Upon a hillside or along the brink
Of streams, encounters instances
Of its eventual enterprise:
Inhabits the enclosing clay,

In rhapsody is caught away
In a great tide

Of beauty, to abide

Translated through the night and day

Of time, and by the anointing balm

Of earth to outgrow decay.

Hark in the wind-the word of silent lips!

Look where some subtle throat, that once had

wakened lust,

Lies clear and lovely now, a silver link

Of change and peace!

Hollows and willows and a river-bed,

Anemones and clouds,

Raindrops and tender distances

Above, beneath,

Inherit and bequeath

Our far-begotten beauty. We are wed

With many kindred who were seeming dead.

Only the delicate woven shrouds

Are vanished, beauty thrown aside

To honor and uncover

A deeper beauty-as the veil that slips
Breathless away between a lover

And his bride.

So, by the body, may the soul surmise
The beauty of surrender, the tranquillity

Of fusion: when, set free

From semblance of mortality,

Yielding its dust the richer to endue

A common avenue

Of earth for other souls to journey through,

It shall put on in purer guise

The mutual beauty of its destiny.

And who shall fear for his identity,
And who shall cling to the poor privacy
Of incompleteness, when the end explains
That what pride forfeits, beauty gains!
Therefore, O spirit, as a runner strips
Upon a windy afternoon,

Be unencumbered of what troubles you-
Arise with grace

And greatly go, the wind upon your face!

Grieve not for the invisible transported brow
On which like leaves the dark hair grew;
Nor for the lips of laughter that are now
Laughing inaudibly in sun and dew;
Nor for the limbs that, fallen low
And seeming faint and slow,

Shall alter and renew

Their shape and hue

Like birches white before the moon,

Or a young apple-tree

In spring, or the round sea;

And shall pursue

More ways of swiftness than the swallow dips

Among . . . and find more winds than ever blew The straining sails of unimpeded ships!

For never beauty dies

That lived. Nightly the skies

Assemble stars, the light of many eyes,

And daily brood on the communal breath

Which we call death.

Reprinted by permission of, and special arrangement with, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

To the Dead in the Graveyard
Underneath My Window

Adelaide Crapsey

Adelaide Crapsey was born at Rochester, New York, in 1878. She graduated from Vassar in 1901. She became instructor in Poetics at Smith College in 1911, but failing health compelled her to retire in 1913. Between 1913 and 1914, when she died, she did most of her poetic writing.

What fine rebellion here! How the spirit chafes at the bonds of the broken body! Lively inflections characterize the whole poem, with the exception of the last few lines.

How can you lie so still? All day I watch
And never a blade of all the green sod moves
To show where restlessly you turn and toss,
Or fling a desperate arm or draw up knees
Stiffened and aching from their long disuse.
I watch all night, and not one ghost comes forth
To take its freedom of the midnight hour.

Oh, have you no rebellion in your bones?

The very worms must scorn you where you lie— A pallid, mouldering, acquiescent folk,

Meek habitants of unresented graves.

Why are you there in your straight row on row,
Where I must ever see you from my bed
That in your mere dumb presence iterate
The text so weary in my ears: "Lie still
And rest-be patient, and lie still and rest."
I'll not be patient! I will not lie still!
There is a brown road runs between the pines,
And further on the purple woodlands lie,
And still beyond blue mountains lift and loom;
And I would walk the road, and I would be
Deep in the wooded shade, and I would reach
The windy mountain-tops that touch the clouds.
My eyes may follow but my feet are held.
Recumbent as you others, must I too
Submit?-be mimic of your movelessness,
With pillow and counterpane for stone and sod?
And if the many sayings of the wise
Teach of submission, I will not submit,
But with a spirit all unreconciled

Flash an unquenched defiance to the stars.
Better it is to walk, to run, to dance;
Better it is to laugh and leap and sing,
To know the open skies of dawn and night,
To move untrammeled down the flaming noon:
And I will clamor it through weary days,
Keeping the edge of deprivation sharp;
Nor with the pliant speaking on my lips
Of resignation, sister to defeat.
I'll not be patient! I will not lie still!

And in ironic quietude who is

The despot of our days and lord of dust

Needs but, scarce heeding, wait to drop
Grim casual comment on rebellion's end;
"Yes, yes. . . . Wilful and petulant, but now
As dead and quiet as the others are."

And this each body and ghost of you hath heard
That in your graves do therefore lie so still.

Reprinted from Verse by Adelaide Crapsey, by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., authorized publishers.

Mother Earth

Harriet Monroe

Harriet Monroe is editor of Poetry, and, with Alice Corbin Henderson, is the compiler of "The New Poetry," a collection of modern verse published by The Macmillan Company, New York, in 1917, and in 1923. Her volumes of poetry include "The Passing Show," published by Houghton Mifflin Company, and "You and I," published by The Macmillan Company.

Be sure you grasp the wide sweep of imagination in this poem. Bring out the triumph that is found in Man. Do not neglect, however, the music of the lines.

Он, a grand old time has the earth
In the long long life she lives!
From her huge mist-shrouded birth,
When, reeling from under,
She tore space asunder,
And, feeling her way

Through the dim first day,
Rose wheeling to run
In the path of the sun-
From then till forever,
Tiring not, pausing never,

She labors and laughs and gives.