with their too-crowded details and difficult diction, will effectually prevent them from ever becoming popular. But their importance will grow even as Moody's place in our literature will eventually be a higher one than that which has yet been accorded him.

His prose play The Great Divide (1907) was strikingly successful when produced by Henry Miller. The Faith Healer (1909), another play in prose, because of its more exalted tone, did not win the favor of the theatre-going public. A complete edition of The Poems and Poetic Dramas of William Vaughn Moody was published in 1912 in two volumes.

In the summer of 1909 Moody was stricken with the illness from which he never recovered. He died in October, 1910.

Once at a simple turning of the way

I met God walking; and although the dawn
Was large behind Him, and the morning stars
Circled and sang about his face as birds
About the fieldward morning cottager,
My coward heart said faintly, "Let us haste!
Day grows and it is far to market-town."
Once where I lay in darkness after fight,
Sore smitten, thrilled a little thread of song
Searching and searching all my muffled sense
Until it shook sweet pangs through all my blocd,
And I beheld one globed in ghostly fire

Singing, star-strong, her golden canticle;

And her mouth sang, "The hosts of Hate roll past,
A uance of dust-motes in the sliding sun;
Love's battle comes on the wide wings of storm,
From east to west one legion! Wilt thou strive?"

Then, since the splendor of her sword-bright gaze
Was heavy on me with yearning and with scorn,
My sick heart muttered, "Yea, the little strife,
Yet see, the grievous wounds! I fain would sleep."
O heart, shalt thou not once be strong to go
Where all sweet throats are calling, once be brave
To slake with deed thy dumbness? Let us go
The path her singing face looms low to point,
Pendulous, blanched with longing, shedding flames
Of silver on the brown grope of the flood;
For all my spirit's soilure is put by

And all my body's soilure, lacking now
But the last lustral sacrament of death
To make me clean for those near-searching eyes
That question yonder whether all be well,
And pause a little ere they dare rejoice.

Question and be thou answered, passionate face!
For I am worthy, worthy now at last
After so long unworth; strong now at last
To give myself to beauty and be saved.

PANDORA'S SONG

(From "The Fire-Bringer")

I stood within the heart of God;
It seemed a place I had known:
(I was blood-sister to the clod,
Blood-brother to the stone.)

I found my love and labor there,
My house, my raiment, meat and wine,
My ancient rage, my old despair,—
Yea, all things that were mine.

I saw the spring and summer pass,
The trees grow bare, and winter come;
All was the same as once it was
Upon my hills at home.

Then suddenly in my own heart
I felt God walk and gaze about;
He spoke; his words seemed held apart
With gladness and with doubt.

66

Here is my meat and wine," He said,
"My love, my toil, my ancient care;
Here is my cloak, my book, my bed,
And here my old despair.

Here are my seasons: winter, spring,
Summer the same, and autumn spills
The fruits I look for; everything
As on my heavenly hills."

ON A SOLDIER FALLEN IN THE PHILIPPINES

Streets of the roaring town,

Hush for him; hush, be still!

He comes, who was stricken down
Doing the word of our will.

Hush! Let him have his state.
Give him his soldier's crown,

The grists of trade can wait

Their grinding at the mill.

But he cannot wait for his honor, now the trumpet has been blown.

Wreathe pride now for his granite brow, lay love on his breast of stone.

Toll! Let the great bells toll
Till the clashing air is dim,
Did we wrong this parted soul?
We will make it up to him.
Toll! Let him never guess
What work we sent him to.

Laurel, laurel, yes.

He did what we bade him do.

Praise, and never a whispered hint but the fight he fought was good;

Never a word that the blood on his sword was his country's own heart's-blood.

A flag for a soldier's bier

Who dies that his land may live;

O banners, banners here,

That he doubt not nor misgive!
That he heed not from the tomb
The evil days draw near

When the nation robed in gloom
With its faithless past shall strive.

Let him never dream that his bullet's scream went wide of its island mark,

Home to the heart of his darling land where she stumbled and sinned in the dark.

George Sterling

George Sterling was born at Sag Harbor, New York, December 1, 1869, and educated at various private schools in the Eastern States. He moved to the far West about 1895 and has lived in California ever since.

Of Sterling's ten volumes of poetry, The Testimony of the Suns (1903), A Wine of Wizardry (1908) and The House of Orchids and Other Poems (1911) are the most characteristic. As their titles indicate, this is poetry of a flamboyant and rhetorical type; of luxuriant sentences and emotions decorated in "the grand manner." Yet Sterling has added a definite vigor to his ornate tropes and verbal prodigality. Nor is he always extravagant. His simpler verses, though not in his most familiar vein, are among his best.

THE BLACK VULTURE

Aloof upon the day's immeasured dome,
He holds unshared the silence of the sky.
Far down his bleak, relentless eyes descry
The eagle's empire and the falcon's home-
Far down, the galleons of sunset roam;

His hazards on the sea of morning lie;
Serene, he hears the broken tempest sigh
Where cold sierras gleam like scattered foam.