Are yet untroubled and unpassionate;

Who, though so noble, share in the world's toil,

And, though so task'd, keep free from dust and soil! I will not say that your mild deeps retain

A tinge, it may be, of their silent pain

Who have long'd deeply once, and long'd in vain— But I will rather say that you remain

A world above man's head, to let him see

How boundless might his soul's horizons be,
How vast, yet of what clear transparency!
How it were good to live there, and breathe free;
How fair a lot to fill

Is left to each man still!

From A VISION

BY HENRY VAUGHAN

I saw Eternity the other night,

Like a great ring of pure and endless light,

All calm, as it was bright:

And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years,
Driven by the spheres,

Like a vast shadow moved; in which the World

And all her train were hurl'd.

LADDERS THROUGH THE BLUE 1

BY HERMANN HAGEDORN

I have climbed ladders through the blue! For apples some, and some for heaven! 1 Copyrighted 1925, by Doubleday, Page & Co.

The rungs of some were six and seven,
But some no earthly number knew.

Some were of oak and some of dew,
Some spider-woven, zephyr-riven.
I have climbed ladders through the blue!
For apples some and some for heaven!

The tallest, firmest, ah, too few!-
Were of such substance as at even
By Truth to the awed heart is given;
And, oh, the pure air, oh, the view,
Climbing the ladders through the blue!

EACH AND ALL

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown

Of thee, from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm

Far heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon

Stops his horse, and lists with delight

Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;

Nor knowest thou what argument

Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.

All are needed by each one—

Nothing is fair or good alone.

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder-bough;
I brought him home; in his nest, at even,
He sings the song, but it pleases not now;
For I did not bring home the river and sky;
He sang to my ear-they sang to my eye.

The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam-
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore,

With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.

The lover watched his graceful maid,
As 'mid the virgin train she strayed;

Nor knew her beauty's best attire

Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
At last she came to his hermitage,

Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;
The gay enchantment was undone―

A gentle wife, but fairy none.

Then I said: "I covet truth;

Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;

I leave it behind with the games of youth."As I spoke, beneath my feet

The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs;
I inhaled the violet's breath;

Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,

The rolling river, the morning bird;
Beauty through my senses stole-

I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

FLOWER IN THE CRANNIED WALL

BY ALFRED TENNYSON

Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies,

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower-but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

NOT OUR GOOD LUCK

BY ROBINSON JEFFERS

Not our good luck nor the instant peak and fulfillment of time gives us to see

The beauty of things, nothing can bridle it.

God who walks lightning-naked on the Pacific has never been hidden from any

Puddle or hillock of the earth behind us.

Between the mean mud tenements and huddle of the

filth of Babylon, the river Euphrates;

And over the tiled brick temple buttresses

And the folly of a garden on arches, the ancienter simple and silent tribe of the stars

Filed, and for all her gods and the priests' mouths
God also moved on the city. . .

Dark ships drawing in from the sundown and the islands of the south, great waves with gray vapor in your hollows

And whitening of high heads coming home from the west,

From Formosa or the skerries of Siberia and the sight of the eyes that have widened for the sky-peaks of Asia:

That he touched you is no wonder, that you slid from his hand

Is an old known tale to our foreland cypresses, no news to the Lobos granite, no marvel

To Point Pinos Light and the beacon at Point Sur, But here is the marvel, he is nowhere not present, his beauty, it is burning in the midland villages

And tortures men's eyes in the alleys of cities.

Far-flown ones, you children of the hawk's dream future, when you lean from a crag of the last planet on the ocean

Of the far stars, remember we also have known beauty.