But yet, now living, fain were I
That some one then should testify,
Saying "He held his pen in trust
To Art, not serving shame or lust."
Will none? Then let my memory die
In after days!

BEFORE SEDAN

"The dead hand clasped a letter."
-Special Correspondence.

Here in this leafy place

Quiet he lies,

Cold with his sightless face
Turned to the skies;

"Tis but another dead;
All you can say is said.

Carry his body hence,
Kings must have slaves;
Kings climb to eminence
Over men's graves:
So this man's eye is dim;
Throw the earth over him.

What was the white you touched,

There, at his side?

Paper his hand had clutched

Tight ere he died;

Message or wish, may be;

Smooth the folds out and see.

Hardly the worst of us

Here could have smiled!

Only the tremulous

Words of a child;

Prattle, that has for stops
Just a few ruddy drops.

Look. She is sad to miss,
Morning and night,
His her dead father's

Tries to be bright,

Good to mamma, and sweet.
That is all." Marguerite."

Ah, if beside the dead
Slumbered the pain!
Ah, if the hearts that bled
Slept with the slain!
If the grief died; - but no.
Death will not have it so.

kiss;

WILFRID SCA WEN BLUNT

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was born at Crabbet Park, Crawley, Sussex, in 1840. He was educated at St. Mary's College, Oscott, and was a member of the diplomatic service from 1858 to 1870. He spent many years in the East, his observations making him strongly sympathetic to lesser nationalities and all the down-trodden. He favored the cause of the Egyptians; his voice was always lifted for justice to Ireland.

As a poet, he is best known by his The Love Sonnets of Proteus (1881) and The New Pilgrimage (1889). Both volumes reveal a deep, philosophical nature expressing itself in terms of high seriousness.

His remarkable My Diaries appeared when Blunt was an octogenarian, in 1921. He died in London, September 11, 1922.

LAUGHTER AND DEATH

There is no laughter in the natural world
Of beast or fish or bird, though no sad doubt
Of their futurity to them unfurled

Has dared to check the mirth-compelling shout.
The lion roars his solemn thunder out

To sleeping woods. The eagle screams her cry.
Even the lark must strain a serious throat
To hurl his blest defiance at the sky.

Fear, anger, jealousy, have found a voice.
Love's pain or rapture the brute bosoms swell.
Nature has symbols for her nobler joys,

Her nobler sorrows. Who has dared foretell
That only man, by some sad mockery,

Should learn to laugh who learns that he must die?

ANDREW LANG

Andrew Lang, critic and essayist, was born in 1844 and educated at Balliol College, Oxford. Besides his many well-known translations of Homer, Theocritus and the Greek Anthology, he published numerous biographical works.

As a poet, his chief claim rests on his delicate light verse. Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872), Ballades in Blue China (1880), and Rhymes à la Mode (1884) disclose Lang as a lesser Austin Dobson. His death occurred July 20, 1912.

SCYTHE SONG

Mowers, weary and brown and blithe,
What is the word, methinks, ye know,
Endless over-word that the Scythe

Sings to the blades of the grass below?
Scythes that swing in the grass and clover,
Something, still, they say as they pass;
What is the word that, over and over,

Sings the Scythe to the flowers and grass?

Hush, ah, hush, the Scythes are saying,
Hush, and heed not, and fall asleep;
Hush they say to the grasses swaying;
Hush they sing to the clover deep!
Hush'tis the lullaby Time is singing-
Hush and heed not for all things pass;
Hush, ah, hush! and the Scythes are swinging
Over the clover, over the grass!

Robert (Seymour) Bridges was born in 1844 and educated at Eton and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. After traveling extensively, he studied medicine in London and practiced until 1882. Most of his poems, like his occasional plays, are classical in tone as well as treatment. He was appointed poet laureate in 1913, following Alfred Austin. His command of the secrets of rhythm, especially exemplified in Shorter Poems (1894), through a subtle versification give his lines a firm delicacy of pattern.

WINTER NIGHTFALL

The day begins to droop -
Its course is done:
But nothing tells the place
Of the setting sun.

The hazy darkness deepens,

And up the lane

You may hear, but cannot see,

The homing wain.

An engine pants and hums
In the farm hard by:
Its lowering smoke is lost
In the lowering sky.

The soaking branches drip,
And all night through
The dropping will not cease
In the avenue.

A tall man there in the house
Must keep his chair:
He knows he will never again
Breathe the spring air:

His heart is worn with work;
He is giddy and sick
If he rise to go as far

As the nearest rick:

He thinks of his morn of life,

His hale, strong years;
And braves as he may the night
Of darkness and tears.

ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY

The Irish-English singer, Arthur (William Edgar) O'Shaughnessy, was born in London in 1844. He was connected, for a while, with the British Museum, and was transferred later to the Department of Natural History. His first literary success, Epic of Women (1870), promised a splendid future for the young poet, a promise strengthened by his Music and Moonlight (1874). Always delicate in health, his hopes were dashed by periods of illness. He met an early death in London in 1881.

The poem here reprinted, like all of O'Shaughnessy's, owes much to its editor. The "Ode," which has become one of the classics of this age, originally had seven verses, the last four being mere versifying. When Palgrave compiled his Golden Treasury, he recognized the great difference between the first three inspired stanzas and the others and calmly and courageously dropped the final four.

William Alexander Percy recently performed a similar service for this singer who, nine-tenths of the time, was an undistinguished minor poet. It is a series of liberties he has taken in his Poems of Arthur O'Shaughnessy (1922), but the editorial omissions are all justifiable.

ODE

We are the music-makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We built up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory: