Yellow brick and gray flag-stone
That my feet have trod upon—
Ye seem to me

Vessels of bright mystery.

For ye do bear a shape, and so

Though ye were made by man, I know An inner Spirit also made,

And ye his breathings have obeyed.

IV

Shape, the strong and awful Spirit,
Laid his ancient hand on you.

He waste chaos doth inherit;
He can alter and subdue.
Verily, he doth lift up

Matter, like a sacred cup.

Into deep substance he reached, and lo Where ye were not, ye were; and so

Out of useless nothing, ye

Groaned and laughed and came to be.

And I use you, as I can,

Wonderful uses, made for man,

Iron pot and brazen pan.

What are ye?

I know not:

Nor what I really do

When I move and govern you.

There is no small work unto God.

He required of us greatness;

Of his least creature

A high angelic nature,

Stature superb and bright completeness.
He sets to us no humble duty.

Each act that he would have us do
Is haloed round with strangest beauty;
Terrific deeds and cosmic tasks
Of his plainest child he asks.
When I polish the brazen pan
I hear a creature laugh afar
In the gardens of a star,

And from his burning presence run
Flaming wheels of many a sun.
Whoever makes a thing more bright,

He is an angel of all light.

When I cleanse this earthen floor
My spirit leaps to see

Bright garments trailing over it,

A cleanness made by me.

Purger of all men's thoughts and ways,

With labor do I sound Thy praise,

My work is done for Thee.
Whoever makes a thing more bright,

He is an angel of all light.

Therefore let me spread abroad
The beautiful cleanness of my God.

VI

One time in the cool of dawn
Angels came and worked with me.
The air was soft with many a wing.
They laughed amid my solitude
And cast bright looks on everything.

Sweetly of me did they ask

That they might do my common task.
And all were beautiful-but one
With garments whiter than the sun
Had such a face

Of deep, remembered grace;

That when I saw I cried-"Thou art
The great Blood-Brother of my heart.
Where have I seen thee?"-And he said,
"When we are dancing round God's throne,
How often thou art there.

Beauties from thy hands have flown

Like white doves wheeling in mid air.
Nay-thy soul remembers not?
Work on, and cleanse thy iron pot."

VII

What are we? I know not.

Amy Lowell

Amy Lowell was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, February 9, 1874, of a long line of noted publicists and poets, the first colonist (a Percival Lowell) arriving in Newburyport in 1637. James Russell Lowell was a cousin of her grandfather; Abbott Lawrence, her mother's father, was minister to England; and Abbott Lawrence Lowell, her brother, is president of Harvard University.

Her first volume, A Dome of Many-colored Glass (1912), was a strangely unpromising book. The subjects were as conventional as the treatment of them; the influence of Keats and Tennyson was evident; the tone was soft and almost without a trace of personality. It was a queer prologue to the vivid Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914) and Men, Women and Ghosts (1916), which marked not only an extraordinary ad

vance but a totally new individuality. These two volumes contained many distinctive poems written in the usual forms, a score of pictorial pieces illustrating Miss Lowell's identification with the Imagists (see Preface) and the first appearance in English of "polyphonic prose."

It was because of such experiments in form and technique that Miss Lowell first attracted attention and is still best known. But, beneath her preoccupation with theories and novelty of utterance, one can observe and appreciate the designer of arabesques, the poet of the external world, the dynamic artificer who (vide such poems as "A Lady," "Vintage" and the epical "Bronze Horses") revivifies history with a creative excitement.

Can Grande's Castle (1918), like the later Legends (1921), reveals Miss Lowell as the gifted narrator, the teller of bizarre and brilliant stories. The feverish agitation is less prominent in her quieter and more personal Pictures of the Floating World (1919), a no less distinctive volume.

Besides Miss Lowell's original poetry, she has made many studies in Japanese and Chinese poetry, reflecting, even in her own work, their Oriental colors and contours. She has also written two volumes of critical essays: Six French Poets (1915) and Tendencies in Modern American Poetry (1917), both of them invaluable aids to the student of contemporary literature.

SOLITAIRE1

When night drifts along the streets of the city,
And sifts down between the uneven roofs,

My mind begins to peek and peer.

It plays at ball in odd, blue Chinese gardens,

And shakes wrought dice-cups in Pagan temples
Amid the broken flutings of white pillars.

It dances with purple and yellow crocuses in its hair,
And its feet shine as they flutter over drenched grasses.

'Reprinted by permission of the publishers, the Macmillan Company, from Pictures of the Floating World by Amy Lowell.

How light and laughing my mind is,

When all good folks have put out their bedroom candles, And the city is still.

MEETING-HOUSE HILL

I must be mad, or very tired,

When the curve of a blue bay beyond a railroad track Is shrill and sweet to me like the sudden springing of a tune,

And the sight of a white church above thin trees in a

city square

Amazes my eyes as though it were the Parthenon.
Clear, reticent, superbly final,

With the pillars of its portico refined to a cautious elegance,

It dominates the weak trees,

And the shot of its spire

Is cool and candid,

Rising into an unresisting sky.

Strange meeting-house

Pausing a moment upon a squalid hill-top.

I watch the spire sweeping the sky,

I am dizzy with the movement of the sky;
I might be watching a mast

With its royals set full

Straining before a two-reef breeze.

I might be sighting a tea-clipper,

Tacking into the blue bay,

Just back from Canton.

With her hold full of green and blue porcelain
And a Chinese coolie leaning over the rail

Gazing at the white spire

With dull, sea-spent eyes.