The Joy of Nelly Deane

  The Marriage of Phaedra

  The Namesake

  The Old Beauty

  The Princess Baladina: Her Adventure

  The Prodigies

  The Professor’s Commencement

  The Profile

  The Sculptor’s Funeral

  The Sculptor’s Funeral

  The Sentimentality of William Tavener

  The Strategy of the Were-Wolf Dog

  The Treasure of Far Island

  The Troll Garden

  The Way of the World

  The West Bound Train

  The Willing Muse

  Tom Outland’s Story

  Tommy, the Unsentimental

  Two Friends

  Wee Winkie’s Wanderings

  The Poetry

  Willa Cather Memorial Prairie in Webster County, Nebraska

  April Twilights

  This poetry collection, Cather’s first book as opposed to work in journals and magazines, was published by vanity publisher Richard G. Badger on 30 April 1903, but was re-edited by the author in 1923 and 1933. The 1923 edition was re-titled April Twilights and Other Poems and was published by Alfred Knoph. The collection was not published in Britain until 1924, when it was taken up by William Heinemann. At the time of the first publication, Cather was working as a teacher of English in local high schools, a role she gave up in 1906. Poetry was a lifelong love of Cather’s and as an undergraduate she had published verse in the student newspaper, The Hesperian (1892). The poems were written at various times, with some previously appearing in literary journals under pseudonyms; she wrote poetry for most of her early life, alongside her other more popular work. Cather may have been encouraged to publish this collection as in recent years national publications had been taking up her poetry – the likes of Lippincott’s and Harper’s Weekly. It has also been suggested by biographers that as she approached the age of thirty, she felt her writing career was not even approaching the success she aspired to and that a volume solely authored by her would validate her writing in the eyes of her circle of family and friends. Her inspirations as a poet are varied – William Shakespeare, Algernon Swinburne, Oscar Wilde, Virgil, John Keats and Dante Gabriel Rossetti being among the most apparent.

  The reviews for the collection were kindly, but mixed. In 1908, Cather determined to collect all the unsold copies and burn them, a rather extreme way of preventing further indifferent reviews, but it does offer some insight into Cather’s psyche as a writer and somewhat belies her 1925 comment: ‘ I do not take myself seriously as a poet.’ As her novels became more popular, so her volume of poetry waned in the eyes of her readers, aided perhaps by critics and reviewers of the late editions of April Twilights, who pointed out clearly that her fiction was vastly superior to her poetry. Cather’s interest in poetry declined after 1912 when her fiction writing career blossomed. Her favourite poems from the collection are said to be Grandmither, Mills of Montmartre and The Hawthorn Tree.

  Cather continued to write short works for magazines whilst publishing her poetry – that same year as the publication of April Twilights, her story A Death in the Desert was published in Scribner’s.

  Of the poems themselves, the subject matter is mixed, some are inspired by personal events, others are an exploration of mythical scenes. The first poem, Grandmither, think not I forget, is thought to be in remembrance of her relative Grandma Boak, who died whilst Cather was at college. Another poem, The Namesake, commemorates her uncle, who died in the American Civil War. A commemorative poem of a different type is Antinous, which makes reference to the young lover of the Emperor Hadrian.

  Her skills as a descriptive writer are evident in the last poem, Paris:

  ‘The towers of Notre Dame cut clean and gray

  The evening sky and pale from left to right

  A hundred bridges leap from either quay.

  Pillared with pride, the city of delight

  Sits like an empress by her silver Seine,

  Heavy with jewels, all her splendid dower

  Flashing upon her, won from shore and main.’

  Her impressions of Paris also inspired Mills of Montmartre, which offers a striking contrast between the fields beyond the city that provide the grain and Montmartre, once a large milling suburb; it is a nicely observed poem, with the girls that worked in the mills featuring strongly.

  Cather’s love of the classics also influences the content, with a number of poems employing an Arcadian theme – Arcadian Winter, Winter at Delphi and Lament for Marsyas are good examples.

  Mythology is also a feature of the collection: the poem Orpheus and Eurydice tells the story of Orpheus trying to lead his lover back from Hades to Arcadia: ‘Sweetheart! The way from Hell’s so long, so long.’

  Prairie Dawn stands out as very different to all the other poems in the collection. It is not inspired by Cather’s literary and classical interests and is the only one executed in blank verse. It plays beautifully to Cather’s gift for descriptive writing:

  ‘A crimson fire that vanquishes the stars,

  A pungent odor from the dusty sage;

  A sudden stirring of the huddled herds,

  A breaking of the distant table-lands

  Through purple mists ascending and the flare

  Of water ditches silver in the light,

  A swift bright lance hurled low across the world;

  A sudden sickness for the hills of home.’

  This is an evocative description and it is thought that the landscape here is drawn from Colorado or Wyoming, though that the hills of home are a reference to Cather’s native Virginia. The descriptive poem London Roses is less romantic in its imagery, offering a rather brutal description of flower sellers in London:

  ‘Rowses, rowses! Penny a bunch!” they tell you,

  Ruddy blooms of corruption, see you and smell you,

  Born of stale earth, fallowed with squalor and tears.’

