs in fief.

He grieves the clover withered, and the sheaf,
The rusted vineyards and the streams run dry.
Autumn has crept upon him like a thief.

He had forgotten spring could be so brief
And dusk so sad when early snows drift by
He who has hold so many springs in fief.

He is a valiant and defeated chief
Whose band went southward as the swallows fly.
Autumn has crept upon him like a thief.

Poets and maids, remember in his grief
Your brother Pan, whose world is all awry.
He who has held so many springs in fief
Autumn has crept upon him like a thief.

W. Adolphe Roberts
(1886 )

VILLANELLE OF THE LIVING PAN

1 Pan is not dead, but sleeping in the brake,
Hard by the blue of-some AEgean shore.
Ah, flute to him, Beloved, he will wake.

Vine leaves have drifted o'er him flake by flake
And with dry laurel he is covered o'er.
Pan is not dead, but sleeping in the brake.

The music that his cicadas make
Comes to him faintly; like forgotten lore,
Ah, flute to him, Beloved, he will wake.

Let not the enemies of Beauty take
Unction of Soul that he can rise no more.
Pan is not dead but sleeping in the brake,

Dreaming of one that for the goat god's sake
Shall pipe old tunes and worship as of yore.
SAh, flute to him, Beloved, he will wake.

So once again the Attic coast shall shake
With a cry greater than it heard before:
j "Pan is not dead, but sleeping in the brake! "
Ah, flute to him Beloved, he will wake.

Claude McKay
(1890-1948)

I SHALL RETURN

I shall return again; I shall return i
To laugh and love and watch with wonder-eyes
At golden noon the forest fires burn,
Wafting their blue-black smoke to sapphire skies.
I shall return to loiter by the streams
That bathe the brown blades of the bending grasses,
And realize once more my thousand dreams
Of water rushing down the mountain passes.
I shall return to hear the fiddle and fife
Of village dances, dear delicious tunes,
That stir the hidden depths of native life,
Stray melodies of dim remembered kunes. n Muz
I shall return, I shall return again,
To ease my mind of long, long years of pain.,

-~~~ ~ ~ ~ -- .Z h44

Claude McKay
(1890-1948)

AMERICA

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigour flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

&~* ~

i_~_U

Claude McKay
(1890-1948)

IF WE IIUST DIE

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, 0 let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honour us though dead!
0 kinsmen! we must neot the common foe.
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave
And for their thousand blows deal one death blow'
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back'

Claude McKay
(1890-1948)

14,,_-eP* 3 3
ST. ISAAC'S CHURCH. PETROGRAD ( ,,

Bow dorm my soul in worship very low
And in the holy silences be lost.
Bow down before the marble Ian of Woe,
Bow down before the singing angel host.
What jewelled glory fills my spirit's eye,
TWhat golden grandeur moves the depths of me!
The soaring arches lift me up on high,
Taking my breath with their rare symmetry.

Bow. down my soul and let the wondrous light
Of beauty bathe thee from her lofty throne,
Bown down before the wonder of man's might.
Bow down in worship, humble and alone,
Bow lowly down before the sacred sight
Of man's Divinity alive in stone.

L.,.. ..L .-.
73

Claude IcKay
(1890-1948)

THROUGH AGONY

All night, through the eternity of night,
Pain was my portion though I could not feel.
Deep in my humbled heart you ground your heel,
Till I was reft of even my inner light,
Till reason from my mind had taken flight,
And all my world went whirling in a reel.
And all my swarthy strength turned cold like steel,
A passive mass beneath your puny might.
Last night I gave you triumph over me,
So I should be myself as once before,
I marvelled at your shallow mystery,
And haunted hungrily your temple door.
I gave you sum and substance to be free,
Oh, you shall never triumph any more.

II.

I do not fear to face the fact and say,
How darkly-dull my living hours have grown,
.Iy wounded heart sinks heavier than stone,
Because I loved you longer than a day'
I do not shame to turn myself aw.ay
Front beckoning flowers beautifully blown,
To mourn your vivid memory alone
In mountain fastnesses austerely gray.
The mists will shroud no on the utter height,
The salty, briminig waters of my breast
Will ninglo with the fresh dews of the night
To bathe ny spirit hankering to rest.
But after sleep I'll wako with greater might,
Once more to venture on the eternal quest.

