It is that the spoon that you just laid down

And the cup that you hold

May be here shining and insolent

When you are still and cold.

Your careless note that I laid away

May leap to my eyes like flame,

When the world has almost forgotten your voice

Or the sound of your name.

The golden Virgin da Vinci drew
May smile on over my head,
And daffodils nod in the silver vase
When you are dead.

So let moth and dust corrupt and thieves
Break through and I shall be glad,
Because of the hatred I bear to things.
Instead of the love I had.

For life seems only a shuddering breath,
A smothered, desperate cry;

And things have a terrible permanence
When people die.

Elinor Wylie

Elinor Wylie was born in Somerville, New Jersey, but she is, she protests, completely a Pennsylvanian by parentage. She t wrote from her infancy until her maturity and then, for the proverbial seven years, did not write a word.

Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) is one of the most brilliant first volumes recently issued in America. Mrs. Wylie's brilliance, it must be added, is one which always sparkles but seldom burns. Too often she achieves a frigid ecstasy; emotion is never absent from her lines but frequently it reflects a passion frozen at its source. For the most part, she exhibits a dramatic

keenness, a remarkable precision of word and gesture. A poem like "The Eagle and the Mole" is notable not only for its incisive symbolism but for its firm outlines and bright clarity of speech.

THE EAGLE AND THE MOLE

Avoid the reeking herd,

Shun the polluted flock,
Live like that stoic bird,
The eagle of the rock.

The huddled warmth of crowds

Begets and fosters hate;

He keeps, above the clouds,
His cliff inviolate.

When flocks are folded warm,
And herds to shelter run,
He sails above the storm,
He stares into the sun.

If in the eagle's track
Your sinews cannot leap,
Avoid the lathered pack,
Turn from the steaming sheep.

If you would keep your soul
From spotted sight or sound,
Live like the velvet mole;
Go burrow underground.

And there hold intercourse
With roots of trees and stones,

With rivers at their source,

And disembodied bones.

SEA LULLABY

The old moon is tarnished
With smoke of the flood,

The dead leaves are varnished
With color like blood,

A treacherous smiler

With teeth white as milk,

A savage beguiler

In sheathings of silk,

The sea creeps to pillage,
She leaps on her prey;
A child of the village
Was murdered today.

She came up to meet him
In a smooth golden cloak,

She choked him and beat him

To death, for a joke.

Her bright locks were tangled,

She shouted for joy,

With one hand she strangled

A strong little boy.

Now in silence she lingers

Beside him all night

To wash her long fingers
In silvery light.

Conrad Aiken

Conrad (Potter) Aiken was born at Savannah, Georgia, August 5, 1889. He attended Harvard, receiving his A.B. in

1912, travelled extensively for three years, and since then, he has devoted all his time to literature, living at South Yarmouth, Massachusetts.

The most outstanding feature of Aiken's creative work is its adaptations of other models transmuted by Aiken's own music. His first volume, Earth Triumphant and Other Tales in Verse (1914), is the Keats tradition crossed and paraphrased by Masefield. Turns and Movies (1916) is a complete change; in more than half of this book, Aiken begins to speak with his true voice. Here he is the natural musician, playing with new rhythms, haunting cadences, muted philosophy.

Nocturne of Remembered Spring (1917), The Charnel Rose (1918) and The House of Dust (1920) are packed with a tired but often beautiful music. Primarily, a lyric poet, Aiken frequently condenses an emotion in a few lines; some of his best moments are these "lapses" into tune. The music of the Morning Song from "Senlin" (in The Charnel Rose) is rich with subtleties of rhythm. But it is much more than a lyrical movement. Beneath the flow and flexibility of these lines, there is a delightful whimsicality, an extraordinary summoning of the immensities that loom behind the casual moments of everyday.

Punch, the Immortal Liar (1921), in many ways Aiken's most appealing work, contains this poet's sharpest characterizations as well as his most beautiful symphonic effects.

MIRACLES

Twilight is spacious, near things in it seem far,

And distant things seem near.

Now in the green west hangs a yellow star.
And now across old waters you may hear
The profound gloom of bells among still trees,
Like a rolling of huge boulders beneath seas.

Silent as thought in evening contemplation
Weaves the bat under the gathering stars.
Silent as dew, we seek new incarnation,
Meditate new avatars.

In a clear dusk like this

Mary climbed up the hill to seek her son,
To lower him down from the cross, and kiss
The mauve wounds, every one.

Men with wings

In the dusk walked softly after her.

She did not see them, but may have felt
The winnowed air around her stir;

She did not see them, but may have known
Why her son's body was light as a little stone.
She may have guessed that other hands were there
Moving the watchful air.

Now, unless persuaded by searching music

Which suddenly opens the portals of the mind,

We guess no angels,

And are contented to be blind.

Let us blow silver horns in the twilight,

And lift our hearts to the yellow star in the green,
To find perhaps, if, while the dew is rising,
Clear things may not be seen.

PORTRAIT OF A GIRL

This is the shape of the leaf, and this of the flower,
And this the pale bole of the tree

Which watches its bough in a pool of unwavering water
In a land we never shall see.

The thrush on the bough is silent, the dew falls softly, In the evening is hardly a sound. . . .

And the three beautiful pilgrims who come here together Touch lightly the dust of the ground.