Her feet are on the winds, where space is deep,
Her eyes are nebulous and veiled;

She hurries through the night to a far lover...

THE SLAVE *

THEY set the slave free, striking off his chains . . . Then he was as much of a slave as ever.

He was still chained to servility,

He was still manacled to indolence and sloth,
He was still bound by fear and superstition,
By ignorance, suspicion, and savagery .
His slavery was not in the chains,

But in himself.

They can only set free men free .
And there is no need of that;

Free men set themselves free.

TASTING THE EARTH *

IN a dark hour, tasting the Earth.

...

As I lay on my couch in the muffled night, and the rain lashed my window,

And my forsaken heart would give me no rest, no pause and no peace,

Though I turned my face far from the wailing of my bereavement. . .

Then I said: I will eat of this sorrow to its last shred, I will take it unto me utterly,

I will see if I be not strong enough to contain it. . . .

What do I fear? Discomfort?

How can it hurt me, this bitterness?

The miracle, then!

Turning toward it, and giving up to it,

I found it deeper than my own self..

O dark great mother-globe so close beneath me
It was she with her inexhaustible grief,

Ages of blood-drenched jungles, and the smoking of craters, and the roar of tempests,

And moan of the forsaken seas,

It was she with the hills beginning to walk in the shapes of the dark-hearted animals,

It was she risen, dashing away tears and praying to dumb skies, in the pomp-crumbling tragedy of

man ...

It was she, container of all griefs, and the buried dust of broken hearts,

Cry of the christs and the lovers and the child-stripped

mothers,

And ambition gone down to defeat, and the battle over

On the food of the strong I fed, on dark strange life. itself:

Wisdom-giving and sombre with the unremitting love

of ages.

There was dank soil in my mouth,

And bitter sea on my lips,

In a dark hour, tasting the Earth.

Chester Firkins, brother of O. W. Firkins, the distinguished American literary critic and poet in his own right, lived long enough to publish only a few of the poems that show a remarkable poetic gift maturing. "On a Subway Express" is one of the best of these and appeared originally in The Atlantic Monthly. There is no knowing how far Chester Firkins might have developed his definitely original powers. He remains one of the few American poets whose early loss, in view of undeniable gifts, is a tragedy.

ON A SUBWAY EXPRESS *

I, WHO have lost the stars, the sod,
For chilling pave and cheerless light,
Have made my meeting-place with God
A new and nether Night-

Have found a fane where thunder fills
Loud caverns, tremulous;—and these
Atone me for my reverend hills

And moonlit silences.

A figment in the crowded dark,
Where men sit muted by the roar,

I ride upon the whirring Spark

Beneath the city's floor.

From Poems, by Chester Firkins, published by Sherman, French & Company, Boston.

In this dim firmament, the stars
Whirl by in blazing files and tiers;
Kin meteors graze our flying bars,
Amid the spinning spheres.

Speed! speed! until the quivering rails

Flash silver where the head-light gleams. As when on lakes the Moon impales The waves upon its beams.

Life throbs about me, yet I stand
Outgazing on majestic Power;
Death rides with me, on either hand,
In my communion hour.

You that 'neath country skies can pray,
Scoff not at me-the city clod ;-

My only respite of the Day

Is this wild ride-with God.

Hermann Hagedorn was class poet of his class at Harvard from which he graduated in 1907. He wrote, in "A Troop of the Guard," one of the most individual class poems that had been heard at Harvard for some years. He has contributed to the leading magazines for the last fifteen years and has published a number of volumes of poetry, a number of plays, a novel, several books on Roosevelt, and other literary work. He has written lyrics and ballads of unusual finish. He is a dexterous artist.

Hagedorn's sonnet, "Doors" appeared originally in The North American Review. It could hardly miss being included in an anthology of the best American sonnets. His lyric "The Wild Rose," written to music by Edward MacDowell, is altogether lovely in its own shyly musical variations. In it he has succeeded in catching not only the spirit but, magically, almost the very sound of the music, and therefore, though it may be considered slighter than some of his other poems, I think it one of his most brilliant achievements.

DOORS *

LIKE a young child who to his mother's door
Runs eager for the welcoming embrace,

And finds the door shut, and with troubled face
Calls and through sobbing calls, and o'er and o'er
Calling, storms at the panel-so before

A door that will not open, sick and numb,
I listen for a word that will not come,

And know, at last, I may not enter more.

*The poems by Hermann Hagedorn are used by permission of, and special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.