POETS AND POETRY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
--that fell
It is generally believed that the University of Kansas exercises an influence upon the development of the material arts alone, but to those who live in Lawrence, close to the actual life of the University and of its student body, it is clearly manifest that some spirit of inspiration hovers over the historical old town of Lawrence, and under its subtle influence many students who come here thoughtless and care-free boys and girls, depart as poets and authors.
The University of Kansas may point with pride, not only to those former students and alumni who have already garnered literary reputations, but may well indeed interest herself in that younger choir of poets who have not as yet ventured from beneath the protecting wing of their Alma Mater.
A list including the names of students of the University, who are at present engaged in producing verse, would indeed be astounding as to numbers, and a revelation as to the identity of the writers.
For lack of space, it is impossible herewith to give mention of all the fledgling poets who are gathered at the University, but only to those few who are more or less known by their published works, or occasional verse.
First and foremost of all KU. bards , is, of course, Harry Kemp. Not directly connected with the University at present, he nevertheless is a student in a larger sense on account of his residence in Lawrence, his constant use of the University library fo. purposes of study and his relations with University professors.
Kemp has achieved to no mean rank among the poets of America and is read with interest by a large group of those interested in current literature. Heretofore his poems have appeared only in magazines, chiefly the American, and New York Independent, but a volume will soon be issued containing the best of his works Kemp is so well known to the people of Lawrence, and to the public at large that further comment here is unnecessary.
The following lyric is one of the most recent from his pen:
THE HEIGHTS.
Of golden worth no more appears
The Dream my fancies built of yore;
The Disillusionment of Years
With Her stern wand, has proven ore
That I deemed aureate, grossest clay,- And painfully accomplished sense Has led me up the thorny way
Of hard and harsh experience:
Yet he who climbs the heights may see Eastward from Eve's rose-rippled bars.
The concaves of Infinity
The concaves of Infinity And all the marches of the stars.
Wattles has published his verse to some extent in current magazines, and intends to offer his initial volume to the public in the near future. The following poem of his is reprinted from the Oread Magazine:
Softly sleeps, as he passes, the sweet wayside grasses
And the heart of a dreamer of dreams is a-start
REALITY.
A star has bloomed in the night, Cold and far.
At the light of the star;
In the path where the primroses are
The road winds on through the plain,
Dusty-white.
But the star is a glory of glories afar
At an infinite height;
Intent on the burning bright goal of his yearning.
Snowy-soft on the sod
He has sped through the shadows of night;
On a delicate, wind-fragrant primrose
Ah, dreamer, fond-dreaming, the star was but seeming.
Has mingled his soul with the star,—
But he trod
"Twas the primrose was God!
A member of the Graduate School, and a fellow in the department of philosophy, he is alike a careful student and a deep thinker.
John Shea is well known at the University of Kansas and over the state of Kansas as well, as a poet of ability. Almost any issue of the Kansas Magazine will contain one or more of his lyrics.
His poetry, however, is not impregnated with the problems of philology with which he busies his mind, but is a creation of leisure hours, and contains a striking note of originality and happiness.
Some god gave thee to tell how good each day.
How the veiled sun with holy mornin glow,
JOHN BURROUGHS.
Breaks from the east, and with unsight
Lovejoy is best known as an artist, and his watercolors and charcoal studies are much in demand among the people of Lawrence.
The following was dashed off with a speed which rivals that of Walt Mason, and is a fair sample of his claims to distinction as a humorous poet:
The fierce red sunset of the western sky Paints fair Mount Oread's brow with livid hue;
Slants through the windows of a dusky room,
THE POET AND THE CHEMIST.
And lights the dim interior to view.
Mid-firing test tubes, dome capsules
The mystic Bushong threads his careful way,
Scanning the crystals of precipitates. Arranging pungent draughts in prim array.
And now through gloomy door, the stately Kemp
Appears with measured tread, his wind-tossed locks
About some bay whose mouth the
"Canst thon reveal the law which needs must rule."
Th' traction of the ruby lips of youth;
When contact with a tender hand,
forsooth.
Sends thrills which fire the ganglia of the brain.
Which loose the seven-fold fibers of the light;
Thy instruments which spectralize the sky,
And gazing down from heights of poetry,
A distant murmur pricks the poet's ear And calls him from his philosophic flight.
Amid the gath'ring shadows of the night.
He sees the weary figure of Bushong. His ample features nestled on his breast.
And each gray crucible and reeking tube
Resounds the measured rhythm of his rest.
THE VOICE OF CHRISTMAS
I cannot put the presence by, of Him, the Crucified,
Who moves men's spirits with His Love as doth the moon, the tide:
Again I see the life He lived, the godlike death He died;
Again I see upon the cross that great soul-battle fought Into the texture of the world the tale of which is wrought Until it hath become the woof of human deed and thought;
And, joining with the adceden bells that all the morning fill,
His cry of agony doth yet my inmost being thrill
Like some fresh grief from yesterday which tears the heart-strings still.
I cannot put His Presence by, I meet Him everywhere; I meet Him in the country town, the city's busy square; The mansion and the tenement attest his Presence there.
Upon the funneled ships at sea He sets His shining feet; The distant Ends of Empire not in vain His Name repeat,— And, like the presence of a rose, He makes the whole world sweet.
