San Francisco Call, Volume 72, Number 131, 9 October 1892 — MADGE MORRIS WAGNER [ARTICLE]

MADGE MORRIS WAGNER

One of California's Truest Poets. TERSE FILLED WITH MELODY She Has Pictured Life and Death-Hot Only a twaet Poet, but a Tender-hearted, Practical Woman. ■Written for The Morning Cali. " And some Orient dawn had round me Kneeling at the house of fame." Fame found Madge Morris Wagner in the blazing Colorado Desert, her fingers on the pulse of Nature at fever beat. Or, at least, thither sent Lipplncotts of Philadelphia to find her the other day and persuade her ■ to speak through them to the world. And this is what sho said, like all who are truly great teachers, making a text of the place and tha time: TO TUE COLORADO DESERT. Thou brown, bare-breasted, voiceless mystery. Bot sphinx of nature, cactus-crow what bast thou done? . - . . Unclothed and mute -as when the groans or chaos turned Thy naked burning bosom to the sun. The mountain silences have speech, the rivers sing, Thou answerest never unto anything. Pink-throated lizards pant within the shade; The horned toad runs rustling In the heat; The shadowy gray coyote, ben afraid, {steal-* to some brackish spring and laps, and prowls Away, and howls and bowls and bowls and howls, Until the solitude ls shaken with an added lonell-

ness. Thy sharp mescal shouts up a giant stall?, Its century ut yearning, to the .sunburnt skies, . And drips r.ira honey from the lips Of yellow waxen flowers, and dies. Some lengthwise sun-dried shapes with reet and bands 1..;-*** And thirsty mouths pressed on the sweltering sands. Marl, here aud tbere a gruesome graveless spot Y. here some one drank thy scorching botuess, anils not.

Uod must bave made tbce In bis anger, and forgot.

Not since 1 can remember have 1 heard a voice so true as this. It is like the sublime and solemn bass of St. John. It is even John the Baptist crying in the wilderness.

Indeed, I doubt if you will find anything i more terribly truthful and fearfully sublime this side of Job than this one lone, lorn cry from the desert A photograph, even were such a thing possible, could not be more ghastly and ghastly exact. It is true poetry, and therefore more really true than the ordinary forms of truth. For truth can only be told entirely by figures of speech— poetry. There are not words enough in all the languages of this world to tell even the simplest truth exactly, even if there were time enough, in the world. We must depend upon figures of speech, as did the seers of the Orient, for the exact truth. But the figures must be true, stately, majestic, impressive. This is poetry; and true poetry is in this sense not ouly the highest form of truth, but it is the only real truth that is uttered. When the world comes to comprehend poetry It will have a great deal more truth, less quibbling about words, legal technicalities, legal lies. Turn back and read this poem from Lippincotl's on the Colorado Desert again, please. You can read it with profit and a certain sort of solemn pleasure a dozen times. There are lines here that are texts, sermons. Uod must bave made tbee in his anger and forgot* Madge Morris Wagner has been all her life with us out here on the great seabank I believe; born in Oregon I think. At least 1 know her father was "a mighty hunter" in Oregon ; and her uncle, Bishop Morris, was a Virginian. Maybe, she, too, was a Virginian. 1 neither know nor care. We fill our books up with the dates and place of birth, things that don't amount to a peanut, and leave little room for deeds or utterances. ■'_':.-- What will we do when we come to have 24. G00 years of history and biography behind us? Why, we will say 'as the Chinese say, "This poet lived in a certain dynasty and said so and so." That is all. So 1 shall proceed to say what this strange, strong woman of the desert has said from out her heart of hearts. For she is a woman, a very human, tender woman. And you will concede before you have dope reading the little bits of her sweet soul which I am permitted to give you that it is great impertinence in me to say much when she is singing. And I want ycu to know distinctly tbat these next lines of hers are as exactly true in all respects as her lines on the Colorado Desert. Her only little baby bad gone away from her, out from the one narrow room and away to beyond the darkness; but in tbe next narrow room, a stronger woman nursed and rocked and cradled her stronger child, and kept rocking on her heart. And so there and then, out of the awful agony and desolation, she sang, as she sang only the other day from the desert: _,