  Other poems are conventional love poems, such as Evening Song.

  In terms of style and structure, leaving aside the one blank verse offering, seven of the poems are sonnets – such as Asphodel - whilst others use conventional stanzas and rhyming schemes. For example:

  ‘Winter lasts a five-month

  Spring-time stays, but one;

  Yellow blow the rye-fields

  When the rose is done. ‘

  (In Rose Time)

  There is no free verse in the collection, even though Cather admired the likes of Walt Whitman for being able to execute it so brilliantly; perhaps her innate conventionality and perhaps a lack of real flair in her poetic ability was too restricting for her to attempt such a liberating, but challenging style.

  Although it is almost universally accepted that poetry was not Cather’s true literary vocation, nevertheless, this volume is a pleasant read. One has to overlook her generous use of ye, thee, thou, yonder, ay and so on as affectations of the day — mildly irritating though it may appear today — and the love poems are some of the most generic and therefore blandest in the collection, but harmless nonetheless. The poems are entertaining and can be used to spot the universal themes Cather revisited in her fiction – sweeping plains, loss, a turning to the past and the Arcadian; for a long period, poetry was important to Cather and therefore the collection is worthy of study.

  The first edition

  CONTENTS

  Dedicatory by Willa Sibert Cather

  PART I. APRIL TWILIGHTS AND OTHER POEMS

  “GRANDMITHER, THINK NOT I FORGET”

  FIDES, SPES

  THE TAVERN

  THE HAWTHORN TREE

  THE POOR MINSTREL

  ANTINOUS

  LONDON ROSES

  WINTER AT DELPHI

  PARADOX

  IN MEDIA VITA

  EVENING SONG

  LAMENT FUR MARSYAS

  “I SOUGHT THE WOOD IN WINTER”

  “I SOUGHT THE WOOD IN WINTER”

  “SLEEP, MINSTREL, SLEEP”

  IN ROSE-TIME

  POPPIES ON LUDLOW CASTLE

  PRAIRIE DAWN

  AFTERMATH

  THOU ART THE PEARL

  ARCADIAN WINTER

  PROVENCAL LEGEND

  THE ENCORE

  SONG

  L’ENVOI

  PART II. THE PALATINE

  IN THE “DARK AGES”

  THE GAUL IN THE CAPITOL

  A LIKENESS

  THE SWEDISH MOTHER

  SPANISH JOHNNY

  AUTUMN MELODY

  PRAIRIE SPRING

  MACON PRAIRIE

  STREET IN PACKINGTOWN

  A SILVER CUP

  RECOGNITION

  GOING HOME

  Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti c. 1871, by George Frederic Watts — Cather was heavily influenced by Rossetti’s poetry.

  Dedicatory by Willa Sibert Cather

  To R.C.C. and C.D.C.

  Somewhere, sometime, in an April twilight,

  When the hills are hid in violet shadows

  When meadow brooks are still and hushed for wonder,

  At the ring dove’s call as at a summons,

  Let us gather from the world’s fair quarters,

  Stealing from the trackless dusk like shadows,

  Meet to wait the moon, and greet in silence.

  When she swims above the April branches,

  Rises clear of naked oak and beeches,

  Sit with me beneath the snowy orchard,

  Where the white moth hangs with wings entranced,

  Drunken with the still perfume of blossoms.

  Then, for that the moon was ours of olden,

  Let it work again its old enchantment.

  Let it, for an April night, transform us

  From our grosser selves to happy shadows

  Of the three who lay and planned at moonrise,

  On an island in a western river,

  Of the conquest of the world together.

  Let us pour our amber wine and drink it

  To the memory of our vanished kingdom,

  To our days of war and ocean venture,

  Brave with brigandage and sack of cities;

  To the Odysseys of summer mornings,

  Starry wonder-tales of nights in April.

  THE verses in Part I of this volume are reprinted from an early volume, APRIL

  TWILIGHTS,published in 1903. Those in Part II are of later composition, and for permission to republish them I am indebted to the editors of SCRIBNER’S MAGAZINE, MCCLURE’S MAGAZINE, and the CENTURY MAGAZINE.

  WILLA CATHER

  PART I. APRIL TWILIGHTS AND OTHER POEMS

  “GRANDMITHER, THINK NOT I FORGET”

  Grandmither, think not I forget, when I come back to town,

  An’ wander the old ways again an’ tread them up an’ down.

  I never smell the clover bloom, nor see the swallows pass,

  Without I mind how good ye were unto a little lass.

  I never hear the winter rain a-pelting all night through,

  Without I think and mind me of how cold it falls on you.

  And if I come not often to your bed beneath the thyme,

  Mayhap’t is that I’d change wi’ ye, and gie my bed for thine,

  Would like to sleep in thine.

  I never hear the summer winds among the roses blow,

  Without I wonder why it was ye loved the lassie so.

  Ye gave me cakes and lollipops and pretty toys a score, —

  I never thought I should come back and ask ye now for more.

