e
No less_ SONG'S _height that these possess:
We can but fail; and may prepare
The way to some success._

* * * * *

Shapes & Shadows

_By Madison Cawein_

THE EVANESCENT BEAUTIFUL.

Day after Day, young with eternal beauty,
Pays flowery duty to the month and clime;
Night after night erects a vasty portal
Of stars immortal for the march of Time.

But where are now the Glory and the Rapture,
That once did capture me in cloud and stream?
Where now the Joy that was both speech and silence?
Where the beguilance that was fact and dream?

I know that Earth and Heaven are as golden
As they of olden made me feel and see;
Not in themselves is lacking aught of power
Through star and flower--something's lost in me.

_Return! Return!_ I cry, _O Visions vanished,
O Voices banished, to my Soul again!_--
The near Earth blossoms and the far Skies glisten,
I look and listen, but, alas! in vain.

_August._

I

Clad on with glowing beauty and the peace,
Benign, of calm maturity, she stands
Among her meadows and her orchard-lands,
And on her mellowing gardens and her trees,
Out of the ripe abundance of her hands,
Bestows increase
And fruitfulness, as, wrapped in sunny ease,
Blue-eyed and blonde she goes,
Upon her bosom _Summer's_ richest rose.

II

And he who follows where her footsteps lead,
By hill and rock, by forest-side and stream,
Shall glimpse the glory of her visible dream,
In flower and fruit, in rounded nut and seed:
She in whose path the very shadows gleam;
Whose humblest weed
Seems lovelier than _June's_ loveliest flower, indeed,
And sweeter to the smell
Than _April's_ self within a rainy dell.

III

Hers is a sumptuous simplicity
Within the fair Republic of her flowers,
Where you may see her standing hours on hours,
Breast-deep in gold, soft-holding up a bee
To her hushed ear; or sitting under bowers
Of greenery,
A butterfly a-tilt upon her knee;
Or, lounging on her hip,
Dancing a cricket on her finger-tip.

IV

Aye, let me breathe hot scents that tell of you:
The hoary catnip and the meadow-mint,
On which the honour of your touch doth print