* j

Claude McKay
(1890-1948)

THE HARLEM DANCER

Applauding youths laughed with your prostitutes
And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway;
Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes
Blown by black players upon a picnic day.
She sang and danced on gracefully and caln,
The light gauze hanging loose about her forn;
To Dn she seemed a proudly-swaying paln
Grown lovelier for passing through a storm.
Upon her swarthy neck black shiny curls
Luxuriant fell; and tossing coins in praise,
The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls,
Devoured her shape with eager, passionate gaze;
But looking at her falsely-sniling face,
I knew her self was not in that strange place.

Claude McKay
(1890-1948)

BAPTISH

Into the furnace lot me go alone;
Stay you without in terror of'the heat,
I will go naked in for thus 'tis sweet -
Into the weird depths of the hottest zone.
I will not quiver in the frailest bone,
You will not note a flicker of defeat;
My heart shall tremble not its fate to meet,
My mouth give utterance to any noan.
The yawning oven spits forth fiery spears;
Red aspish tongues shout wordlessly my name.
Desire destroys, consumes ny mortal fears,
Transforming me into a shape of flano.
I will come out, back to your world of tears,
A stronger soul within a finer frame.

i:

I:ll

--.-Y~--r------ --; --.~w-------- ---- --J--r----rlr.-rc--L---

Claude McKay
FAI.E-HEART (1890-1948)

So ruch I have forgotten in ten years, .
So much in ten brief years! I have forgot
ihat time the purple apples come to juice,
And what month brings the shy forget-me-not.
I have forgot the special, startling season
Of the pimento's flowering and fruiting;
What time of year the ground doves brown the fields
And fill the noonday with their curious fluting.
I have forgotten much, but still remember
The poinsettia's red, blood-red, in warm December.

I still recall the honey-fever grass,
But cannot recollect the high days when
We rooted then out of the ping-wing path
To stop the nad bees in the rabbit pen.
I often try to think in what sweet month
The languid painted ladies used to dapple
The yellow by-road nazing :'rom the main,
Sweet with the golden threads of the rose-apple.
I have forgotten strange but quite remember
The poinsettia's red, blood-red, in warn December.

What weeks, what months, what time of the mild year
We cheated school to have our fling at tops?
What days our wine-thrilled bodies pulsed with joy
Feasting upon blackberries in the copse?
Oh some I know' I have embalmed the days,
Even the sacred uonents when we played,
All innocent of passion, uncorrupt,
At noon and evening in the flamn-heart's shade.
Te wore so happy, happy, I remember,
Beneath the poinsettia's red in warn December.

I

!

~"~~~ --27

Claude McKay
(1890-1948)

OUTCAST

For the dim regions whence my fathers came
My spirit, bondaged by the body, longs.
Words felt, but never heard, my lips would frame;
My soul would sing forgotten jungle songs.
I would go back to darkness and to peace,
But the great western world holds me in fee,
.And I may never hope for full release
While to its alien gods I bend my knee.
Something in me is lost, forever lost,
Some vital thing has gone out of my heart,
And I must walk the way of life a ghost
Among the sons of earth, a thing apart.
For I was born, far from my native clime,
Under the white man's menace, out of time.

7S

Frank A. Collymore
(1893- )

BENEATH THE CASUARINAS

'I

We walk slowly beneath the casuarinas. i
Our feet nako no sound on the thick pile spread
Beneath the trees' shade: all is silent:
We walk with nuted footsteps and no word is said.
Overhead the casuarinas strain upwards to the sky,
Their dull green plumage vainly poised for flight;
Around us everything is strange and still
And all is filled with an unreal light:
We night be walking along the timeless floor
Of a sea where desolate tides forever creep
Or roaring along the secret paths
That wind among the twilight plains of sleep.
And then... what is that sound which falls
On the ear in the stillness? Is it the beat
Of the blood in the pulse, or the sigh
Of the casuarinas in the midday heat?
The sound of the sea in the curled shell pressed
To the eager car.... hearts' lost content....
The empty mouthing of the long-forgotten dead...
The winds' secret.... the old lament
Of all creation..... silence made manifest
In sound? We shall never know
We pass front their shadow out into the sunlight,
-And the silence echoes and re-echoes within us as we go.

7,

Frank A. Collynore
(1893- )

RETURN

We too shall cone down to the sea,
Past the gay green gardens of the heart's munificence,
Past the lichened pathway where the rust
Stains the stone and the forked tree stands desolate,
Down to the sands :
Thore the shattered bones of leviathan
Are strewn with coral splinters and the wrack of lands.

