New Dreams for Old

Is there no voice in the world to come crying,

“New dreams for old!  New for old!”

Many have long in my heart been dying,

Faded, weary, and cold.

All of them, all, would I give for a new one.

Is there no seeker of dreams that were?

Nor would I ask if the new were a true one;

Only for new dreams!  New for old!

For I am here, half-way of my journey,

Here with the old!  All so old!

And the best heart with death is at tourney

If naught new it is told.

Will there no voice, then, come, or a vision,

Come with the beauty that ever blows

Out of the lands that are called Elysian?

I must have new dreams!  New for old!

Cale Young Rice[1] in “The Century”[2]

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[1] Cale Young Rice was an American poet and dramatist. He was born in 1872 in Dixon, Kentucky, where his birthplace is designated by Kentucky State Historical Marker 1508. Rice was the son of Laban Marchbanks Rice, a Confederate veteran and tobacco merchant, and his wife Martha Lacy. He was a younger brother of Laban Lacy Rice, a noted educator, who later collected and published Rice’s works in a single volume. Rice grew up in Evansville, Indiana and Louisville, Kentucky. He was educated at Cumberland University and at Harvard (A.B., 1895; A.M., 1896). In a 1906 New York Times review of Plays and Lyrics: The Collected Poems of Cale Young Rice, Jessie B. Rittenhouse opined that Rice’s dramatic works outshone his poetry “though occasional lyrics…evidenced a delicate touch.”

Rice married the popular author Alice Hegan (see footnote 187); they worked together on several books. They had no children. In 1942 Alice died. The following year, overwhelmed with sorrow at her loss, Rice took his own life at his home in Louisville.  (Source: Wikipedia)

[2] The Century Magazine began publication in 1881, as a successor to Scribner’s Monthly Magazine.  It ceased publication in 1930.  The image adjacent is of the cover of the August 1903 issue.