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I only know there came to me
A fragrance such as never clings
To aught save happy living things;
A sound as of some joyous elf
Singing sweet songs to please himself,
And, through and over everything,
A sense of glad awakening.
The grass, a tip-toe at my ear,
Whispering to me I could hear;
I felt the rain's cool finger-tips
Brushed tenderly across my lips,
Laid gently on my sealèd sight,
And all at once the heavy night
Fell from my eyes and I could see,-
A drenched and dripping apple-tree,
A last long line of silver rain,
A sky grown clear and blue again.
And as I looked a quickening gust
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle

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Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,-
I know not how such things can be!-
I breathed my soul back into me.
Ah! Up then from the ground sprang
And hailed the earth with such a cry
As is not heard save from a man -
Who has been dead and lives again.
About the trees my arms I wound;
Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;
I raised my quivering arms on high;
I laughed and laughed into the sky,
Till at my throat a strangling sob
Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb

Sent instant tears into my eyes;
O God, I cried, no dark disguise
Can e'er hereafter hide from me
Thy radiant identity!

Thou canst not move across the grass
But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,
Nor speak, however silently,

But my hushed voice will answer Thee.
I know the path that tells Thy way
Through the cool eve of every day;
God, I can push the grass apart
And lay my finger on Thy heart!

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,-
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That cannot keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat-the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.

THE PEAR TREE

In this squalid, dirty dooryard,

Where the chickens scratch and run,

White, incredible, the pear tree

Stands apart and takes the sun,

Mindful of the eyes upon it,
Vain of its new holiness,

Like the waste-man's little daughter
In her first communion dress.

Stephen Vincent Benét

Stephen Vincent Benét, the younger brother of William Rose Benét, was born at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in July, 1898. He was educated in various parts of the country, graduating from Yale in 1919.

At seventeen he published a small book containing six dramatic portraits, Five Men and Pompey (1915), a remarkable set of monologues which, in spite of distinct traces of Browning, was little short of astounding, coming from a schoolboy. In Benét's next volume, Young Adventure (1918), one hears something more than the speech of an infant prodigy; the precocious facility has developed into an individual vigor.

Heavens and Earth (1920), the most representative collection, has a greater imaginative sweep. His novel, The Beginning of Wisdom, appeared in 1921. Like his brother, the younger Benét is at his best in the decoratively grotesque; his fancy exults in running the scales between the whimsically bizarre and the lightly diabolic.

PORTRAIT OF A BOY

After the whipping, he crawled into bed;
Accepting the harsh fact with no great weeping.
How funny uncle's hat had looked striped red!
He chuckled silently. The moon came, sweeping
A black frayed rag of tattered cloud before
In scorning; very pure and pale she seemed,
Flooding his bed with radiance. On the floor

Fat motes danced. He sobbed; closed his eyes and dreamed.

Warm sand flowed round him. Blurts of crimson light Splashed the white grains like blood.

mouth

Past the cave's

Shone with a large fierce splendor, wildly bright,
The crooked constellations of the South;

Here the Cross swung; and there, affronting Mars,
The Centaur stormed aside a froth of stars.
Within, great casks like wattled aldermen
Sighed of enormous feasts, and cloth of gold
Glowed on the walls like hot desire. Again,
Beside webbed purples from some galleon's hold,
A black chest bore the skull and bones in white
Above a scrawled "Gunpowder!" By the flames,
Decked out in crimson, gemmed with syenite,
Hailing their fellows by outrageous names
The pirates sat and diced.
"Doubloons!" they said.
"Doubloons!"

Their eyes were moons.
The words crashed gold.

Léonie Adams

Léonie Adams was born in Brooklyn, New York, December 5, 1899. After a public school preparation, she became a member of the class of 1922 at Barnard, writing her first published poems as an undergraduate.

The few poems by Miss Adams which have appeared show an unusual distinction of thought. They establish a kinship with Emily Dickinson by their intellectual restraint, with Edna St. Vincent Millay by their spiritual fervor.

APRIL MORTALITY

Rebellion shook an ancient dust,

And bones bleached dry of rottenness
Said: Heart, be bitter still, nor trust

The earth, the sky, in their bright dress.

Heart, heart, dost thou not break to kno
This anguish thou wilt bear alone?
We sang of it an age ago,

And traced it dimly upon stone.

With all the drifting race of men
Thou also art begot to mourn
That she is crucified again,

The lonely Beauty yet unborn.

And if thou dreamest to have won Some touch of her in permanence, 'Tis the old cheating of the sun,

The intricate lovely play of sense.

Be bitter still, remember how

Four petals, when a little breath
Of wind made stir the pear-tree bough,
Blew delicately down to death.

HOME-COMING

When I stepped homeward to my hill Dusk went before with quiet tread; The bare laced branches of the trees Were as a mist about its head.

Upon its leaf-brown breast, the rocks Like great gray sheep lay silent-wise; Between the birch trees' gleaming arms, The faint stars trembled in the skies. The white brook met me half-way up And laughed as one that knew me well, To whose more clear than crystal voice The frost had joined a crystal spell.

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