NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 2, 14 January 1925, Page 34

NOTES

By Eileen Duggan

Vigils Aline Kilmer has published her second book of poems. There have been many of her songs published in" the Poetry Page of the Tablet, and so keen was their personality, so brave their womanliness, that one could not refrain from sending to New York for the whole volume.- It came, a slender thing called Candle* that Burn. The poem of the name page will be remembered by Tablet readers. This second hook is borrowed and so must be dealt with before the first, which in a way is a pity, since in this second her hush of Spring is. growing bark, close bark, brave bark, needed hark; but as always one regrets the flowery spilth of Spring. Life has gone on with Aline since the days when poor Kilmer wrote that fragrant valentine to his little woman, in the blue garment made in the manner of the Japanese, the little woman whose blue eyes "put lovely little blue reflections on everything she looks at." Kilmer went out to the wars loving deeply his wife, his home, his children, and for such valor and .such love perhaps God took him, before Life could rust his sword, or weariness weaken his faith. He rode the summer blithely and the summer bore him away. But all that belongs to the first volume, that book of joy. . The sorrow o.f losing him is in it. it is true, but not the battle and the loneliness that follows after loss.

The Poems The tiling that draws one to the second book is less its beauty than its truth. What of this? , • "If I had loved you more God would have had pity; He would never have left me here in this desolate place, Left me to go on my knees to the door of Heaven, Crying in vain for a little sight of your face. /'How could I know that the earth would he dark without you ? For you were always the lover and I the friend. Now if there were any hope that T might find \ yon, ..'•'■ I would go seeking you to the world's end. "God is a jealous God. You have loved too ,' ' wildly, ''.-;• •«."'" . ' ',

You have loved too well," one said. I bowed my head but my heart in scorn was crying That you whom I had not loved enough were dead." A bitter wind has blown out of the north into her garden and withered her tree of joy, but if joy is gone truth remains, and in her search for her own faults she is almost pitiless. She confesses that Joyce is not always' in her mind—the writing, the children, the cares of life drive him out, but then comes the atonement. "When a storm comes Up at night,, and the wind is crying, When the trees are moaning like masts on laboring ships, T wake in fear and put out my hand to find you With your name on my lips. "No pain that the heart can hold is like to' this one — To call forgetting into aching space, To reach out confident hands and find heside you „ Only an empty place. "This should atone for the hours when. I forget you. Take then my offering, clean and sharp and sweet, An agony brighter than years of dull remembrance, 1 lay it at your feet. . There are still poems on the children.. Nobody tires of Kenton and Deborah and Christopher, or of Michael, the flower of them all. The poems are less light-hearted. Michael she tells us has the touch of tears. We hear it in many, singing voices, not great voices perhaps, but the voices that go quickest to the heart. "Michael, its the touch of tears. Though you sing for very gladness, Others will not see your mirth ; They will mourn your fancied sadness. Though you laugh at them in scorn, . Show your happy heart for token, Michael, you'll protest in vain— They will swear your heart is broken." . And there is another of Michael, a lovely thing. All the children brought her tribute from the meadow. Kenton, the eldest, came

with buttercups, golden buttercups. • The small Christopher followed Deborah bringing, golden dandelions, but Michael loitered and came last laying in her open hand an - autumn leaf. Some grace from a far county surely touched Michael. '' K $M "Death in all loveliness, fragile and exquisite, _£»'& Who but he would choose it from all tlujjj^Bl blossoming land , " ' ' • _,%<!.;<£ Who but he would find it where it hid among i|; the flowers? ' ...'•'':■■'.'■ \j ■■% Death in all loveliness, he laid it in my ", ; hand. . ' : ( ,;-: Poems of Self There were few of these in the first volume. . :| Perhaps living alone has driven her thought (: inwards. Aline has become a flagellant. She ■-■-:■ sets down mercilessly her shortcomings.- This was surely not written of the little woman in ■•;* the blue garment — - ■■•';|; "The heart knoweth? If this be true, indeed ■■'vo. Then the thing that I bear in my bosom is not a heart; .. :\ \' For it knows no more than a hollow whispering reed f \ ' That answers to every wind. : .'■■ I am sick of the thing! I think we had better part." ;'£>■; Surely it is a sad rhyme, this, whoever is its subject—"My heart will come to any :"' piper's calling, a fool in motley that dances .>;/ for any king." It must have been raining ; that day outside the house of Kilmer. \A Put this next one links sweetness and truth. It is true of all of us. Perhaps the ..;'. ~ other is too in a sense. :f '- , ''r" "I'm glad I have a little heart, For my heart is very small — It makes it free to come and go And no one cares at all. '■■;■;■/ "I. give my heart for a tender word, ,■ For a gentle look or touch, And the one that has it never knows ';.'.:::! And it does not hurt me much.

There is more courage than anything else , in this second volume. Everything in her life is uprooted and has to be planted again. ■;.' Kilmer is gone, and Rose is gone, but the others remain and for them she must live. .;'■ The blue garment is changed now for a" little ;, suit of mail. And she goes out into battle ',! with Kenton and Michael for pages. Al-''■<'.;•:' ready she is making their armor, and warn- ' -■ ing them not to mind its dints and holes. And with it all she clings to laughter, one '':'■■■ guesses, to hide her wounds. The poem, , "Vigils," shows best v how the old Aline has ■' become the new. It is not a mere matter of"; tilting her head, and sloping her lance. '■■;£ She has tried pride and come back broken i\! "Once I knelt.in my.shilling mail, . - '•'"', Here by Thine altar all the night. . ■■ :; " .X ;-' My heart beat proudly, my prayer ' rose' loudly, v ' But T looked to my armor to win ,the figtt|.

.[ "God,■"my, lance was a broken; reed, :; My mace a 1 toy ; for a child's delight. ;t/ My helm is battered, my shield is shattered, ■-. :■'.-■■ I am stiff with .wounds, and I lost the fight. ' ."Low I kneel through the night again, V : Hear my prayer, if my prayer be right, ■ Take for Thy token my proud heart broken. ?■ ., God, guide my arm I go back to the / 1! fight." *> f ; : '.( Victory to you, little mother of men, •warrior, worker, singer! There was once a Man who found it easier to walk through a roaring, spitting crowd than to fight his own loneliness in a dark garden. He will , take care of your armor. ..