INTRODUCTION
"Trust not your hopes for all are vain,
Trust not your happiness and pain,
Trust not your storehouses of grain,
Trust not your strength on land or sea,
Trust not your loves that come and go,
Trust only the hate of the common foe,
War is the one reality."
Trust not your happiness and pain,
Trust not your storehouses of grain,
Trust not your strength on land or sea,
Trust not your loves that come and go,
Trust only the hate of the common foe,
War is the one reality."
Her songs are to enfold her sorrow "like portions of a mellow sheath." The "age-bent" woman that she once saw lead the herd to pasture is made to typify a resignation that the young poet herself has striven for. She can never be off guard. She is proud that she has had the courage to oppose, and she knows that she has won illumination from conflict.
There was one gay tune, however, that she wrote to triumphantly—the Elizabethan tune. When she struck it she became fluent with beautiful words and imagery.—
As clouds lie in the west,
My fairest pleasures rest
In you, their element
Of being. Loath to die
They ornament your sky,
Amassed, magnificent.
My fairest pleasures rest
In you, their element
Of being. Loath to die
They ornament your sky,
Amassed, magnificent.
The poems she has written to this measure have a smiling detachment.
All that Gladys Cromwell had to say came out of a spiritual experience brooded over and made her own, and elevated by an heroic quality
[ix]
