To Venice so the story ran,

And through the world the glory ran:

The story of

The glory of

Victorious dead Loredan.

Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)

Miss Lazarus was chiefly noted during her lifetime for her literary crusade in behalf of her race, fired to this by the persecution of the Jews in Russia. Her antecedents were Portuguese Jewish. She began writing poetry at fourteen. At the age of eighteen her Poems and Translations were published. Four years later came Admetus and Other Poems. She also wrote romance and tragedy and The Dance of Death, a drama of persecution in the 12th century. He likewise translated Heine and brought out in 1882 Songs of a Semite. Her complete verse, with a memoir, appeared in 1888.

Miss Lazarus worked among the Jewish refugees in New York and her poetry is full of fire and indignation and pity in their cause. I give here one of her quieter poems which yet possesses a dignity and classic distinction that set it apart. She was a true bearer of the torch, a courageous and vivid figure in her time, eloquent against wrong.

THE CRANES OF IBYCUS *

THERE was a man who watched the river flow
Past the huge town, one gray November day.
Round him in narrow high-piled streets at play
The boys made merry as they saw him go,
Murmuring half-loud, with eyes upon the stream,
The immortal screed he held within his hand.
For he was walking in an April land

With Faust and Helen. Shadowy as a dream

The poem by Emma Lazarus is used with the permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.

Was the prose-world, the river and the town.
Wild joy possessed him; through enchanted skies
He saw the cranes of Ibycus swoop down.
He closed the page, he lifted up his eyes,

Lo-a black line of birds in wavering thread

Bore him the greetings of the deathless dead!

James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916)

Riley was one of the most widely popular of American poets because he dealt in homely sentiment with a lavish hand. He was born in Indiana. Starting to become a lawyer he joined a patentmedicine traveling wagon. That might serve as a sort of symbolism of his life. He ceased in his literary work to be judicious and ladled out the soothing-syrup of sentimentality. Riley was by turns a sign-painter, an actor, and a newspaper man. He contributed verse to the Indianapolis papers as far back as 1873. He joined the Indianapolis Journal and wrote for it dialect poems purporting to come from one "Benj. F. Johnson of Boone." His first book of verse in "Hoosier" was entitled The Old Swimmin' Hole, and 'Leven More Poems and appeared in 1883. He followed this success soon with other volumes. Riley wrote for the ordinary person and the ordinary person responded. But the Indiana bard also made a certain idiom absolutely his own. He was clever with his refrains, and his versification in general was above the ordinary. His work still has a strong hold on the heart of the people and will have for a long time to come. To other sections of the country he made intensely real the Hoosier domain. He is one of the most enduring of our folk-poets.

"WHEN THE FROST IS ON THE PUNKIN" *

WHEN the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock,

And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock,

*From the Biographical Edition of the Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley. Copyright, 1913. Used by special permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

And the clackin' of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens,

And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence; O, it's then the time a feller is a-feelin' at his best, With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,

As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is

here

Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the

trees,

And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of

the bees;

But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze

Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mockWhen the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,
And the raspin' of the tangled leaves as golden as the

morn;

The stubble in the furries-kindo' lonesome-like, but

still

A-preachin' sermuns to us of the barns they growed to

fill;