My soul dropped through the air with heavenly

plunder?

Gripping the dazzling bird my dreaming knew?

Nay! but a piteous freight,

A dark and heavy weight

Despoiled of silver plumage, its voice forever stilled,-All of the wonder

Gone that ever filled

Its guise with glory. O bird that I have killed,
How brilliantly you flew

Across my rapturous vision when first I dreamed of

you!

Yet I fling my soul on high with new endeavor,
And I ride the world below with a joyful mind.
I shall start a heron soon

In the marsh beneath the moon

A wondrous silver heron its inner darkness fledges!
I beat forever

The fens and the sedges.

The pledge is still the same for all disastrous

pledges,

All hopes resigned!

My soul still flies above me for the quarry it shall find!

A STREET CAR SYMPHONY

BY ROY HElton

Rumble along, over the water

Smooth as glass where the oil spots are;

There by that tug's nose, wide meadows of wonder
Gold like the blood of a splintered star!

Here inside where the straps are swinging
Huddles the freight of a Spruce Street car.

Poke necked spinster, with fumbling eyes,
Flat as a psalm book and ugly and queer;
Blonde in bright taffeta, merry as spring,
With a pearl in each ear;

Young mulatto girl, clean and comely,
All ablaze with a new pink gown,-
White folk's fashions, Gold Coast colors;

Dim red aisles of the broad red town.

Stout bald artist with sandy hair,
Grease marked coat and egg on his mouth;

Oh what a madness of youth in the air
When the wind blows south!

"What are you doing back home, old Kate? Pretty lonely, I guess, and grey;

Nobody now to meet at the gate

At the end of the day;

You who mothered and smoothed me down,
Buttoned my collars and messed at my tie,—

While the moon rode white on the brow of the wind
And the stars ran high."

Scurry along here! The great folk are frowning.

Frowning? Not they.

And their solemn old

twilight,

They are off out of town,

homes, in the broad cloth of

Like old empty mothers, look hungrily down.

Spoonful of yellow hair

Caught up in a wide red bow,

And the ruddy face of a child
At her noon day glow:

"When father and mother died

I wasn't so pleased at first,

Though I don't know which of the two of them

Was really the worst;

Ma with her weepy smile

Bothering me in my bed,

Or Pa with his drunken snort

And his aching head.

It's good to be all on your own,

Though the lady that works me is slow;

There always are fellows to kid, when a girl

Has a shape and a go;

And Johnnie'll be waiting, I'll bet

On the corner of Seventh and Race,

With a pink in his coat and a shine on his shoes,

And a grin on his face.

He's a looker, and on to the town;

And he knows how I love him all right:

Oh what a strange noise the blood makes in my heart When I think of to-night."

Young girl student with calm grave eyes:

Life's aflame on the lamp lit street.

"What will the Lord God make of me

When the true man's eyes and my own eyes meet?
Amo, Amas,-now the wind comes warm;
Over the hills now the daisies roam;

Launcelot! Launcelot! When are you coming
To carry me home?"

Gay girls in messalines flitting the pavements;
Loom of tall towers that rise through the dusk;
Faint scent of spring where the trees are budding,
Then garlic and gas and musk.

Drooping pale widow in from the graveyard,
Planning to sell the new tenant their coal;
Figuring how much she'll get for the ice box,
And why God has taken the light from her soul.

Clutter of faded old tenement houses

Warm with the folk of the Ghetto and Rome,
Banked, with sprawled legs, on colonial doorways,
Common and dirty, but making it home.

Women in wigs with the grey hair beneath them,
Wrinkled old grandmas, all shrouded in white,

And a million brown children that dance on the pave

ments

And stay up all night.

Pious old man in a choker collar

Conning a speech for the Ladies' Aid

On the dangers of dance, and the open Sabbath, And of calling a spade a spade.

Drag along solemnly! Through these dark byways
Washington strolled for a breath of the south,
And Darthea Penniston ventured, or pretty
Peg Shippen with roses of youth on her mouth.

Chicken coops, Swiss chard, sparrow grass, spinach; Moon over head and a smoke tossed star;

"End of the line! All out, sir, at Dock Street!"

Back into town on the Spruce Street car.

DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES

BY HANIEL LONG

They say that dead men tell no tales!

Except of barges with red sails
And sailors mad for nightingales;

Except of jongleurs stretched at ease
Beside old highways through the trees;

Except of dying moons that break
The hearts of lads who lie awake;