Complete Works of Adelaide Crapsey Read online

  Adelaide Crapsey

  (1878-1914)

  Contents

  The Life and Poetry of Adelaide Crapsey

  Brief Introduction: Adelaide Crapsey by Claude Bragdon

  Complete Poetical Works of Adelaide Crapsey

  The Poems

  List of Poems in Chronological Order

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2019

  Version 1

  Browse the entire series…

  Adelaide Crapsey

  By Delphi Classics, 2019

  COPYRIGHT

  Adelaide Crapsey - Delphi Poets Series

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2019.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  ISBN: 978 1 91348 703 4

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

  NOTE

  When reading poetry on an eReader, it is advisable to use a small font size and landscape mode, which will allow the lines of poetry to display correctly.

  The Life and Poetry of Adelaide Crapsey

  Brooklyn Heights, New York, 1856 — Crapsey’s birthplace

  Brooklyn Heights today

  Crapsey, c. 1905

  Brief Introduction: Adelaide Crapsey by Claude Bragdon

  ADELAIDE CRAPSEY, daughter of Algernon Sidney and Adelaide Trowbridge Crapsey, was born on the ninth of September, 1878. She died in her thirty-sixth year on October the eighth, 1914. Her young girlhood was spent in Rochester, New York, where her eminent father was rector of St. Andrew’s Parish. At fourteen she entered the preparatory school of Kemper Hall, Kenosha, Wisconsin, from which school she graduated at the head of her class, in 1897. She entered Vassar College the same year, graduating with the class of 1901.

  Two years after her graduation she began her work as a teacher of History and Literature, in Kemper Hall. In 1905 she went abroad and became a student in the School of Archaeology in Rome. The following year she assumed the position of instructor in Literature and History in Miss Lowe’s Preparatory School in Stamford, Conn., but in 1908 on account of failing health she was compelled to abandon teaching for a time. The two succeeding years she spent in Italy and England, working on her Analysts of English Metrics — an exhaustive scientific thesis relating to accent — which years before she had planned to accomplish as her serious life work.

  In 1911 she returned to America and became instructor in Poetics at Smith College. The double burden of teaching and writing proved too much for her frail constitution, and in 1913, gravely ill, she was obliged to abandon definitely and finally both activities. The rest is a silence broken only by the remarkable verses of her last poetic phase.

  These are the bare biographical facts in the life of Adelaide Crapsey, but it would be an injustice to the reader not to attempt to render some sense of her personality, all compounded of beauty, mystery and charm. I remember her as fair and fragile, in action swift, in repose still; so quick and silent in her movements that she seemed never to enter a room but to appear there, and on the stroke of some invisible clock to vanish as she had come.

  Although in Meredith’s phrase “a man and a woman both for brains,” she was an intensely feminine presence. Perfection was the passion of her life, and as one discerns it in her verse, one marked it also in her raiment. In the line

  “And know my tear-drenched veil along the grass.”

  I see again her drooping figure with some trail of gossamer bewitchment clinging about or drifting after her. Although her body spoke of a fastidious and sedulous care in keeping with her essentially aristocratic nature, she was merciless in the demands she made upon it, and this was the direct cause of her loss of health. The keen and shining blade of her spirit too greatly scorned its scabbard the body, and for this she paid the uttermost penalty.

  Her death was tragic. Full of the desire of life she yet was forced to go, leaving her work all unfinished. Her last year was spent in exile at Saranac Lake. From her window she looked down on the graveyard— “Trudeau’s Garden,” she called it, with grim-gay irony. Here, forbidden the work her metrical study entailed, these poems grew — flowers of a battlefield of the spirit. But of her passionate revolt against the mandate of her destiny she spared her family and friends even a sign. When they came to cheer and comfort her it was she who brought them cheer and comfort. With magnificent and appalling courage she gave forth to them the humor and gaiety of her unclouded years, saving them even beyond the end from knowledge of this beautiful and terrible testament of a spirit all unreconciled, flashing “unquenched defiance to the stars.”

  This collection of her verse is of her own choosing, arranged and prepared by her own hand. She wrote gay verse in the earlier days before the shadow fell upon her, but her rigorous regard for unity banished it from this record of the fearful questioning of her spirit.

  This “immortal residue” is full of poignancy and power. The heart is stricken with her own terror at the approach of

  “The despot of our days the lord of dust.”

  The book which is her funeral urn will be found to hold more than the ashes of a personal passion, it contains

  “Infinite passion, and the pain of finite hearts that yearn.”

  CLAUDE BRAGDON.

  Rochester, N. Y.

