How you would laugh, you wild rippling water,

As you bore off my soul!)

Ah Hyé, once goddess, does thy power still hold me?

A

IV

A REED

H, there is bleeding and I am bent down,
I, that was swaying and lissome and strong,—
I, that stood up from the earth, from the water,
I am bent down.

Soft flows the water past tenderly soothing,
Yet shrink I from this that once was my loving.
Idle the hand was that so ruthlessly brake me,
Nor cared for the thing the long dying
Would make me.

Ah, there is bleeding and I am bent down,

I, that was wind-kissed, that was fashioned for song,
I, that stood up from the earth, from the water,
I am bent down.

MARY AUSTIN

I

SONG FOR THE PASSING OF A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN

G

[From the Paiute]

o thy way in comeliness!

Strong sun across the sod doth make
Such quickening as thy countenance.

Pursue thy unguessed errand and pass by;
I am more worth for what thy passing wakes,
Great races in my loins to thee that cry!
My blood is redder for thy loveliness.
Prosper; be fair; pass by!

Over-sweet the heart is

Where my love has bruised it,
Breathe you not that fragrance,
You who are not my lover;
Do not stoop above my heart
With its languor on you,
Lest I should not know you
From my own beloved,
Lest from out my singing
Leaps my heart upon you!

A

ART, LIFE AND CRITICISM

EDWIN BJÖRKMAN

RT, which merges man's sense of beauty with his instinct for self-expression, lies as close to life as any

other form of human activity. It is neither a fair bubble, too frail for serious men's consideration, nor an exotic fruit ripening for a few chosen spirits on some enchanted isle to which passage can be bought only by surrender of ordinary human cares and concerns. On the contrary, art, seen in the light of modern knowledge, appears as an instrument forged by life for the promotion of its most essential purpose-its own perfection. Therefore, art comes to all who will receive it as the messenger and missionary of a great life-force-nay, it is itself such a force, bringing with it powers of lasting value to our whole existence: a new vision, a new perception, a new inspiration. Out of it grows a keener pleasure in life, a greater harmony with it, a better understanding of it, and, for this reason, a stronger hold on it.

Art is many things, both at once and successively, and it has a legitimate right to be every one of them. What these multitudinous shapes are-shapes that art may assume and still be art-does not concern me for the moment. I am now dealing with art in its highest form alone. To the question of what this form stands for, I answer unhesitatingly: EXPERIMENTAL

CREATION.

What life itself does with its multiform host of real creatures in order to accomplish its own perfection, that we do with the creatures to which our imaginations give a fictitious existence, whether it be in marble, on canvas, or in words. Life's way is undoubtedly the more effective. But in the beginning of things, at least, our way is the kinder, and in the long run it is perhaps also the quicker.

In art we set the problems of existence, solve them tentatively, listen to the discussion that ensues, and decide whether our solution be worthy of translation into actual living. If we find that

we have met with failure, nothing is lost but some time and energy that might have been spent much less profitably. If we had undertaken the same experiment in reality—with ourselves and with the bodies and souls of our relatives and friends and townsmen-what a result there would have been, of sorrow, of pain, of strife, and of death!

Art in its highest form may, therefore, be regarded as man's most time-saving and labor-saving device. In this form all art need not be cast, as I have already indicated, but toward that form all art and all the arts should ever be tending. Only as preparation for it the earlier and less ambitious stages of art find a warrant for their continued existence. Those who raise the cry of "art for art's own sake" no less than those who ask blindly, "What is the use of art anyhow?" should remember that the art which exists for itself alone, which craves nothing but formal perfection, and which does not aim beyond pleasing the senses-whether it be the senses of the appreciator or of its own creator-is to the highest art what childhood is to mature manhood. It is a school, a mastering of means to an end.

Man must learn to walk before he undertakes to fight; he must learn to read before he can dream of studying. In the same way art must develop and master a technique, it must wrestle with and conquer its material, before it can enter on its final and only true mission: that of tentatively and inexpensively solving the problems of existence in order that, through such solutions, not only man's life but all life may be raised to ever more exalted levels of perfection.

Implied in this conclusion we find the principal reason by which the cry of "art for art's own sake " may be warranted. For art should not be subjugated to the service of any other vital activity except indirectly. The task of art, this means, is not, as has so often been mistakenly contended, to serve religion, or sex, or morals, or science, or man's personal desires. Art, if it be sincere, can submit to no other mastership than that of life itself —of life in all its fulness and majesty and glory. And by serving life, art serves also everything that forms part of life.

Poetry using the word to denote all creative, imaginative literature is to practical life what the laboratory is to science.