Touch it with feet that trouble the dust but as wings do, Come shyly together, are still,

Like dancers, who wait, in a pause of the music, for music The exquisite silence to fill

This is the thought of the first, and this of the second, And this the grave thought of the third:

"Linger we thus for a moment, palely expectant, And silence will end, and the bird

"Sing the pure phrase, sweet phrase, clear phrase in the twilight

To fill the blue bell of the world;

And we, who on music so leaflike have drifted together, Leaflike apart shall be whirled

"Into what but the beauty of silence, silence forever?..." This is the shape of the tree,

And the flower and the leaf, and the three pale beautiful pilgrims:

This is what you are to me.

MORNING SONG FROM "SENLIN"

It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
When the light drips through the shutters like the dew,
I arise, I face the sunrise,

And do the things my fathers learned to do.

Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops

Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,
And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet
Stand before a glass and tie my tie.

Vine-leaves tap my window,

Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,

The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree
Repeating three clear tones.

It is morning. I stand by the mirror
And tie my tie once more.

While waves far off in a pale rose twilight
Crash on a white sand shore.

I stand by a mirror and comb my hair:
How small and white my face!-

The green earth tilts through a sphere of air
And bathes in a flame of space.

There are houses hanging above the stars

And stars hung under a sea . . .

And a sun far off in a shell of silence
Dapples my walls for me.

It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
Should I not pause in the light to remember God?
Upright and firm I stand on a star unstable,
He is immense and lonely as a cloud.

I will dedicate this moment before my mirror
To him alone, for him I will comb my hair.
Accept these humble offerings, clouds of silence!
I will think of you as I descend the stair.

Vine-leaves tap my window,

The snail-track shines on the stones;
Dew-drops flash from the chinaberry tree
Repeating two clear tones.

It is morning, I awake from a bed of silence,
Shining I rise from the starless waters of sleep.
The walls are about me still as in the evening,
I am the same, and the same name still I keep.

The earth revolves with me, yet makes no motion,
The stars pale silently in a coral sky.

In a whistling void I stand before my mirror,
Unconcerned, and tie my tie.

There are horses neighing on far-off hills
Tossing their long white manes,

And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk,
Their shoulders black with rains.

It is morning, I stand by the mirror.
And surprise my soul once more;
The blue air rushes above my ceiling,
There are suns beneath my floor.

It is morning, Senlin says, I ascend from darkness And depart on the winds of space for I know not where; My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket,

And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair.

There are shadows across the windows, clouds in heaven,
And a god among the stars; and I will go
Thinking of him as I might think of daybreak
And humming a tune I know. .

Vine-leaves tap at the window,
Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,
The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree
Repeating three clear tones.

Maxwell Bodenheim

Maxwell Bodenheim was born at Natchez, Mississippi, May 26, 1892. His education, with the exception of grammar school training, was achieved under the guidance of the U. S. Army, in which Bodenheim served a full enlistment of three years, beginning in 1910. In 1918, his first volume appeared and even

those who were puzzled or repelled by Bodenheim's complex idiom were forced to recognize its intense individuality.

Minna and Myself (1918) and Advice (1920) reveal, first of all, this poet's extreme sensitivity to words. Words, under his hands, have unexpected growths; placid nouns and sober adjectives bear fantastic fruit. Sometimes he packs his metaphors so close that they become inextricably mixed. Sometimes he spins his fantasies so thin that the cord of coherence snaps and the poem frays into unpatterned ravellings. But, at his best, in the realm of the whimsical-grotesque, Bodenheim walks with a light and nimble footstep.

POET TO HIS LOVE

An old silver church in a forest

Is my love for you.

The trees around it

Are words that I have stolen from your heart.
An old silver bell, the last smile you gave,

Hangs at the top of my church.

It rings only when you come through the forest
And stand beside it.

And then, it has no need for ringing,

For your voice takes its place.

OLD AGE

In me is a little painted square

Bordered by old shops with gaudy awnings.

And before the shops sit smoking, open-bloused old men,

Drinking sunlight.

The old men are my thoughts;

And I come to them each evening, in a creaking cart,

And quietly unload supplies.

We fill slim pipes and chat

And inhale scents from pale flowers in the center of the

square.

Strong men, tinkling women, and squealing children
Stroll past us, or into the shops.

They greet the shopkeepers and touch their hats or foreheads to me.

Some evening I shall not return to my people.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay, possibly the most gifted of the younger lyricists, was born February 22, 1892, at Rockland, Maine. After a childhood spent almost entirely in New England, she attended Vassar College, from which she was graduated in 1917. Since that time she has lived in New York City and abroad.

Although the bulk of her poetry is not large, the quality of it approaches and sometimes attains greatness. Her first long poem, "Renascence," was written when Miss Millay was scarcely nineteen; it remains today one of the most remarkable poems of this generation. Beginning like a child's aimless verse, it proceeds, with a calm lucidity, to an amazing climax. It is as if a child had, in the midst of its ingenuousness, uttered some terrific truth. The cumulative power of this poem is surpassed only by its beauty.

Renascence, Miss Millay's first volume, was published in 1917. It is full of the same passion as its title poem; here is a hunger for beauty so intense that no delight is great enough to give the soul peace. Such poems as "God's World" and the unnamed sonnets vibrate with this rapture.

Figs from Thistles (1920) is a far more sophisticated booklet. Sharp and cynically brilliant, Miss Millay's craftsmanship no less than her intuition saves these poems from mere cleverness.

Second April (1921) is an intensification of her lyrical gift tinctured with an increasing sadness. Her poignant poetic play, Aria da Capo, first performed by the Provincetown Players in New York, was published in The Monthly Chapbook (England); the issue of July, 1920, being devoted to it.