Masters may not cringe before these “terms obdurate.” He will point to _The Spoon River Anthology_. I will point to his work before the Anthology and again these later things. Masters of course loves Walt Whitman. He knows the poem from which I quoted. But Theodore Watts-Dunton—you remember him? Masters, I am sure, is more anxious and willing to accept, nay, subscribe to, the rules and judgments of this Victorian critic than to the mere words spoken in poesy of Watts-Dunton’s American contemporary, Whitman. I am almost certain of this. Masters speaks highly of Watts-Dunton’s essay on poetry. It appeared in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Please read it and find the Masters creed. He seems ready to bow before it. If Masters wants honors as a decadent he can have them—really he has earned them. _The Spoon River Anthology_: its manner, joy, abandon, deepest humanity, art (all that makes it the tremendous book it is), seem to be the one great thing that Masters had to give us. The new book does not show the “truly deep poetic spirit” which Francis Hackett claims to have found in it. Such a judgment is given the lie by such poems as: _St. Francis and the Lady Clare_, _Rain in My Heart_, _Simon Surnamed Peter_, _The City_, _Helen of Troy_, _O Glorious France_, _Love Is a Madness_, _The Altar_, _Soul’s Desire_, _Ballad of Launcelot and Elaine_, _In Michigan_, _The Star_. Our own feeble voice aside, I merely put before you words of two men—one a creator and critic, and the other a creator and human being. And I hope I have visualized for you the pathetically absurd spectacle of a “modern poet” bowing on bended knee before—. Well, why should a poet bow at all? ---------- [1] _Chicago Poems, by Carl Sandburg. New York: Henry Holt._ [2] _Songs and Satires, by Edgar Lee Masters. New York: Macmillan._ The Poet Sings to the World BEN HECHT I am a stranger, wandering always. Only the dark trees know me and the dark skies. Wistfully I look on you and wander on coldly, For you will not know me... Only the night that swims in the black branches knows me And the silence that walks in the dark streets. But I know you— You of the little words and the little visions Who are warm with laughter and the joy of common things. I wander among you and I wish to laugh And I yearn to take your hand. But your eyes look into mine and stare And there is no love in them such as you lavish elsewhere. Your eyes look into mine and frown For you will not know me... Only the blue distances of the day on the water know me And the cold wind that warms itself in my heart.