Pre-Pulitzer Poetry

By Robert Hillyer

Before winning the 1934 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, Robert Hillyer (1895-1961) explored a variety of subjects and poetic forms in his books. This new poetry collection contains six of Hillyer's pre-Pulitzer books in their entirety, including a longer narrative poem (Carmus) that is a haunting fairy tale for adults with beautiful imagery and sentences.

Hillyer was classmates with E.E. Cummings at Harvard and became lifelong friends with Robert Frost (who said that he and Hillyer had been "running side-by-side all these years, and he knows that I think of his poetry as he thinks of mine: with affection ... (and) ... admiration." While poets of Hillyer's era were flirting with modernism, imagism and symbolism, Hillyer was working with sonnets and pastorals, mostly rejecting free verse and the "existential agonies of modern man" in order to write about eternal themes like nature, love and death. Hillyer was not really an innovator. Hillyer felt most comfortable writing sonnets and other constricted forms with meter and rhyme, and his poems rarely sounded artificial or stilted. Although occasionally the poems used allusions to art and history and mythology, the poems mostly remained accessible and didn't require elaborate footnotes.

This ebook edition also contains illustrations by Beatrice Stevens and two books of translations: a collection of Danish poetry and an improved translation in verse of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It also includes an essay about Robert Hillyer's poetry by horror writer Arthur Machen and an essay that Hillyer wrote comparing Egyptian religion with Christianity.

Recently Personville Press republished Hillyer's 1942 poetic novel "My Heart for Hostage" (which evokes Hillyer's experiences of living in Paris after WWI and presents a coherent aesthetic sensibility for a lyrical novel). This sensibility is apparent in his poems as well. Critics Horace Gregory and Marya Zaturenska said that the "gift that Hillyer possessed was an extremely sensitive ear for verbal music, a gift that, however 'literary' its speech may be, never fails to delight the reader, for among the best of Hillyer's lyrics the clear strains of sixteenth-century music were revived and were sounded with the mastery that conceals its art."

This volume includes English translations Hillyer did of Danish poems by notable Danish poets (sometimes for the first time). That includes: Adam Oehlenschläger (1779-1850), B.S. Ingeman (1789-1862), Poul M. Møller (1794-1838), Christian Winther (1796-1876), Frederick Paludan-Müller (1809-1876), Holger Drachmann (1846-1908), Johannes Jørgensen (1866-1956), Ludvig Holstein (1864-1943), Jeppe Aakjær (1866-1930), Sophus Claussen (1865-1931) and Johannes V. Jensen (1873-1950) .

Between 1937-1945 Hillyer was the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard and taught several authors including Howard Nemerov, James Agee and Theodore Roethke. After that appointment ended, Hillyer taught at Kenyon College between 1948-1951 and ultimately finished his teaching career at University of Delaware between 1954-1961. In addition to publishing several more poetry collections after winning the Pulitzer, Hillyer published two books about versification and several scholarly essays about well-known poets.

To avoid having lines of poetry run onto multiple lines, reading this ebook on smaller displays (such as mobile phones) is not recommended.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Personville Press
• Release date: Dec 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215249017

Robert Hillyer

ROBERT HILLYER (1895-1961) was a U.S. poet who published 15 books of poetry, 2 novels and 2 books of criticism. He volunteered with the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps in France during World War 1 and worked as a diplomatic courier during the 1919 Paris peace conference after the war. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1934. Born in New Jersey, he taught at Harvard University, Trinity College, Kenyon College and University of Delaware. He is known for his traditional approach to poetry, classical poetic forms, pastoral themes and a rejection of Modernist innovations like free verse. FREE DOWNLOAD: You can download Hillyer's 1942 novel MY HEART FOR HOSTAGE at the Personville Press website.

Book preview

Pre-Pulitzer Poetry

Table of Contents

Introduction

Seventh Hill

Book One – Meditations

Book One – Sonnets

Book Three – Pastorals

Book Three – Prothalamion

Halt in the Garden

Introduction by Arthur Machen

Poems

The Hills Give Promise: Lyric Poems

Carmus: A Symphonic Poem

Synopsis

Canto I.

Interlude: Ocean

Canto II.

Interlude: The Song of Frema, the Earth-Spirit

Canto III.

Interlude

Canto IV.

