Adelaide Crapsey
(1878-1914)
Contents
The Life and Poetry of Adelaide Crapsey
Brief Introduction: Adelaide Crapsey by Claude Bragdon
Complete Poetical Works of Adelaide Crapsey
The Poems
List of Poems in Chronological Order
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
The Delphi Classics Catalogue
© Delphi Classics 2019
Version 1
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Adelaide Crapsey
By Delphi Classics, 2019
COPYRIGHT
Adelaide Crapsey - Delphi Poets Series
First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by Delphi Classics.
© Delphi Classics, 2019.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.
ISBN: 978 1 91348 703 4
Delphi Classics
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Delphi Publishing Ltd
Hastings, East Sussex
United Kingdom
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The Life and Poetry of Adelaide Crapsey
Brooklyn Heights, New York, 1856 — Crapsey’s birthplace
Brooklyn Heights today
Crapsey, c. 1905
Brief Introduction: Adelaide Crapsey by Claude Bragdon
ADELAIDE CRAPSEY, daughter of Algernon Sidney and Adelaide Trowbridge Crapsey, was born on the ninth of September, 1878. She died in her thirty-sixth year on October the eighth, 1914. Her young girlhood was spent in Rochester, New York, where her eminent father was rector of St. Andrew’s Parish. At fourteen she entered the preparatory school of Kemper Hall, Kenosha, Wisconsin, from which school she graduated at the head of her class, in 1897. She entered Vassar College the same year, graduating with the class of 1901.
Two years after her graduation she began her work as a teacher of History and Literature, in Kemper Hall. In 1905 she went abroad and became a student in the School of Archaeology in Rome. The following year she assumed the position of instructor in Literature and History in Miss Lowe’s Preparatory School in Stamford, Conn., but in 1908 on account of failing health she was compelled to abandon teaching for a time. The two succeeding years she spent in Italy and England, working on her Analysts of English Metrics — an exhaustive scientific thesis relating to accent — which years before she had planned to accomplish as her serious life work.
In 1911 she returned to America and became instructor in Poetics at Smith College. The double burden of teaching and writing proved too much for her frail constitution, and in 1913, gravely ill, she was obliged to abandon definitely and finally both activities. The rest is a silence broken only by the remarkable verses of her last poetic phase.
These are the bare biographical facts in the life of Adelaide Crapsey, but it would be an injustice to the reader not to attempt to render some sense of her personality, all compounded of beauty, mystery and charm. I remember her as fair and fragile, in action swift, in repose still; so quick and silent in her movements that she seemed never to enter a room but to appear there, and on the stroke of some invisible clock to vanish as she had come.
Although in Meredith’s phrase “a man and a woman both for brains,” she was an intensely feminine presence. Perfection was the passion of her life, and as one discerns it in her verse, one marked it also in her raiment. In the line
“And know my tear-drenched veil along the grass.”
I see again her drooping figure with some trail of gossamer bewitchment clinging about or drifting after her. Although her body spoke of a fastidious and sedulous care in keeping with her essentially aristocratic nature, she was merciless in the demands she made upon it, and this was the direct cause of her loss of health. The keen and shining blade of her spirit too greatly scorned its scabbard the body, and for this she paid the uttermost penalty.
Her death was tragic. Full of the desire of life she yet was forced to go, leaving her work all unfinished. Her last year was spent in exile at Saranac Lake. From her window she looked down on the graveyard— “Trudeau’s Garden,” she called it, with grim-gay irony. Here, forbidden the work her metrical study entailed, these poems grew — flowers of a battlefield of the spirit. But of her passionate revolt against the mandate of her destiny she spared her family and friends even a sign. When they came to cheer and comfort her it was she who brought them cheer and comfort. With magnificent and appalling courage she gave forth to them the humor and gaiety of her unclouded years, saving them even beyond the end from knowledge of this beautiful and terrible testament of a spirit all unreconciled, flashing “unquenched defiance to the stars.”
This collection of her verse is of her own choosing, arranged and prepared by her own hand. She wrote gay verse in the earlier days before the shadow fell upon her, but her rigorous regard for unity banished it from this record of the fearful questioning of her spirit.
This “immortal residue” is full of poignancy and power. The heart is stricken with her own terror at the approach of
“The despot of our days the lord of dust.”