'Jo shall come down to the sea again
Whence we once crawled landward
To rear our gardens and palaces and temples;
For always there has lingered, echoing the ancient memory
Within the bone,
Persistent, the song of the sea-shell:
And naught shall silence that insistent monotone.

We shall return. See,
On the bright sands her wav.s have strewn
Golden coronals to welcome us i
Crowned as kings we shall return --
VTW who have fled
Fror her dark embrace, back to our another, the sea,
The crowding sea, vomiting her living and her dead.

Frank A. Collymore
(1893-

BY LAMPLIGHT

Remembering those evenings when for us
The echoing forests of Sibelius
Gleamed in the lamplight, remembering
Naught of their secret whispering,
Naught of their cold loneliness,
Only the warmth and friendliness
Of you sitting there beside me; recalling
Only the.frozen echoes falling, falling
Upon the curtained shadows where the night
Had stolen the pattern from the bright
Lettering that flecked the long bookshelves --
I saw the ghosts of our forgotten selves
And know now why the shadow crept
Into your wandering eyes and why you wept.

L -

- -- ~~_~ ~ ~~r--uu-~ r--., J .

Frank A. Collymore
(1893- )

PORTRAIT OF MR. X

I should like to paint you a portrait o'f i:r. X:
Not, you will understand me, such a portrait
Is night be effected by camera or brush,
Pencil or pen. That has been done,
That has boon accomplished. No,
I should like to present that which Mr. X is,
The Mr. X not seen L/ human or by camera eye:
Ir. X himself, X, as always, the unknovm

ind, first and foremost, his viscera would have to be presented:
All the tremendous implications
Of that unseen, improbable metropolis --
Its remarkable storehouses of energy,
Its sewerage system, its marvels of connunication,
Its workers busy on repair, its slum areas,
Its arterial highways, its chemical laboratories,
Its alternating periods of inflations and depression,
Its longwave stations -- all these the background.

And sprawling haphazardly around
Would be the Mr. X you might have seen:
The appurtenance of flesh, the forked symbol.
The knobbly knees, the pale and flabby hands,
The sloping shoulders and the modest paunch,
The mild defective eye behind the lens,
The print demeanour, the unassuming tie:
These the social pattern, like his underwear.

Yet all these not as colour; perceived rather
As texture and temperature. Colour I should keep
For other matters: for his notion through space and tine,
The delicate blue thene of his.breathing, his gamboge
Slumbor; and to illustrate his dreas,
The golden mystery of hidden suns,
Each sun a wild and glittering stallion,
Tameless by night,
But gelded for diurnal thoroughfare.

And there should be dim green dolls for nonories
Of lost playthings, of nagic swords and invisibl6t cloaks;
And one would be able to lick the paint
And it would be chocolates in silver paper,
Redcoated wooden soldiers,
And moonstain through a broken pane of glass.

But from these dells strange flowers would thrust,
Strange hothouse flowers skewered on wire
By means of appropriate catchwords
(Sing yo-ho for the status quo)
And tinted with the sober shades of respectability
(And a yo-ho-ho for the libido)
And silver in the plate on Sundays,
And a flag --
A flag, his country 'tis of her, the irresponsible

archangel.

/2...

a

O* O ,- r-^-:. ..

f

2.

And then superimposed upon these primaries
(A bit woolly around the edges
As most of these productions are)
His workaday reactions: shaving, etcetera,
The morning newspaper, two fried eggs
As befits the father of a family,' boy and girl,
And schoolfees for the children;
Accountant or what not with a dash of bitters,
And a refrigerator, and people dropping in of an evening,
And a radio and gossip and a ghost
Of something, somewhere refusing to be laid
(0 wind, 0 sea, 0 stars), rising somctines
At inopportune moncnts from the next twinbed,
And prime beef and indigestion on Sabbath afternoons --
The indignity of idleness.
Perhaps
These would be done in nauve and pinkish greys
With here and there a touch of sepia .
A tinge a twinge a fringe to round off the portrait:
Securities for security, and a life insurance
For death's assurance,
Also, pale and thin,
A halo, slightly phosphorescent, like the leavings
Of a sunset, a halo of self-sacrifice; and a cross,
The wooden whisper of a tree that never blooded.
For Mr. X's portrait is not to be sketched in merely,
Nor is this adurxbration an afterthought;
He nust be presented in every possible dimension,
Capable of infinite extension. But until
Such a portrait can be effected,
Caught within some bottleneck of c,
His individual talents wither, fade,
And float unharvested upon the swift and sterile air.

