[In the following essay, originally published in 1918, Brawley praises Braithwaite's two collections of verse, Lyrics of Life and Love and The House of Falling Leaves.]

Prominent for some years, first as poet and then as critic, has been William Stanley Braithwaite, of Boston. The work of this author belongs not so much to Negro literature as to American literature in the large, and he has encouraged and inspired a host of other writers. With singleness of purpose he has given himself to books and the book world, and it is by this devotion that he has won the distinct success that he has achieved.

In 1904 Mr. Braithwaite published a small volume of poems entitled Lyrics of Life and Love. This was followed four years later by The House of Falling Leaves. Within recent years, however, he has given little time to his own verse, becoming more and more distinguished as a critic of American poetry. For several years he has been a valued contributor to The Boston Evening Transcript, and he has had verse or critical essays in The Forum, the Century, Scribner's, and the Atlantic. He has collected and edited The Book of Elizabethan Verse, The Book of Georgian Verse, and The Book of Restoration Verse; he has published the Anthology of Magazine Verse for each year since 1913, also The Golden Treasury of Magazine Verse; and, while editor of the Poetry Review in 1916, he projected a series of Contemporary American Poets. In 1917 he brought together in a volume, The Poetic Year, a special series of articles which he had contributed to the Transcript. The aim of this was, in the form of conversations among a small group of friends, to whom fanciful and suggestive Greek names had been given, to discuss the poetry that had appeared in 1916. After the war appeared Victory: Celebrated by Thirty-eight American Poets and The Story of the Great War for young people. In 1918 Mr. Braithwaite was awarded the Spingarn Medal.

In a review of this writer's poetry we have to consider especially the two collections, Lyrics of Life and Love, and The House of Falling Leaves, and the poems that have more recently appeared in the Atlantic, Scribner's, and other magazines. It is to be hoped that before very long he will publish a new edition of his poems. The earlier volumes are out of print, and a new book could contain the best of them, as well as what has appeared more recently. Lyrics of Life and Love embodied the best of the poet's early work. The little book contains eighty pages, and no one of the lyrics takes up more than two pages, twenty in fact being exactly eight lines in length. This appearance of fragility, however, is a little deceptive. While Keats and Shelley are constantly evident as the models in technique, the yearning of more than one lyric reflects the deeper romantic temper. The bravado and the tenderness of the old poets are evident again in the two Christmas pieces, “Holly Berry and Mistletoe,” and “Yule-Song: A Memory”:

The trees are bare, wild flies the snow,
          Hearths are glowing, hearts are merry—
High in the air is the Mistletoe,
          Over the door is the Holly Berry.
Never have care how the winds may blow,
          Never confess the revel grows weary—
Yule is the time of the Mistletoe,
          Yule is the time of the Holly Berry.
December comes, snows come,
          Comes the wintry weather;
Faces from away come—
          Hearts must be together.
          Down the stair-steps of the hours
          Yule leaps the hills and towers—
          Fill the bowl and hang the holly,
          Let the times be jolly.

“The Watchers” is in the spirit of Kingsley's “The Three Fishers”:

Two women on the lone wet strand—
          (The wind's out with a will to roam)
The waves wage war on rocks and sand,
          (And a ship is long due home.)
The sea sprays in the women's eyes—
          (Hearts can writhe like the sea's wild foam)
Lower descend the tempestuous skies,
          (For the wind's out with a will to roam.)
“O daughter, thine eyes be better than mine,”
          (The waves ascend high on yonder dome)
“North or South is there never a sign?”
          (And a ship is long due home.)
They watched there all the long night through—
          (The wind's out with a will to roam)
Wind and rain and sorrow for two—
          (And heaven on the long reach home.)

The second volume marked a decided advance in technique. When we remember also the Pre-Raphaelite spirit, with its love of rhythm and imagery, we are not surprised to find here an appreciation “To Dante Gabriel Rossetti.” Especially has the poet made progress in the handling of the sonnet, as may be seen in the following:

My thoughts go marching like an armèd host
          Out of the city of silence, guns and cars;
Troop after troop across my dreams they post
          To the invasion of the wind and stars.
O brave array of youth's untamed desire!
          With thy bold, dauntless captain Hope to lead
His raw recruits to Fate's opposing fire,
          And up the walls of Circumstance to bleed.
How fares the expedition in the end?
          When this my heart shall have old age for king
And to the wars no further troop can send,
          What final message will the arm'stice bring?
The host gone forth in youth the world to meet,
In age returns—in victory or defeat?

Then there is the epilogue with its heart-cry:

Lord of the mystic star-blown gleams
Whose sweet compassion lifts my dreams;
Lord of life in the lips of the rose
That kiss desire; whence Beauty grows;
Lord of the power inviolate
That keeps immune thy seas from fate,
.....Lord, Very God of these works of thine,
Hear me, I beseech thee, most divine!

Within very recent years Mr. Braithwaite has attracted unusual attention among the discerning by a new note of mysticism that has crept into his verse. This was first observed in “Sandy Star,” that appeared in the Atlantic (July, 1909):

No more from out the sunset,
          No more across the foam,
No more across the windy hills
          Will Sandy Star come home.
He went away to search it,
          With a curse upon his tongue,
And in his hands the staff of life
          Made music as it swung.
I wonder if he found it,
          And knows the mystery now:
Our Sandy Star who went away
          With the secret on his brow.

The same note is in “The Mystery” (or “The Way,” as the poet prefers to call it) that appeared in Scribner's (October, 1915):

He could not tell the way he came
          Because his chart was lost:
Yet all his way was paved with flame
          From the bourne he crossed.
He did not know the way to go,
          Because he had no map:
He followed where the winds blow,—
          And the April sap.
He never knew upon his brow
          The secret that he bore—
And laughs away the mystery now
          The dark's at his door.

Mr. Braithwaite has done well. He has consistently kept before him his vision, and after years of hard work his position is now one of unique distinction. A few years ago a special reception was accorded him in New York by the authors of America, and in an editorial of November 30, 1915, the Transcript said: “He has helped poetry to readers as well as to poets. One is guilty of no extravagance in saying that the poets we have—and they may take their place with their peers in any country—and the gathering deference we pay them, are created largely out of the stubborn, self-effacing enthusiasm of this one man. In a sense their distinction is his own. In a sense he has himself written their poetry. Very much by his toil they may write and be read. Not one of them will ever write a finer poem than Braithwaite himself has lived already.”