ROBERT HILLYER - AUTOGRAPH POEM SIGNED 1913 - HFSID 23244

ROBERT HILLYER
The poet signs a handwritten poem
 Autograph Poem signed: "Robert Hillyer/1913", 2¾p, 8½x11. Titled: "Peace". In full: "Vested in black, the night, a silent cloud/Fell on the world, and fiercely folded it/In the cold depths of a starless shroud./Throughout the sleeping world, the wind/with screams/Scatters the filmy fragments of our dreams/[illegible]/One came to me, clad in the robes of night,/An old, gray monk. He took me to the brink/Of a wild chasm, filled with smoke and light/From distant, fearful fires. Said he, 'This is thy/soul,/Behold and fear./'I am the World, I say, destroy this thing.'/'Then art thou Music in the World?' I asked./He answered, 'Nay.' 'Well art thou the World's/Spring/or Youth?' He answered 'Nay.' 'Who art/thou then/'/I am the World's triumphant race of Men.'/I struck him down./'Thou are not Truth,' I said, 'for thou didst/say/That my soul was a fearful thing. Is there/No beauty then beyond the flames?' 'Ah nay'/He answered, 'nought (sic)but furious fires/Which burn with flaming thouts/and wild desires/That is my truth.'/I left him where he stood, and then/I fled/Into the chasm of my Soul unharmed/Through all the flames and clouds of/smoke I sped/Without a fear. Beyond the furious fires of/thought,/I found the peaceful token that/I sought/A white May-flower." At the upper margin, Hillyer has drawn a Far East scene in pen and ink. Hillyer graduated from Harvard in 1917, so this is an early poem, likely written either in the months before or during his first year at the University at which he would later teach. In 1917, he published Sonnets and Other Lyrics -- and served overseas with the French Ambulance during WWI. American poet, author and educator Robert Hillyer (1895-1961) won the 1934 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Collected Verse. Hillyer, who recorded some of his poems in 1941 and 1955, was a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets from 1949 until his death in 1961. Light show through of ink (all legible). First page is lightly soiled at lower right blank corner, tackhead-size stain at upper left margin, near but not touching drawing. Second page is nicked at upper and lower right blank edge. Signature page is chipped at lower left blank corner. Overall, fine condition.