The first edition of Verse was published by the Manas Press in 1915. Alfred A. Knopf published a second edition in 1922 (reprinted in 1925 and 1929) and a third edition in 1934 (reprinted in 1938). The following twenty-eight cinquains have been formatted to approximate their presentation in the original Knopf 1922 edition in which they appear in PART I (of two) in a section titled CINQUAINS 1911-1913.
This is not a complete collection of Crapsey's cinquains. Additional cinquains were published in the third edition and still more were made available through The Complete Poems and Collected Letters of Adelaide Crapsey (1977), the definitive source of Crapsey's work.
| page 30 |
CINQUAINS 1911-1913 |
| |
|
| page 31 |
NOVEMBER NIGHT
Listen…
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall. |
| |
|
| page 32 |
RELEASE
With swift
Great sweep of her
Magnificent arm my pain
Clanged back the doors that shut my soul
From life. |
| |
|
| page 33 |
TRIAD
These be
Three silent things:
The falling snow…the hour
Before the dawn…the mouth of one
Just dead. |
| |
|
| page 34 |
SNOW
Look up…
From bleakening hills
Blows down the light, first breath
Of wintry wind…look up, and scent
The snow! |
| |
|
| page 35 |
ANGUISH
Keep thou
Thy tearless watch
All night but when blue-dawn
Breathes on the silver moon, then weep!
Then weep! |
| |
|
| page 36 |
TRAPPED
Well and
If day on day
Follows, and weary year
On year…and ever days and years…
Well? |
| |
|
| page 37 |
MOON-SHADOWS
Still as
On windless nights
The moon-cast shadows are,
So still will be my heart when I
Am dead. |
| |
|
| page 38 |
SUSANNA AND THE ELDERS
"Why do
You thus devise
Evil against her?" "For that
She is beautiful, delicate;
Therefore." |
| |
|
| page 39 |
YOUTH
But me
They cannot touch,
Old Age and death…the strange
And ignominious end of old
Dead folk! |
| |
|
| page 40 |
THE GUARDED WOUND
If it
Were lighter touch
Than petal of flower resting
On grass, oh still too heavy it were,
Too heavy! |
| |
|
| page 41 |
WINTER
The cold
With steely clutch
Grips all the land…alack,
The little people in the hills
Will die! |
| |
|
| page 42 |
NIGHT WINDS
The old
Old winds that blew
When chaos was, what do
They tell the clattered trees that I
Should weep? |
| |
|
| page 43 |
ARBUTUS
Not Spring's
Thou art, but her's,
Most cool, most virginal,
Winter's, with thy faint breath, thy snows
Rose-tinged. |
| |
|
| page 44 |
ROMA AETERNA
The sun
Is warm to-day,
O Romulus, and on
Thine olden Palatine the birds
Still sing. |
| |
|
| page 45 |
"HE'S KILLED THE MAY…"
"He's killed the May and he's laid her by
To bear the red rose company."
Not thou,
White rose, but thy
Ensanguined sister is
The dear companion of my heart's
Shed blood. |
| |
|
| page 46 |
AMAZE
I know
Not these my hands
And yet I think there was
A woman like me once had hands
Like these. |
| |
|
| page 47 |
SHADOW
A-sway,
On red rose,
A golden butterfly…
And on my heart a butterfly
Night-wing'd. |
| |
|
| page 48 |
MADNESS
Burdock,
Blue aconite,
And thistle and thorn…of these,
Singing, I wreathe my pretty wreath
O' death. |
| |
|
| page 49 |
THE WARNING
Just now,
Out of the strange
Still dusk…as strange, as still…
A white moth flew. Why am I grown
So cold? |
| |
|
| page 50 |
SAYING OF IL HABOUL
Guardian of the Treasure of Solomon
And Keeper of the Prophet's Armour
My tent
A vapour that
The wind dispels and but
As dust before the wind am I
Myself. |
| |
|
| page 51 |
FATE DEFIED
As it
Were tissue of silver
I'll wear, O fate, thy grey,
And go mistily radiant, clad
Like the moon. |
| |
|
| page 52 |
LAUREL IN THE BERKSHIRES
Sea-foam
And coral! Oh, I'll
Climb the great pasture rocks
And dream me mermaid in the sun's
Gold flood. |
| |
|
| page 53 |
NIAGARA
Seen on a Night in November
How frail
Above the bulk
Of crashing water hangs,
Autumnal, evanescent, wan,
The moon. |
| |
|
| page 54 |
THE GRAND CANYON
By Zeus!
Shout word of this
To the eldest dead! Titans,
Gods, Heroes, come who have once more
A home! |
| |
|
| page 55 |
NOW BARABBAS WAS A ROBBER
No guile?
Nay, but so strangely
He moves among us…Not this
Man but Barabbas! Release to us
Barabbas! |
| |
|
| page 56 |
FOR LUCAS CRANACH'S EVE
Oh me,
Was there a time
When Paradise knew Eve
In this sweet guise, so placid and
So young? |
| |
|
| page 57 |
THE SOURCE
Thou hast
Drawn laughter from
A well of secret tears
And thence so elvish it rings,—mocking
And sweet: |
| |
|
| page 58 |
BLUE HYACINTHS
In your
Curled petals what ghosts
Of blue headlands and seas,
What perfumed immortal breath sighing
Of Greece. |
| |
|