. .

...l _-_l.. ._. .. -. i. .J__ I

Frank A. Collymoro
(1893-

SO THIS IS LOVE

Yes, the Little Follow used us remarkably well:
Brought us together most aptly,
And a certain fortuity in the occurrence
Achieved a remarkable completeness
Which the romantic approach
Might well have failed to accomplish.

The spell woven, the charm proceeded
To work in the approved manner,
And soon the emotional reaction
Quite outstripped the senses' entertainment.
Indeed there was a singular intensity
About the entire incident which may perhaps
Account for its peculiar perfection
(For you will admit, I have no doubt,
That the affair was of comparatively brief duration).

And so, instruments of the inscrutable,
YWe performed the duet in harmony --
The old, old theme, but how unwearying the melody,
Capable of what infinite variation,
Presaging what transcendental revelation!

We performed the duet, I say, with distinction,
And have now returned to our respective Lares and Penates:
You to the wanted domesticities of your station,
And I to forgetting.

d!.

IiA. !i. Clarke

THE RICE PILASNTERS
I

The mermaids rose from out the water into the glare
Shaking their hair
From drops of brown muddy water
Hovering there:
Their long-legged wooors flashing short curved arcs
Of steel, erase the smiling pastel green
That roof the flooded parks,
Unfeathered pelicans
Wading on hunan feet, of unknown hue
You semaphore
No strange tongue
Save that which Pharoah knew
Who built the sphinx.

t.Saigtorhi
i rndoso ro~ ud ae

4 oeigtee

W. Therold Barnes

SONG OF THE PEDLAR

"Needles and pins, virtues and sins
Raging and ranting, psaln-singing and chanting,
Rich nan and poor nan and beggar and robber,
Devils and fire, and saints and cold water,
His own another's son and her own father's daughter.
And who is to catalogue virtues and sins,
Marking where lust leaves off, where love begins?
Crimes that are great, good deeds that are piddling,
Soul-searing hate and love fair to middling,
Old sinners turned saints and young saints a-sinning,
When half of the losing cones back with the winning,
Life is confusing, alas and alack'
Nothing is white and nothing is black.
Does day end with night? Is night day's beginning?
Debit is credit and losing is winning,
One and one's two, and one and one's seven
Lnd one and one's hell, and one and one's heaven ..."

So sang the pedlar plying his trade,
Selling the things that his old hands had made.
He was old, he was daft; but I paused as I laughed
Briefly to wonder: What would he- have sung
Had he been younger, had he been young?

I

Agnes Iaxwell-Hall
(1894-

SJ 2JICA MII KET

Honey, pepper, leaf-green lines,
Pagen fruit whose names are rhymes,
Mangoes, breadfruit, ginger-roots,
Granadillas, boaboo-shoots,
Cho-cho, ackees, tangerines,
Lemons, purple Congo-beans,
Sugar, okras, kola-nuts,
Citrons, hairy coconuts,
Fish, tobacco, native hats,
Gold bananas, woven mats,
Plantains, wild-thyne, pallid leeks,
Pigeons with their scarlet beaks,
Oranges and saffron ymnS
Baskets, ruby guava jams,
Turtles, goat-skins, cinnamon,
Allspice, conch-shells, golden run.
Black skins, babel and the sun
j That burns all colours into one.

(1894-

VILLANELLE OF II..IORTAL LOVE

Love will awaken all lovely things at last.
One by one they shall cone from the sleep of Time,
Bearing in triumph the deathless dreons of the past.

Hard on their fair designs cane the wreck of the blast;
S Where they lie scattered in every land and cline,
Love will awaken all lovely things at last.

Gathered from out the ages, a concourse vast,
Those shall return once nore with arns sublime,
Bearing in triumph the deathless dreams of the past.

Lo, in what manifold moulds is their beauty cast!
Ah, with what colours bedecked in the noe Sprinetime
Love will awaken all lovely things at last!

Now shall the Earth emerge from its gwitryfast,
And music flow again in powerful rhyne,
Bearing in triumph the deathless dreams of the past.

