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What still peace is. I need the voice of the sedges That knows not any of the old earth yearning

And its cry, but is quiet,

Like the air and the water.

Arthur L. Phelps

THE SCREECH OWL

He sits all day in a cemetery tree,

The damp of sinking graves upon his breath;
Brooding the little ways of life and death,
Chuckling at thought of immortality.
Long rows of tombstones make his library,

Rare tomes of wit-"dry wit," he seems to say.
He cons them till night comes, then flies away
Into the dark, to call for you or me.

Or so, when as a boy I heard his cry

Grate the harp-strings of night, I thought it was;
A man, I cross myself, a boy still—half:

As on that night I saw a dear friend die,
And long sat brooding on the patient stars,
And seemed to hear, far off, his mocking laugh!
J. E. Scruggs

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Le MÉDECIN MALGRÉ LUI

Oh I suppose I should

Wash the walls of my office,
Polish the rust from

My instruments and keep them

Definitely in order;

Build shelves in

The little laboratory;

Empty out the old stains,

Clean the bottles

And refill them; buy

Another lens; put

My journals on edge instead of

Letting them lie flat

In heaps then begin

Ten years back and

Gradually

Read them to date,
Cataloguing important

:

Articles for ready reference.

I suppose I should

Read the new books.

If to this I added

A bill at the tailor's

And the cleaner's

And grew a decent beard

And cultivated a look

Of importance

L

3

William Carlos Williams

Who can tell? I might be

A credit to my Lady Happiness
And never think anything

But a white thought!

William Carlos Williams

PLUMS

It is a waste of time to talk to my cousin about his plums, Though I know—

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standing on the path with the sun in my hair I make a sufficiently pleasing picture.

The plums are soft with bloom, and luscious purple—
If I took a step forward and held out my green smock,
Looked up and laughed at him,

He would throw them, showering rain-drops, into my lap,
And, quickly descending,

Slide his arm round my waist and-probably-kiss me.

Shall I go, I wonder?—

No, I will have none of these things.

P. T. R.

TO A PHRASE

I have been combing the sands of my thought for you— You

Who left me the trace of your fragrance

In lieu of yourself,

A pungency as of sandalwood,

Or things lain long in lavender,
Very faint,

But of a stabbing sweetness.

Now that I have found yoù,
Your delicate coloring,

Which once delighted me,

Has faded in the wash of many tides.

Yet you can still

Sting the tears to my eyes,

Little Phrase-someone-said-to-me-long-ago,

Who might have meant so much

But who meant so little.

But I think—

I have untangled you from the seaweed of forgotten things, I think I shall toss you back into the sea!

1

Hazel Hall

Marie Laurencin !—

KALEIDOSCOPE

IN THE FRAIL WOOD

How she likened them to young gazelles
Disporting in a quiet glade, with their thin legs
And their large wondering eyes,

Full of delicate trembling-shy, tender, suspecting,
Furtively watching for the stranger in the wood.
L'éventail exquis! la main d'ivoire!

Les yeux de gazelles!—glimmering, provocative
Magic tumbling out of them like bronzed hoops
Or circled ropes to dance with like gilded wire.
The hand touches a frail cheek, and faints
In its cushioned depths with the excess
Of its palloring fragility.

Light zephyrs hover over the edges of frail lace,
And roll from off dark coils of ribboned hair-

Great bird-swings poised at the nape of the childish neck
Setting out the white throat from the blue or rose shadow-
Blue, and a far cerise, with a gentle dove-like grey
Encircling them, covering them with mists of timidity.
Speak they in concert of a little girl's morning,
As she steps frailly out of the linen and the lace
That folded her young virgin limbs from the terrors
Of the monstrous undivulging night:

Stepping out upon the edges of a world too bright
With glinting facets of a diamonded despair,

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