MY TRIUMPH

The poet, looking back upon the hopes he has cherished, per ceives that he has fallen tar short of achieving them. The songs he has sung are less sweet than those he has dreamed of singing; the wishes he has wrought into facts are less noble than those that are yet unfulfilled. But he looks forward to the time when all that he desires for humankind shall yet come to pass. The praise will not be his; it will belong to others. Still, he does not envy those who are destined to succeed where he failed. Rather does he rejoice that through them his hopes for the race will be realized. And he is happy that by longing for just such a triumph he shares in it-he makes it his triumph.

Hail to the coming singers!
Hail to the brave light-bringers!
Forward I reach and share
All that they sing and dare.

The airs of heaven blow o'er me;
A glory shines before me.
Of what mankind shall be,-
Pure, generous, brave, and free.

A dream of man and woman
Diviner but still human,
Solving the riddle old,
Shaping the Age of Gold!

The love of God and neighbor;
An equal-handed labor;

The richer life, where beauty
Walks hand in hand with duty.

Ring, bells in unreared steeples,
The joy of unborn peoples!
Sound, trumpets far off blown,
Your triumph is my own.

Parcel and part of all,
I keep the festival,
Fore-reach the good to be,
And share the victory.

I feel the earth move sunward,
I join the great march onward,
And take, by faith, while living,
My freehold of thanksgiving.

John Greenleaf Whittier.

TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON

n the great Civil War in England between the Puritans and Charles the First the author of this poem sacrificed everything in the royal cause. That cause was defeated and Lovelace was imprisoned. In these stanzas he makes the most of his gloomy situation and sings the joys of various kinds of freedom. First is the freedom brought by love, when his sweetheart speaks to him through the grate of the dungeon. Second is the freedom brought by the recollection of good fellowship, when tried and true comrades took their wine straight-"with no allaying Thames." Third is the freedom brought by remembrance of the king for whom he was suffering. Finally comes the passionate and heroic assertion that though the body of a man may be confined, nevertheless his spirit can remain free and chainless.

WHE

HEN Love with unconfinéd wings
Hovers within my gates,

And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair
And fetter'd to her eye,
The Gods that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,

Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,

When healths and draughts go free
Fishes that tipple in the deep
Know no such liberty.

When (like committed linnets) I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty
And glories of my King;

When I shall voice aloud how good
He is, how great should be,
Enlarged winds, that curl the flood,
Know no such liberty.

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.

Richard Lovelace.

GRIEF

Shakespeare says: "I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching." This is especially true regarding grief or affliction. "Man was born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward," but we bid other people bear their sorrows manfully; we should therefore bear ours with equal courage.

UPON there a dulling knife;

PON this trouble shall I whet my life

Bade I my friend be brave?

I shall still braver be.

No man shall say of me,

"Others he saved, himself he cannot save."
But swift and fair

As the Primeval word that smote the night-
"Let there be light!"

Courage shall leap from me, a gallant sword
To rout the enemy and all his horde,

Cleaving a kingly pathway through despair.
Angela Morgan.

From "Forward, March!"
The John Lane Co.

THE RECTIFYING YEARS

Time brings the deeper understanding that clears up our misconceptions; it shows us the error of our hates; it dispels our worries and our fears; it allays the grief that seemed too poignant to be borne.

7ES, things are more or less amiss;

YES

To-day it's that, to-morrow this;
Yet with so much that's out of whack,
Life does not wholly jump the track
Because, since matters move along,
No one thing's always staying wrong.
So heed not failures, losses, fears,
But trust the rectifying years.

What we shall have's not what we've got;
Our pains don't linger in one spot-
They skip about; the seesaw's end
That's up will mighty soon descend;
You've looked at bacon? Life's like that
A streak of lean, a streak of fat.

Change, like a sky that clouds, that clears,
Hangs o'er the rectifying years.

Uneven things not leveled down
Are somehow simply got aroun';
The sting is taken from offence;
The evil has its recompense;
The broken heart is knit again;
The baffled longing knows not pain;
Wrong fades and trouble disappears
Before the rectifying years.

Then envy, hate towards man or class
Should from your sinful nature pass.
Though others hold a higher place
Or have more power or wealth or grace,
The best of them, be sure, cannot