Book of Danish Verse (Translations)

About the Danish Poets

By Adam Oehlenschläger (1779-1850)

By B.S. Ingeman (1789-1862)

By Poul M. Møller (1794-1838)

By Christian Winther (1796-1876)

By Frederick Paludan-Müller (1809-1876)

By Holger Drachmann (1846-1908)

By Johannes Jørgensen (1866-1956)

By Ludvig Holstein (1864-1943)

By Jeppe Aakjær (1866-1930)

By Sophus Claussen (1865-1931)

By Johannes V. Jensen (1873-1950)

Coming Forth by Day (Translations)

The Egyptian Religion (Essay)

Translated Verses from Egyptian Book of the Dead

Superficial Notes & Commentaries

Index of First Lines

About the Author

Get More Cool Stuff

About This Edition

Pre-Pulitzer Poetry

Robert Hillyer

Copyright © 2023 Estate of Robert Hillyer

Cover Design by James, GoOnWrite.com

Published by Personville Press (Houston, Texas) on Dec 29, 2023. Interior art is by Beatrice Stevens (1876-1947). Info about copyright and version history appears at the end of this ebook. This ebook (Version 1.0.0) was published by Personville Press with the authorization and consent of the estate of Robert Hillyer. It is distributed without DRM. To report technical problems or make editorial inquiries, contact idiotprogrammer AT gmail.com.

Reading Tip: To avoid having lines of poetry run onto multiple lines, reading this ebook on smaller displays (such as mobile phones) is not recommended. For devices with color displays, go to Font Options and choose Publisher Default. For e-ink (black and white) displays ONLY, choose your device's preferred font. If the ebook's font seems too light for reading, changing to another font will usually improve readability.

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Introduction

This ebook collects several poetry books which Robert Hillyer (1895-1961) published during the 1920s.

I recently edited a critical ebook edition of Robert Hillyer's 1942 novel My Heart for Hostage, which led me to explore all of Hillyer's poetry. I wrote a long biographical sketch of Hillyer's life and works which you can find on the Personville Press website and at this web address.

Before Hillyer's Collected Verse won the Pulitzer Prize in 1934, Hillyer had published 6 poetry books and 2 translations. (Click here to learn about publishing info and dates.) Three of these poetry books (Alchemy, Carmus and Gates of the Compass) were longer narrative poems which Hillyer called symphonic poems. The first two symphonic poems (Alchemy and Carmus) contained beautiful illustrations by Beatrice Stevens. Ultimately I decided to omit Alchemy (1920) from this ebook because the large number of illustrations in Alchemy would make this ebook have an unwieldy file size. You can still view a free PDF scan of Alchemy on archive.org, and eventually Personville Press will release an ebook version of it as well. Carmus is still a terrific read and contains the original illustrations; the story is a haunting fairy tale for adults full of beautiful imagery and sentences. (I personally found it helpful to read the poem synopsis before diving into the poem, but some might prefer skipping it).

Seventh Hill appears first in this ebook even though it was the last to be published. I mostly tried to replicate the original sequence of the poems as they appeared in each book. Carmus was published together in the same volume as The Hills Give Promise, but that was probably done more for the publisher's convenience than for artistic reasons. That is why they appear here as separate books.

Instead of listing each individual poem in the table of contents, this ebook lists poems at the top of the appropriate book section. At the end there is an Index of First Lines which should make it easy to look up a poem. There is a small number of notes and commentaries about individual poems which mainly pertain to textual discrepancies and perhaps relevant biographical details. By now, there are many online resources for looking up literary and mythological references (as I had to do for Hesperides in the poem titled Halt in the Garden), so there is rarely a need to mention them here.

In several cases, I added brief explanatory notes of a sentence or two in each section. Short notes are indicated with brackets [...] to make it clear that they did not appear in the original books. Some poems translated for the Book of Danish Verse have never before been translated in English and their creators are probably unknown to English-speaking readers. For this reason, this ebook includes a 1-2 sentence biographical profile about these poets .

Audio Recordings. The Robert Hillyer page on Wikipedia also links to two audio recordings of Hillyer reciting his own poetry in the 1950s: University of Delaware recordings of audio readings (MSS 0696) and a recording of Hillyer reading his own poems at the Library of Congress (PL 25) on archive.org. The University of Delaware recordings include Hillyer reciting a mix of original poems along with many of his favorite poems from previous centuries.

Layout & Presentation

When publishing poetry ebooks, it can be a challenge to convey line breaks and indents in accordance with the poet's wishes (especially when the poet is no longer around). It can sometimes be ambiguous in the printed edition whether the stanza ends at the bottom of the page or at the beginning of the next. Hillyer's rhyme and meter is fairly regular and predictable, so in most cases it can be easy to figure out these things. Some poems use indents and occasionally an indent is used for special emphasis or echo of a previous line.

