FOREWORD
On the departure for France of my friend and former pupil, Mr. MacLeish, in the Federal service, it became my privilege to prepare his manuscript for publication and see it through the press. In this editorial capacity I have been beset by but one misgiving—the apprehension, namely, that the casual reader might, unless forewarned, read these poems for their lilt and melodic charm alone without ever penetrating beneath their surface. Since this would be a grievous vexation to Mr. MacLeish himself, for in his eyes lyrical tunefulness is far less important than vital underlying idea, I venture to insist upon the intellectual content of his work and to suggest the fundamental conviction animating most of it. Under various symbols he is passionately appealing for the intuitive apprehension of reality as against the baffling limitations of the reason and the senses—as, for example, in "Our Lady of Troy," where the tragedy of Faustus lies in his purblind reliance upon positivist science to the exclusion of the visioned aesthetic gospel proclaimed by Helen. There are, of course, other ideas in the volume, such as the subtle qualitative definition in "An Eternity," the curious problem of remembered inspiration in "Echo," and the different reactions in the war poems; but on the whole his title, "Tower of Ivory," adequately represents his predominating idealistic conception, that against all the assaults of arid rationalism and crass materialism, against all the riddles of endless speculation and brutal experience, there is an impregnable tower of refuge into which man may enter, in the spirit, and find there the true values and eternal verities which alone can make him victorious over the world. So much for the content of his work: his command of the beauty of poetic form may be left to speak for itself.
September 12, 1917.
New Haven, Conn.