Nay, more-lest that my means should ne'er suffice,—
For such a work there was no buyer's price;

The age forsooth was filled with wars of greed,
A straitened world it was for those in need.

Some time in that condition did I live,
Yet of my secret not a word did give,
Finding no person who my aims would share,
Nor act for me with friendly patron care

By hap, a friend beloved at Tus I had;

...

Thou would'st have said 'Two souls in one skin clad!'
To me he spake, 'Good is thy whole project,
Thy foot toward fortune now is turned direct;

That book, which written is in Pahlavi,

I'll get for thee; but slack thou must not be;
Thine is the gift of speech; and youth is thine.
To tell the tale of champions' deeds-in fine,
Do thou the Kingly Book anew relate

And seek through it renown among the great.'

When he at last that book before me laid
He made ablaze with light my soul of shade!

INSPIRATION

WILFRED WILSON GIBSON

On the outermost far-flung ridge of ice and snow
That over pits of sunset fire hangs sheer
My naked spirit poises, then hangs clear
From the cold crystal into the furnace glow
Of ruby and amber lucencies, and dives,
In the brief moment of ten thousand lives
Through fathomless infinities of light,
Then cleansed by lustral flame and frost returns;
And for an instant through my body burns;
The immortal fires of cold-white ecstasy
As down the darkening valley of the night
I keep the old track of mortality.

HOW TO THE SINGER COMES THE SONG?

RICHARD WATSON GILDER

I

How to the singer comes the song?

At times a joy, alone;

A wordless tone

Caught from the crystal gleam of the ice-bound trees;
Or from the violet-perfumed breeze;

Or the sharp smell of the seas

In sunlight glittering many an emerald mile;

Or the keen memory of a love-lit smile.

II

Thus to the singer comes the song:

Gazing at crimson skies

Where burns and dies

On day's wide hearth the calm celestial fire,
The poet with a wild desire

Strikes the impassioned lyre,

Takes into tuned sound the flaming sight

And ushers with new song the ancient night.

III

How to the singer comes the song?

Bowed down by ill and sorrow

On every morrow—

The unworded pain breaks forth in heavenly singing;

Not all too late dear solace bringing

To broken spirits winging

Through mortal anguish to the unknown rest

A lyric balm for every wounded breast.

IV.

How to the singer comes the song?

How to the summer fields

Come flowers? How yields

Darkness to happy dawn? How doth the night
Bring stars? O, how do love and light

Leap at the sound and sight

Of her who makes this dark world seem less wrongLife of his life, soul of all his song!

POETRY

ELLA HEATH

I am the reality of things that seem:
The great transmuter, melting loss to gain,
Languor to love, and fining joy from pain;
I am the waking, who am called the dream;
I am the sun, all light reflects my gleam;
I am the altar fire within the fane;

I am the face of the refreshing rain;
I am the sea which flows to every stream;
I am the utmost height there is to climb;
I am the truth mirrored in fancy's glass;
I am stability, all else will pass;

I am eternity, encircling time;

Kill me, none may; conquer me, nothing can,-
I am God's soul, fused in the soul of man.

POETS

JOYCE KILMER

Vain is the chiming of forgotten bells
That the wind sways above a ruined shrine,
Vainer his voice in whom no longer dwells
Hunger that craves immortal Bread and Wine.

Light songs we breathe that perish with our breath
Out of our lips that have not kissed the rod.
They shall not live who have not tasted death.
They only sing who are struck dumb by God.

OF AN OLD SONG

Wм. E. H. LECKY

Little snatch of an ancient song,
What has made thee live so long?
Flying on thy wings of rhyme
Lightly down the depths of time,
Telling nothing strange or rare,
Scarce a thought or image there,
Nothing but the old, old tale
Of a hapless lover's wail;
Offspring of an idle hour,

Whence has come thy lasting power?
By what turn of rhythm or phrase,
By what subtle careless grace,
Can thy music charm our ears,
After full three hundred years?
Landmarks of the human mind
One by one are left behind,
And a subtle change is wrought
In the mould and cast of thought:
Modes of reasoning pass away,
Types of beauty lose their sway;
Creeds and Causes that have made
Many noble lives must fade,
And the words that thrilled of old
Now seem hueless, dead and cold;
Fancy's rainbow tints are flying,
Thoughts, like men, are slowly dying:
All things perish and the strongest
Often do not last the longest;
The stately ship is seen no more,
The fragile skiff attains the shore;
And while the great and wise decay,
And all their trophies pass away,
Some sudden thought, some careless rhyme
Still floats above the wrecks of time.

THE FATE OF THE PROPHETS

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

From The Divine Tragedy

Alas! how full of fear

Is the fate of the Prophet and Seer!
For evermore, for evermore,

It shall be as it hath been heretofore;

The age in which they live will not forgive The splendor of the everlasting light,

That makes their foreheads bright,

Nor the sublime

Fore-running of their time!

THE POET

AMY LOWELL

What instinct forces man to journey on, Urged by a longing blind but dominant! Nothing he sees can hold him, nothing daunt His never-failing eagerness. The sun Setting in splendor every night has won

His vassalage; those towers flamboyant Of airy cloudland palaces now haunt His daylight wanderings. Forever done With simple joys and quiet happiness.

He guards the vision of the sunset sky; Though faint with weariness he must possess Some fragments of the sunset's majesty; He spurns life's human friendships to profess Life's loneliness of dreaming ecstasy.