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Joyce Kilmer

Chapter 84: EARLY POEMS
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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.

EARLY POEMS


All day I serve among the volumes telling
Old tales of love and war and high romance;
Good company, God wot, is in them dwelling,
Brave knights who dared to scorn untoward chance.
King Arthur—Sidney—Copperfield—the daring
And friendly souls of Meredith’s bright page—
The Pilgrim on his darksome journey faring,
And Shakespeare’s heroes, great in love and rage.
Fair ladies, too—here Beatricè smiling
Through hell leads Dante to the happy stars;
And Heloise, the cruel guards beguiling,
With Abelard makes mock of convent bars.
Yet when night comes I leave these folks with pleasure
To open Love’s great summer-scented tome
Within whose pages—precious beyond measure—
My own White Flower Lady hath her home.