  October 1915

  Kemper Hall, an Episcopal college in Kenosha, Wisconsin — Crapsey was sent with her sister Emily to the boarding school here in 1893.

  Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, 1864. Crapsey attended the college in 1897, graduating with honours. It was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely following Elmira College.

  Crapsey and Jean Webster on Class Day 1901

  School of Archaeology, Rome — Crapsey worked here as a lecturer between 1903 and 1905.

  Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts — a private women’s liberal arts college. Crapsey joined the teaching staff here in 1911, where she lectured in poetics.

  Saranac Lake, New York, where Crapsey spent much of her time in her later days

  Crapsey, c. 1910

  Complete Poetical Works of Adelaide Crapsey

  CONTENTS

  UNDERGRADUATE POEMS

  Loneliness.

  Time Flies.

  The Heart of a Maid.

  Repentance.

  Hail Mary!

  PART I

  Birth-Moment

  The Mother Exultant

  John Keats —

  Cinquains

  November Night

  Release

  Triad

  Snow

  Anguish

  Trapped

  Moon-shadows

  Susanna And The Elders

  Youth

  Languor After Pain

  The Guarded Wound

  Winter

  Night Winds

  Arbutus

  Roma Aeterna

  He’s killed the may and he’s laid her by / To bear the red rose company.

  Amaze

  Shadow

  Fate Defied

  Madness

  The Warning —

  Saying of II Haboul


  The Death Of Holofernes

  Laurel In The Berkshires

  Niagara

  The Grand Canyon

  Now Barabbas Was A Robber

  Refuge In Darkness

  PART II

  To Walter Savage Landor

  The Pledge

  Hypnos, God of Sleep

  Expenses

  Adventure

  On Seeing Weather-Beaten Trees

  Warning To The Mighty

  Oh, Lady, Let The Sad Tears Fall

  Dirge

  The Sun-Dial

  The Entombment

  Autumn

  Ah me.. Alas..

  Perfume of Youth

  Rapunzel

  Narcissus

  Vendor’s Song

  AVIS

  Doom

  Grain Field

  Song

  Pierrot

  The Monk in the Garden

  The Mourner

  Night

  Harvesters’ Song

  Rose-Mary Of The Angels

  Angélique

  Chimes

  Mad-Song

  The Witch

  Cry of the Nymph to Eros

  Cradle-Song

  The Lonely Death

  Lo, All The Way

  The Crucifixion

  The Immortal Residue

  POSTHUMOUS POEMS

  To The Dead in the Grave-Yard Under My Window

  To an Unfaithful Lover

  To A Hermit Thrush

  The Source

  For Lucas Cranach’s Eve

  Blue Hyacinths.

  Fresher

  Why have

  Lunatick

  Thou art not friendly sleep that hath delayed

  Nor moon

  Old Love

  My Birds That Fly No Longer

  The Elgin Marbles

  Safe.

  Sad of Heart.

  The Event.

  The Companions

  Epigram

  You Nor I Nor Nobody Knows

  The Proud Poet

  The Plaint

  Endymion.

  What news comrade upon the mountain top

  Now doth blue kirtled night relume the stars

  Tears.

  John-a-dreams —

  Incantation.

  Milking Time

  The Fiddler

  Aubade.

  The Parting.

  As I Went

  Lines Addressed To My Left Lung Inconveniently Enamoured Of Plant-Life

  Lament

  Grave Digger Catch

  The Song of Choice.

  The Two Mothers

  The Expulsion

  Dooms-Day

  I offer my self to you as cool water in cup of crystal

  Evil.

  La Morte

  Girl Fleeing Love

  It’s oh, my dear, the sun shines clear

  Clotilda Sings

  Journey’s End.

  There’s a gay girl laughing.

  Champagne.

  The Black-mailing Ruffian.

  Bob White.

  An Early Christian Hymn: “How doth the Heathen rage”

  Non Solo.

  To Anacreon.

  Traces of the Rustic in Amos.

  Truthful Love.

  The Golden Princess.

  The changed request

  UNDERGRADUATE POEMS

  Loneliness.

  The earth’s all wrapped in gray shroud-mist,

  Dull gray are sea and sky,

  And where the water laps the land

  On gray sand-dunes stand I.

  Oh, if God there be, his face from me

  The rolling gray mists hide;

  And if God there be, his voice from me

  Is kept by the moan of the tide.

  Time Flies.

  Yesterday in the garden-close

  Budded and blossomed and blew a rose,

  Faded and fallen its petals gay;

  The rose lies dead in the garden to-day.

  But, sweet, I pray you do not sorrow,

  As fair a rose will bloom to-morrow.

