PANDORA'S SONG

Of wounds and sore defeat
I made my battle stay;
Winged sandals for my feet
I wove of my delay;
Of weariness and fear,
I made my shouting spear;
Of loss, and doubt, and dread,
And swift oncoming doom
I made a helmet for my head
And a floating plume.

From the shutting mist of death,
And the failure of the breath,
I made a battle-horn to blow
Across the vales of overthrow.
O hearken, love, the battle-horn!
The triumph clear, the silver scorn!
O hearken where the echoes bring,
Down the
grey disastrous morn,

Laughter and rallying!

William Vaughn Moody

A WHITE IRIS

Tall and clothed in samite,
Chaste and pure,

In smooth armor,

Your head held high

In its helmet

Of silver:

Jean D'Arc riding

Among the sword blades!

Has Spring for you
Wrought visions,
As it did for her

In a garden?

Pauline B. Barrington

"FROST TO-NIGHT"

Apple-green west and an orange bar,

And the crystal eye of a lone, one star .
And, "Child, take the shears and cut what you will.
Frost to-night-so clear and dead-still."

Then I sally forth, half sad, half proud,
And I come to the velvet, imperial crowd,

The wine-red, the gold, the crimson, the pied,-
The dahlias that reign by the garden-side.

The dahlias I might not touch till to-night!
A gleam of the shears in the fading light,
And I gathered them all,—the splendid throng,
And in one great sheaf I bore them along.

In my garden of Life with its all-late flowers
I heed a Voice in the shrinking hours:
"Frost to-night-so clear and dead-still
Half sad, half proud, my arms I fill.

Edith M. Thomas.

SILVER

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;

One by one the casements catch

Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,

With paws of silver sleeps the dog;

From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and a silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

Walter de la Mare

FROM "VARIATIONS"

VI

You are as beautiful as white clouds
Flowing among bright stars at night:
You are as beautiful as pale clouds
Which the moon sets alight.

You are as lovely as golden stars
Which white clouds try to brush away:
You are as bright as golden stars
When they come out to play.

You are as glittering as those stairs

Of stone down which the blue brooks run:

You are as shining as sea-waves

All hastening to the sun.

Conrad Aiken

AN OLD WOMAN OF THE ROADS

O, to have a little house!

To own the hearth and stool and all!
The heaped up sods upon the fire,
The pile of turf against the wall!

To have a clock with weights and chains
And pendulum swinging up and down!
A dresser filled with shining delph,
Speckled and white and blue and brown!

I could be busy all the day

Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor,
And fixing on their shelf again
My white and blue and speckled store!

I could be quiet there at night
Beside the fire and by myself,
Sure of a bed and loth to leave

The ticking clock and the shining delph!

Och! but I'm weary of mist and dark,

And roads where there's never a house nor bush,
And tired I am of bog and road,

And the crying wind and the lonesome hush!

And I am praying to God on high,
And I am praying Him night and day,
For a little house a house of my own-
Out of the wind's and the rain's way.

Padraic Colum

THE DARK CAVALIER

I am the Dark Cavalier; I am the Last Lover:
My arms shall welcome you when other arms are tired;
I stand to wait for you, patient in the darkness,
Offering forgetfulness of all that you desired.

I ask no merriment, no pretense of gladness,

I can love heavy lids. and lips without their rose;
Though you are sorrowful you will not weary me;
I will not go from you when all the tired world goes.

I am the Dark Cavalier; I am the Last Lover;

I promise faithfulness no other lips may keep;
Safe in my bridal place, comforted by darkness,
You shall lie happily, smiling in your sleep.

Margaret Widdemer

SAID A BLADE OF GRASS

Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf,

"You make such a noise falling! You scatter all my winter dreams." Said the leaf indignant, "Low-born and low-dwelling!

Songless, peevish thing! You live not in the upper air and you can not tell the sound of singing."

Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept.

And when Spring came she waked again—and she was a blade of grass. And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and

above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, "O these autumn leaves! They make such a noise! They scatter all my winter dreams."

Kahlil Gibran

SYMBOLS

I saw history in a poet's song,
In a river reach and a gallows-hill,
In a bridal bed, and a secret wrong,
In a crown of thorns: in a daffodil.

I imagined measureless time in a day,
And starry space in a wagon-road,
And the treasure of all good harvests lay
In a single seed that the sower sowed.

My garden-wind had driven and havened again
All ships that ever had gone to sea,
And I saw the glory of all dead men

In the shadow that went by the side of me.

John Drinkwater