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fragrant whimsicality, a child-like freshness vivifies poems like The Whole Duty of Berkshire Brooks," "Dilemma" and "Frost on a Window," which reminds one of the manner of her amazing daughter, Hilda, (see page 394).

THE WHOLE DUTY OF BERKSHIRE BROOKS
To build the trout a crystal stair;

To comb the hillside's thick green hair;
To water jewel-weed and rushes;
To teach first notes to baby thrushes;
To flavor raspberry and apple
And make a whirling pool to dapple
With scattered gold of late October;
To urge wise laughter on the sober
And lend a dream to those who laugh;
To chant the beetle's epitaph;
To mirror the blue dragonfly,
Frail air-plane of a slender sky;
Over the stones to lull and leap
Herding the bubbles like white sheep;
The claims of worry to deny,
And whisper sorrow into sleep!

FROST ON A WINDOW

This forest looks the way
Nightingales sound.

Tall larches lilt and sway
Above the glittering ground:
The wild white cherry spray
Scatters radiance round.

The chuckle of the nightingale
Is like this elfin wood.

Even as his gleaming trills assail

The spirit's solitude,

These leaves of light, these branches frail

Are music's very mood.

The song of these fantastic trees,
The plumes of frost they wear,
Are for the poet's whim who sees
Through a deceptive air,

And has an ear for melodies
When never a sound is there.

Amelia Josephine Burr

Amelia Josephine Burr was born in New York City in 1878. She was educated at Hunter College and has made her home in Englewood, New Jersey.

A great range of interests has been the outstanding feature of her work. Too often she yields to her own facility, but there is decided vigor in many pages of The Roadside Fire (1912), In Deep Places (1914) and Life and Living (1916).

BATTLE-SONG OF FAILURE

We strain toward Heaven and lay hold on Hell;
With starward eyes we stumble in hard ways,

And to the moments when we see life well
Succeeds the blindness of bewildered days,-

But what of that? Into the sullen flesh

Our souls drive home the spur with splendid sting. Bleeding and soiled, we gird ourselves afresh. Forth, and make firm a highway for the King.

The loveless greed the centuries have stored
In marshy foulness traps our faltering feet.
The sins of men whom punishment ignored
Like fever in our weakened pulses beat;
But what of that? The shame is not to fail

Nor is the victor's laurel everything.

To fight until we fall is to prevail.

Forth, and make firm a highway for the King.

Yea, cast our lives into the ancient slough,
And fall we shouting, with uplifted face;
Over the spot where mired we struggle now
Shall march in triumph a transfigured race.
They shall exult where weary we have wept-
They shall achieve where we have striven in vain--
Leaping in vigor where we faintly crept,

Joyous along the road we paved with pain.
What though we seem to sink in the morass?
Under those unborn feet our dust shall sing,
When o'er our failure perfect they shall pass.
Forth, and make firm a highway for the King!

Donald Robert Perry Marquis was born at Walnut, Bureau County, Illinois, July 29, 1878. Since his boyhood he has been actively connected with various newspapers, his chief metropolitan success being due to his pungent column, The Sun Dial" in the New York Evening Sun.

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Many of Marquis's most penetrating and satiric skits have been collected in his prose volumes, Hermione (1916) and Prefaces (1919). Besides his burlesque verse, Marquis has written a quantity of serious poetry, the best of which he published in Dreams and Dust (1915).

UNREST

A fierce unrest seethes at the core
Of all existing things:

It was the eager wish to soar

That gave the gods their wings.

From what flat wastes of cosmic slime,
And stung by what quick fire,
Sunward the restless races climb!-
Men risen out of mire!

There throbs through all the worlds that are
This heart-beat hot and strong

And shaken systems, star by star,
Awake and glow in song.

But for the urge of this unrest
These joyous spheres are mute;

But for the rebel in his breast
Had man remained a brute,

When baffled lips demanded speech,
Speech trembled into birth-
(One day the lyric word shall reach
From earth to laughing earth.)-

When man's dim eyes demanded light,
The light he sought was born—
His wish, a Titan, scaled the height
And flung him back the morn!

From deed to dream, from dream to deed,
From daring hope to hope,
The restless wish, the instant need,
Still lashed him up the slope!

I sing no governed firmament,
Cold, ordered, regular-

I sing the stinging discontent
That leaps from star to star!

John Erskine

John Erskine was born in New York City, October 5, 1879. He graduated from Columbia University, receiving his A.M. in 1901 and Ph.D. in 1903. He has taught English since 1903, first at Amherst College, and (beginning in 1909) at Columbia.

Although most of Erskine's works have been performed in the capacity of editor and essayist, he has written two volumes of excellent verse. Acteon and Other Poems (1906) is little more than an introduction to The Shadowed Hour (1917), which contains such keen verses as Satan" and "Ash-Wednesday" in which philosophy and poetry are interknit.

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