For out of the welter and dust of the holocaust
Rises the promised glory of our prime:
Love will awaken all lovely things at last,
Bearing in triumph the deathless dreams of the past.

i

J. E. Clare McFarlane
(1894-

RE EMBER NOW:

Dear Friend, if Hemory serves thee 'now,
Aught of the glorious years remain,
The gladness they have known take thou;
Leave me the pain.

So many things we did together,
So many paths our feet have known! -
But now, in fine or stormy weather,
We go alone.

And I have winced at those reminders
That crowd our late abandoned ways:-
The eager, resolute pathfinders
Ofyesterdays -

Green banks where yellow blossoms cluster,
The wooden seat beneath the vine
Where oft we watched the heavens muster
And fall in line;

The rocks that guard the ancient scene,
The old stile and the sea's low wailing,
Whence little love-barques that have been
Went forth a-sailing --

The moon o'er distant waters rising,
The sun making his parting bow
'Iidst splendours beyond Man's devising --
Remember now!

These know not any yesterdays;
Nor will they share the thoughts I borrow
To win my fond heart from its gaze
Beyond tomorrow.

For these the eternal dream will last; -
The floundered, riven barque, for me,
'Twixt endless future, endless past,
Divides the sea.

But the mad world will never know
That here was precious cargo lost;
Some legend from this grief will grow
And reach the coast --

A bantering jest, a false surmise,
Of wanton huzours, lightly gone:-
They looked into each others eyes
And, then, passed on!

P t R0r YAM 1 T, Cla1e coie rlmane
A Rever*ie

Now gleams the golden half-moon overhead;
Beneath, theo vagiuelyfirrorig sesa; t-the. lap
". .Of weltede. -TieE; Port RoyrL_'.. s3teel--gray -lade
:"-In threat'nihg. admonition gua'rdls. the gap;
S *: -ar to ::he ._vstv:rc-. glow the .ounset-sk-ies-
The rosy 'emory of ~Love"s.snatest kiss,
Y rami-.gethe' jeelled tears "of. ,broken; hblis
That' h;alianhg start to lokastc's .eyes.

wJl-- igh-rti-forever lives,- forever. dies;
The !'gcner:tiohs pass, Youth-.runs. its:.'ace,
-And Age comes tottering back with bootless sighs,
Or cynical contempt; but in thy face
No wrinkless tell of baffled wanderings
Among the shattered .frgments of a .tream;
.--Ere sorrow. claims thec passes fort1ithy.a gleam
"To- sha.doTy dcpthsJ.andcountlcx'd;S hisperings.

S- And not t unlike thee in its .hectic .bloom
This buriodl. City -that mnT -fP.ncy. Cars
S.'7ith. mighty lovers from its vratery tomb -
'Thce vnished. love2 sazd fgrlieIsof othe-r years;
The D]arling .of the T.tions,' hose:caress
. n. fought and bled'anad ahdicd Tar; st'thoso mile
Theh crimsonn'd tirnto gave hiM blood-bullt pile,
Sv.'pt from the ocean'S farthest wilderness.

ind in this gilded anteroom of life,
S:Bri-lliant like with glory and l.ith-ihome,
The;ro ar -r mDght distraction fror -the. trife,
The couticr :joctc-d rand the heazrtc-snore .ncms
To hide.: ~rithan thc. hadow .of bhcr'-flame *
.- A nkered bloom, a fragrance passed acu,.y,
Or in thige o.ldn cakot of decay
d... o store the Jotting -.csinnamts f. aname ,i

: h-B-t in:.:the low, htho' puulsing .wamtath-of youth,
.* j" -anidst the .plendour of dcsire-fill'd eyes,
.-..The joyous.i urging of her winc-moist mouth, .
The blutch,:th e .glimmrorinj. lure of Paradiso,
iA hidcous.night engulfed hor. in. its womb,
SA ,wif t and doullc. dararc ae s-a. 1e o. l;
-ind from the -very .gR.tes of .ioc.vcxn to. i-ll
S pasn' ., eemoteo flfl ish Tit2in h-."gloom |

Unlike to thee, the coricthn-Tvcrmoro;
,To seccad youth 1-',er/s, no footsteps ,fall
-`bout her cchoi-ng court; or. sanded shore,
"Where once.-the. cvb6nin sunlight -playcd, and .all
Her ravishing 'ombraces' paid .in k~ind.
The wind sviccpe whisperiht~~ ithvard.c to the .Bca,
V'arm .-ith th.e love of mountain, vale and lea; ;
The 7iators stir but leave no trace behind!

