Highmount Louis Untermeyer For biographical note concerning the author, see "The Laughers," page 88. This exquisite poem may well test the imagination of the reader. Bring out the contrast between the restless impatience of the sea and the calm solidity of the hills. Do not forget the rhyme. HILLS, you have answered the craving You have opened your deep blue bosom The sea had filled me with the stress Of its own restlessness; My voice was in that angry roll Of passion beating upon the world. The ground beneath me shifted; I was swirled In an implacable flood that howled to see Its breakers rising in me, A torrent rushing through my soul, And tearing things free. I could not control A monstrous impatience, a stubborn and vain Repetition of madness and longing, of question and pain, Driving me up to the brow of this hill Calling and questioning still. And you-you smile In ordered calm; You wrap yourself in cloudy contemplation while Rooted in quiet confidence, you rise Above the frantic and assailing years; Your silent faith is louder than the cries; The shattering fears Break and subside when they encounter you. Hills, you are strong; and my burdens Are scattered like foam; You have opened your deep blue bosom Reprinted by permission of the author, and by permission. of, and special arrangement with, Henry Holt and Company. May is Building Her House Richard Le Gallienne Richard Le Gallienne was born in Liverpool, January 20, 1866. He is a journalist and man of letters. He was educated at Liverpool College and has published numerous poems, sonnets, and essays. This beautiful fancy should be rendered with tenderness and delight. There is much music in the rhyme, which should be fully developed. Paint each picture as vividly as possible without destroying the onward flow of the verse. MAY is building her house. With apple blooms With echoes and dreams, May is building her house. Of petal and blade, Of the roots of the oak, is the flooring made, With a carpet of mosses and lichen and clover, Each small miracle over and over, And tender, traveling green things strayed. Her windows, the morning and evening star, With the coming and going Of fair things blowing, The thresholds of the four winds are. May is building her house. From the dust of things She is making the songs and the flowers and the wings; From October's tossed and trodden gold She is making the young year out of the old; She is making all the summer sweet, And the brown leaves spurned of November's feet She is changing back again into spring's. Reprinted by permission of the author and Harper and Brothers, publishers of the author's works. After Sunset Grace Hazard Conkling Grace Hazard Conkling was born in New York City. She entered Smith College in 1899 and later studied music and languages in Heidelberg and Paris. She married Roscoe Platt Conkling in 1905. She is teaching English in Smith College at the present time, and contributes poems to a number of the leading magazines of the country. with An effective oral interpretation of this intimate study of one of Nature's most impressive phenomena requires slow rate, appropriate tone-color to depict the varying scenes and sentiments. I HAVE an understanding with the hills At evening, when the slanted radiance fills Their hollows, and the great winds let them be, And why a dream of forests must endure A flower can say it, or a shaken leaf, But few may ever snare it in a song, Though for the quest a life is not too long. A Dakota Wheat Field Hamlin Garland Hamlin Garland was born in West Salem, Wisconsin, on September 16, 1860. He is a novelist and dramatist. As a boy he worked on a farm and went to school, and later taught school in Illinois. He began to write stories about 1893. Residents of states having expansive wheat fields will recognize how true to nature is the following beautiful description. The poem, especially in the second stanza, offers opportunity for the study of changes in rate to express changing scenes and emotions. LIKE liquid gold the wheat field lies, A marvel of yellow and russet and green, That ripples and runs, that floats and flies, |