The book which is her funeral urn will be found to hold more than the ashes of a personal passion, it contains
“Infinite passion, and the pain of finite hearts that yearn.”
CLAUDE BRAGDON.
Rochester, N. Y.
October 1915
Kemper Hall, an Episcopal college in Kenosha, Wisconsin — Crapsey was sent with her sister Emily to the boarding school here in 1893.
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, 1864. Crapsey attended the college in 1897, graduating with honours. It was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely following Elmira College.
Crapsey and Jean Webster on Class Day 1901
School of Archaeology, Rome — Crapsey worked here as a lecturer between 1903 and 1905.
Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts — a private women’s liberal arts college. Crapsey joined the teaching staff here in 1911, where she lectured in poetics.
Saranac Lake, New York, where Crapsey spent much of her time in her later days
Crapsey, c. 1910
Complete Poetical Works of Adelaide Crapsey
CONTENTS
UNDERGRADUATE POEMS
Loneliness.
Time Flies.
The Heart of a Maid.
Repentance.
Hail Mary!
PART I
Birth-Moment
The Mother Exultant
John Keats —
Cinquains
November Night
Release
Triad
Snow
Anguish
Trapped
Moon-shadows
Susanna And The Elders
Youth
Languor After Pain
The Guarded Wound
Winter
Night Winds
Arbutus
Roma Aeterna
He’s killed the may and he’s laid her by / To bear the red rose company.
Amaze
Shadow
Fate Defied
Madness
The Warning —
Saying of II Haboul
The Death Of Holofernes
Laurel In The Berkshires
Niagara
The Grand Canyon
Now Barabbas Was A Robber
Refuge In Darkness
PART II
To Walter Savage Landor
The Pledge
Hypnos, God of Sleep
Expenses
Adventure
On Seeing Weather-Beaten Trees
Warning To The Mighty
Oh, Lady, Let The Sad Tears Fall
Dirge
The Sun-Dial
The Entombment
Autumn
Ah me.. Alas..
Perfume of Youth
Rapunzel
Narcissus
Vendor’s Song
AVIS
Doom
Grain Field
Song
Pierrot
The Monk in the Garden
The Mourner
Night
Harvesters’ Song
Rose-Mary Of The Angels
Angélique
Chimes
Mad-Song
The Witch
Cry of the Nymph to Eros
Cradle-Song
The Lonely Death
Lo, All The Way
The Crucifixion
The Immortal Residue
POSTHUMOUS POEMS
To The Dead in the Grave-Yard Under My Window
To an Unfaithful Lover
To A Hermit Thrush
The Source
For Lucas Cranach’s Eve
Blue Hyacinths.
Fresher
Why have
Lunatick
Thou art not friendly sleep that hath delayed
Nor moon
Old Love
My Birds That Fly No Longer
The Elgin Marbles
Safe.
Sad of Heart.
The Event.
The Companions
Epigram
You Nor I Nor Nobody Knows
The Proud Poet
The Plaint
Endymion.
What news comrade upon the mountain top
Now doth blue kirtled night relume the stars
Tears.
John-a-dreams —
Incantation.
Milking Time
The Fiddler
Aubade.
The Parting.
As I Went
Lines Addressed To My Left Lung Inconveniently Enamoured Of Plant-Life
Lament
Grave Digger Catch
The Song of Choice.
The Two Mothers
The Expulsion
Dooms-Day
I offer my self to you as cool water in cup of crystal
Evil.
La Morte
Girl Fleeing Love
It’s oh, my dear, the sun shines clear
Clotilda Sings
Journey’s End.
There’s a gay girl laughing.
Champagne.
The Black-mailing Ruffian.
Bob White.
An Early Christian Hymn: “How doth the Heathen rage”
Non Solo.
To Anacreon.
Traces of the Rustic in Amos.
Truthful Love.
The Golden Princess.
The changed request
UNDERGRADUATE POEMS
Loneliness.
The earth’s all wrapped in gray shroud-mist,
Dull gray are sea and sky,
And where the water laps the land
On gray sand-dunes stand I.
Oh, if God there be, his face from me
The rolling gray mists hide;
And if God there be, his voice from me
Is kept by the moan of the tide.
Time Flies.
Yesterday in the garden-close
Budded and blossomed and blew a rose,
Faded and fallen its petals gay;
The rose lies dead in the garden to-day.
