hood. Literature and art have brought it forth to sight and named it Wisdom and Justice and Purity and Hope and Joy and Love. In such prophecy it is approved as true. The supreme social need, now as ever, is that living women shall not violate that ideal but help its realization. It is the supreme gift of the lady to social culture that at her best she has drawn man to her as to a "fair, divided excellence" in such fashion that he has been compelled to look above to face her, and thus has linked the marriage of hearts to the up-climbing of the race.

S

SEMELE

STEPHEN PHILLIPS

EMELE, lying in the arms of Jove,

In madness of too curious womanhood,
Or in a woman's perilous vanity,

Looked up into his face, and murmured thus: "Thou visitest me secret from the sky,

But as an earthly lover; yet I know
Thou art a god descending in deep night
Down from the flashing silence of the stars,
Immortal, for the touch of mortal lips.
As thou art god, beloved, swear to me
One thing that I shall ask thee to fulfil."
Then answered glorious Jove, in human guise,
O'er-raptured by the human after heaven:
"I swear to thee the oath no god may break,
By stream of Styx, the holy wave of hell,
Rippling for ever in the ear of souls,
That whatsoe'er thou askest I will grant.
And yet be fearful of too large request;
Remember thou art mortal and must pass."
Then Semele said sweetly in his ear,

"This then I ask, that when thou com'st again, It shall be in full glory as a god,

In flaming splendor, and in rolling power.
Love me as clear god, not as god disguised!
I crave thy majesty as thou my kiss."

She sighed once on his lips, then hid her face.
But Jove was sorely troubled at her words.
"Alas!" he cried, "release me from this oath,
Which, if I swear it, Styx will ne'er relent;
Should thus I visit thee, then would'st thou die,
Shrivelled in glory insupportable.

Then ask some other thing that thou mayst live,
Since, if I woo thee in my proper shape,

Thou shalt be strewn in ashes from my eyes."
"But I will ask no other thing of thee,"
Semele answered; "and what thou hast said,
Incites me, being woman, to persist.

But, if I die, I die a dazzling death.

Swear then by Styx that thou wilt do this thing."
And by that Stygian river, by whose wave
No god may swear, and of his oath be free,
Jove swore that he would come in his own shape,
Knowing that of that glory she must die.

And Acheron heard, and through his stagnant pools
Muttering, recorded sullenly the oath.

So on the after midnight when she stood
Mortal with fluttering heart on the dark hill,
A god broke up the heaven, and coming down,
Lightened and thundered out of her the life,
Making the woman ashes in mid-air.

Who are ye who gaze deep in my eyes
And are swept on with the current?
Are ye some of them who have known me?
Ayez pitié pitié de moi!
J'ai faim!

II

AMENITAS

I

HAVE heard the pipings of Pan,

The confused sweet music of his memories.

from lips more warm?

My lips on thine sweet music drawing

And yet-drew I strange beauty

Ah-something I remember

Pools reflecting night-my arms seem empty!
Did I not hold something—a slender

thing and white?

But no 'twas thou,-thou and I commingling.

Yet hear I something fluttering

My heart laughs high with glee!

And feel I something swaying .

And arms entwining me!

Ah-now 'tis gone,-was't thou-thou slender reed

That so bewitched me?

Why gaze I in the thickets-and think on

Ah-something I remember . . .

D

III

scarlet flowers?

TREES BY THE WATER

ÆMONS, they say, dwelt in you once, and I know it!
For, see, you would trap me to come to your shelter,
Your sweet roots outstretching in water . . .

(How ye would enfold me, did I yield to your tempting!)
Ye children of water, ye know this great warring,

This endless long struggle 'tween us and these soulless! (How your outstretched roots tempt me!)

Ye daughters and sons of the stars and streams and the dew,

Ye mænads of wistful faces, incarnated anew,

Ye know this long warring 'tween us and these soulless.
(Ah, shall I yet yield me and step down in that water?
To lie close in the clasp of your moss-hung long arms,
Your branches above me-