  Yesterday, dearest, you and I,

  Swore that our love would never die.

  Our vows were frail as all vows be.

  To-day love’s fled from you and me.

  But, sweet, I pray you do not sorrow,

  New love will come to us to-morrow.

  Thus the hours swiftly by us go;

  Well, I e’en wist it must be so.

  Do not weep now for what is past,

  Love and roses will never last.

  Then gaily speed past what is over,

  And gladly greet new rose and lover.

  The Heart of a Maid.

  “Petals of the marguerite,

  Tell me, pray,

  Doth he love me? — Answer

  ‘Yea’ or ‘nay.’”

  “Loveth?” laughs she gaily,

  “Let him sigh!

  For all the love he offers,

  What care I?”

  “Petals of the marguerite,

  Tell me, pray,

  Doth he love me? — Answer

  Ύea’ or ‘nay.’”

  “Loves not?” weeps she sorely,

  “Let me die!

  For life without his love,

  What care I?”

  Repentance.

  (From the old French.)

  In very truth, I’ve been a sinner

  And spent my life in foolish manner;

  Too much I’ve used my youthful days

  In lightsome, vain and sinful ways.

  Aye, oft I’ve visited the court,

  Made love to ladies — idle sport!

  To them I’ve written triolets,

  Rondeaux, sonnets and chansonettes.

  With naughty lords I’ve often dined,

  Gamed, fought and all too often wined.

  Aye, much I’ve walked in paths of evil;

  My boon companion’s been the devil.

  But now, alack! gay youth is spent;

  I’m getting old — I’d best repent!

  Hail Mary!

  In loveliness and purity,

  In faith and grace and piety,

  In love and in humility,

  God give me grace to be like thee,

  That in my poor and low degree

  I, like thyself, may blessed be.

  Hail, Mary!

  PART I

  Birth-Moment

  Behold her,

  Running through the waves,

  Eager to reach the land;

  The water laps her,

  Sun and wind are on her,

  Healthy, brine-drenched and young,

  Behold Desire new-born; —

  Desire on first fulfillment’s radiant edge,

  Love at miraculous moment of emergence,

  This is she,

  Who running,

  Hastens, hastens to the land.

  Look.. Look..

  Her blown gold hair and lucent eyes of youth,

  Her body rose and ivory in the sun..

  Look,

  How she hastens,

  Running, running to the land.

  Her hands are yearning and her feet are swift

  To reach and hold

  She knows not what

  Yet knows that it is life;

  Need urges her,

  Self, uncomprehended but most deep divined,

  Unwilled but all-compelling, drives her on.

  Life runs to life.

  She who longs,

  But hath not yet accepted or bestowed,

  All virginal dear and bright,

  Runs, runs to reach the land.

  And she who runs shall be

  Married to blue of summer skies at noon,

  Companion to green fields,

  Held bride of subtle fragrance and of all sweet sound,

  Beloved of the stars,

  And wanton mistress to the veering winds.

 
; Oh breathless space between:

  Womb-time just passed,

  Dark-hidden, chaotic-formative, unpersonal,

  And individual life of fresh-created force

  Not yet begun:

  One moment more

  Before desire shall meet desire

  And new creation start.

  Oh breathless space,

  While she,

  Just risen from the waves,

  Runs, runs to reach the land.

  (Ah, keenest personal moment

  When mouth unkissed turns eager-slow and tremulous

  Towards lover’s mouth,

  That tremulous and eager-slow

  Droops down to it:

  But breathless space of breath or two

  Lies in between

  Before the mouth upturned and mouth down-drooped

  Shall meet and make the kiss.)

  Look. Look..

  She runs..

  Love fresh-emerged,

  Desire new-born..

  Blown on by wind,

  And shone on by the sun,

  She rises from the waves

  And running,

  Hastens, hastens to the land.

  Belovèd and Belovèd and Belovèd,

  Even so right

  And beautiful and undenied

  Is my desire;

  Even so longing-swift

  I run to your receiving arms.

  O Aphrodite!

  O Aphrodite, hear!

  Hear my wrung cry flame upward poignant-glad...

  This is my time for me.

  I too am young;

  I too am all of love!

  1905.

  The Mother Exultant

  Joy! Joy! Joy!

  The hills are glad,

  The valleys re-echo with merriment,

  In my heart is the sound of laughter,

  And my feet dance to the time of it;

  Oh, little son, carried light on my shoulder,

  Let us go laughing and dancing through the live days,

  For this is the hour of the vintage,

  When man gathereth for himself the fruits of the vineyard.