I am the pool of blue

That worships the vivid sky;
My hopes were heaven-high,
They are all fulfilled in you.

I am the pool of gold

When sunset burns and dies-
You are my deepening skies;
Give me your stars to hold.

Sara Teasdale

I WOULD LIVE IN YOUR LOVE

I would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea, Born up by each wave as it passes, drawn down by each wave that recedes;

I would empty my soul of the dreams that have gathered in me, I would beat with your heart as it beats, I would follow your soul as it leads.

THE LAMP

Sara Teasdale

If I can bear your love like a lamp before me,
When I go down the long steep Road of Darkness,
I shall not fear the everlasting shadows,

Nor cry in terror.

If I can find out God, then I shall find Him,
If none can find Him, then I shall sleep soundly,
Knowing how well on earth your love sufficed me,
A lamp in darkness.

MATERNITY

One wept, whose only babe was dead,

New-born ten years ago.

"Weep not; he is in bliss," they said.
She answered, "Even so.

Sara Teasdale

"Ten years ago was born in pain

A child, not now forlorn;

But oh, ten years ago in vain

A mother, a mother was born."

MOTHERHOOD

Alice Meynell

Mary, the Christ long slain, passed silently,
Following the children joyously astir
Under the cedrus and the olive-tree,
Pausing to let their laughter float to her.
Each voice an echo of a voice more dear,
She saw a little Christ in every face;
When lo, another woman, gliding near,
Yearned o'er the tender life that filled the place.
And Mary sought the woman's hand, and spoke:
"I know thee not, yet know thy memory tossed
With all a thousand dreams their eyes evoke
Who bring to thee a child beloved and lost.

"I, too, have rocked my little one.

Oh, He was fair!

Yea, fairer than the fairest sun,

And like its rays through amber spun

His sun-bright hair.

Still I can see it shine and shine."

"Even so," the woman said, "was mine."

"His ways were ever darling ways”—

And Mary smiled

"So soft, so clinging! Glad relays
Of love were all His precious days.
My little child!

My infinite star! My music fled!"
"Even so was mine," the woman said.

Then whispered Mary: "Tell me, thou,
Of thine." " And she:

"Oh, mine was rosy as a bough
Blooming with roses, sent, somehow,

To bloom for me!

His balmy fingers left a thrill

Within my breast that warms me still."

Then gazed she down some wilder, darker hour,
And said when Mary questioned, knowing not:
"Who art thou, mother of so sweet a flower?"-
"I am the mother of Iscariot."

SACRIFICE

When apple boughs are dim with bloom
And lilacs blossom by the door,
How sweetly poignant the perfume
From springs that are no more!

Strange how that faint, familiar scent
Of early lilacs after rain
By subtle alchemy is blent

With childhood's tenderest joy and pain.

Across the long mists of the way

Agnes Lee

Are weary mothers seen through tears; They broke their lives from day to day To pour this fragrance down the years. Ada Foster Murray

And go I must, my dears,

And journey while I may,

Though heart be sore for the little House
That had no word but Stay.

Maybe, no other way

Your child could ever know

Why a little House would have you stay,

When a little Road says, Go.

Josephine Preston Peabody

MY MIRROR*

There is a mirror in my room
Less like a mirror than a tomb,

There are so many ghosts that pass
Across the surface of the glass.

When in the morning I arise
With circles round my tired eyes,
Seeking the glass to brush my hair
My mother's mother meets me there.

If in the middle of the day
I happen to go by that way,
I see a smile I used to know-
My mother, twenty years ago.

But when I rise by candle-light
To feed my baby in the night,
Then whitely in the glass I see

My dead child's face look out at me.

Aline Kilmer

*From Candles That Burn by Aline Kilmer. Copyright, 1919, by George H. Doran Company, Publishers.

RELIGION IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY

The religious spirit is in the poetry of to-day, not as a theme in itself, and not as propaganda, but as an all-pervading force. Few poems that are poems in any real sense are written "about religion," or in defense of doctrines. This is probably very fortunate for poetry and for religion. For unless a poet has been caught in a tremendous tide of popular religious feeling, a reformation or a rebirth of spirituality, his poems that discuss doctrines and his poems purposefully written "about religion" are likely to be dry and hard in their didacticism. Or, if they escape the dangers of aridity, poems made in this purposeful way are likely to fall into sticky sloughs of sentimentality whither only ladies of Don Marquis' Hermione group are likely to go to seek them. Among such persons any poem in which the holy name of God is mentioned, will, if read with perfervid intensity, bring instantaneous applause, no matter what the artistic value of the poem may be, no matter what is said about Him. Therefore it may be a very good thing that we have few poems of this kind, for, if we had more, many of them would probably be travesties of poetry and of religion.

Moral didacticism in poetry is seldom pleasing to the contemporary poet. He prefers to leave lessons to the teacher and sermons to the preacher. For this reason many thoughtful persons have questioned the moral value and the moral importance of our contemporary poetry. But sincere thinking should suggest the idea that poetry may be very valuable morally, even when morals are not pointed out and explained in it. "Rhymed ethics" and "rhythmical persuasions" are not necessarily productive of the finest worship and wonder.

The fact is simply this, that the modern poet believes that explanations often hurt that beauty which they are meant to