And now thy c~scment darkens in the skies;
Pale Niiobc thy flaming love must fold
withinn her ducky skirts;-the cplcndour flies
The ashen fingers of the night behold
Thou, too, must dic, fair offspring of -n hour'
So Time's onclouded glories fade and cdio
On the d;c:op bccom of Etcrnity:
pr;;..lanc r.if.- r rY.w-y cv'rioc.

QUIA MULTTUM A.IAVIT J. r". rY
From The Magdalon) -

Scarce knowing what she did, l.ike tih: ,. nd. re'>:
Hollowing a path through eart'ks roel; c-'
She bored into the mass; her rlorioJc ii;.
She parted from behind and jo Jnid nJ
Beneath her throat and twistc. down ". oco;
Else it were but a hindrance .o i :.. T.h
Of al'1 that throng she only it ;;A.
Defined, and knew her goal tA-,; o';: i:..: ri
Yet not without much strugg,-tli'.v -.~' -I:
At last prevail; not without'--- : ,* ::-
And loud appeals for mercy av '".l :..i .: ...
Indifferent to his fate, who -' .; .;ke. .:..,

She stood at length where PiJ o t ,
Reared its forbidding front and saO I .I
With military escort down the stairs,
Out of the throng she broke and with c e':
Fell at his feet. "My Lord' My Love!" ;.c...
And the rough soldiers found no easy I":'
Loosening her grappling fingers. He ;.\ :,.*:J x "'^n
And touched her hair. "Mary," he sai;., ;.-o,
Be of good cheer for I have overcome;
'Tis but a little while and I shall n.:. yi'.;,
And the rough soldiers marvelled at t;":.,: ;-:. i;.i.

Silence as sudden as the waters knew
When on Gennasaret he commanded peaco
Fell on the multitude at sight of thi.;;
The Man condemned; the ransomed Wom.n'.; l-v-,
There, in that space, for all the wor::. ::
Acknowledged; for not aL Hell's spite -..rr:,i.l;i
To smother in deluded hearts the sparl
That owned it kindred to that sacred P' ::~i~

J. E. Clare MAcFarlane
(1894-

EXTRACT FROM DAPHNE

Unto this spot of Earth once more he cane:
A vale deep set between opposing peaks,
But high above the straggling haunts of men;
Fair Nature's bowl wherein the rain and dew I
Gather'd in crystal pools and singing streams; I
And nists spun out fantastic dreams between
Sunshine and shadow; where sweet peace abode
Like infant slumber; and o'en Nature's wrath,
As now it shook the valleys and hills
Y!ith thunder and the levell'd cedar's might,
Possess'd a central calm. Somewhat of this
Had passed into the making of the man
Tho stood within the door-way of the hut
That served for shelter, with dark eyes intent
Upon the scene below; and in his nind
A grander; which he know now lay beyond
Rain-curtain'd hills; for on the distant plain,
Even unto th' horizon's edge where sea,
Headland and cloud merged and were lost within
One wild embrace, majestically robed,
The storm's proud pageantry in order moved
Across the world; a spare but sinewy frame
The lightning's glow discovered with a scar
Deep furrow'd on a cheek of bronze; one hand
Clasp'd the rude door-post while the other strok'd
His chin in meditative thought; the scene
Not strangely to his senses spoke; in days
Long past each object that the eye beheld,
Far off or near, was a familiar friend
A guide to joys and intimacies sweet
That like the fragrance of un-number'd Springs
Haunted the shaded walks of memory.
Now as occasion offered he repaired
To this lone spot, this cabin by his hand
Uprear'd; a lowly outward monument
To sacred things enshrined within the soul,
And guardod jealously from prying eyes
And kindly, prattling tongues;.a lov'd retreat
From the world's importunities, the world's
Repulses; where the bruis'd cnd broken spirit
Might find a balm in hallow'd memories,
And win new inspiration from the face
That changed not through the changing chance of years.
Between these two, the human soul, the place,
There grew a likeness: so the nan perceiv'd
In the grin visage of the storm, the grey,
Bleak-heights above him, the stern rocks that frown'd
In silence, in the music of the wind,
The tumult of the waters, what to him
'fore echoes of the life that surg'd within,
And kindred harmonics, and rival heights
Of toil and sacrifice; and there had passed
Into this place that held his dearest dreams
A human heart, it seem'd, that felt and knew;
A nind that recollected.

