It is morning, I awake from a bed of silence,
Shining I rise from the starless waters of sleep.
The walls are about me still as in the evening,
I am the same, and the same name still I keep.
The earth revolves with me, yet makes no motion,
The stars pale silently in a coral sky.

In a whistling void I stand before my mirror,
Unconcerned, and tie my tie.

There are horses neighing on far-off hills
Tossing their long white manes,

And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk,
Their shoulders black with rains..

It is morning, I stand by the mirror
And surprise my soul once more;
The blue air rushes above my ceiling,
There are suns beneath my floor.

It is morning, Senlin says, I ascend from darkness And depart on the winds of space for I know not where; My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket,

And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair.

There are shadows across the windows, clouds in heaven,

And a god among the stars; and I will go

Thinking of him as I might think of daybreak
And humming a tune I know. . .

Vine-leaves tap at the window,

Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,

The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree
Repeating three clear tones.

Christopher (Darlington) Morley was born at Haverford, Pennsylvania, May 5, 1890. He graduated from Haverford College in 1910 and was Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford, England, 1910-13.

Since 1914 he has been on the staff of various periodicals, coming to New York in 1920 to run his column ("The Bowling Green") on the New York Evening Post.

Morley is the author of ten dissimilar volumes of essays, skits, gossip, travel-notes, light verse and serious poetry. The Rocking Horse (1919) and Hide and Seek (1920) sink too often in their own sentiment; their sweetness is frequently cloying, their charm a little too conscious. But Morley's vigor energizes his lines and prevents his verses-especially those in the latter volume-from becoming tawdry with oversweetness.

QUICKENING 1

Such little, puny things are words in rhyme:
Poor feeble loops and strokes as frail as hairs;
You see them printed here, and mark their chime,
And turn to your more durable affairs.

Yet on such petty tools the poet dares

To run his race with mortar, bricks and lime,

And draws his frail stick to the point, and stares

To aim his arrow at the heart of Time.

Intangible, yet pressing, hemming in,

This measured emptiness engulfs us all,

And yet he points his paper javelin

And sees it eddy, waver, turn, and fall,
And feels, between delight and trouble torn,
The stirring of a sonnet still unborn.

1 From Hide and Seek by Christopher Morley. Copyright, 1920. George H. Doran Company, Publishers.

Leslie Nelson Jennings was born in 1891 at Ware, Massachusetts. When he was five years old, he moved to California, where he has lived ever since. For a short term, he worked on a newspaper but ill health forced him to discontinue this work and drove him to the hills.

Jennings's work is still in a formative stage. His lyrics, while personal in theme, are full of the manner and music of several of his contemporaries. His sonnets, like those of David Morton, show Jennings at his best; they are quiet but never dull reflections of loveliness.

FRUSTRATE1

How futile are these scales in which we weigh
Pity and passion, and the spirit's need!
Words and the veins of desperate peoples bleed!
Words and a lark, and hedges white with may!
O must this rapture and this grief remain

Uncaptured in our silences? And must
We stand like stones, less lyrical than dust
That flowers beneath the benison of rain?

And if I say, "I love you," can you know,
Save by the urgent beating of my heart,
The flame that tears my baffled lips apart?
Poor symbols, cracked or broken long ago,
What witness can you bear that we have tried
To utter Beauty when our tongues were tied!

From The Sonnet. Copyright, 1918, by Mahlon Leonard Fisher.

Maxwell Bodenheim was born at Natchez, Mississippi, May 26, 1892. His education, with the exception of grammar school training, was achieved under the guidance of the U. S. Army, in which Bodenheim served a full enlistment of three years, beginning in 1910. For a while he studied law and art in Chicago, but his mind, fascinated by the new poetry, turned to literature. He wrote steadily for five years without having a single poem accepted. In 1918, his first volume appeared and even those who were puzzled or repelled by Bodenheim's complex idiom were forced to recognize its intense individuality.

Minna and Myself (1918) reveals, first of all, this poet's extreme sensitivity to words. Words, under his hands, have unexpected growths; placid nouns and sober adjectives bear fantastic fruit. Sometimes he packs his metaphors so close that they become inextricably mixed. Sometimes he spins his fantasies so thin that the cord of coherence snaps and the poem frays into ragged and unpatterned ravellings. But, at his best, Bodenheim is as clear-headed as he is colorful.

In Advice (1920), Bodenheim's manner—and his mannerisms -are intensified. There is scarcely a phrase that is not tricked out with more ornaments and associations than it can bear; whole poems sink beneath the weight of their profuse decorations. Yet, in spite of his verbal exaggerations, this poetry achieves a keen if too ornate delicacy. In the realm of the whimsical-grotesque, Bodenheim walks with a light and nimble footstep.

POET TO HIS LOVE

An old silver church in a forest

Is my love for you.

The trees around it

Are words that I have stolen from your heart.

An old silver bell, the last smile you gave,
Hangs at the top of my church.

It rings only when you come through the forest
And stand beside it.

And then, it has no need for ringing,

For your voice takes its place.

OLD AGE

In me is a little painted square

Bordered by old shops with gaudy awnings.

And before the shops sit smoking, open-bloused old men, Drinking sunlight.

The old men are my thoughts;

And I come to them each evening, in a creaking cart,
And quietly unload supplies.

We fill slim pipes and chat

And inhale scents from pale flowers in the centre of the

square.

Strong men, tinkling women, and dripping, squealing children

Stroll past us, or into the shops.

They greet the shopkeepers and touch their hats or foreheads to me.

Some evening I shall not return to my people.

DEATH

I shall walk down the road;

I shall turn and feel upon my feet