I hear ber rocking the baby— Her room is Just next to wine— And I fancy 1 feel the dimpled arms Tbat round her neck entwine. As she rocks, and rocks the baby, In tbe room Just next to mine. I bear her rocking the baby Each day when the twilight comes, And I know there's a world of blessing and lore In' the "baby bye" she hnms. I can see the restless fingers Flaring with ■-mamma's rings." And the sweet little smiling, pouting mouth, That co hers in kiss net clings. As she rocks and sings to the baby, And ill-cam as she rocks and sings. I bear her rocking the baby, Slower and sower now. And I know she Is leaving her good-night kiss On Its eyes, and cheeks ana brow. From her rocking, rocking, rocking, 1 wonder would she start, ■ .-3 Could she know, through the wall between us, She was rocking on my heart. While my empty arms are aching For a form they may not press And my emptier heart is breaking In its desolate loneliness. I list to the rocking, rocklrg. In the room Just next to mine, And i r- at ho a prayer in silence At a mother's broken shrine. For the woman who rocks the baby In the room Just next to mine. Now and then the winds blow a leaf of hers from the desert or from San Diego, where she edits tier Golden Era Magazine, a way beyond the seas to Europe; but her own country has been very careless about her, save to pick up her thoughts and air them in the pool's corner of the classics as time surges by. And she has been and is quite as careless of the world; brave, bonnie, beautiful little Madge Morris. "it's a beast of a name," said Sir , as he leaned on an elbow and dipped the stub end of a celery stick in the salt. "Yes, I know Madge Morris is a silly sort of name. But if her name happens to be Morris and her uncle a Bishop who baptized her as Madge in memory of his mother and her grandmother, and — "God bless me, sir, it's a good name, a brave, good name, and I honor her for having made it worthy of inquiry in Europe." V' ._ . __;_ I think little more need be said here. Turn back and read about the rocking of the baby. And if there are not tears in your eyes and tenderness In your heart, if you are not better indeed for the reading of It in all respects, why all that I might say in those pages till the going down of the sun would neither profit you nor please you. Here are the two extremes of song—the solitude, nakedness, desolation, mystery and awful death and dearth of the boundless desert; and the crooning cradle song, the baby," whose utmost bound and limit of life is its mother's encircling arms. She has pictured life and death. You can hear the mother rocking, rocking; you can see the dead men lying in the sands in her song of the Colorado Desert as you rarely see shapes In any song— ?.?..--._. Soma lengthwise sun-dried shapes with feet and hands. And right here I am tempted to take enough of your time to say that the coyote is photographed iv a single line more correctly than he has yet been described in columns. • I concede that it is not melodious to say, "he howls and howls and howls and howls" ; -hut then the coyote Is not traveling on his notes, He is not melodious; he simply howls. Then he bowls more: then more and more. That is ail. God made him. Madge Morris did not make him. She merely took bis photograph; and for the hist time it ever was really taken. In conclusion let me assure you that Mrs. Wagner has not- written of the desert from a car window. On the contrary she knows and she loves the desert as a sailor knows and loves the ocean. Her tent is there season after season and the mercury above Ml. -For she and her enterprising husband, Harr .Vaguer, believe in Arizona as I believe in her. And yon may kuow that more than a dozen years ago I named the Colorado River "The New Nile," in either, the North American Review or the Independent, and pointed out that this vast valley of dust aud desert sand would and could produce enough to more than feed tbe whole United States. - - ' _ No, Madge Morris Wagner is no sentimentalist. Such idlers wbo profess poetry give us not gold, but brass— not . broad, but a : stone.- She is a quiet, hard worker, a practical woman, endowed with that one best things of all things to have iv a family, common-sense., '-„,. • You all remember her firm hand and fair face here with us Tn San Francisco when we were establishing Arbor day. She was

editings famous .Gold*n,Lra.then. ** »■» is still, '--hen sh_ can gal a cowboy **> <- nrr com out from the Colorado Desert. ■:'■■■. r-_ '■_■ She 1 is Mil planting 3 . tree.*, V she « c « <°% husband, •.__*«._ Wagner. V And v- Jhoy.ag.. : planting > Id-. is, . too, : - persistently, ioi like all thiol: are teachers,' and all u^"***, he holds only 9 office of Sui-orintenden* ;*? Schools for - Sa_ , Diego County be -**«« > ■;, a very few years, ny the help of a few tan i- • ful cc.ab__.rs. 11-'t.d the* *-»■■-- of tbe :&««» ia letters as a _ .Idler lifts his banner oi victory in the su-;. _____ Inttti. of men P.opie is not behind them. _, _,-. \ JOAQUIN MILEEB.