ON ]TIONAL VANITY

J. E. Clare McFarlane
(1894 -

Slowly we learn; the oft repeated line
Lingers a little moment and is gone;
Nation on nation follows, sun on sun.
With empire's dust fate builds her great design,
But we are blind and see not; in our pride
We strain toward the petrifying mound
To sit above our fellow, and we ride
The slow and luckless toiler to the ground.
Fools are we for our pains; whom we despise,
Last come, shall mount our withered vanities,
Topmost to sit upon the vast decay
Of time and temporal things -- for, last or first,
The proud array of pictured bubbles burst,
Mirages of their glory pass away.

i

t

_,,.~._,._,,_~-~-I. .I --.~- ---^Y --;---------------- -----y.-I..

	Title Page
	Table of Contents
	Frontispiece
	Foreword
	Introductory essay - Wycliffe...
	The West Indies - H. S. Bunbur...
	Five Indian tribes - Henry...
	St. Mary's, Northside - Baron Oliver...
	The lost mate - Arabel Moulton...
	On a certain prospect from the...
	Like John to-whit - Nellie...
	San glorida - Rom Redeam
	Extract from San Glorida - Tom...
	Spanish town - Tom Redeam
	Cuba - Tom Redeam
	Orange Valley, St. Ann - Tom...
	A legionary of life - Tom...
	Now the Lignum Vitae blows - Tom...
	The hills of St. Andrew - Lena...
	The measure - Lena Kent
	I saw Limonta sleeping - Cyril...
	September - Arthur Nicholas
	Arcadia - Arthur Nicholas
	The gift - Arthur Nicholas
	When nature calls - Tropica
	Dedication - Clara Maud Garret...
	New born - Clara Maud Garrett
	Flaming June - Constance Holla...
	The cup of life - Constance...
	Yellow - Constance Hollar
	The song of a blue mountain stream...
	The road - Reginald H. Hurray
	The maroon girl - W. Adolphe...
	The cat - W. Adolphe Roberts
	Morgan - W. Adolphe Roberts
	On a monument to Marti - W. Adolphe...
	New York - W. Adolphe Roberts
	Vieux Carre - W. Adolphe Rober...
	La gloire - W. Adolphe Roberts
	Villanelle of the sad poet - W....
	Villanelle of the living poet -...
	I shall return - Claude McKay
	America - Claude McKay
	If we must die - Claude McKay
	St. Isaac's church, Petrograd -...
	Through agony - Claude McKay
	The Harlem dancer - Claude...
	Baptism - Claude McKay
	Flame-heart - Claude McKay
	Outcast - Claude McKay
	Beneath the casuarinas - Frank...
	Return - Frank A. Collymore
	By lamplight - Frank A. Collym...
	Portrait of Mr. X - Frank...
	So this is love - Frank A....
	The rice planters - A. H....
	Song of the pedlar - W. T....
	Jamaica market - Agnes Maxwell...
	Villanelle of immortal love - J....
	Remember now - J. E. Clare...
	Port Royal - J. E. Clare McFar...
	Quia multum amavit - J. E. Clare...
	Extract from Daphne - J. E. Clare...
	On national vanity - J. E. Clare...
	Away to the woodlands - J. E. Clare...
	Villanelle of ceasing shadows -...
	How shall I site in dreamy indolence...
	From out the loneliness - Harold...
	Let us beware lest we too firmly...
	A certain beggar, named Lazarus...
	To the unborn leader - H....
	Dark voices - H. A. Vauhan
	In absense - H. A. Vauhan
	The tree - H. A. Vauhan
	Jamaican fisherman - Philip...
	A beauty too of twisted trees -...
	Pocomania - Philip Sherlock
	Paradise - Philip Sherlock
	Nightfall at Sauteurs - Philip...
	A sword of flame - Philip...
	Sleep time, boy - Philip...
	Trees his testament - Philip...
	Nightfall - Una Marson
	The wind is not a lyre - Roger...
	A chorus from George William Gordon...
	Men of ideas - Roger Maís
	Orchard - Roger Maís
	All men come to the hills - Roger...
	Song for a synthesis - G....
	Port royal - G. A. Hamilton
	That summerl - G. A. Hamilton
	Weather in action - Mary Locke...
	Rex Poinciana - Vivian L....
	Crickets at night - Vivian...
	The web - Vivian L. Virtue
	River and sea - Vivian L....
