WE

BY HERVEY ALLEN

We who have come back from the war,
And stand upright and draw full breath,
Seek boldly what life holds in store
And eat its whole fruit rind and core,
Before we enter through the door
To keep our rendezvous with death.

We who have walked with death in France,
When all the world with death was rife,
Who came through all that devils' dance,
When life was but a circumstance,
A sniper's whim, a bullet's glance,
We have a rendezvous with life!

With life that hurtles like a spark
From stricken steel where anvils chime,
That leaps the space from dark to dark,
A blinding, blazing, flaming arc,

As clean as fire, and frank and stark-
White life that lives while there is time.

We will not live by musty creeds,

Who learned the truth through love and war, Who tipped the scales for right by deeds, When old men's lies were broken reeds,

We follow where the cold fact leads

And bow our heads no more.

We have come back who broke the line
The hard Hun held by bomb and knife!
All but the blind can read 'the sign;
The time is ours by right divine,

Who drank with Death in blood red wine,
We have a rendezvous with life!

COURAGE, MON AMI!

BY WILLARD WATTLES

Oh, it is good to camp with the spirit,
Oh, it is jaunty to walk with the mind,
When the soul sees all the future to share it
Knowing the road that stretches behind.

Courage, my comrade, the devil is dying!

Here's the bright sun and a cloud scudding free; The touch of your hand is too near for denying, And laughter's a tavern sufficient for me.

Hang your old hat on the smoke-mellowed rafter,
Strike an old song on your crazy guitar;
Hey, hustle, old lady, it's heaven we're after-
God, but I'm glad we can be what we are!

From TAMAR

BY ROBINSON JEFFERS

She answered, standing dark against the west in the window, the death of the winter rose of evening

Behind her little high-poised head, and threading the brown twilight of the room with the silver

Exultance of her voice, "My brother can you feel how happy I am, but how far off too?

If I have done wrong it has turned good to me, I could almost be sorry that I have to die now

Out of such freedom; if I were standing back of the evening crimson on a mountain in Asia

All the fool shames you can whip up into a filth of words would not be farther off me,

Nor any fear of anything, if I stood in the evening star and saw this dusty dime's worth

A dot of light, dropped up the star-gleam."

THE CELESTIAL SURGEON

BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

If I have faltered more or less
In my great task of happiness;
If I have moved among my race
And shown no glorious morning face;
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not; if morning skies,
Books, and my food, and summer rain
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain:-
Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take
And stab my spirit broad awake;
Or, Lord, if too obdurate I,
Choose thou, before that spirit die,

A piercing pain, a killing sin,
And to my dead heart run them in!

From THE COLLAR

BY GEORGE HERBERT

I struck the board and cry'd, "No more;

I will abroad."

What, shall I ever sigh and pine?

My lines and life are free; free as the road,
Loose as the winde, as large as store
Is the yeare onely lost to me?

Have I no bayes to crown it,

No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted,
All wasted?

Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,
And thou hast hands.

Recover all thy sigh-blown age

On double pleasures; leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit and not; forsake thy cage,
Thy rope of sands

Which pettie thoughts have made; and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,

And be thy law,

While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.

Away! take heed;

I will abroad.

Call in thy death's-head there, tie up thy fears;
He that forbears

To suit and serve his need

Deserves his load.

AN OLD SONG RESUNG

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.

She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;

But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white

hand.

She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;

But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

A Selection from THE POEM OF JOYS

BY WALT WHITMAN

... O the joy of my spirit! it is uncaged! it darts like lightning!

It is not enough to have this globe, or a certain time— I will have thousands of globes, and all time ..