Line length varies from poem to poem, but many of Hillyer's poems have passages with long lines (sometimes 10 syllables or more). On an ebook, if a line exceeds the length of the screen, it appears as a runon which will be indented. (This may happen a lot if reading in a very small display). 95% of the time, you can tell the difference between an actual indented line (and not simply a continuation of a previous line) by checking if the 2nd line is capitalized (which indicates a planned indent). My best advice would be to try to read this ebook on a larger screen; if this is not possible, try to reduce font size as much as your eyes allow. If you discover any formatting problems or any other quality problems, feel free to drop me a line.

Robert Nagle, Editor

Seventh Hill

Contents

Book One – Meditations (I-XIV)

Book Two – Sonnets (I-IX)

Book Three – Pastorals (I-XIX)

Book Four – Prothalamion (1-II)

Book One – Meditations

I.

The farthest country is Tierra del Fuego,

That is the bleakest and the loneliest land;

There are the echoing mountains of felspar,

And salt winds walking the empty sand.

This country remembers the birth of the moon

From a rocky rib of the young earth's side;

It heard the white-hot mountains bellow

Against the march of the first flood tide.

I lifted a shell by the glass-green breakers

And heard what no man has heard before,

The whisper of steam in the hot fern forest

And slow feet crunching the ocean floor.

I saw the slanted flash of a seagull

When a sheaf of light poured over the clouds,

I heard the wind in the stiff dune grasses,

But I saw no sail and I heard no shrouds.

To a promontory of Tierra del Fuego

I climbed at noon and stretched my hand

Toward another country, remoter and bleaker.

II.

When I say For Ever I think of the temple of Zeus.

The broken drums of the columns buried in grass;

Marble avails not, words are of little use,

It is longer than miles from Olympia to Patras.

For Ever is marble, For Ever is white and tall.

But the road I follow ends in a tangle of weeds

Where lie the drums of the columns, the stones of the wall,

Broken letters of a word that no man reads.

III.

The skirts of the careless wind have thrown

The sand in pattern of herring-bone.

Up from the ocean to the skies

Egyptward the phoenix flies.

Is it far away, bird of flame.

Is it far away, eyes of stone?

You’ll lose your sight, you’ll lose your name

Before the homeward journey is done.

Will you and the sun sail alone,

Bird of flame and boat of the sun?

Your eyes will fall to the yellow beach

And the tide will bear them out of reach;

The green tide will look at the sky

Through the fiery glaze of a phoenix eye.

Will the shrines of Egypt still be kind

When the wings are salty, the eyes blind?

And what is sight to the dazzling sun

Who puts the stars out one by one?

Who is the young man that would dare

Fling his questions up the air

To the lord of fire who cruises there!

Forgive, bright phoenix, Egypt-bound,

That silence make so small a sound;

And you, my earth of sky and sea.

Beg with adroit humility

Forgiveness of your brother stars,

Jupiter, Mercury, and Mars,

That you, a sandy sparkle blown

Into design of herring-bone

As the skirts of the wind go brushing by,

Fly Egyptward, and think you fly

With the sun, immortal and alone.

IV.

This pathway marked No Thoroughfare

Is obviously barred,

But vulgar people love to stare

In someone else’s yard.

It is not reverent but rude

To spy beyond the bounds

Like raw plebeians who intrude

Upon patrician grounds

And bribe the servants to undo

The door a little crack—

A burglar's glimpse, a keyhole view,

Behind the Master's back.

A scandal, so it seems to me,

The way they force the doors

To trespass on the privacy

Of their superiors.

How much more fitting to await

The summons to attend,

Ride proudly through the open gate

And enter as a friend.

V.

Happy art thou, my phantom saint,

As the quill draws out the whorls of paint

And the letter blossoms into a rose;

Word by word the slow book grows.

Out of the window I see the stream

Cleave the hill with a broken gleam.

The autumn sunset burns to a scar

And the sky is healed with a single star.

Around thee the pools of shadow blend,

Fingers loosen and labours end.

The ink has dried on the supple quill

And sunset burned out over the hill.

Thou hast left thy work, O my phantom saint,

Unfinished, but not one letter faint.

The spirit blossoms into a rose,

And word by word the slow book grows.

VI.

As I was faring through a wood

Bewildered as I was,

I came upon a wayside rood

That glistered clear as glass.

Like glass in noontide sun, the rays

Stood out in thorny light

So dazzling to my darkened gaze

I could not see aright.

Why is the wonder wrought for me

So lost and so alone?

I knelt beneath the fiery tree

Upon a floor of stone.

Why for a man of little faith

This wonder for a saint?