	Nocturne - Vivian L. Virtue
	Villanelle of the dream - Vivian...
	I have seen March - Vivian...
	Atlantic moonrise - Vivian...
	Beauty - Vivian L. Virtue
	King Solomon and Queen Balkis -...
	Ballade - Vivian L. Virtue
	To those, hail - H. M. Telemaq...
	Adina - H. M. Telemaque
	Roots - H. M. Telemaque
	Evensong - A. J. Seymour
	There runs a dream - A. J....
	To a lady dead - A. J. Seymour
	First of August - A. J. Seymou...
	Over Guiana, clouds - A. J....
	For Christopher Columbus - A. J....
	Release - George Campbell
	All women I have loved - George...
	History makers - George Campbe...
	Litany - George Campbell
	Magdalene - George Campbell
	We tear our leaders down - George...
	Oh! You build a house - George...
	Expect no turbulence - Barbara...
	Ave Maria - Barbara Ferland
	Dawn is a fisherman - Raymond...
	Sheep - K. E. Ingram
	There were those - K. E. Ingra...
	Nature - H. D. Carberry
	Mellow oboe - H. G. Smith
	This land - H. G. Smith
	Extract from testament - H. G....
	The vision comes and goes - H....
	Epstein's "Lucifer" - H. G....
	The harps of dawn - H. G....
	And I will lift up to the lips...
	The final man - Basil McFarlan...
	Elegy, four o'clock - Basil...
	On this mountain - A. L. Hendr...
	Old Jamaican housewife thinks about...
	The saint - Dorothy E. Whitfie...
	Jamaica - Louis Simpson
	To the western world - Louis...
	The ancient Carib - Geoffrey...
	The cobbler - Geoffrey Drayton
	Old black beggar - Geoffrey...
	Speculations on uranium - Geoffrey...
	The parrots - Cecil Herbert
	Song - Cecil Herbert
	Lines written on a train - Cecil...
	Dream spinning - Jan Carew
	Green zombies - Jan Carew
	Aiomon Kondi - Jan Carew
	The charcoal burner - Jan...
	The sea-reapers - Barnabas...
	The caterpillar shears the leaf...
	W. I. - High Popham
	Homestead - E. M. Roach
	Acceptance - Neville Dawes
	Fugue - Neville Dawes
	He plucked a burning stylus - E....
	At Grafton Bay - E. M. Roach
	Sun - Samuel Selvon
	Swans - George Lamming
	The illumined graves - George...
	Forest hills - George Lamming
	Machiavelli's mother - L....
	Words - Martin Carter
	Weroon Weroon - Martin Carter
	Voices - Martin Carter
	This is the dark time my love -...
	Not hands like mine - Martin...
	The palm - E. McG. Keane
	The carol in minor - E. McG....
	Perhaps not now - E. McG....
	A moth and a firefly - Derek...
	A city's death by fire - Derek...
	The absolute sea - Derek Walco...
	Extract from Henri Christophe -...
	As John to Patmose - Derek...
	Letter to Margaret - Derek...
	In a green night - Derek Walco...
	Let black hands grow - Denis...
	Federation, the units and their...

MILLISECOND	CLASS.METHOD	MESSAGE
0	sobekcm_page_globals.constructor
0	sobekcm_page_globals.constructor	Application State validated or built
0	sobekcm_database.verify_item_lookup_object
0	sobekcm_page_globals.constructor	Navigation Object created from URI query string
0	sobekcm_database.verify_item_lookup_object
0	sobekcm_page_globals.display_item	Retrieving item or group information
0	sobekcm_page_globals.get_entire_collection_hierarchy	Retrieving hierarchy information
0	sobekcm_assistant.get_entire_collection_hierarchy
0	cached_data_manager.retrieve_item_aggregation
0	cached_data_manager.retrieve_item_aggregation	Found item aggregation on local cache
0	item_aggregation_builder.get_item_aggregation	Found 'dloc1' item aggregation in cache
0	system.web.ui.page.page_load (ufdc.page_load)
0	sobekcm_page_globals.constructor.on_page_load
0	html_echo_mainwriter.add_style_references	Adding style references to HTML
0	html_echo_mainwriter.add_text_to_page	Reading the text from the file and echoing back to the output stream
3	html_echo_mainwriter.add_text_to_page	Finished reading and writing the file