EDWIN MARKHAM AND HIS GOLDEN SHOWER BY BAILEY MILLARD spise." So shoes it was. How Moore, with only a bookish knowl- word and one that no versifier need deedge of the Orient, could have written the rare Lalla Rookh in a way that made learned men and travellers attest to its historic truth and the perfect accuracy of its scenic passages always has been a literary wonder. But it is safe to assume that Edwin Markham, relating a totally different kind of Oriental story, has repeated this feat of magic in his Shoes of Happiness, a long and well-turned ballad, from which his latest collection of verse takes its title. To study and to know a country and its people well enough to write such a poem as The Shoes of Happiness is not accomplished in a week or a month, and besides, it requires a tremendous exercise of the projective sense even where the story is ready to hand, as was the one so delicately and effectively retold by Mr. Markham. The original tale is an old one-that of a sick and unhappy Sultan who was told that if he could find and wear the shirt of a contented man he himself would be hale and happy. But when after a long quest by the Sultan's Grand Vizier the contented man was found and his shirt demanded, he frankly confessed that he had no such garment. With the genesis of the poem the present writer is well acquainted. Mr. Markham, pleased with the success of his "Juggler," wanted to write another ballad, and was looking for a suitable story. When this one of the shirt of the contented man was suggested to him he remarked: "It's pretty good, but in spite of Tom Hood, I don't see anything very poetic in a shirt. It might as well be a pair of trousers." A few days later, while discussing the same story, he said: "I have it-that shirt is going to be shoes-a good long vowel, easily rhymed Then followed a long, laborious period of Oriental research, culminating at last in the ballad as printed in the Century and republished in the present book, the first Markhamic volume of verse since Lincoln and Other Poems appeared fourteen years ago. To read this poem will be a pleasure to those who like a ballad of a racy, subtle humour, but to hear Mr. Markham read it as he read it to us that night at Hopatcong after he had just finished the last whipcracking line, the first time reads "Virgilia." It is the revelation of Markham, the lover. Markham, the man, was well known to readers of poetry, and so, too, was Markham, the moralist and upholder of democracy. But as a lover he reveals himself with great tenderness of emotion, both in "Virgilia" and in its sequel, "The Crowning Hour." "Virgilia" came in reply to a question asked by a literary friend, who said: "Markham, you seem to fight shy of love. Why don't you put a little of it into your verse?" "I thought I had," was the reply; "but I haven't written a poem of real passion. I don't know that I am capable of so lofty a flight. But perhaps it isn't too late to try." And so he wrote "Virgilia," born of the sea, "the mother of songs and sorrows," as tender and mournful a song of passion as any of Heine's and as full of "liebe und liebes weh." But though "Virgilia" and its sequel tell the tale of broken lives, there is revealed in them both the fine, fragrant faith of the poet: It will all come back, the wasted splendour, The heart's lost youth like a breaking flower, The dauntless dare and the wistful, tender Touch of the April hour. In fact, faint hearts will find wonderful encouragement in nearly all the poems in this book. To bruised spirits such verse as "Courage All," "Freedom" and "Earth is Enough" will come as balm. Sickened souls will find the Markhamic tonic almost as potent as that of Browning, while the prescription is written in a more legible hand. There is nothing Byronic in the methods of Mr. Markham as is evidenced by the decade of patient toil that has made this book. Although urged time and again by publishers that he give them a volume of verse, he always said: "Wait. I am not ready yet." He never "dashed off" but one poem in his life, and that was "Peace Over Africa," for which he received a higher price than for any other. This was written at the cabled request of the editor of the London Morning Chronicle, who wanted it for immediate publication in celebration of the conclusion of peace with the Boers. Mr. Markham finished the poem by working all one long night and was rendered ill by the performance. "The Testimony of the Dust," in the new volume, is an example of his ruthless pruning proclivity. There were over thirty quatrains in the original poem, but only five of them-"the poem within the poem," as he terms it-are retained for this publication. Unlike Tennyson and other bards, who could brook no suggestion as to the improvement of their work, Mr. Markham always urges his literary friends. "to say what they honestly think of it." As to critical reviews, he said to the present writer: "I am always glad of any just strictures that may help me see my work as it is." But what is to be said of his verse by way of criticism after the testimony of Robert Underwood Johnson that "A poem by Edwin Markham is a national event"; after Stedman wrote of his rhymes that "they are truly and exquisitely poetic," and after Nordau called him "a great poet— higher than Whitman"? As to Mr. Markham's selective judgment of his own work, this is exampled in a letter to the writer in which he said, "I agree with you that 'Virgilia' is the high-water mark of my Shoes of Happiness." Called from his Staten Island home to California in February, Mr. Markham is still in his old State at the present writing. This is his first visit to the land of poppies since he left it in 1899 to take up his residence in the East. He went to San Francisco on the invitation of the managers of the Exposition. His coming was heralded in large type by the Coast papers, and he received a series of ovations on his arrival in the Bay City. Banquet followed banquet and reception followed reception. He was importuned to make many addresses and to give readings from his poetical works. Never has the city honoured any of its returning literati as it has honoured the author of "The Man with the Hoe." His tour up and down the Golden State has been a sort of royal progress, and has been immensely profitable to the poet. "Markham has been holding his hat under a golden shower," writes a friend of his from California. "If this sort of thing keeps up we shall witness the entertaining spectacle of a plutocratic poet." From some of the halls and theatres where his lectures and readings have been given hundreds of people have been turned away. At San José and Oakland, in both of which cities he formerly lived, he was treated like a returning hero, and at San Diego and Los Angeles great crowds flocked to do him honour. Surely, it would seem that the appreciation of poets and poetry, often said to be wanting in these days, is still alive -in the West, at least. From the work of a poet who is so essentially human it is significant that these couplets, contained in his new book, should have been most freely quoted in the Coast papers in the reports of his readings: OUTWITTED. He drew a circle that shut me out- WILL COLOUR MUSIC BECOME AN ART? BY EDWARD RICE DOYLE FOLLOWING the recent innovation of the Russian Symphony Society of playing "colour music" synchronously with the orchestration of "Prometheus," by Scriabine, there is bound to arise a diversity of opinion as to the possibility of our enjoying such an art as "colour music.' Simply stated, colour music consists of throwing a series of colours of definite hues, tones and tints upon some diaphanous material according to a written score arranged to follow music and to interpret the mood of the music to the eye while the music of sound appeals to the (This colour schedule is that arranged by Scriabine, and is purely arbitrary.) As each key was pressed, the corresponding colour was thrown on the diaphanous material, sometimes in two or more note chords, giving a compound colour, and at other times in unisons of one colour. The colours were produced by tungsten lamps under colour filters. To give animation to the colours the lamps were attached to a belt, moving in an ellipsis under the gauzes, thus constantly changing their positions. This machine, which has been called the "chromola," was the design of Preston S. Millar, of the Electrical Testing Laboratories of New York, |