For still when drowsiness comes on
It seems so soft and cool,
Shaped happily beneath my cheek,
Hollow and beautiful!

2

Her Words

My mother has the prettiest tricks
Of words and words and words.
Her talk comes out as smooth and sleek
As breasts of singing birds.

She shapes her speech all silver fine
Because she loves it so.

And her own eyes begin to shine
To hear her stories grow.

And if she goes to make a call

Or out to take a walk,

We leave our work when she returns
And run to hear her talk.

We had not dreamed these things were so
Of sorrow and of mirth.

Her speech is as a thousand eyes
Through which we see the earth.

God wove a web of loveliness,
Of clouds and stars and birds,
But made not anything at all
So beautiful as words.

They shine around our simple earth
With golden shadowings,

And every common thing they touch
Is exquisite with wings.

There's nothing poor and nothing small
But is made fair with them.

They are the hands of living faith
That touch the garment's hem.

They are as fair as bloom or air,
They shine like any star,

And I am rich who learned from her

How beautiful they are.

Reprinted by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the owners of the copyright.

Roofs

Joyce Kilmer

Joyce Kilmer was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1886. He was educated at Columbia University. He was killed in action during the second Battle of the Marne, July 30, 1918. He is the author of several volumes of prose and verse.

This eloquent plea for home should be read in medium rate and with sustained earnestness and sympathy. Remember that home is the key-word throughout. A very fine effect may be obtained by dwelling upon and bringing out with increasing emphasis the repetition of "homes" in the fifth line from the last. THE road is wide and the stars are out and the breath of the night is sweet,

And this is the time when wanderlust should seize upon my feet.

But I'm glad to turn from the open road and the starlight on my face,

And to leave the splendor of out-of-doors for a human dwelling-place.

I never have seen a vagabond who really liked to

roam

All up and down the streets of the world and not have a home;

The tramp who slept in your barn last night and left at break of day

Will wander only until he finds another place to

stay.

A gypsy man will sleep in his cart with canvas overhead,

Or else he'll go into his tent when it is time for

bed.

He'll sit on the grass and take his ease so long as the sun is high,

But when it is dark he wants a roof to keep away

the sky.

If you call a gypsy a vagabond, I think you do him

wrong,

For he never goes a-traveling but he takes his home

along.

And the only reason a road is good, as every wanderer knows,

Is just because of the homes, the homes to which

it goes.

They say that life is a highway and its milestones are the years,

And now and then there's a toll-gate where you buy your way with tears.

It's a rough road and a steep road and it stretches broad and far,

But at last it leads to a golden Town where golden Houses are.

From Joyce Kilmer: Poems, Essays, and Letters, edited by R. C. Holliday. Copyright 1914, by George H. Doran Company, Publishers.

Piano

David Herbert Lawrence

David Herbert Lawrence was born in 1885. He is an English poet, and is noted for his intense passion and emotion. Louis Untermeyer in his "Modern American and British Poetry," says of him: "As a poet he is often caught in the net of his own emotions; his passion thickens his utterance and distorts his rhythms, which sometimes seem purposely harsh and bitter-flavored. within his range he is as powerful as he is poignant." Among his books of poetry are "Amores" and "Look! We Have Come Through," published by B. W. Huebsch, Inc., New York, and "New Poems," published by Martin Secher, London.

But

This delicate poem should be rendered delicately. Begin softly and drift into affection and reverie. In the last stanza there is an emotional revulsion at the music of the present singer, followed by a complete capitulation to grief.

SOFTLY, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings,

And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong

To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside

And hymns in the cosy parlor, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamor

With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour

Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a

child for the past.

Reprinted by permission of, and by special arrangement with, B. W. Huebsch, Inc., New York. Copyrighted.

Autumn

Jean Starr Untermeyer

(To My Mother)

Jean Starr Untermeyer was born at Zanesville, Ohio, in 1886. She was educated at Putnam Seminary, Zanesville, and Columbia University, New York. She married Louis Untermeyer, the poet, in 1907. She excels in speaking of ordinary things in a poetic way. Her two published volumes are "Growing Pains" and "Dreams out of Darkness," both published by B. W. Huebsch, Inc., New York.

Rarely has the picture of the home life of the preceding generation been painted so clearly as in this poem. Linger over each separate picture with affection, and if emotion bubbles up in the closing lines, do not crush it out, yet keep it under control.

How memory cuts away the years,
And how clean the picture comes
Of autumn days, brisk and busy;
Charged with keen sunshine,