My Favorite Marsden

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review Elyssa East’s Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574566772944605580.html. Among her subjects is the New England painter Marsden Hartley, who after years of expatriation in Europe and New York City came home to do his best work. He wrote a poem about it:

Return of the Native

Rock, juniper, and wind,

and a seagull sitting still—

all these of one mind.

He who finds will

to come home

will surely find old faith

made new again,

and lavish welcome.

Old things breaketh

new, when heart and soul

lose no whit of old refrain;

it is a smiling festival

when rock, juniper, and wind

are of one mind;

a seagull signs the bond—makes what was broken, whole.