WINGS*

GRAY gulls that wheeled and dipped and rose
Where tossing crests like Alpine snows

Would shimmer and entice;

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A soaring wing that shone so far

The orient horizon bar

Flushed, and the sea between

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Like an Arabian carpet glowed

With changeful hues where subtly flowed
Some magical device;

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And one pale plume in heaven's dim dome
Above that fairy-colored foam,

The new moon's ghostly sheen.

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Katharine Lee Bates.

*Used by permission, from "Wings," by Katharine Lee Bates. copyright by E. P. Dutton and Company.

SALUTE TO THE TREES

MANY a tree is found in the wood
And every tree for its use is good;

Some for the strength of the gnarled root,
Some for the sweetness of flower or fruit;
Some for shelter against the storm,
And some to keep the hearth-stone warm.
Some for the roof, and some for the beam,
And some for a boat to breast the stream:
In the wealth of the wood since the world began
The trees have offered their gifts to man.

But the glory of trees is more than their gifts;
"Tis a beautiful wonder of life that lifts
From a wrinkled seed in an earth-bound clod.
A column, an arch in the temple of God,-
A pillar of power, a dome of delight,
A shrine of song, and a joy of sight!

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Their roots are the nurses of rivers in birth
Their leaves are alive with the breath of the earth;
They shelter the dwellings of man; and they bend
O'er his grave with the look of a loving friend. »

I have camped in the whispering forest of pines,
I have slept in the shadow of olives and vines;
In the knees of an oak, at the foot of a palm
I have found good rest and slumber's balm.

And now, when the morning gilds the boughs
Of the vaulted elm at the door of my house,
I open the window and make salute:

"God bless thy branches and feed thy root!
Thou hast lived before, live after me,

Thou ancient, friendly, faithful tree."

Henry van Dyke.

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THE CHANT OF THE COLORADO

(At the Grand Canyon)

MY BROTHER, man, shapes him a plan
And builds him a house in a day,

But I have toiled through a million years
For a home to last alway.

I have flooded the sands and washed them

down,

I have cut through gneiss and granite.

No toiler of earth has wrought as I,

Since God's first breath began it.

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High mountain-buttes I have chiselled, to shade
My wanderings to the sea.

With the wind's aid, and the cloud's aid,
Unweary and mighty and unafraid,

I have bodied eternity.

My brother, man, builds for a span:

His life is a moment's breath.

But I have hewn for a million years,

Nor a moment dreamt of death.

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By moons and stars I have measured my taskAnd some of the skies have perished:

But ever I cut and flashed and foamed,

As ever my aim I cherished:

My aim to quarry the heart of earth,

Till, in the rock's red rise,

Its age and birth, through an awful girth
Of strata, should show the wonder-worth
Of patience to all eyes.

My brother, man, builds as he can,
And beauty he adds for his joy,
But all the hues of sublimity

My pinnacled walls employ.

Slow shadows iris them all day long,
And silvery veils, soul-stilling,
The moon drops down their precipices,
Soft with a spectral thrilling.
For all immutable dreams that sway
With beauty the earth and air,
Are ever at play, by night and day,
My house of eternity to array

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In visions ever fair.

Cale Young Rice.

A DEAD HARVEST

In Kensington Gardens

ALONG the graceless grass of town
They rake the rows of red and brown-
Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hay
Delicate, touched with gold and grey,
Raked long ago and far away.

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A narrow silence in the park,
Between the lights a narrow dark.
One street rolls on the north; and one,
Muffled, upon the south doth run;
Amid the mist the work is done.

A futile crop! for it the fire

Smoulders, and, for a stack, a pyre.
So go the town's lives on the breeze,
Even as the sheddings of the trees;
Bosom nor barn is filled with these.

1Ο

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Alice Meynell.

CHECK

THE night was creeping on the ground;
She crept and did not make a sound
Until she reached the tree, and then
She covered it, and stole again
Along the grass beside the wall.

I heard the rustle of her shawl
As she threw blackness everywhere
Upon the sky and ground and air,
And in the room where I was hid:
But no matter what she did
To everything that was without,
She could not put my candle out.

So I stared at the night, and she
Stared back solemnly at me.

James Stephens.

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