Psalms are heard in "The Flocks" and "The Runner in the Skies."

The Solitary (1919) is another stride forward. Its major section, a long symbolic poem called "The Sea," breathes the same note that was the burden of the earlier books-"We are flesh on the way to godhood"-with greater strength and still greater control.

THE SLAVE

They set the slave free, striking off his chains . . . Then he was as much of a slave as ever.

He was still chained to servility,

He was still manacled to indolence and sloth,
He was still bound by fear and superstition,
By ignorance, suspicion, and savagery. . .
His slavery was not in the chains,

They can only set free men free.

And there is no need of that:

Free men set themselves free.

THE RUNNER IN THE SKIES

Who is the runner in the skies,

With her blowing scarf of stars,

And our Earth and sun hovering like bees about her

blossoming heart?

Her feet are on the winds, where space is deep,

Her eyes are nebulous and veiled;

She hurries through the night to a far lover

THE LINCOLN CHILD1

Clearing in the forest,

In the wild Kentucky forest,

And the stars, wintry stars, strewn above!

O Night that is the starriest

Since Earth began to roll-
For a Soul

Is born out of Love!

Mother love, father love, love of eternal God-
Stars have pushed aside to let him through-
Through heaven's sun-sown deeps

One sparkling ray of God

Strikes the clod

(And while an angel-host through wood and clearing

sweeps!)

Born in the wild

The Child

Naked, ruddy, new,

Wakes with the piteous human cry and at the motherheart sleeps.

To the mother wild berries and honey,

To the father awe without end,

To the child a swaddling of flannel—
And a dawn rolls sharp and sunny

And the skies of winter bend
To see the first sweet word penned
In the godliest human annal.

1 See pages 54, 78, 84, 139, 172.

Soon in the wide wilderness,

On a branch blown over a creek,

Up a trail of the wild coon,

In a lair of the wild bee,

The rugged boy, by danger's stress,

Learnt the speech the wild things speak,
Learnt the Earth's eternal tune

Of strife-engendered harmony—

Went to school where Life itself was master,
Went to church where Earth was minister-
And in Danger and Disaster

Felt his future manhood stir!

And lo, as he grew ugly, gaunt,
And gnarled his way into a man,
What wisdom came to feed his want,
What worlds came near to let him scan!
And as he fathomed through and through
Our dark and sorry human scheme,

He knew what Shakespeare never knew,
What Dante never dared to dream-

That Men are one

Beneath the sun,

And before God are equal souls—

This truth was his,

And this it is

That round him such a glory rolls.

For not alone he knew it as a truth,

He made it of his blood, and of his brain-
He crowned it on the day when piteous Booth
Sent a whole land to weeping with world pain-

When a black cloud blotted out the sun
And men stopped in the streets to sob,
To think Old Abe was dead.

Dead, and the day's work still undone,

Dead, and war's ruining heart athrob,
And earth with fields of carnage freshly spread.
Millions died fighting;

But in this man we mourned

Those millions, and one other—

And the States today uniting,

North and South,

East and West,

Speak with a people's mouth

A rhapsody of rest

To him our beloved best,

Our big, gaunt, homely brother

Our huge Atlantic coast-storm in a shawl,

Our cyclone in a smile-our President,

Who knew and loved us all

With love more eloquent

Than his own words-with Love that in real deeds was

Oh, to pour love through deeds

To be as Lincoln was!

That all the land might fill its daily needs

Glorified by a human Cause!

Then were America a vast World-Torch

Flaming a faith across the dying Earth,
Proclaiming from the Atlantic's rocky porch,
That a New World was struggling at the birth!
O living God. O Thou who living art

And real, and near, draw, as at that babe's birth,
Into our souls and sanctify our Earth-

Let down thy strength that we endure

Mighty and pure

As mothers and fathers of our own Lincoln-child.

O Child, flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone,

Soul torn from out our Soul!

May you be great, and pure, and beautiful—

A Soul to search this world

To be a father, brother, comrade, son,

A toiler powerful;

A man whose toil is done

One with God's Law above:

Work wrought through Love!

Lola Ridge

Lola Ridge was born in Dublin, Ireland, leaving there in infancy and spending her childhood in Sydney, Australia. After living some years in New Zealand, she returned to Australia to study art. In 1907, she came to the United States, earning her living as organizer, as advertisement writer, as illustrator, artist's model, factory-worker, etc. In 1918, The New Republic published her long poem The Ghetto and Miss Ridge, until then totally unknown, became the "discovery" of the year.

Her volume The Ghetto and Other Poems (1918) contains one poem that is brilliant, several that are powerful and none that is mediocre. The title-poem is its pinnacle; in it Miss Ridge touches strange heights. It is essentially a poem of the city, of its sodden brutalities, its sudden beauties.

Sun-Up (1920) is less integrated, more frankly experimental. But the same vibrancy and restrained power that distinguished her preceding book are manifest here.