He'd never married,
And he didn't mean to.
He'd tried religion

And found it pleasant;
He relished a pigeon
Stewed with a pheasant
In an iron kettle;

He built stone ovens. He'd never settle

In any province.

He made pantries

Of Vaux and Arden And the village gentry's Kitchen-garden.

Fruits within yards

Were his staples;

He drank whole vineyards
From Rome to Naples,
Then went to Brittany

For the cider.
He could sit any
Horse, a rider
Outstripping Cheiron's
Canter and gallop.
Pau's environs,

The pubs of Salop,
Wells and Bath inns
Shared his pleasure
With taverns of Athens;
The Sultan's treasure
He'd seen in Turkey;

He'd known London

Bright and murky.

His bones were sunned on

Paris benches

Beset by sparrows;
Roman trenches,

Cave-men's barrows,
He liked impartial;
He liked an Abbey.
His step was martial;
Spent and shabby
He wasn't broken;
A dozen lingoes
He must have spoken.
As a king goes
He went, not minding
That he lived seeking

And never finding.

He'd visit Peking
And then be gone soon

To the far Canaries;
He'd cross a monsoon
To chase vagaries.
He loved a city

And a street's alarums;
Parks were pretty

And so were bar-rooms.
He loved fiddles;

He talked with rustics;
Life was riddles

And queer acrostics.
His sins were serried,
His virtues garish;
His corpse was buried
In a country parish.
Before he went hence-
God knows where-
He spoke this sentence
With a princely air:
"The noose draws tighter;
This is the end;
I'm a good fighter,

But a bad friend:

I've played the traitor

Over and over;

I'm a good hater,

But a bad lover."

Let No Charitable Hope

Now let no charitable hope
Confuse my mind with images

Of eagle and of antelope:

I am in nature none of these.

ADA FOSTER MURRAY

Her Dwelling Place

Amid the fairest things that grow
My lady hath her dwelling place;
Where runnels flow, and frail buds blow
As shy and pallid as her face.

The wild, bright creatures of the wood
About her fearless flit and spring;

To light her dusky solitude
Comes April's earliest offering.

The calm Night from her urn of rest
Pours downward an unbroken stream;
All day upon her mother's breast
My lady lieth in a dream.

Love could not chill her low, soft bed
With any sad memorial stone;
He put a red rose at her head-
A flame as fragrant as his own.

The Shadowed Star

The rosy lamp, the leaping flame,
The friendly pauses in the game-

I had not felt your breath for years,

Nor heard in dreams the sweet old name;
Why was it, dearest, that you came

To thrill my heart with sudden tears?

Through whirling systems, alien, vast,
My flesh and soul, it seems, have passed,
And you have circled far, so far;

What harmony of interchange

Has brought my planet in your range,
What shadow trembles through your star?

The One Who Stayed

I met a woman old and grey

And sought to cheer her lonely way.

A girl flashed by us, all aglow;
"Your child?" I said; she answered, "No,

"I have but one, and she is dead; Yet seven others live," she said;

"Live, but we live so far apart I hold them only in my heart;

"But one who has no dwelling-place In earthly time or earthly space,

"She nestles in my arms at night,

She greets me when the morn is bright;

"Her winsome smile, her baby ways
Make glad my bleak November days."

She looked across the waters grey,
Then pressed my hand and turned away.

When You Came

There were blossoms all unblown,
They had known the rain so much;
There were angels in the stone
Waiting for the master's touch;
Sweetest songs were still unsung,
Tenderest chords were left unstrung,
When you came.

Summer sinks beneath the snow,
Pale grows every morning's glow;
Yet the wonder does not die
Of the dawn that flushed the sky
When you came.

Foster Murray

Ada

MORRIS ABEL BEER

Old Garrets

Whenever I see old garrets I think of mice and cheese,
And slender, wistful poets who dream by candle-light,
I think of winds that shiver and wailing leafless trees,
And winding, wooden stairways that creak in hush of
night.

I see dim, wrinkled parchments, a dusty quill or two,

A narrow, paneless window that frames a sparkling sky, Stained walls and broken ceilings the rain has eaten through, A dried-up china ink-pot,—a shelf with books piled high. Within those dingy garrets in yellow candle-glow,

What fadeless visions blossomed, what deathless dreams had birth,

What flaming songs leapt starward from poets' roofs below,

When city streets lay sleeping and night had stilled the earth!

Now a house that is rich and modern is a pleasant dwelling place,

But a poet should live in a garret where the witching

moonlight streams,

Alone with the whispering stars and apart from the world's

mad race,

Reigning in indolent ease, a king in his palace of dreams!

The Puddle

The lady with the broom beheld dismayed

A puddle that the rain had left behind;
"More work for me, to clean the pavement now,-
But little rest I find."

And so with weariness she plied her broom,-
The ugly pool soon vanished with the day;
But the poet from his window watched her sweep
The evening star away!

OLIVE TILFORD DARGAN

From "The Cycle's Rim"

Pearl-drift among

Deep lies thy body, jewel of the sea,
Locked down with wave on wave.
The coral towers, and yet not thee, not thee!
So lightly didst thou mount, blue rung o'er rung,
The lustered ladder rippling from that land
Of strangely boughed and wooing wilderness.
Province of dream unwaning, dream yet banned
From sleepers in the sun; but thou, as presses
The lark that feels his song, sped to thy sky.
O unrepressed! If thou wouldst choose be gone,
What sea-charm then could stay thee, bid thee lie
Too deep for cock-crow earth or heaven's dawn?
Yet must I chant these broken, mortal staves,
And lay my leaf of laurel on the waves.

My prayers are thee! But, Dear, what means this thing?
That we do walk together as a wind,

Heedless of garden gates where sigh and cling
The little roses that once sought to bind

Our hearts to time; making no pause beside

Blue, curling waters where our thoughts like doves
Drifted to wild-leaf nest; smiling where cried
The tragic marshes with strange shadow loves
That bound us from the sun. The maples burn
Their April wicks of passion; willows yet