Tramping on Life Part 68

Always, always I wrote my poetry and kept studying in my own fas.h.i.+on ...

marks of proficiency, attendance at cla.s.s went by the board. My studying was rather browsing among the mult.i.tudes of books in the college library. I pa.s.sed hours, back in the stacks, forgetting day and night ... recitations ... meals....

I was soon in trouble with my professors ... I was always up, and even ahead, with my studies, but I was a disrupting influence for the other students, because of my irregularity.

I discovered wonderful books back there in the "stack" ... the works of Paracelsus, who whispered me that wisdom was to be found more in the vagabond bye-ways of life than in the ordered and regulated highways.

That the true knowledge was to be garnered from knocking about with vagrants, gipsies, carriers ... from corners in wayside inns where travellers discoursed....

And there was Boehmen, the inspired German shoemaker, who was visited by an angel, or some sort of divine stranger, and given his first illumination outside his shop ... and later walked a-field and heard what the flowers were saying to each other, seeing through all creation at one glance, crystal-clear.

And there were the unusual poets ... old Matthew Prior, who wrote besides his poems, the Treaty, was it, of Utrecht?... hobn.o.bbed with the big people of the land ... yet refused all marks of honour ... the best Latinist of the day ... at a time when Latin was the diplomatic language of Europe.

When he wasn't hobn.o.bbing with the aristocracy or writing treaties he was sitting in inns and drinking with teamsters ... had a long love affair with a cobbler's wife, and married the lady after the cobbler died....

There was Skelton and his rough-running, irregular rhythmic rather than strictly metrical verses ... mad and ribald ... often tedious ... but with wild flashes of beauty interwoven through his poems ... the poem about his mistress's sparrow ... the elegy on its death ... where he prayed G.o.d to give it the little wren of the Virgin Mary, as a wife, in heaven--"to tread, for _solas_!"

And Gay, the author of many delightful fables ... who must wait still longer for his proper niche, because he showed gross levity on the subject of death and life ... he who wrote for his own epitaph:

"Life is a jest, and all things show it; I thought so once, but now I know it."

For all those who would not keep step, who romped out of the regular procedure and wantoned by the way, picking what flowers they chose, I held feeling and sympathy.

The _Annual_, a book published by the seniors each spring, now advertised a prize for the best poem submitted by any student ... a prize of twenty-five dollars. I had no doubt but that the prize was mine already. Not that I had become as yet the poet I desired, but that the average level of human endeavour in any art is so low that I knew my a.s.siduity and application and fair amount of inspiration would win.

I wrote my poem--_A Day in a j.a.panese Garden_, ... only two lines I remember:

"And black cranes trailed their long legs as they flew Down to it, somewhere out of Heaven's blue,"

descriptive of a little lake ... oh, yes, and two more I remember, descriptive of sunset:

"And Fujiyama's far and sacred top Became a jewel s.h.i.+ning in the sun."

The poem was an over-laquered, metaphor-cloyed thing ... much like the bulk of our free verse of to-day ... but it was superior to all the rest of the contributions.

The prize was declared off. After an evening's serious discussion the committee decided that, though my effort was far and away the best, it would not do to let me have the prize, because I was so wild-appearing ... because I was known as having been a tramp. And because seniors and students of correct standing at the university had tried. And it would not be good for the school morale to let me have what I had won.

They compromised by declaring the prize off.

A year after, Professor Black, a.s.sistant professor in English literature, who served on the judging board, told me confidentially of this ... though he declared that he had fought for me, alleging how I needed the money, and how I had honestly won the award.

I thought of the couplet of Gay:

"He who would without malice pa.s.s his days Must live obscure and never merit praise."

Outwardly I maintained a bold and courageous rudeness. Inwardly a panic had swept over me ... not the panic of deep solitude when a man is alone at night in a boundless forest ... I have known that, too, but it is nothing to that which comes to a man who knows all society, by its very structure, arrayed against him and his dreams.

When the ancient Egyptians had finished the building of a pyramid, they began polis.h.i.+ng it at the top, proceeding downward. And it has been said that on the finished, hard, smooth exterior even a fly would slip....

Huge, granite, towering, the regularised life appeared to me, the life that bulked on all sides ... I saw that it was the object of education, not to liberate the soul and mind and heart, but to reduce everything to dead and commonplace formulae.

On all sides, so to speak, I saw Christ and Socrates and Sh.e.l.ley valeted by society ... dress suits laid out for them ... carefully pressed and creased ... which,--now dead,--it was pretended their spirits took up and wore ... had, in fact, always worn....

And my mind went back to those happy days at Eos ... happy despite the fly in the ointment....

I thought of my Southern widow, Mrs. Tighe.

"Poet," she had once said, "come to my place in the South. I have a bungalow back of my house that you may live in ... write your poems unmolested ... I won't be going there for awhile yet, but I will give you a letter to the caretaker, and you can use the place. And my pantry and ice box will be at your service ... so you'll need do nothing but write."

Now, fed full of rebuffs, I wished I had accepted her offer. And I wrote her, care of the Eos Artworks ... an ingenuous letter, burning with nave love....

She had once told me how she had scandalised the neighbours by painting a little boy, in the nude, in that same bungalow ... the story being carried about by the servants ... and if it had not been for her social prestige!--

I thought there could be nothing pleasanter than living in her place, perhaps becoming her lover....

I imagined myself posing, nude, for her canvases....

But my brief hope fell to earth. A curt note from a married sister of hers ... who first apologised for having read my letter.... But Mrs.

Tighe was abroad, painting in Spain.

The shock of having someone else, indubitably with a hostile eye, read my letter, in which I had poured forth all my heart, made me almost sick. I was chagrined inexpressibly.

The truth was, spring was coming on. Spring affects me as it does migratory fowls. With its first effort of meadow and bough toward renewed flowers and greenness, the instinct for change and adventure stirs anew in me.

The school year was not yet up, but I didn't want to graduate.

At that time I had a pa.s.sion for meeting well-known people.

It was then my only avenue of literary publication, so to speak. The magazines were steadily returning my deluge of poems--I sent at least three a week to them ... but to those who had established themselves I could show my work, and get their advice and notice....

Walking along the main street, I ran into Jack Travers, the young reporter who had dubbed me the "Vagabond Poet," the "Box-car Bard."...

"Well, what are you up to now, Gregory?"

"Nothing, only I'm thinking of a trip south to Osageville to pay a visit to Mackworth, the Kansas novelist."

"That's the stuff ... I need another good story for the _Era_."