But, sweet, I pray you do not sorrow,
As fair a rose will bloom to-morrow.
Yesterday, dearest, you and I,
Swore that our love would never die.
Our vows were frail as all vows be.
To-day love’s fled from you and me.
But, sweet, I pray you do not sorrow,
New love will come to us to-morrow.
Thus the hours swiftly by us go;
Well, I e’en wist it must be so.
Do not weep now for what is past,
Love and roses will never last.
Then gaily speed past what is over,
And gladly greet new rose and lover.
The Heart of a Maid.
“Petals of the marguerite,
Tell me, pray,
Doth he love me? — Answer
‘Yea’ or ‘nay.’”
“Loveth?” laughs she gaily,
“Let him sigh!
For all the love he offers,
What care I?”
“Petals of the marguerite,
Tell me, pray,
Doth he love me? — Answer
Ύea’ or ‘nay.’”
“Loves not?” weeps she sorely,
“Let me die!
For life without his love,
What care I?”
Repentance.
(From the old French.)
In very truth, I’ve been a sinner
And spent my life in foolish manner;
Too much I’ve used my youthful days
In lightsome, vain and sinful ways.
Aye, oft I’ve visited the court,
Made love to ladies — idle sport!
To them I’ve written triolets,
Rondeaux, sonnets and chansonettes.
With naughty lords I’ve often dined,
Gamed, fought and all too often wined.
Aye, much I’ve walked in paths of evil;
My boon companion’s been the devil.
But now, alack! gay youth is spent;
I’m getting old — I’d best repent!
Hail Mary!
In loveliness and purity,
In faith and grace and piety,
In love and in humility,
God give me grace to be like thee,
That in my poor and low degree
I, like thyself, may blessed be.
Hail, Mary!
PART I
Birth-Moment
Behold her,
Running through the waves,
Eager to reach the land;
The water laps her,
Sun and wind are on her,
Healthy, brine-drenched and young,
Behold Desire new-born; —
Desire on first fulfillment’s radiant edge,
Love at miraculous moment of emergence,
This is she,
Who running,
Hastens, hastens to the land.
Look.. Look..
Her blown gold hair and lucent eyes of youth,
Her body rose and ivory in the sun..
Look,
How she hastens,
Running, running to the land.
Her hands are yearning and her feet are swift
To reach and hold
She knows not what
Yet knows that it is life;
Need urges her,
Self, uncomprehended but most deep divined,
Unwilled but all-compelling, drives her on.
Life runs to life.
She who longs,
But hath not yet accepted or bestowed,
All virginal dear and bright,
Runs, runs to reach the land.
And she who runs shall be
Married to blue of summer skies at noon,
Companion to green fields,
Held bride of subtle fragrance and of all sweet sound,
Beloved of the stars,
And wanton mistress to the veering winds.
; Oh breathless space between:
Womb-time just passed,
Dark-hidden, chaotic-formative, unpersonal,
And individual life of fresh-created force
Not yet begun:
One moment more
Before desire shall meet desire
And new creation start.
Oh breathless space,
While she,
Just risen from the waves,
Runs, runs to reach the land.
(Ah, keenest personal moment
When mouth unkissed turns eager-slow and tremulous
Towards lover’s mouth,
That tremulous and eager-slow
Droops down to it:
But breathless space of breath or two
Lies in between
Before the mouth upturned and mouth down-drooped
Shall meet and make the kiss.)
Look. Look..
She runs..
Love fresh-emerged,
Desire new-born..
Blown on by wind,
And shone on by the sun,
She rises from the waves
And running,
Hastens, hastens to the land.
Belovèd and Belovèd and Belovèd,
Even so right
And beautiful and undenied
Is my desire;
Even so longing-swift
I run to your receiving arms.
O Aphrodite!
O Aphrodite, hear!
Hear my wrung cry flame upward poignant-glad...
This is my time for me.
I too am young;
I too am all of love!
1905.
The Mother Exultant
Joy! Joy! Joy!
The hills are glad,
The valleys re-echo with merriment,
In my heart is the sound of laughter,
And my feet dance to the time of it;
Oh, little son, carried light on my shoulder,
Let us go laughing and dancing through the live days,
For this is the hour of the vintage,
When man gathereth for himself the fruits of the vineyard.
Complete Works of Adelaide Crapsey Page 1