But whether there shall gleam a light

Across the waters stormy,
Somewhere beyond the crouching night

You wait, who went before me;
And I shall speed with bellied Sail

By winds of blackness blown,
Alert to catch your eager hail,
Who found the way alone.

VINCENT STARRETT.

From The Midland.

BUM

He's a little dog, with a stubby tail, and a moth-eaten coat of tan,

And his legs are short, of the wabbly sort: I doubt if they ever ran; And he howls at night, while in broad daylight he sleeps like a bloomin' log, And he likes the food of the gutter breed; he's à most irregular dog.

I call him Bum, and in total sum he's all that his name implies,
For he's just a tramp with a highway stamp that culture cannot disguise;
And his friends, I'ye found, in the streets abound, be they urchins or dogs

or men;
Yet he sticks to me with a fiendish glee.

It is truly beyond my ken.

I talk to him when I'm lonesome-like, and I'm sure that he understands
When he looks at me so attentively and gently licks my hands:
Then he tubs his nose on my tailored clothes, but I never say nought thereat,
For the good Lord knows I can buy more clothes, but never a friend like that!

W. DAYTON WEDGEFARTH.
Publisher: Sully & Kleinteich Co., New York.

THE SPHINX

&
Within a sultry desert land,

Where neither flowers nor shadows are,
Hid to the breast in shifting sand

There stands an image secular.
Where Pharaoh's sceptre gave the laws,

The thing that held me captive rests,
Strange compound of a panther's claws

And of a woman's rounded breasts.
O strange beyond the strangest fears

And hopes and ancient questionings,
That I who am so young in years

Have loved the oldest of all things!
O wanderer, stay where life is sweet,

And jubilant earth is glad of May,
Disturb not with incautious feet

The mystery of an elder day.

When we have sighed to fold our hands

And join the Pharaohs in the tomb,
She still shall stare across the sands
And hearken for the crack of doom!

GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK. From: "The Haunted House and Other Poems."

SWINBURNE

Eloquent master, thy melodious rage

Our latter song may not aspire to reach!

Our eyes beheld the magic of thy speech
Conjure the love-queens of a perished age,
Yea, clothe with life their spectral forms, and wage,

When the sight stung thee, war with Heaven for each:

Only the rolling anthem of the beach
Could break the spell and end thy vassalage.
The sea, thy true love, taught thy lyric tongue

The mighty music of her mutiny:
Thy voice as hers the ages shall prolong,

And, praising numbers, men shall ask of thee:
“Is it the sea that thunders in his song,
Or is it his song reverberates in the sea?"

GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK. From "The Haunted House."

THE GHOST OF OSCAR WILDE

Within the graveyard of Montmartre

Where wreath on wreath is piled,
Where Paris huddles to her breast

Her genius like a child,
The ghost of Heinrich Heine met
The ghost of Oscar Wilde.

The wind was howling desolate,

The moon's dead face shone bright; The ghost of Heinrich Heine hailed

The sad wraith with delight: “Is it the slow worm's slimy touch

That makes you walk the night?

“Or rankles still the bitter jibe

Of fool and Pharisee,
When angels wept that England's law

Had nailed you to the Tree,
When from her brow she tore the rose

Of golden minstrelsy?"

Then spake the ghost of Oscar Wilde

While shrill the night hawk cried: “Sweet singer of the race that bare

Him of the Wounded Side, (I loved them not on earth, but men

Change somehow, having died).

“In Père La Chaise my head is laid,

My coffin-bed is cool,
The mound above my grave

defies
The scorn of knave and fool,
But máy God's mercy save me from

The Psychopathic School!

“Tight though I draw my cerecloth, still

I hear the din thereof
When with sharp knife and argument

They pierce my soul above,
Because I drew from Shakespeare's heart

The secret of his love.

SALUTATION

Beyond the sea a land of heroes lies,
Of fairy heaths and rivers, mountains steep,
O'ergrown with vine-her memory I shall keep
Most dear, her heritage most dearly prize.
But lo, a lad I left her, and mine eyes
Fell on the sea-girt mistress of the deep

What time my boy's heart heard as in a sleep
The choral walls of rhythmic beauty rise.
O lyric England, thee I call mine own;

With lyre and lute and wreath I come to thee;

The realm is thine of song and of the sea,
And thy mouth's speech is heard from zone to zone:

Turn not in scorn thine ivied brow from me,
Who am a suppliant kneeling at thy throne!

PRAYER
I stood upon the threshold.' Musical
W

Reverberant footsteps ghostlike came and went,

And my lips trembled as magnificent
Before me rose a vision of that hall
Whereof great Milton is the mighty wall,

Shakespeare the dome with incense redolent,

Each latter singer precious ornament,
And Holy Writ the groundwork, bearing all.
“Lord.” sobbed I, "take Thy splendid gift of youth
For the one boon that I have craved so long:
Mould Thou my stammering accents and uncouth,
With awful music raise and make me strong,
A living martyr of Thy vocal truth,

A resonant column in the House of Song!”
From “The Haunted House"

GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK.

2. SAMUEL, I. 26
God's iron finger wrote the law

Upon an adamantine scroll
That thrilled my life with tender awe

When first I met you soul to soul.
Thence springs the great flame heaven-lit,

Predestined when the world began,
Whereby my heart to yours is knit

As David's was to Jonathan.
From “The Haunted House"

GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK.

VIGIL

I dare not slight the stranger at my door

Threadbare of garb, and sorrowful of lot,
Lest it be Christ that stands—and goes his way

Because I, all unworthy, knew him not.
I dare not miss one flash of kindly cheer

From alien souls, in challenge glad and high;
Ah,—what if God be moving very near,
And I, so blind, so deaf, had passed him by?

LAURA SIMMONS.
From Congregationalist, Boston.

MAY
Help me to bear Thy spring, dear Lord; to bless

Each new, dear, well-remembered loveliness;
The silver sheen

Of fresh things, shy and green;
The fragrant lure of lilacs after rain-
The old ache, trampling in my heart again !

LAURA SIMMONS.
From the New York Sun.

A NEW YEAR PRAYER

Oh, Young New Year—Take not these things from me:
The olden faiths; the shining loyalty
Of friends, the long and searching years have proved- .
The glowing hearthfires and the books I loved;
All wonted kindnesses and welcoming-
All safe, hardtrodden paths to which I cling!
Oh blithe New Year, glad with the thrill of Spring-
Leave me the ways that were my comforting!

LAURA SIMMONS.
From Life, New York.

BE STRONG

Be strong in faith and courage: ever true

To that still Voice which urges you along. Press onward! There is nought can hinder you:

Be strong!