FRAGMENT FROM "HEROD"

Herod speaks:

I dreamed last night of a dome of beaten gold
To be a counter-glory to the Sun.

There shall the eagle blindly dash himself,

There the first beam shall strike, and there the moon
Shall aim all night her argent archery;

And it shall be the tryst of sundered stars,
The haunt of dead and dreaming Solomon;
Shall send a light upon the lost in Hell,
And flashings upon faces without hope.—
And I will think in gold and dream in silver,
Imagine in marble and conceive in bronze,
Till it shall dazzle pilgrim nations

And stammering tribes from undiscovered lands,
Allure the living God out of the bliss,

And all the streaming seraphim from heaven.

BEAUTIFUL LIE THE DEAD

Beautiful lie the dead;

Clear comes each feature;

Satisfied not to be,

Strangely contented.

Like ships, the anchor dropped,

Furled every sail is;

Mirrored with all their masts

In a deep water.

A DREAM

My dead love came to me, and said:
'God gives me one hour's rest,
To spend with thee on earth again:
How shall we spend it best?'

'Why, as of old,' I said; and so
We quarrelled, as of old:

But, when I turned to make my peace,
That one short hour was told.

Laurence Binyon

Laurence Binyon was born at Lancaster, August 10, 1869, a cousin of Stephen Phillips; in Primavera (1890) their early poems appeared together. Binyon's subsequent volumes showed little distinction until he published London Visions, which, in an enlarged edition in 1908, revealed a gift of characterization and a turn of speech in surprising contrast to his previous academic Lyrical Poems (1894). His Odes (1901) contains his ripest work; two poems in particular, "The Threshold" and "The Bacchanal of Alexander," are glowing and unusually spontaneous.

Binyon's power has continued to grow; age has given his verse a new sharpness. "The House That Was," one of his most recent poems, appeared in The London Mercury, November, 1919.

A SONG

For Mercy, Courage, Kindness, Mirth,
There is no measure upon earth.
Nay, they wither, root and stem,
If an end be set to them.

Overbrim and overflow,

If you own heart you would know;
For the spirit born to bless

Lives but in its own excess.

THE HOUSE THAT WAS

Of the old house, only a few crumbled

Courses of brick, smothered in nettle and dock, Or a squared stone, lying mossy where it tumbled! Sprawling bramble and saucy thistle mock What once was firelit floor and private charm

Where, seen in a windowedti

er

and huby-dye thy tra k

last living reach

sail the

aniid April's cuckoo

Crot aconite mixt with weeds

A

But, uark and lofty, a royal cedar towers
By homely thorns: whether the white rain drifts
Or sun scorches, he holds the downs in ken,
The western vale; his branchy tiers he lifts,
Older than many
generation of men.

Lord Alfred Douglas was born in 1870 and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was the editor of The Academy from 1907 to 1910 and was at one time the intimate friend

of Oscar Wilde. One the minor poets of "the eighteen-nineties," several of his poems rise above his own affectations and the end-of-the-century decadence. The City of the Soul (1899) and Sonnets (1900) contain his most graceful writing.

THE GREEN RIVER

I know a green grass path that leaves the field
And, like a running river, winds along
Into a leafy wood, where is no throng
Of birds at noon-day; and no soft throats yield
Their music to the moon. The place is sealed,
An unclaimed sovereignty of voiceless song,
he unravished silences belong
...outhsh

born a
the County
He was, uda Bernard Shaw" dise
berry-picker, a panhandler-in short,

'inrevealed.

Autobiog

the r

To fin some voice

...oid.

shape of sorrow with wan faustaulo &

Or love that swoons on sleep, or else delight
That is as wide-eyed as a marigold.

T. Sturgefore

Thomas Sturge Moore was born March 4, 18. He is well known not only as an author, but as a critic and wood-engraver. As an artist, he has achieved no little distinction and has designed the covers for the poetry of W. B. Yeats and others. As a poet, the greater portion of his verse is severely classical in tone, academic in expression but, of its kind, dis

tinctive and intimate.

Among his many volumes, the most

outstanding are The Vinedresser and Other Poems (1899), A Sicilian Idyll (1911) and The Sea Is Kind (1914).

Down thy last living reach

Of river, sail the golden light-
Enter the sun's heart even teach
O wondrous-gifted Pain, teach Thou
The God of love, let him learn how!

SILENCE SINGS

So faint, no ear is sure it hears,
So faint and far;

So vast that very near appears

My voice, both here and in each star
Unmeasured leagues do bridge between ;
Like that which on a face is seen

Where secrets are;