Color

To my Mother and Father
This First Book

Acknowledgments

For permission to reprint certain of these poems thanks is hereby given to the following publications:

The American Mercury
The Bookman
The Century
The Crisis
The Conning Tower: New York World
Folio
Harper’s Magazine
Les Continents
The Messenger
The Nation
Opportunity
Palms
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse
The Southwestern Christian Advocate
The Survey Graphic
The World Tomorrow
Vanity Fair

To You Who Read My Book

SOON every sprinter,

However fleet,

Comes to a winter

Of sure defeat:

Though he may race

Like the hunted doe,

Time has a pace

To lay him low.

Soon we who sing,

However high,

Must face the Thing

We cannot fly.

Yea, though we fling

Our notes to the sun,

Time will outsing

Us every one.

All things must change

As the wind is blown;

Time will estrange

The flesh from the bone.

The dream shall elude

The dreamer’s clasp,

And only its hood

Shall comfort his grasp.

A little while,

Too brief at most,

And even my smile

Will be a ghost.

A little space,