veloped. At present the relatively small number of 38,000 hectares have been expropriated in that State.

The Department of Agriculture continues its active policy of endeavoring to improve farming conditions throughout the Republic. It is sending a respectable number of young men to the best agricultural schools in the United States. It is establishing a new agricultural institution at Chapingo, near Mexico City, and during the past year one of its representatives has been canvassing our agricultural colleges for good instructors to place in that school and at the school at Tacuba in the capital. German agriculturists are also sought. Implements for farm labor are imported duty free. A liberal budget has been requested for the operations of the coming fiscal year. An effort to provide agricultural loan banks to protect small proprietors from extortionate rates of interest in financing their operations has still to be worked out. If extreme radicalism can be prevented from destroying confidence by senseless expropriations, if irrigation and credits can be established to catch pace with needs, the land of Mexico may be brought to contribute a normal measure of the food supplies of which the country stands in such perpetual need. The forced resignation of General Villareal from the Secretaryship of Agriculture last December, after investigation of the acts of his subordinates by the President, may safely be considered a hopeful sign that less radical measures will prevail in future. President Obregón, in sympathy with the revolutionary struggle in behalf of the indigent rural population, indicates a commendable desire to protect property interest to a saner degree than some of his subordinates. The wrath of the nation against age-old agrarian abuses needs careful direction toward sanity, the elimination of political self-interest and social ruthlessness, and admonition that haste made slowly brings the most rapid and substantial progress.

HERBERT INGRAM PRIESTLEY.

RAVENNA

BY ANNE GOODWIN WINSLOW

Nulla speranza li conforta mai,
Non che di posa, ma di minor pena.

DANTE, INFERNO V

How could he write the things he wrote, just here
In her own home where she had once been dear?
I think sometimes he must have caught her eyes
Lighting in swift surprise

Upon those words remote, austere,
Falling from his stern pen,

Just here, just when

She should have seemed most near,

With all the looks and ways

That made that dark house fair,

In the familiar days

While Guido's eagles brooded on the air

That still could kiss her hair.

"No hope of rest or any lesser pain

Shall comfort them again"—

How could he ever bear to think that way,

Here in the tranquil day,

With not a shadow falling on the blue

Of the bright wave she knew?

How could he look on these still cypress trees

Scarce stirring in the breeze,

And write of rushing winds and beating wings
And damned and desperate things?

I like to think the deep, didactic springs

Of those relentless words found birth

In some high region of the poet's mind

While memory lagged behind,—

Being a fond and foolish thing that clings

Forever to the earth,

And that when afterward he came to look

At what he had to say

Of that young flower that bloomed beside his way,

Why, then I like to think that in the book

He wrote "no more that day."

Out of its night to the wild

Glad urge of its day.

So, while they go on their way,

She can wait

By the gate.

While I, who make of my brain and my soul and my hand,

Only a fugitive song for the mirth of the land,

Turn, as the blind must turn to the warmth of the sun,

Reverently, and alone, in the presence of one

Who, mutely and steadfastly, up from the night and the sod, Is shaping a life in the wonderful likeness of God.

TO ONE IN FLANDERS

BY CONSTANCE LINDSAY SKINNER

As on that day, among the red leaves blowing,
We lay and watched the wild hawks windward throng,
You looked at me and, like thin water flowing,

Time and creed went past;

And old earth sang to us her old wild song.

As on that day-alone, 'mid dead leaves blowing,
I stand and watch the dark ships seaward glide,
And wonder if the Flemish autumn's strowing
Red, low-singing leaves

Where, like stopped water, your wild splendor died.

Do you regret, in fields of ghost-flowers blowing,
The sterner love that cleaved our passion here?
Or do you dream my tears are dewdrops glowing
Round your unmarked sleep?

And do you wake, and weep-I wonder, Dear?

THE INFINITE

[AFTER LEOPARDI]

BY FRANCIS ROGERS

I always loved this solitary hill,

And yon green hedge that from my roving glance Shuts off the low horizon's farthest sweep.

For as in meditation here I sit

I come to sense beyond that distant line
Immeasurable space and stillness deeper far
Than any silence known to mortal ears,
Where for a time my heart can know no fear.
And as the wind goes soughing through the leaves
I listen, and compare that silence infinite

With this soft sound. Then in my mind wells up
The thought of all eternity, of days

Long past and dead; then of the day that is And what it means to me. And so, deep down

In this immensity of thought I sink;

And sweet it is to drown in such a sea.