DAWN

Out of the scabbard of the night.
By God's hand drawn,

Flashes his shining sword of light,
And lo-the dawn!

Charlotte P. S. Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman was born at Hartford, Connecticut, July 3, 1860. She began public work in 1890, lecturing on ethics, economics and sociology; identifying herself with the labor question and the advance of women.

She has written about a dozen books, her best works being Woman and Economics (1898) and Human Work (1904). Her volume of verse, In This Our World (1898), hurls many a shaft of ironic wit. Beneath the whimsical humor of "A Conservative" and the better known "Similar Cases" (unfortunately too long to quote) there is a sub-acid satire not easily forgotten.

A CONSERVATIVE

The garden beds I wandered by
One bright and cheerful morn,
When I found a new-fledged butterfly,
A-sitting on a thorn,

A black and crimson butterfly

All doleful and forlorn.

I thought that life could have no sting
To infant butterflies,

So I gazed on this unhappy thing
With wonder and surprise.
While sadly with his waving wing
He wiped his weeping eyes.

Said I, "What can the matter be?
Why weepest thou so sore?
With garden fair and sunlight free
And flowers in goodly store,"-
But he only turned away from me
And burst into a roar.

Cried he, "My legs are thin and few
Where once I had a swarm!
Soft fuzzy fur-a joy to view-
Once kept my body warm,
Before these flapping wing-things grew

To hamper and deform!"

At that outrageous bug I shot
The fury of mine eye;
Said I, in scorn all burning hot,

In rage and anger high,

"You ignominious idiot!

Those wings are made to fly!"

"I do not want to fly," said he, I only want to squirm!"

And he drooped his wings dejectedly,
But still his voice was firm:
"I do not want to be a fly!
I want to be a worm!"

O yesterday of unknown lack,
To-day of unknown bliss!
I left my fool in red and black;
The last I saw was this,-
The creature madly climbing back
Into his chrysalis.

Louise Imogen Guiney

Louise Imogen Guiney was born at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1861. Although she attended Elmhurst Academy in Providence, most of her studying was with private tutors. In 1901 she went to England, where she lived until her death.

Traditional in form and feeling, Miss Guiney's work has a distinctly personal vigor; even her earliest collection, The White Sail and Other Poems (1887), is not without individuality. Her two most characteristic volumes are A Roadside Harp (1893) and Patrins (1897). A more recent publication, Happy Ending, appeared in 1909.

Miss Guiney died at Chirping-Camden, England, November 3, 1920.

THE WILD RIDE

I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,
All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses,

All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and

neighing.

Let cowards and laggards fall back! But alert to the

saddle

Weatherworn and abreast, go men of our galloping legion,

With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him.

The trail is through dolor and dread, over crags and

morasses;

There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us:

What odds? We are Knights of the Grail, we are vowed to the riding.

Thought's self is a vanishing wing, and joy is a cobweb, And friendship a flower in the dust, and glory a sunbeam: Not here is our prize, nor, alas! after these our pursuing.

A dipping of plumes, a tear, a shake of the bridle,
A passing salute to this world and her pitiful beauty;
We hurry with never a word in the track of our fathers.

I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,

All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses, All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing.

We spur to a land of no name, outracing the storm-wind; We leap to the infinite dark like sparks from the anvil. Thou leadest, O God! All's well with Thy troopers

that follow.

(William) Bliss Carman was born at Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, April 15, 1861, of a long line of United Empire Loyalists who withdrew from Connecticut at the time of the Revolutionary War. Carman was educated at the University of New Brunswick (1879-81), at Edinburgh (1882-3) and Harvard (1886-8). He took up his residence in the United States about 1889 and, with the exception of short sojourns in the Maritime Provinces, has lived there ever since.

In 1893, Carman issued his first book, Low Tide on Grand Pré: A Book of Lyrics. It was immediately successful, running quickly into a second edition. From the outset, it was evident that Carman possessed the true lyrical power: the ability to fuse thought in emotion, to interpret the external world through a personal intensity. Simple and direct in his choice of themes, his passion made them universal. A vivid buoyancy, new to American literature, made his worship of Nature frankly pagan as contrasted to the moralizing tributes of most of his predecessors. This freshness and irresponsible whimsy made Carman the natural collaborator for Richard Hovey, and when their first joint Songs from Vagabondia appeared in 1894 Carman's fame was established. (See Preface.)

Although the three Vagabondia collections contain Carman's best known poems, several of his other volumes (he has published almost twenty of them) vibrate with the same glowing pulse. An almost physical radiance rises from Ballads of Lost Haven (1897), From the Book of Myths (1902) and Songs of the Sea Children (1904).

Carman has also written several volumes of essays and, in conjunction with Mary Perry King, has devised several poemdances (Daughters of Dawn, 1913) suggesting Vachel Lindsay's later poem-games. In his collection April Airs (1916), although the strength is diluted and the music somewhat thinned, the old magic persists; the spell may be overfamiliar but it is not powerless.