  Grandmither, gie me your still, white hands, that lie upon your breast,

  For mine do beat the dark all night and never find me rest;

  They grope among the shadows an’ they beat the cold black air,

  They go seekin’ in the darkness, an’ they never find him there,

  An’ they never find him there.

  Grandmither, gie me your sightless eyes, that I may never see

  His own a-burnin’ full o’ love that must not shine for me.

  Grandmither, gie me your peaceful lips, white as the kirkyard snow,

  For mine be red wi’ burnin’ thirst, an’ he must never know.

  Grandmither, gie me your clay-stopped ears, that I may never hear

  My lad a-singin’ in the night when I am sick wi’ fear;

  A-singin’ when the moonlight over a’ the land is white —

  Aw God! I’ll up an’ go to him a-singin’ in the night,

  A-callin’ in the night.

  Grandmither, gie me your clay-cold heart that has forgot to ache,

  For mine be fire within my breast and yet it cannot break.

  It beats an’ throbs forever for the things that must not be, —

  An’ can ye not let me creep in an’ rest awhile by ye?

  A little lass afeard o’ dark slept by ye years agone —

  Ah, she has found what night can hold ‘twixt sunset an’ the dawn!

  So when I plant the rose an’ rue above your grave for ye,

  Ye’ll know it’s under rue an’ rose that I would like to be,

  That I would like to be.

  FIDES, SPES

  Joy is come to the little

  Everywhere;

  Pink to the peach and pink to the apple,

  White to the pear.

  Stars are come to the dogwood,

  Astral, pale;

  Mists are pink on the red-hud,

  Veil after veil.

  Flutes for the feathery locusts,

  Soft as spray;

  Tongues of lovers for chestnuts, poplars,

  Babbling May.

  Yellow plumes for the willows’

  Wind-blown hair;

  Oak trees and sycamores only

  Comfortless, bare.

  Sore from steel and the watching,

  Somber and old,

  (Wooing robes for the beeches, larches,

  Splashed with gold,

  Breath of love from the lilacs,

  Warm with noon,)

  Great hearts cold when the little

  Beat mad so soon.

  What is their faith to bear it

  Till it come,

  Waiting with rain-cloud and swallow,

  Frozen, dumb?

  THE TAVERN

  In the tavern of my heart

  Many a one has sat before,

  Drunk red wine and sung a stave,

  And, departing, come no more.

  When the night was cold without,

  And the ravens croaked of storm,

  They have sat them at my hearth,

  Telling me my house was warm.

  As the lute and cup went round,

  They have rhymed me well in lay; —

  When the hunt was on at mom,

  Each, departing, went his way.

  On the walls, in compliment,

  Some would scrawl a verse or two,

  Some have hung a willow branch,

  Or a wreath of corn-flowers blue.

  Ah! my friend, when thou dost go,

  Leave no wreath of flowers for me;

  Not pale daffodils nor rue,

  Violets nor rosemary.

  Spill the wine upon the lamps,

  Tread the fire, and bar the door;

  So despoil the wretched place,

  None will come forevermore.

  THE HAWTHORN TREE

  Across the shimmering meadows

  Ah, when he came to me!

  In the spring-time,

  In the night-time,

  In the starlight,

  Beneath the hawthorn tree.

  Up from the misty marsh-land —

  Ah, when he climbed to me!

  To my white bowser,

  To my sweet rest,

  To my warm breast,

  Beneath the hawthorn tree.

  Ask of me what the birds sang,

  High in the hawthorn tree;

  What the breeze tells,

  What the rose smells,

  What the stars shine —

  Not what he said to me!

  THE POOR MINSTREL

  Does the darkness cradle thee

  Than mine arms more tenderly?

  Do the angels God hath put

  There to guard thy lonely sleep —

  One at head and one at foot —

  Watch more fond and constant keep?

  When the black-bird sings in May,

  And the spring is in the wood,

  Would you never trudge the way

  Over hill-tops, if you could?

  Was my harp so hard a load

  Even on the sunny moms

  When the plumed huntsmen rode

  To the music of their horns?

  Hath the love that lit the stars,

  Fills the sea and moulds the flowers,

  Whose completeness nothing mars,

  Made forgot what once was ours?

  Christ hath perfect rest to give —

  Stillness and perpetual peace;

  You, who found it hard to live,

  Sleep and sleep, without surcease.

  Christ hath stars to light thy porch,

  Silence after fevered song; —

  I had but a minstrel’s torch

  And the way was wet and long.

  Sleep. No more on winter nights,

  Harping at some castle gate,

  Thou must see the revel lights

  Stream upon our cold estate.

  Bitter was the bread of song

  While you tarried in my tent,

  And the jeering of the throng

  Hurt you, as it came and went.

  When you slept upon my breast

  Grief had wed me long ago:

  Christ hath his perpetual rest

  For thy weariness. But oh!

  When I sleep beside the road,

  Thanking God thou liest not so,

  Brother to the owl and toad,

  Could’st thou, Dear, but let me know,

  Does the darkness cradle thee

  Than mine arms more tenderly?

  ANTINOUS

  With attributes of gods they sculptured him,

  Hermes, Osiris, but were never wise