Where I walk, a shadow gray
Through gray asphodel,
I am glad, who have had

All that life can tell.

Margaret Widdemer

PSALM

They have burned to Thee many tapers in many temples:

I burn to Thee the taper of my heart.

They have sought Thee at many altars, they have carried lights to find Thee:

I find thee in The white fire of my heart.

They have gone forth restlessly, forging many shapes, images where they seek Thee, idols of deed and thought:

Thou art the fire of my deeds; Thou art the white flame of my

dreams.

O vanity! They know things and codes and customs,
They believe what they see to be true; but they know not Thee,
Thou art within the light of their eyes that see, and the core of fire.

The white fire of my heart forges the shapes of my brain;

The white fire of my heart is a sun, and my deeds and thoughts are its dark planets;

It is a far flame of Thee, a star in Thy firmament.

With pleasant warmth flicker the red fires of the hearth,

And the blue, mad flames of the marsh flare and consume themselves: I too am an ember of Thee, a little star; my warmth and my light travel a long way.

So little, so wholly given to its human quest,

And yet of Thee, wholly of Thee, Thou Unspeakable,

All the colors of life in a burning white mist

Pure and intense as Thou, O Heart of life!

Frail is my taper, it flickers in the storm,
It is blown out in the great wind of the world:

Yet when the world is dead and the seas are a crust of salt,

When the sun is dark in heaven and the stars have changed their

courses,

Forever somewhere with Thee, on the altar of life

Shall still burn the white fire of my heart.

DEIRDRE

Jessie E. Sampter

Do not let any woman read this verse;

It is for men, and after them their sons
And their sons' sons.

The time comes when our hearts sink utterly;
When we remember Deirdre and her tale,
And that her lips are dust.

Once she did tread the earth: men took her hand;
They looked into her eyes and said their say,
And she replied to them.

More than a thousand years it is since she
Was beautiful: she trod the waving grass;
She saw the clouds.

A thousand years! The grass is still the same,
The clouds as lovely as they were that time
When Deirdre was alive.

But there has never been a woman born
Who was so beautiful, not one so beautiful
Of all the women born.

Let all men go apart and mourn together;
No man can ever love her; not a man
Can ever be her lover.

No man can bend before her: no man say-
What could one say to her? There are no words
That one could say to her!

Now she is but a story that is told
Beside the fire! No man can ever be
The friend of that poor queen.

James Stephens

AN APRIL MORNING

Once more in misted April
The world is growing green.
Along the winding river
The plumey willows lean.

Beyond the sweeping meadows
The looming mountains rise,
Like battlements of dreamland
Against the brooding skies.

In every wooded valley
The buds are breaking through,
As though the heart of all things
No languor ever knew.

The golden-wings and bluebirds
Call to their heavenly choirs.
The pines are blued and drifted
With smoke of brushwood fires.

And in my sister's garden

Where little breezes run,
The golden daffodillies

Are blowing in the sun.

THE ANSWER

When I go back to earth

And all my joyous body

Puts off the red and white

That once had been so proud,

Bliss Carman

From April Airs by Bliss Carman, copyright, 1916, reprinted by permission of the publishers, Small, Maynard & Company, Inc.

ORGANIC RHYTHM

Nor many years ago, when we of this generation attended school, the word "rhythm" had an occult and mysterious sound. We heard very little about it. But we heard of "meter" quite frequently. "Meter" meant tiresome exercises in "scansion." "Meter" meant memorizing formidable definitions of words like "anapæst" and "amphibrach." How we hated it! "Meter" and "scansion" were good for us because they provided "mental drill," and poetry was the disastrous result of the invention of "anapaest" and "amphibrach." How we hated the poets! We resolved that when we had left school and could choose freely we would have nothing to do with poetry! Unfortunately many of us kept the resolution.

On the other hand, when we became men and women, many of us realized that such words as "anapaest" and "amphibrach" were made and defined by grammarians and critics, not by poets. We realized that this technical language could be made useful and satisfactory in its own way. Very likely the ability to analyze and dissect the metrical structure of a poem has a real importance for the well-educated man or woman. But many of us learned too late what might have brought us nearer to the joy of poetry if we had learned it sooner, that this ability to analyze and dissect metrical structures according to the rules of teachers and critics is of small importance in comparison with the ability to feel a beautiful rhythm and enjoy a fine poem. Who ever gave us a clue to the meaning of rhythm in poetry? Who shared with us a sense of the joy and beauty in the rhythms of English verse? Did anyone ever tell us, for our comfort, that many a maker of beautiful lyrics has made them with no knowledge at all of the school-book definitions of "anapæst" and "amphibrach"?