No hate is in our anger,

No vengeance in our wrath;
We hold the line of freedom
Across the tyrant's path.
Wher'er oppression vaunteth

We loose the sword once more,
To stay the feet of conquest,
And pray an end of war.

371.

FREDERICK PETERSON

Wild Geese

OW oft against the sunset sky or moon

How

1859

I watched that moving zigzag of spread wings

In unforgotten Autumns gone too soon,

in unforgotten Springs!

Creatures of desolation, far they fly

Above all lands bound by the curling foams;
In misty fens, wild moors and trackless sky
These wild things have their home.
They know the tundra of Siberian coasts.
And tropic marshes by the Indian seas;

They know the clouds and night and starry hosts
From Crux to Pleiades.

Dark flying rune against the western glow

It tells the sweep and loneliness of things,

Symbol of Autumns vanished long ago.
Symbol of coming Springs!

ACROSS the foaming river

The old bridge bends its bow;
My father's fathers built it
In ages long ago.

They never left the farmstead
Past which the waters curled,
Why should one ever wander
When here is all the world.

Family, friends, and garden;
Small fields of rice and tea;
The cattle in the meadow;

The birds in stream and tree;

The pageant of the seasons
As the slow years go by;
Between the peaks above us
An azure bridge of sky.

The dead they live and linger
In each familiar place

With kindly thoughts to hearten
The children of their race.

373.

HARRIET MONROE

LOVE

Love Song

I my life, but not too well
To give it to thee like a flower,
So it may pleasure thee to dwell

Deep in its perfume but an hour.
I love my life, but not too well.

I love my life, but not too well
To sing it note by note away,
So to thy soul the song may tell

The beauty of the desolate day.
I love my life, but not too well.

I love my life, but not too well
To cast it like a cloak on thine,
Against the storms that sound and swell
Between thy lonely heart and mine.
I love my life, but not too well.

1860

374.

EDGAR LEE MASTERS

Hare Drummer

Do the boys and girls go to Siever's

For cider, after school, in late September?

Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets

1869

On Aaron Hatfield's farm when the frosts begin?

For many times with the laughing girls and

boys

Played I along the road and over the hills

When the sun was low and the air was cool,

Stopping to club the walnut tree

Standing leafless against a flaming west.
Now, the swell of autumn smoke,

And the dropping acorns,

And the echoes about the vales

Bring dreams of life. They hover over me.

They question me:

Where are those laughing comrades?

How many are with me, how many

In the old orchards along the way to Siever's,
And in the woods that overlook
The quiet water?

375.

GEORGE STERLING

The Black Vulture

1869-1926

LOOF upon the day's immeasured dome,

AL

He holds unshared the silence of the sky. Far down his bleak, relentless eyes descry The eagle's empire and the falcon's home Far down, the galleons of sunset roam;

His hazards on the sea of morning lie; Serene, he hears the broken tempest sigh Where cold sierras gleam like scattered foam.

And least of all he holds the human swarm
Unwitting now that envious men prepare

To make their dream and its fulfillment one, When, poised above the caldrons of the storm, Their hearts, contemptuous of death, shall dare His roads between the thunder and the sun.

376.

THE

The Last Days

HE russet leaves of the sycamore
Lie at last on the valley floor
By the autumn wind swept to and fro
Like ghosts in a tale of long ago.
Shallow and clear the Carmel glides

Where the willows droop on its vine-walled sides.

The bracken-rust is red on the hill;

The pines stand brooding, somber and still;
Gray are the cliffs, and the waters gray,
Where the seagulls dip to the sea-born spray.
Sad November, lady of rain,

Sends the goose-wedge over again.

Wilder now, for the verdure's birth,

Falls the sunlight over the earth;

Kildees call from the fields where now
The banding blackbirds follow the plow;

Rustling poplar and brittle weed
Whisper low to the river-reed.