TO A BIRD AT DAWN BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE Now the slow light fills all the trees, The world, before so still and strange, With day's familiar presences, Back to its common self must change, And little gossip shapes of song The porches of the morning throng. "One of the finest lyrics our language or any duced."-Current Opinion. other has pro- YOU MUST MEAN MORE- O bird that somewhere yonder sings In the dim hour 'twixt dreams and dawn, Lone in the hush of sleeping things. In some sky sanctuary withdrawn; Your perfect song is too like pain, And will not let me sleep again. I think you must be more than bird, A little creature of soft wings; Not yours this deep and thrilling word- Some morning planet 'tis that sings; Surely from no small feathered throat Wells that august, eternal note. As some old language of the dead, In one resounding syllable, Says Rome and Greece, and all is said- A simple word a child may spell; So in your liquid note impearled Sings the long epic of the world. Unfathomed sweetness of your song, With ancient anguish at its core, What night of elemental wrong, With shudder unimagined, bore Peace so divine-what hell hath trod This voice that softly talks with God! All silence in one silver flower Of speech that speaks not, save as speaks The moon in heaven, yet hath power To tell the soul the think it seeks, And pack, as by some wizard's art, The whole within the finite part. To you, sweet bird, ohe well might feign- With such authority you sing So clear, yet so profound, a strain Into the simple ear of spring- Some simple understanding given Of the hid purposes of Heaven. Not yours with such as these to vie That of the day's small business sing, Voice of man's heart and of God's sky- But 0 you make so deep a thing Of joy, I dare not think of pain Until I hear you sing again. -Copyright, The John Lane Co. MAY IS BUILDING HER HOUSE BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE May is building her house. With apple blooms She is roofing over the glimmering rooms; Of the oak and the beech hath she builded its beams, And, spinning all day at her secret looms, With arras of leaves each wind-swayed wall She pictureth over, and peopleth it all. With echoes and dreams, And singing of streams. May is building her house. Of petal and blade, Of the roots of the oak is the flooring made, With a carpet of mosses and lichen and clover, Each small miracle over and over, And tender, traveling green things strayed. Her windows, the morning and evening star, And her rustling doorways, ever ajar With the coming and going Of fair things blowing, The thresholds of the four winds are. May is building her house. From the dust of things She is making the songs and the flowers and the wings; From October's tossed and trodden gold She is making the young year out of the old; Yea! out of winter's flying sleet She is making all the summer sweet, And the brown leaves spurned of November's feet She is changing back again to spring. -Copyright, The John Lane Co. You must mean more than just this hour You perfect thing so subtly fair, Simple and complex as a flower, Wrought with such planetary care: How patient the eternal power That wove the marvel of your hair. How long the sunlight and the sea Wove and rewove this rippling gold To rhythms of eternity; And many a flashing thing grew old Waiting this miracle to be; And painted marvels manifold. Still with his work unsatisfied, ' Eager each new effect to try, The solemn artist cast aside Rainbow and shell and butterfly,- As some stern blacksmith scatters wide The sparks that from his anvil fly. How many shells whorl within whorl, Litter the marges of the sphere With wrack of unregarded pearl, To shape that little thing. four ear: Creation, just to make one gr Hath travailed with exceeding fear. The moonlight of forgotten seas Dwells in your eyes, and on your tongue The honey of a million bees And all the sorrow of all song; You are the ending of all these, The world grew old to make you young. All Time hath travelled to this rose-- To the strange making of this face Came agonies of fires and snows; And Death and April, nights and days Unnumbered, unimagined throes Find in this flower their resting-place. Strange Artist, to my aching thought Give answer; all the patient power That to this perfect ending wrought--- Shall it mean nothing but this hour! Say not that it is all for nought Time brings Eternity a flower. -Copyright, The John Lane Co. a And all my life until this day, And all my life'until I die, All joy and sorow of the way, Seem calling yonder in the sky; And thereis something the song saith That makes me unafraid of death. I 't. I , . tft';. 'F4: i e ti ' . , r , . . : s I Under AUSpices of Oratorical Association 8 P.M., .,NN.0 IMP -06 r Adm mini You would not miss Lowell, Longfellow, Riley or Kipling and you should not miss LeGallienne.