Joyce Kilmer

Chapter 72: MADNESS (For Sara Teasdale)

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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.

MADNESS
(For Sara Teasdale)

The lonely farm, the crowded street,

The palace and the slum,

Give welcome to my silent feet

As, bearing gifts, I come.

Last night a beggar crouched alone,

A ragged helpless thing;

I set him on a moonbeam throne—

To-day he is a king.

Last night a king in orb and crown

Held court with splendid cheer;

To-day he tears his purple gown

And moans and shrieks in fear.

Not iron bars, nor flashing spears,

Not land, nor sky, nor sea,

Nor love’s artillery of tears

Can keep mine own from me.

Serene, unchanging, ever fair,

I smile with secret mirth

And in a net of mine own hair

I swing the captive earth.