when he was run over by
an Erie train and dictated his weekly article for the New York
_Times_ in hospital with three broken ribs, no difficulties or
perplexities daunted him.

But beneath this whirling activity which amused and amazed his
friends there lay a deeper and quieter vein which was rich in its
own passion. It is not becoming to prate of what lies in other
men's souls; we all have our secrecies and sanctuaries, rarely
acknowledged even to ourselves. But no one can read Joyce
Kilmer's poems without grasping his vigorous idealism, his keen
sense of beauty, his devout and simple religion, his clutch on
the preciousness of common things. He loved the precarious
bustle on Grub Street; he was of that adventurous, buoyant stuff
that rejects hum-drum security and a pelfed and padded life. He
always insisted that America is the very shrine and fountain of
poetry, and this country (which is indeed pathetically eager to
take poets to its bosom) stirred his vivid imagination. The
romance of the commuter's train and the suburban street, of the
delicatessen shop and the circus and the snowman in the
yard--these were the familiar themes where he was rich and
felicitous. Many a commuter will remember his beautiful poem "The
12:45," bespeaking the thrill we have all felt in the shabby
midnight train that takes us home, yearning and weary, to the
well-beloved hearth:

What love commands, the train fulfills
And beautiful upon the hills
Are these our feet of burnished steel.
Subtly and certainly, I feel
That Glen Rock welcomes us to her.
And silent Ridgewood seems to stir
And smile, because she knows the train
Has brought her children back again.
We carry people home--and so
God speeds us, wheresoe'er we go.
The midnight train is slow and old,
But of it let this thing be told,
To its high honour be it said,
It carries weary folk to bed.

To a man such as this, whose whole fervent and busy adventure was lit
within by the lamplight and firelight of domestic passion, the war, with
its broken homes and defiled sanctities, came as a personal affront.
Both to his craving for the glamour of such a colossal drama, and to his
sense of what was most worshipful in human life, the call was
irresistible. Counsels of prudence and comfort were as nothing; the
heart-shaking poetry of this nation's entry into an utterly unselfish
war burned away all barriers. His life had been a