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4th. The Vagabond has constantly maintained that, whatever the outcome of the election, we should all be alive on the morning of November 4th. He finds that his prediction has come true, and waking up to a world which seems outwardly as substantial as it has ever been, he is delighted to turn his thoughts into other and more refreshing channels than the deep dark and turbulent moat of politics.
Among the day's pleasures none brought the Vagabond more satisfaction than the lecture he attended at 4 this afternoon in Emerson. Mr. Conrad Aiken, poet, critic and novelist, one of the premier stylistic geniuses of our day, spoke under the auspices of the Morris Gray Fund.
Conrad Aiken has experimented with more than one style and more than one attitude toward life. He has at last proclaimed his credo one of complete detachment from contemporary problems and turns his back on the petty squabbles and differences occasioned by such human institutions as, say, a presidential election. One of the most beautiful and searching of Mr. Aiken's poems is that beginning.
"Three then came forward out of darkness, one An old man bearded, his old eyes red with weeping, A peasant, with hard hands, "Come now," he said, And see the Road, for which our people die. Twelve miles of road we've made, a little only, Westward winding. Of human blood and stone We build; and in a thousand years will come Beyond the hills to sea . . . ."
But closer to the Vagabond's sentimental heart is one of his earliest, and probably most naive, pieces, entitled "Bread and Music".
"Music I heard with you was more than music, And bread I broke with you was more than bread; Now that I am without you, all is desolate; All that was once so beautiful is dead . . . ."
Having writen it down the Vagabond goes off to walk along the early morning riverbank and dream his morning dreams. His Love. Later is time enough to cease his dreaming . . . .
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