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John Fox Jr. 213 Cale Young Rice Cale Young Rice, an almost forgotten poet, was born in Dixon in 1872 and earned a master’s degree at Harvard; he then settled in Louisville and married Alice Hegan, whose literary reputation would soon eclipse his, despite his lifetime production of some thirty-five books of poetry, verse drama, fiction, and autobiography. Most critics consider him a competent but uninspired poet. He was a traditionalist who would have nothing of the new poetry being encouraged and brought to light by Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, and T. S. Eliot. Rice was thirty when he married Alice Hegan, but he must have loved her very much. Less than a year after she died, in 1942, he shot himself dead. The two poems below are soothing and predictable and contain no surprises or original insights. h “When the Wind Is Low” When the wind is low, and the sea is soft, And the far heat-lightning plays On the rim of the West where dark clouds nest On a darker bank of haze; When I lean at the rail with you that I love And gaze to my heart’s content; I know the heavens are there above— But you are my firmament. When the phosphor-stars are thrown from the bow And the watch climbs up the shroud; When the dim mast dips as the vessel slips Through the foam that seethes aloud; I know that the years of our life are few, And fain as a bird to flee, That time is as brief as a drop of dew— But you are eternity. “West of Eden” We have fared west of Eden, far from peace, Westward of Eden, breeding and dying, 213 214 The Kentucky Anthology The old race of Adam, seeking surcease, The children of Cain, cursing and crying. Far west of Eden, bearing our burden, Wearing our sorrow, tilling the earth, Wondering what shall at length be our guerdon When we have bettered the seed of our birth. Eden was ignorance; tasting the apple Stung us to testing atom and star. Speech of the serpent was prompting to grapple With life as it is, things as they are. Over the world we have fared, westing, Farther away from the bliss of the brute, Wanting it, hating it, yet in our questing Glad to have eaten the fatal fruit. ...

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