s poem, _The Machine_, awakens sympathy for the printer of Christmas
story books and reveals Gibson as the twentieth-century Thomas Hood of
_The Song of the Shirt_. One of the most richly human of his poems is
_The Crane_, the story of the seamstress mother and her lame boy. His
realistic volume of verse bearing the significant title, _Daily Bread_
(1910), contains a number of narrative poems, which endeavor to set to
music the "one measure" to which all life moves,--the earning of daily
bread.

Gibson owes much of his popularity to his spirit of democracy and to
the story form of his verse. Like Masefield, he sacrifices beauty to
dull realism. Gibson manifests less range, less dramatic feeling, than
Masefield, but avoids Masefield's uncouthness and repellent dramatic
episodes.

These two poets illustrate a tendency to introduce a new realistic
poetry. Wordsworth wrote of Michael and the Westmoreland peasantry,
but Masefield and Gibson have taken as subjects of verse the toilers
of factory, foundry, and forecastle. Closeness to life and simplicity
of narration characterize these authors. They approximate the subject
matter and technique of realistic fiction.

Alfred Noyes.--Alfred Noyes was born in 1880 in Wolverhampton
Staffordshire. He wrote verse while an Oxford undergraduate and he has
since become one of the leading poets of the twentieth century. He has
traveled in England and in America, reading his poems and lecturing on
literary subjects.

[Illustration: ALFRED NOYES.]

_The Flower of Old Japan_ (1903) is a fairy tale of children who dream
of the pictures on blue china plates and Japanese fans. The poem is
symbolic. The children are ourselves; and Japan is but the "kingdom of
those dreams which ...are the sole reality worth living and dying
for."

The poet says of this kingdom:--

"Deep in every heart it lies
With its untranscended skies;
For what heaven should bend above
Hearts that own the heaven of love?"[8]

_The Forest of Wild Thyme_ (1905) affords another

"Hour to hunt the fairy gleam
That flutters through this childish dream."[9]

There is also a deeper meaning to be read into this poem. The mystery
of life, small as well as great, is found simply told in these
lines:--

"What does it take to make a rose,
Mother-mine?
The God that died to make it knows
It takes the world's eternal wars,
It takes the moon and all the stars,
It takes the might of heaven an