A TRUSH IN THE MOONLIGHT
In came the moon and covered me with wonder,
Touched me and was near me and made me very still.
In came a rush of song, like rain after thunder,
Pouring importunate on my window-sill.
I lowered my head, I hid it, I would not see nor hear,
The birdsong had stricken me, had brought the moon too near.
But when I dared to lift my head, night began to fill
With singing in the darkness. And then the thrush grew still.
And the moon came in, and silence, on my window-sill.
TWO CHURCHES ON SUNDAY
They stand and bark like foolish dogs,
“O notice us! O notice us!”
And then they stand and whine....
As if to say, “The good kind God
That made the world made even us,
All in the scheme divine.”
And then they bark like foolish dogs,
And then they stand and whine.
THE LAST WORDS OF TOLSTOI
Awhile I felt the imperial sky
Clothe a sole figure, which was I;
Then, lonely for democracy,
I hailed the purple robe of air
Kinship for all mankind to share;
But now at last, with ashen hair,
I learn it is not they nor I
Who own the mantle of the sky,
Silence alone wears majesty.
APOLLO SINGS
Here shall come forth a flower
and near him ever grow.
But his ear heeds me not,
and my hot tears mean nothing
to him who was dearer to me
than Daphne, he whose clear eye,
that dazed the sun, now droops near earth....
O hyacinthine flower, grow here!
Sweet were his lips as a flower touching
the feet of a bee in Spring, his lips
would repeat the word, “Love, love,”
all that was sweet in the world was reborn.
Death could not defeat him,
for his young lips, completing love, were eager.
His youth shall ever be fleet, evading death....
O hyacinthine flower, be sweet!
Harold Witter Bynner, also known by the pen name Emanuel Morgan, (1881 - 1968) was an American poet and translator. He was known for his long residence in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and association with other literary figures there.
Bynner was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Thomas Edgarton Bynner and the former Annie Louise Brewer. His domineering mother separated from his alcoholic father in December 1888 and moved with her two sons to Connecticut. The father died in 1891, and in 1892 the family moved to Brookline, Massachusetts. Bynner attended Brookline High School and was editor of its literary magazine. He entered Harvard University in 1898, where he was the first member of his class invited to join the student literary magazine, The Harvard Advocate, by its editor Wallace Stevens. He was also published in another of Harvard's literary journals, The Harvard Monthly. His favorite professor was George Santayana. While a student he took on the nickname "Hal" by which his friends would know him for the rest of his life. He enjoyed theater, opera, and symphony performances in Boston, and he became involved in the suffrage movement. He graduated from Harvard with honors in 1902. His first book of poems, An Ode to Harvard (later changed to Young Harvard), came out in 1907. In 1911 he was the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Poet
After a trip to Europe, he took a position at McClure's Magazine and worked there for four years. He had an opportunity to meet and socialize with many New York writers and artists. He next turned to independent writing and lecturing, living in Cornish, New Hampshire.
In 1916 he and Arthur Davison Ficke, a friend from Harvard, were among the perpetrators of an elaborate literary hoax. They created a purported "Spectrist" school of poets, along the lines of the Imagists, but based in Pittsburgh. Spectra, a slim collection, was published under the pseudonyms of Anne Knish (Ficke) and Emanuel Morgan (Bynner). Marjorie Allen Seiffert, writing as Elijah Hay, was also part of the "movement".
Bynner was friendly with Kahlil Gibran and introduced the writer to his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf. The latter published Gibran's The Prophet in 1923, which has had a long popularity. Gibran drew a portrait of Bynner in 1919.
In New York, Bynner was a member of The Players club, the Harvard Club, and the MacDowell Club. In San Francisco, he joined the Bohemian Club
Bynner traveled with Ficke and others to Japan, Korea and China in 1917.
He had a short spell in academia in 1918–1919 at the University of California, Berkeley. He was hired to teach Oral English to the Students' Army Training Corps as a form of conscientious objector alternative service. After World War I ended, Bynner was invited to stay on in the English department to teach poetry. His students included several who became published poets of some note, such as Stanton A. Coblentz, Hildegarde Flanner, Idella Purnell, and Genevieve Taggard. In celebration of the end of the war, he composed A Canticle of Praise, performed in the Hearst Greek Theatre before some 8,000 (eight thousand) people.
At Berkeley he met Kiang Kang-hu, a professor of Chinese, and began an eleven-year collaboration with him on the translation of T'ang Dynasty poems. His teaching contract was not renewed, but his students continued to meet as a group and he occasionally joined them. An elaborate dinner honoring him was held at the Bohemian Club in San Francisco. A festschrift, a book of poems by students and friends, W.B. in California, was given to all who were present.
Bynner returned to China, living there from June 1920 to April 1921 for intensive study of Chinese literature and culture. He met sculptor Beniamino Bufano en route. After returning to California, Bynner went to see family in New York. He embarked on another lecture tour, reaching Santa Fe, New Mexico in February 1922. Exhausted and suffering from a lingering cold, he decided to cancel the rest of his tour and rest there.
From 1921 to 1923, Bynner had served as president of the Poetry Society of America. To encourage young poets, he created the Witter Bynner Prize for Undergraduate Excellence in Poetry, administered by the Poetry Society in cooperation with Palms poetry magazine, of which he was associate editor. African-American poets received the award soon after it was established: Countee Cullen in 1925 and Langston Hughes in 1926.
Bynner's home in Santa Fe is now a bed and breakfast called the Inn of the Turquoise Bear.
In 1972, the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry was founded through a bequest from Bynner. It makes grants to perpetuate the art of poetry, primarily by supporting individual poets, translations, and audience development. Since 1997, it has funded the Witter Bynner Fellowship, the recipient of which is selected by the U.S. Poet Laureate.
A Witter Bynner Poetry Prize was established by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1980 to support young poets. It was discontinued in 2003.
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