I raised my quivering arms on high;
I laughed and laughed into the sky,
Till at my throat a strangling sob
Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb
Sent instant tears into my eyes;
O God, I cried, no dark disguise
Can e'er hereafter hide from me
Thy radiant identity!

Thou canst not move across the grass

But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,
Nor speak, however silently,

But my hushed voice will answer Thee.
I know the path that tells Thy way
Through the cool eve of every day;
God, I can push the grass apart
And lay my finger on Thy heart!

The world stands out on either side.
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,-
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,

And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That cannot keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat-the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.

PITY ME NOT

Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field and thicket as the year goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Nor that a man's desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.

This have I known always: love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails;
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales.
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

I SHALL GO BACK

I shall go back again to the bleak shore
And build a little shanty on the sand
In such a way that the extremest band
Of brittle seaweed will escape my door
But by a yard or two, and nevermore
Shall I return to take you by the hand;
I shall be gone to what I understand
And happier than I ever was before.

The love that stood a moment in your eyes,

The words that lay a moment on your tongue,

Are one with all that in a moment dies,
A little under-said and over-sung;

But I shall find the sullen rocks and skies
Unchanged from what they were when I was young.

THE PEAR TREE

In this squalid, dirty dooryard,
Where the chickens scratch and run,
White, incredible, the pear tree

Stands apart and takes the sun,

Mindful of the eyes upon it,
Vain of its new holiness,
Like the waste-man's little daughter
In her first communion dress.

WILD SWANS

I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over;-
And what did I see I had not seen before?
Only a question less or a question more;
Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying.
Tiresome heart, forever living and dying!

your

House without air! I leave you and lock Wild swans, come over the town, come over The town again, trailing your legs and crying!

door!

Mary Carolyn Davies was born at Sprague, Washington, and was educated in the schools at and about Portland, Oregon. At college (the University of California) she won the Emily Chamberlin Cook prize for Poetry in 1912, being the first freshman to win it. In the same year, she established another precedent by being the first woman to win the Bohemian Club prize. With the proceeds, the young poet went to New York, arriving with the remnants of her fortune-four dollars and eighty-five cents.

The long struggle with the city began. Miss Davies wrote short stories, two serials, reams of sentimental verses-anything to keep alive. She turned finally to verse, chiefly because "when the rent is due there's no time to write a story, only verse can save one in time."

Her work divides itself into two distinct classes: the hackwork which she does for a living and the genuine poetry which she creates for its own sake. Her first volume The Drums in Our Street (1918) was a mixture of loud bombast and quiet beauty, of blatant war-verse and unaffected lyrics. Youth Riding (1919), although as uneven as its predecessor, is simpler and surer. The poems in vers libre are clearly musical, and her eight-line lyrics are particularly wistful and delicate.

THE DAY BEFORE APRIL1

The day before April,

Alone, alone,

I walked in the woods

And I sat on a stone.

1 Reprinted by permission of the Publishers, The Macmillan Company. From Youth Riding by Mary Carolyn Davies.

I sat on a broad stone
And sang to the birds.
The tune was God's making
But I made the words.

THE APPLE TREE SAID:1

My apples are heavy upon me.
It was the Spring;

And proud was I of my petals,

Nor dreamed this thing:

That joy could grow to a burden,
Or beauty could be

Changed from snow-light to heavy
To humble me.

Winifred Welles

Winifred Welles was born at Norwich Town, Connecticut, January 26, 1893, and educated in the vicinity of her home.

Her frail and delicately fashioned lyrics are the distinguishing feature of The Hesitant Heart (1920). This first volume, so appropriately named, has a frank tenderness that never grows maudlin, a wistful introspection that never forgets to sing.

1 Reprinted by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company. From Youth Riding by Mary Carolyn Davies.