the time of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti women sang only what they thought they were expected to sing. The conventions of an androcentric culture imposed upon women a spiritual bondage of reserve, indirection and disguise, from which only great genius or unusual daring could set them free. But it is the custom of critics who compare the small achievement of women in the arts, and especially in poetry, with the great achievements of their brothers, to forget or ignore the lets and hindrances that in ancient times, and in mediæval times, often prevented women from learning to express themselves adequately. Silence and repression were enjoined upon women by nearly all of the ancient religious systems, and the obligations that life imposed upon them were so heavy that small opportunity was left for the exercise of any gift of expres

sion.

When women did begin to make their thoughts and feelings into poems they were still timid. A pen name was a prop to confidence. And they practised another device which served to conceal their own personal feelings; they dramatized the emotions of men in their lyrics. To dramatize masculine emotions or emotions of any other kind in narrative and dramatic poetry is all very well and a part of being an artist. But the subjective and personal lyric which is not the sincere expression of genuine emotion lacks vitality simply because it lacks directness of appeal.

It is a fine thing, therefore, to be able to say that the day of the bondage of silence has gone by for women, we hope forever. In our times a number of women here and across the water have begun to sing with competent sincerity of the love of woman for man. To-day real emotions are beginning to find a real expression and we are beginning to hope that, some day, we shall have a great poet of womanhood who will sing for the world of the woman's way of loving.

It will be a great word, that woman's word, when it is spoken. It will be a word of the race as much as of the individual, strong with the spirit of the folk, and not remote from the plain, homely

things of life. For the love of the best women for the men who are their mates is a love that is racial as well as individual. The woman who will make these great poems of to-morrow must have the wholesome vitality of a peasant, the virtue of a peasant, and the sensitivity of a great artist. . . .

The women who are making the best contemporary lyrics of love have learned the first lesson of poetry, which is sincerity. They are capable of spiritual bravery. They do not pose. They strip off old cloaks and masks. They offer the world the best of themselves. Perhaps they even believe that nothing but their best is worthy of acceptance by the people. That may be why the word "poetess," with all its suggestion of tepid and insipid achievement, has gone out of fashion. To-day a few women are not "poetesses," but poets.

One of them is Irene Rutherford McLeod. She has written a number of fine lyrics of love and is still so young that we have great hope that she will be heard often and for a long time to come. Her poem, "So beautiful You Are Indeed" is a record of that step into infinity, beyond madness and beyond wisdom, which great love sometimes enables the spirit of a man and the spirit of a woman to take together.

Just as brave and just as lovely is Grace Fallow Norton's lyric, "Love Is A Terrible Thing." Men will hardly understand this poem as well as women. It is essentially feminine. If a man were to say that "Love is a terrible thing" he would not mean what a woman means when she says it.

"For there is a flame that has blown too near,
And there is a name that has grown too dear,
And there is a fear . . .'

And to the still hills and cool earth and far sky
I made moan,

"The heart in my bosom is not my own!

'O would I were free as the wind on the wing;
Love is a terrible thing!'".

This is an admirable poem, not only because of its sincerity, but because it is a rare combination of lyrical rhythm with the cadences of natural speech.

In her poem, "Homage," Helen Hoyt speaks with reverence. This stanza is a clue to the meaning of the whole:

"Not to myself, I knew, belonged your homage:
I but the vessel of your holy drinking,

The channel to you of that olden wonder
Of love and womanhood,-I but a woman.

Preeminent among living women who have written love songs with competent sincerity, is Sara Teasdale. Her philosophy of poetry is a philosophy of absolute fidelity to the truth as it is felt. She believes that poets who will report themselves truly to the world can hardly fail, if they be poets in any real sense, to give the world poetry of unquestioned excellence. She believes that the worst of all artistic immoralities is to say in a lyric what has not been felt in the heart. The statements made in it may be fancy or fiction, but the thing that is felt in it,that must be true. Otherwise it can not have that certain and insistent quality which claims the allegiance of mankind and makes it not only unique but universal.

Sara Teasdale has been true to this philosophy. She has been emotionally honest. She has keenly felt things that all women feel and she has given her emotions a true form and significance. Therefore her little songs, with their often wistful and sometimes exultant beauty, are now cherished by lovers of poetry wherever English is spoken. And, although her work has only been in