Long shall she and I be dead,
While you whisper what she said;
You, when I no word can give her,
Shall forever whisper, river:

Things you heard that blessed be,
Telling them to men like me.

OUTSIDE hove Shasta, snowy height on height,
A glory; but a negligible sight,

For you had often seen a mountain-peak
But not my paper. So we came to speak . . .
A smoke, a smile,-a good way to commence
The comfortable exchange of difference!
You a young engineer, five feet eleven,
Forty-five chest, with football in your heaven,
Liking a road-bed newly built and clean,
Your fingers hot to cut away the green
Of brush and flowers that bring beside a track
The kind of beauty steel lines ought to lack,-
And I a poet, wistful of my betters,

Reading George Meredith's high-hearted letters,
Joining betweenwhile in the mingled speech
Of a drummer, circus-man, and parson, each
Absorbing to himself as I to me

And you to you—a glad identity!

After a time, when others went away,

A curious kinship made us choose to stay,

Which I could tell you now; but at the time
You thought of baseball teams and I of rhyme,
Until we found that we were college men
And smoked more easily and smiled again;
And I from Cambridge cried, the poet still:
"I know your fine Greek theatre on the hill
At Berkeley!" With your happy Grecian head
Upraised, "I never saw the place," you said-
"Once I was free of class, I always went
Out to the field."

Young engineer, you meant

As fair a tribute to the better part
As ever I did. Beauty of the heart
Is evident in temples. But it breathes
Alive where athletes quicken curly wreaths,
Which are the lovelier because they die.
You are a poet quite as much as I,
Though differences appear in what we do,
And I am athlete quite as much as you.
Because you half-surmise my quarter-mile
And I your quatrain, we could greet and smile.
Who knows but we shall look again and find
The circus-man and drummer, not behind

But leading in our visible estate—

As discus-thrower and as laureate?

Francis Carlin, whose full real name is James Francis Carlin MacDonnell, was born at Bay Shore, N. Y., and educated at parish schools in Norwalk, Conn. He became floor superintendent at Macy's. He then discovered his true calling as a poet, contributed poems to newspapers and magazines, and has published several volumes of great beauty and authentic Gaelic inspiration, notably My Ireland (1917) and The Cairn of Stars (1920). From the latter the following poems are taken. Carlin is a finished craftsman, with a delicious fancy and the true lyric voice.

THE TWO NESTS *

THE wonder was on me in Curraghmacall,
When I was as tall as the height of your knee,
That the wren should be building a hole in the wall
Instead of a nest in a tree.

And I still do be thinking it strange, when I pass
A pasture that has to be evenly ploughed,
That the lark should be building a hole in the grass
Instead of a nest in a cloud.

JOY TO YOU*

Joy to you and gladness,

And that your soul may be

As far away from sadness

As the Star was from the sea

When the Sheep-Boy, the Sheep-Boy,

Heard Heaven's melody.

* From Cairn of Stars, by Francis Carlin. Copyright, 1920, by Henry Holt and Company.

Smiles to you and laughter,
And also that you may
Be merry the morning after
On good St. Stephen's Day
When the Wren-Boy, the Wren-Boy
Shall sing his roundelay.

Joy to you and gladness,

And that the midnight bell

May ring away the sadness

From the stricken Old Year's knell When the Chimes-Boy, the Chimes-Boy, Strikes "Welcome" and "Farewell."

James Oppenheim (1882

Oppenheim was born in Minnesota, but his family soon moved to New York. He went to public school and to Columbia, engaged in settlement work, and was superintendent of a Technical School for Girls. He studied the lower East Side and brought out two books in the year 1909. One was a book of short stories, Doctor Rast, one Monday Morning, and Other Poems. The latter showed the influence of Whitman but also a new personality. It was a book that endeavored to bring to the world a new message of brotherhood; it was uneven and chaotic, but native power pervaded it. Oppenheim produced more short stories, novels, moving picture scenarios, his energy seemed inexhaustible. The original publication of Songs for the New Age finally placed him as one of our most dynamic poets. He questioned everything, delved into every superficial aspect of life to find the actual truth. His enthusiasm, his protest, his irony were stimulating. This remains his strongest book of poems. He came under the influence of psychoanalysis, and one of his latest books, The Mystic Warrior, is an effort at autobiography in the psychoanalytic vein. He became a practising psychoanalyst and is still writing stories and poetry. Both the study and the practice of psychoanalysis, he says, have acquainted him with a deeper knowledge of human life and its motives and spiritual struggles than he could have gained in any other way. The poems selected here are from his Songs for the New Age.

THE RUNNER IN THE SKIES *

WHO is the runner in the skies,

With her blowing scarf of stars,

And our Earth and sun hovering like bees about her blossoming heart?

* Reprinted by permission from Songs for the New Age, by James Oppen. heim, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.