Joyce Kilmer

Chapter 61: THE APARTMENT HOUSE

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About This Book

A biographical memoir accompanies a wide selection of poems, essays, and letters that together trace the author’s life, friendships, and artistic growth. The poems alternate between nature and devotional themes, domestic observations, and wartime and memorial pieces composed both abroad and at home. Essays and correspondence reveal literary preferences, personal affections, and religious sensibilities, while photographs and facsimiles supplement the personal record. The collection balances lyrical short poems with occasional longer pieces and critical or biographical sketches, offering a compact portrait of a poet engaged with faith, ordinary life, and the moral and emotional stakes of his historical moment.

THE APARTMENT HOUSE

Severe against the pleasant arc of sky

The great stone box is cruelly displayed.

The street becomes more dreary from its shade,

And vagrant breezes touch its walls and die.

Here sullen convicts in their chains might lie,

Or slaves toil dumbly at some dreary trade.

How worse than folly is their labour made

Who cleft the rocks that this might rise on high!

Yet, as I look, I see a woman’s face

Gleam from a window far above the street.

This is a house of homes, a sacred place,

By human passion made divinely sweet.

How all the building thrills with sudden grace

Beneath the magic of Love’s golden feet!