a strange unrest, a something
front endpaper, 90ºccw, 4×3 detail, U Georgia copy/scan,
The Literary Digest vol. 69 (April-June 1921),
showing desert waste, punctuated by alphabet.
hathtrust : source
the same volume (May 21, 1921 number) contains a “something” poem by Roselle Mercier Montgomery (1874-1933), her “The Citizens of No Man’s Land” —
here — from which the epigram.
Two books by Roselle Mercier Montgomery were published :
- Ulysses Returns, and Other Poems (1925) : link
dedicated to the author’s husband.
Stanford copy/scan (via google books); obituary and (two) poems clipped (from the The New York Times pasted into rear) - Many Devices (1929) : link (via archive.org)
dedicated to the author’s sister.
four parts, the second containing her “Lee on Stone Mountain,” the third offering several poems as if in Black Face; but like the first volume, much about the ups and downs of life and, eventually, death. Horace is mentioned and echoed frequently.
—
The 1925 collection contains “The Citizens of No Man’s Land,” shown below:
Why is it that, although we settle down
And live the lives we lived, a strange unrest,
A something, haunts us as we work or play —
A restlessness too vague to be expressed?
Is it that we who, out there, walked with Death
And knew the fellowship of fear and Pain,
Are citizens for aye of No Man’s Land,
And never shall be as we were again?
To those of us who played the game out there,
And saw brave men, who failed to win, lose all
Where Fate was dealer, Life and Death the stakes,
Shall other games forevermore seem small?
Ah, true that home is dear, that love is sweet,
And pleasant are our friends to be among,
Yet something lacks, to us from No Man’s Land —
Is it that no one here can speak our tongue?
We cannot tell them what befell us there,
For well we know they could not understand.
So each sits quiet, by his own hearth fire,
And sees therein the sights of No Man’s Land!
We have a secret way to judge of men
It is a way we learned to judge out there.
But what, or how we learned it, none will tell —
It is a secret that we cannot share!
They feel our strangeness, too — those at our side
Who chatter of the things of every day;
They mark our silences, our strange reserve,
“Ah, he is changed!” they shake their heads and say.
They say the dead return not, but I think
We know, who have come back from No Man’s Land,
How ghosts must feel, to walk familiar ways,
And yet find no one there to understand!
New York Times obituary (September 16, 1933) : link (paywall)
but/and here —
Riverside, Conn., Saturday, Sept. 16. —
Mrs. Roselle Mercier Montgomery, poet, who won four annual prizes of the Poetry Society of America, died at her home here early this morning after an illness of two months. She was 59 years old. Surviving are her husband, John Seymour Montgomery, a son, John S. Jr. of New York, and a daughter, Miss Roselle Mercier Montgomery of Riverside, and a sister, Mrs. John J. Parker of Cleveland, Ohio.
Mrs. Montgomery, who signed early works with the pseudonym of "Glen Allen," later using her own name in the form Roselle Mercier Montgomery, was born in Crawfordville, Ga. She studied at the Female Seminary of Washington, Ga., and Mary Baldwin Seminary in Staunton, Va., later taking courses at Harvard and Columbia. In 1927 Oglethorpe University made her a Doctor of Literature.
Among the volumes of poems by Mrs. Montgomery, the best known are “Ulysses Returns and Other Poems,” and “Many Devices.” The poem “Ulysses Returns,” won the 1923 prize of the Poetry Society. Her verse has frequently appeared in magazines and in The Neow York Times and other newspapers.
In the World War period Mrs. Montgomery was chairman of the Red Cross chapter at Riverside. For some years she had been chairman of the literature and poetry committee of the New York City Federation of Women’s Clubs and vice chairman of the poetry committee of the League of American Pen Women. She belonged to many literary societies, Daughters of the American Revolution and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
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