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And now he will never know. February, 1918. I wonder if there is any other country where the death of a young poet is double-column front-page news? And if poets were able to proofread their own obits, I wonder if any two lines would have given Joyce Kilmer more honest pride than these: JOYCE KILMER, POET, IS KILLED IN ACTION
The hero of John Davidson's Ballad in Blank Verse on the Making of a Poet soars to a monotheistic conception of his powers, asserting Henceforth I shall be God, for consciousness Is God. I suffer. I am God. In recent years a few poets have modestly disclaimed equality with God. See William Rose Benét, Imagination, and Joyce Kilmer, Trees.
Kilmer Duelma tall, stocky, swaggering, his clothes the loose, nonchalant perfection of the season, his walk ambling, studied, lackadaisical, aimless, his color high, his cheeks full, his eyes a little vacuous, his mind acquiescing in a sort of genial, inconsequential way to every query and thought that was put to him.
"For a sapling poet, within a few short years and by the hard business of words, to attain to a secretary and a butler and a family of, at length, four children, is a modern Arabian Nights Tale." Aye, indeed! But Joyce Kilmer will have as genuine a claim on remembrance by reason of his friends' love as in anything his own hand penned.
The Catholic church too has some grounds for its title, "nursing mother of poets." The rise of the group of Catholic poets, Francis Thompson, Alice Meynell, and Lionel Johnson, in particular, has tended to give a more religious cast to the recent poet. If Joyce Kilmer had lived, perhaps verse on the Catholic poet would have been even more in evidence.
Those who know what friendship means among men who have stood on the bottom rung together will ask no further comment. Kilmer was Holliday's best man in 1913; Holliday stood godfather to Kilmer's daughter Rose. On Aug. 22, 1918, Mrs. Kilmer appointed Mr. Holliday her husband's literary executor.
His memoir of Joyce Kilmer is a fitting token of the manly affection that sweetens life and enriches him who even sees it from a distance. Just when Holliday's connection with the Scribner store ceased I do not know. My guess is, about 1911.
However content in servitude, he does not blink the fact that it is servitude. "Upon his will he binds a radiant chain," said Joyce Kilmer in a fine sonnet. However radiant, it is still a chain.
It was never more than a garment, worn gracefully, but still only what the tailors call a business suit. In France, Kilmer wrote but a handful of pieces intended for publication, but at least one of them the prose sketch "Holy Ireland" showed his essential fibre. The comparative silence of his pen when he found himself face to face with war was a true expression.
which gave many hearts a pang when they picked up the newspaper last Sunday morning. Joyce Kilmer died as he lived "in action." He found life intensely amusing, unspeakably interesting; his energy was unlimited, his courage stout. He attacked life at all points, rapidly gathered its complexities about him, and the more intricate it became the more zestful he found it.
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