My praiseworthy activity

And notes me plying

My Daily Task?-Nor strange, dear me, But gratifying!"

To whom the Bard: "I still divest

My orchard of the Insect Pest,

That you are such is manifest,
Prepare to die.-

And yet, how sweetly does your crest
Reflect the sky!

"Go then forgiven, (for what ails
Your naughty life this fact avails
To pardon) mirror in your scales
Celestial blue,

Till the sun sets and the light fails
The skies and you."

May all we proud and bustling parties

Whose lot in forum, street and mart is

Stand in conspectu Deitatis

And save our face,

Reflecting where our scaly heart is

Some skyey grace.

Helen Parry Eden [18

STUDENTS

John Brown and Jeanne at Fontainebleau-
'Twas Toussaint, just a year ago;
Crimson and copper was the glow
Of all the woods at Fontainebleau.
They peered into that ancient well,
And watched the slow torch as it fell.
John gave the keeper two whole sous,
And Jeanne that smile with which she woos
John Brown to folly. So they lose
The Paris train. But never mind!-

All-Saints are rustling in the wind,
And there's an inn, a crackling fire—
(It's deur-cinquante, but Jeanne's desire);

Students

There's dinner, candles, country wine,
Jeanne's lips-philosophy divine!
There was a bosquet at Saint Cloud
Wherein John's picture of her grew
To be a Salon masterpiece-

Till the rain fell that would not cease.
Through one long alley how they raced!-
'Twas gold and brown, and all a waste
Of matted leaves, moss-interlaced.
Shades of mad queens and hunter-kings
And thorn-sharp feet of dryad-things
Were company to their wanderings;
Then rain and darkness on them drew.
The rich folks' motors honked and flew.
They hailed an old cab, heaven for two;
The bright Champs-Elysées at last—
Though the cab crawled it sped too fast.

Paris, upspringing white and gold:
Flamboyant arch and high-enscrolled
War-sculpture, big, Napoleonic-
Fierce chargers, angels histrionic;
The royal sweep of gardened spaces,
The pomp and whirl of columned Places;
The Rive Gauche, age-old, gay and gray;
The impasse and the loved café;
The tempting tidy little shops;

The convent walls, the glimpsed tree-tops;
Book-stalls, old men like dwarfs in plays;
Talk, work, and Latin Quarter ways.

May-Robinson's, the chestnut trees-
Were ever crowds as gay as these?
The quick pale waiters on a run,
The round green tables, one by one,
Hidden away in amorous bowers-
Lilac, laburnum's golden showers.
Kiss, clink of glasses, laughter heard,
And nightingales quite undeterred.
And then that last extravagance—
O Jeanne, a single amber glance

1793

Will pay him!-"Let's play millionaire
For just two hours-on princely fare,
At some hotel where lovers dine
À deux and pledge across the wine!”
They find a damask breakfast-room,
Where stiff silk roses range their bloom.
The garçon has a splendid way
Of bearing in grand déjeuner.

Then to be left alone, alone,
High up above Rue Castiglione;
Curtained away from all the rude
Rumors, in silken solitude;

And, John, her head upon your knees —
Time waits for moments such as these.

Florence Wilkinson (18

A LIKENESS

(PORTRAIT BUST OF AN UNKNOWN, CAPITOL, ROME)

In every line a supple beauty-
The restless head a little bent-
Disgust of pleasure, scorn of duty,
The unseeing eyes of discontent.
I often come to sit beside him,

This youth who passed and left no trace
Of good or ill that did betide him,
Save the disdain upon his face.

The hope of all his House, the brother
Adored, the golden-hearted son,
Whom Fortune pampered like a mother;
And then a shadow on the sun.
Whether he followed Cæsar's trumpet,

Or chanced the riskier game at home
To find how favor played the strumpet
In fickle politics at Rome;:

Whether he dreamed a dream in Asia
He never could forget by day,
Or gave his youth to some Aspasia,
Or gamed his heritage away;
Once lost, across the Empire's border

The Chaperon,

This man would seek his peace in vain;
His look arraigns a social order

Somehow entrammelled with his pain.
"The dice of gods are always loaded";
One gambler, arrogant as they,
Fierce, and by fierce injustice goaded,
Left both his hazard and the play.
Incapable of compromises,

Unable to forgive or spare,
The strange awarding of the prizes
He had no fortitude to bear.

Tricked by the forms of things material→→
The solid-seeming arch and stone,
The noise of war, the pomp imperial,
The heights and depths about a throne—
He missed, among the shapes diurnal,
The old, deep-travelled road from pain,
The thoughts of men, which are eternal,
In which, eternal, men remain.
Ritratto d'ignoto; defying

Things unsubstantial as a dream-
An Empire, long in ashes lying—

His face still set against the stream.
Yes, so he looked, that gifted brother
I loved, who passed and left no trace,
Not even-luckier than this other-

His sorrow in a marble face.

Willa Sibert Cather [1875

THE CHAPERON

I TAKE my chaperon to the play

She thinks she's taking me.

And the gilded youth who owns the box,
A proud young man is he;

But how would his young heart be hurt
If he could only know

That not for his sweet sake I go

Nor yet to see the trifling show;

But to see my chaperon flirt.

1795

Her eyes beneath her snowy hair

They sparkle young as mine; There's scarce a wrinkle in her hand So delicate and fine.

And when my chaperon is seen,

They come from everywhere---
The dear old boys with silvery hair,

With old-time grace and old-time air,

To greet their old-time queen.

They bow as my young Midas here
Will never learn to bow
(The dancing-masters do not teach
That gracious reverence now);
With voices quavering just a bit,

They play their old parts through,
They talk of folk who used to woo,
Of hearts that broke in 'fifty-two—
Now none the worse for it.

And as those aged crickets chirp,

I watch my chaperon's face,

And see the dear old features take

A new and tender grace;

And in her happy eyes

I see

A PITCHER of mignonette

In a tenement's highest casement,

Queer sort of flower-pot-yet
That pitcher of mignonette

Is a garden in heaven set,

To the little sick child in the basement

The pitcher of mignonette,

In the tenement's highest casement.

Henry Cuyler Bunner [1855-1896]