A roof shut out the sky; beneath

The gloaming wood grew faint.

Low voices murmured and I heard

Bells far away and soft,

The lights around the rood were stirred

By smoke that swirled aloft.

The Host and the angelic Cup

Shone forth with forkëd flame,

But no priest came to lift them up

Or call them by their Name.

And there were others in that place

Who knelt or moved about,

And I beheld on every face

The secret smile of doubt.

And three with leaden measures crept

To prove the things of gold,

And one in robes of purple slept

Twitching as if with cold.

And as I watched, I saw a rout

Of beasts that trampled down

The three with rules who crept about,

The one who had a crown.

Oxen there were, and kine, and sheep.

That trampled down the men;

I shall not see unless in sleep

The like of that again.

But at the altar, pair by pair,

They bent, and so a yoke

Was placed upon them, made of air

Yet heavier than oak.

And all their bleating din grew still.

They stood in meek array

As if they waited there until

The break of Judgment Day.

Sanctus! the voice was like a star

Singing in silver curve.

A bell rang soft and very far

Yet rang through every nerve.

Sanctus! now farther and forlorn,

As if none understood.

The Host by hand unseen was borne

In glory to the rood.

Three times the bell rang out; it seemed

Each tinkle of the sound

Turned to a silent light that gleamed

Upon a holy ground.

The sanctus died upon my car

And wakened on my eye

To be a star set high and clear

Amid a frightened sky.

The walls, the rood, the altar waned,

The chapel was no more;

Only the patient beasts remained

Where they had been before.

And where the altar once had stood

Came forth a maid who smiled;

And from the waning of the rood

Was born a laughing child.

Mother, he said, the day has come!

Her face grew dark with pain.

Mother, do thou and I go home,

And she was healed again.

Then spread the angel of the east

Her wings of fire and gold.

Then vanished maid and child and beast,

And all the wood grew cold.

As cold as on a ruined hearth

The ashes of content;

As cold as the lost heart of earth

Whose inner warmth is spent.

As cold as he who saw the sight

And went upon his way

Denying, in the depth of night,

That he had seen the day.

VII.

The curtains draw across the brain

And in that lighted house of mirth,

Secure from all the eyes of earth,

Our troupe of dreams come out again.

Folly has donned the sage's mask,

Wisdom appears the Knave of Hearts,

Yet in these topsy-turvy parts

They seem as real as one could ask;

As real as when they change their roles

To be themselves and haunt the dream

Where for some hours of day they seem

Important to our sleeping souls.

VIII.

All day from smoky roofs the snow

Has thudded to the yards below

And melted, till at evening

The warmth and wet of early spring

Hang in a haze where every sound

Comes muffled as from underground,

And every faint sensation, fraught

With the finality of thought,

Entices from their dark chambers

Other days that the mind remembers

Because they also had looked back

Where memory itself goes black.

The rift in winter brings to pass

A wilder glory than green grass,

An ampler light than ever came

On blossoms trembling into flame.

The passersby with open coats

Rise huge and sudden like the boats

Which loom portentous on the lee

Through early morning fog at sea;

And on the lawn where snow grows thin

Sparrows raise an increasing din

In crazy revelry of noise

Like congresses of yelling boys;

Yet waning in the rear, refined

By space, their clamour brings to mind

The April evening when first

On unaccustomed hearing burst

The voice of bluebirds singing plain:

We have come back! come back again!

I know it now, on every hand

Murmurs the thawing meadowland;

I smell the maple sap, I feel

The uncertain breeze advance and wheel;

Almost without persuasion see

The blue wood close in after me,

Conspiring dimly, tree by tree;

As mated over empty miles

One clear bell rings, one clear star smiles.

In the grim city I have known

The glow has melted bricks and stone,

For this is the promise never kept

By spring herself. We that slept

Wake for one moment longer than

The generations known to-man;

Beyond our syllable find speech,

Beyond our halted breathing reach

Toward the all-comprehending air,

And, fearing no denial, share

The undiminished draught which gives

Life manifold to all that lives.

Nor will the familiar dead be still;

They hasten toward me down the hill.

Though memory on living ears

Make not a sound, each phantom hears

His name, as though the thought had spun

A summons down oblivion.

They come whose spring is never past,

Langland and Chaucer, friends at last,

Shakspere and Drayton and John Donne,

Sidney and tuneful Campion,

And Herrick, with uplifted nose

Snuffing the air for wine or a rose.

Heroes put on their mail of flesh;

Istar's beloved, Gilgamesh;

Achilles, the great surly boy

Who slumbers well by windy Troy;

And he who snatched his father’s