He comes to break the barriers down raised up by barren creeds;
About the earth from zone to zone like sunlight He proceeds;
He comes to give the World's starved heart the perfect love it needs,
The Christ whose friends have played Him false, whom dogmas have belied,
Still speaking to the hearts of men...Tho shamed and crucified,
The Master of the Centuries who will not be denied!
—HARRY KEMP.
--ed ray,
Strikes shattered silver on the winter snow.
A parody on the Thanatopsis of Bryant, in the last year's Jayhawker, was thought by some to have been the best bit of humorous verse ever printed in a University publication.
snow.
To the tree it has been given how to see.
Brown-legged blossoms clustered round a hive.
To hear wood poets bard it in a tree.
And feel the up-reach in all things alive.
Thou tellest us: To know is to know Good,
All else is chaff and like chaff quickly gone.
When swirl the winds of stern Adversity;
Plain earthly Good is honied locust food;
Gray John-o'-Birds, the seasons rolling on.
Are each a movement in Symphony.
A student himself making small pretensions to the name of "poet," and yet richly deserving mention as a writer of verse, is Owen Lovejoy, a junior in the College. Only occasionally does he proffer anything to University readers, but what he does offer is eagerly read.
Lifts, from his task his elfish buxom
iowls.
storm-king mocks.
laws
First wrath then resignation marks his mien.
And deep chagrin conceals disdainful scowls.
Thine eyes have seen the Earth's immutables
The son of Plato and the Muses, tunes
Harmonies to clothing of the capiles.
Then thus begins, "Bold seeker of the truth!
Transformed; the air made frigid till it flowed
Adown thy beaker. Thou hast mixtures made,
Sufficient thine own theories to explode And put dramatic star-light in the shade.
"The sun, the moon, a hundred viscera,
To thine analysis have yielded all;
But tell me, noble chemist, dost thou now
AIRCRAFT To drive the Standard Oil trust to the wall;
Of formulae by which thou coulds produce
The flush that creeps across the lover's cheek,
Nor powder-puff nor reason can reduce?
Miss Maude Swisher, a sophmore in the College, has from time to time written for the K. K. Magazine. Her poems, mostly impressionistic studies, are written under the stress of real poetic feeling. The following is a little poem describing the sensations experienced by a poet at the approach of evening:
EVENING
EVENING.
The rich shadows
Are now all gone
That morning's meadows gleamed
Upon.
A lonely bird,
A plaintive bird,
Preluding evening's songs
Is heard.
I listen long
In twilight's mood,
In twilight's mood,
Softened, enraptured, sad Subdued.
Subdued.
We print in this issue a number of his poems.
Buzick has cultivated the sonnet form almost exclusively, and has attained to some degree of excellence in its production. .
A. R. Buzick, in the junior class of the College, is a contributor to the Kansas Magazine published at Wichita.
THE STUFF OF SOULS.
Since when abysmal man stood evolute,
Possessed of a soul-heritage denied
The weighted species of the air, the tide.
The range of speech...
The caves of earth, and every plodding brute,
He hath desired to drag to earth the fruit
Of Immortality; hath ever cried
To know the secret of this soul that hides
in clay; rare tune in a misshapen lute!
To thee who wouldst these mysteries explore,
hath jealous Heaven left one gate ajar
So! feast your fill of charmed poesy's
lore,
They told quite all, then rising, fled afar.
For many singers on this saddened star Have wrought their souls in song, ceasing before
The following is a tribute from his pen to the victims of the Quantrell rail:
Earl O'Roke, another member of the junior class of the College, occupies the position of poet-laureate of the K. K. club, and has contributed some good verse to the publication of that society.
They slumber 'neath the oak trees's fallen leaves;
Beside their tomb, the gopher digs his
lair,
And silk threads that the Indian Summer weaves
usecate the ground we hallow there.
SPOKE ON BRITISH INDIA.
England Has Helped Conditions There, Says W. T. Elmore.
"The people of British India are no where near competent for self-government," said W. T. Elmore, who has been a missionary in that country for nine years, in an address on "India's Unrest," in chapel Friday morning. "The lack of national honor and the prevalence of bribe taking among the native officials are the great obstacles delaying the granting of any considerable measure of self-government."
Though many British officials are unsympathetic and the London government imposes some grievous taxes, Mr. Elmore says that Great Britain has done all for India that ever has been done for it. Not only does that country have great natural resources and a challenging history, but the English people have developed it and are preparing it for a large influence if its population can be taught aright.
India has many good schools, said Mr. Elmore, but as 95 per cent of her educated men hope to enter government employ where there is an opening for but a much smaller proportion, many of these men become mere political agitators. The all-pervading caste system is also recognized by the nation's leaders as a great handicap to the country's progress.
Mr. Elmore explained that one great need of missionary and other uplifting influences was to change the character of the homes. Where women are despised even the best educated men will sink back to the low native level when their environment is debasing.
OTTAWA LOST COIN
Football Did Not Pay and May Give Up Basket-Ball.
According to a report issued by Treasurer Frank Jennings of the Ottawa University student council, the football season of the university ended with the management $483.86 in the hole. The deficit will probably mean the abandonment of a basket-ball schedule this year, as that sport has always been a money loser there. Every football contest at home with the exception of the Baker game lost money. A college minstrel show is being planned to make up part of the deficit.
Small dinner parties a speciality at Vic's.