And still she turned and veered between
The river and the sea.

And many a time I thought her hands
Were praying to be free.

And then there came a night of storm,
Of wind and dark and snow,
And in the morn my shining vane

Had vanished in the blow.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

Portrait of a Lady

Sarah Northcliffe Cleghorn

Sarah Northcliffe Cleghorn was born at Norfolk, Virginia, February 4, 1876. Some of her books are, "The Turnpike Lady," 1907; "The Spinster," 1916; "Fellow Captains" (with Dorothy Canfield Fisher), 1916; and "Portraits and Protests," 1917.

Can you picture this lady for yourself? Do you not admire her? Bring this deep admiration into your reading.

HER eyes are sunlit hazel:

Soft shadows round them play.
Her dark hair, smoothly ordered,
Is faintly touched with gray.
Full of a gentle brightness

Her look and language are:-
Kind tongue that never wounded,
Sweet mirth that leaves no scar.

Her dresses are soft lilac

And silver-pearly gray.
She wears, on meet occasion,

Modes of a by-gone day, Yet moves with bright composure

In fashion's pageant set, Until her world she teaches

Its costume to forget.

With score of friends foregathered
Before a cheerful blaze,
She loves good ranging converse
Of past and future days.
Her best delight (too seldom)
From olden friends to hear
How fares the small old city
She left this many a year.

(There is a still more pleasant,
A cozier converse still,
When, all the guests departed,
Close comrades talk their fill.
Beside our smoldering fire

We muse and wonder late;
Commingling household gossip
With talk of gods and fate.)

All seeming ways of living,-
Proportion, comeliness,
Authority and order,-

Her loyal heart possess.
Then with what happy fingers
She spreads the linen fair
In that great Church of Bishops
That is her darling care!

And yet I dare to forecast
What her new name must be
Writ in the mystic volume
Beside the crystal sea:—
Instead of "True Believer,"
The golden quill hath penned,
"Of the poor beasts that perish,
The brave and noble friend."

Reprinted by permission of the author and Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright 1919.

The Wild Ride

Louise Imogen Guiney

For biographical note concerning the author, see "The Kings," page 114.

Here is life, summed up in a score of lines. Read the poem with courage and heroism, but do not treat the passing interests of life mentioned in the poem with too great scorn or brutality. Perhaps half the beauty of this selection lies in our longing for the pleasures of life, although we know we must leave them.

I HEAR in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses, All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses, All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing.

Let cowards and laggards fall back! But alert to the saddle,

Weatherworn and abreast, go men of our galloping legion,

With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him.

The trail is through dolor and dread, over crags and morasses;

There are shapes by the way, there are things that

appall or entice us:

What odds? We are Knights of the Grail, we are vowed to the riding.

Thought's self is a vanishing wing, and joy is a cobweb,

And friendship a flower in the dust, and glory a sunbeam :

Not here is our prize, nor, alas! after these our pursuing.

A dipping of plumes, a tear, a shake of the bridle, A passing salute to this world and her pitiful beauty; We hurry with never a word in the track of our fathers.

I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses, All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses, All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing.

We spur to a land of no name, outracing the stormwind;

We leap to the infinite dark like sparks from the anvil.

Thou leadest, O God! All's well with Thy troopers that follow.

At the Crossroads

Richard Hovey

For biographical note concerning the author, see "The Sea Gypsy," page 14.

This poem, like the preceding, has a note of high heroism, but friendship here is made to triumph over Fate. Seek a balance between the note of fatalism and the note of friendship.

You to the left and I to the right,

For the ways of men must sever—

And it well may be for a day and a night,
And it well may be forever.

But whether we meet or whether we part
(For our ways are past our knowing),

A pledge from the heart to its fellow heart
On the ways we all are going!

Here's luck!

For we know not where we are going.

Whether we win or whether we lose
With the hands that life is dealing,
It is not we nor the ways we choose,
But the fall of the cards that's sealing.
There's a fate in love and a fate in fight,

And the best of us all go under

And whether we're wrong or whether we're right,

We win, sometimes, to our wonder.

Here's luck!

That we may not go under!

With a steady swing and an open brow

We have tramped the ways together,