They have remembered islands in the dawn,
And windy capes that tried their slender spars,
And tortuous channels where their keels have gone,
And calm blue nights of stillness and the stars.

Ah, never think that ships forget a shore,

Or bitter seas, or winds that made them wise; There is a dream upon them, evermore;

And there be some who say that sunk ships rise To seek familiar harbors in the night,

Blowing in mists, their spectral sails like light.

Orrick Johns

Orrick Johns was born at St. Louis, Missouri, in 1887. He schooled himself to be an advertising copy writer, his creative work being kept as an avocation.

Asphalt and Other Poems (1917) is a queer mixture. Cheap stanzas crowd against lines of singular beauty; poor dialect verse elbows lyrics that sing without a false note. The same

incongruity is evident in Black Branches (1920), where much that is strained and artificial mingles with poetry that is not only spontaneous but searching. At his best, notably in the refreshing "Country Rhymes," Johns is a true singer, a lyricist of no little stature.

THE INTERPRETER

In the very early morning when the light was low
She got all together and she went like snow,
Like snow in the springtime on a sunny hill,

And we were only frightened and can't think still.

We can't think quite that the katydids and frogs
And the little crying chickens and the little grunting hogs,
And the other living things that she spoke for to us
Have nothing more to tell her since it happened thus.

She never is around for any one to touch,
But of ecstasy and longing she too knew much
And always when any one has time to call his own
She will come and be beside him as quiet as a stone.

LITTLE THINGS

There's nothing very beautiful and nothing very gay
About the rush of faces in the town by day;
But a light tan cow in a pale green mead,
That is very beautiful, beautiful indeed

And the soft March wind and the low March mist
Are better than kisses in a dark street kissed
The fragrance of the forest when it wakes at dawn,
The fragrance of a trim green village lawn,
The hearing of the murmur of the rain at play-
These things are beautiful, beautiful as day!
And I shan't stand waiting for love or scorn
When the feast is laid for a day new-born
Oh, better let the little things I loved when little
Return when the heart finds the great things brittle;
And better is a temple made of bark and thong
Than a tall stone temple that may stand too long.

Margaret Widdemer was born at Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and began writing in her childhood. After graduating from Drexel Institute Library School in 1909, she became a contributor of poems and short stories to various magazines—her first published poem ("The Factories") being widely quoted. She married Robert Haven Schauffler, the author, in August, 1919.

Miss Widdemer's poetic work has two distinct phases. In the one mood, she is the protesting poet, the champion of the down-trodden, the lyricist on fire with angry passion. In the other, she is the writer of well-made, polite and popular sentimental verse. Her finest poems are in Factories with Other Lyrics (1915), although several of her best songs are in The Old Road to Paradise (1918), which divided, with Sandburg's Cornhuskers, the Columbia Poetry Prize in 1918.

Miss Widdemer is also the author of two books of short stories, four novels and several books for girls.

FACTORIES

I have shut my little sister in from life and light
(For a rose, for a ribbon, for a wreath across my hair),
I have made her restless feet still until the night,
Locked from sweets of summer and from wild spring

air;

I who ranged the meadowlands, free from sun to sun, Free to sing and pull the buds and watch the far wings

fly,

I have bound my sister till her playing time was doneOh, my little sister, was it I? Was it I?

I have robbed my sister of her day of maidenhood

(For a robe, for a feather, for a trinket's restless

spark),

Shut from love till dusk shall fall, how shall she know

good,

How shall she go scatheless through the sun-lit dark? I who could be innocent, I who could be gay,

I who could have love and mirth before the light

went by,

I have put my sister in her mating-time away

Sister, my young sister, was it I? Was it I?

I have robbed my sister of the lips against her breast, (For a coin, for the weaving of my children's lace

and lawn),

Feet that pace beside the loom, hands that cannot restHow can she know motherhood, whose strength is gone? I who took no heed of her, starved and labor-worn,

I, against whose placid heart my sleepy gold-heads lie, Round my path they cry to me, little souls unbornGod of Life! Creator! It was I! It was I!

THE TWO DYINGS

I can remember once, ere I was dead,
The sorrow and the prayer and bitter cry
When they who loved me stood around the bed,
Watching till I should die:

They need not so have grieved their souls for me,
Grouped statue-like to count my failing breath-
Only one thought strove faintly, bitterly

With the kind drug of Death:

How once upon a time, unwept, unknown,
Unhelped by pitying sigh or murmured prayer,
My youth died in slow agony alone
With none to watch or care.

THE MODERN WOMAN TO HER LOVER

I shall not lie to you any more,

Flatter or fawn to attain my end—
I am what never has been before,

Woman-and Friend.

I shall be strong as a man is strong,
I shall be fair as a man is fair,

Hand in locked hand we shall pass along
To a purer air:

I shall not drag at your bridle-rein,

Knee pressed to knee we shall ride the hill;

I shall not lie to you ever again—

Will you love me still?

Alan Seeger

Alan Seeger was born in New York, June 22, 1888. When he was still a baby, his parents moved to Staten Island, where he remained through boyhood. Later, there were several other