Flamed the eternal spirit, night and day;
Untouched, unwasted, though the crumbling clay
Lay wrecked and ruined! Ah, is it not so,
Dear poet-comrade, who from sight hast gone;'
Is it not so the spirit hath a life

Death may not conquer? But, O dauntless one!
Still must we sorrow.
Heavy is the strife

And thou not with us; thou of the old race
That with Jehovah parleyed, face to face.

RICHARD WATSON GILDER.

EAR bard and prophet, that thy rest is deep,

DEAR

Thanks be to God! Not now on thy heart falls

Rumor intolerable. Sleep, O sleep!

See not the blood of Israel that crawls

Warm yet, into the moon and night; that cries
Even as of old, till all the world stands still
At rapine that even to Israel's agonies

Seems strange and monstrous, a mad dream of ill.
Thou sleepest! Yea, but as in grief we said;-
There is a spiritual life unconquerable..

So, bard of the ancient people, though being dead
Thou speakest and thy voice we love full well.
Never thy holy memory forsakes us;

Thy spirit is the trumpet that awakes us!

RICHARD WATSON GILDER.

Under No Skies But Ours

EMMA LAZARUS

I

UNDER no skies but ours, her grave be made! //

'Neath blue unblurred and clear stars never shamed

'Tis meet that she be laid!

Just Heaven accorded that sad right we claimed:"

The Old World gave its guest
Back to the loving West.

The city of her birth, which exiles hail

From that broad-breasted harbor, known so long, Forever heaving in its rippled mail

Of steely waves, to clasp the island-seat

Of Freedom-whom she sang with voice so sweet,
With voice so sweet and strong!

Not in the shadow of the shameful Past,
But in the radiance of the days to be,

The glory of the brows of Liberty.

The singer of that splendor sleeps at last;

Proud Spring, shall heap her painless rest with flowers Under no skies but ours!

II

On the far azure, eastern hills, where prone,
Like slowly-crumbling pillars, memories lie,
Discrowned, and overthrown,

The wrinkled Orient calls upon her sons,
Uncomforted, with an unceasing cry:
"Come, come, ye wandering ones!

A nation's hearth-stone waits the sacred fire!"
But, quenching their desire,

"Mother, not yet," they sigh,

"Not yet; the silver trumpets have not blown, Nor eastward moves in heaven the column-cloud. Haply, with faint host strengthened, by-and-by,

With psalms, with shawns, with ring of cymbals loud Shall Israel return unto his own;

Not yet alas, not yet!

To-day his face is set

Westward for there the Foster mother stands,

Young, forceful, mild, with frank, front-beaming

light,

And large, warm-welcoming hands.

Lo, in her spacious lands

The arm of Israel shall gather might!"

III

This was her home-aye, hers, whose noble pride
Had that dear name denied

To soil whereon her brothers suffered wrong:
Yet of another country she was free,-

The golden vales, the fields of Arcady,

The woods that whispered, and the streams of song! Among the lucent marbles of the Greek

'Twas hers to pass, and charm grand lips to speak, But as in siren palace reared apart,

One born to lead his people through the sea, Saw the Egyptian smite, and felt the smart Quickening the fire-seed in his Hebrew heart To burst in blaze-so she!

Yea, in that bitterest year

When Russia spurned the Jew,

She, too, ah, from a lovelier land she, too, Went forth, and left, for service more austere, Pure Beauty smiling in the fair white fane (The strong sweet voice we nevermore shall hear) Thrilled sword-like through the ear

Of whoso slept, though sleep were dull as death! O strange, O holiest hour

Of rapture and of power,

When a great soul is girded with a Cause! Finding at length, led on by deep hid laws, That Deed to do, wherefore God lent His breath, O Awful Hour more strange,

Of chill surprise and change,

Command most stern that bids the doer pause
Ere yet that Deed is done,

The trump be silent, ere the field is won!

How green, in coming years,

For her the glistening victor-palm had sprung!
Woe for the words unsaid, the song unsung!
Speech falters into tears

Tears but such tears as fed the vital root
Of Hope, and haste the time of bloom and leaf.
None shall forbid high Grief:

But doubt she had forbidden, who deeply know
The vigor of that stem whence life she drew,
The sure succession, the unfailing fruit!
IV

O faithful Israel, that keep'st aflame

The Lamp perpetual with remembrance due
Of the undying deed! Be this her fame:
The source of steadfast purpose, tireless borne.
If, in some dazzling morn

That breaks on e'en the blank eyes of the blind,
The flag of Judah shall indeed unfurl,

The hero-Ezra on his arm shall bind
No lordlier hand, no subtler amulet
Than her linkék songs of pearl,

And rubies passion-red as with rare life-blood wet!
We, too, we, too, have claim

On this uniting name!

We of the West may bow where Israel weeps. Beneath our clear stars, never veiled in shame She woke to life, and now, alas, she sleeps,

(Proud May-time heap her painless rest with flowers!) Under no skies but ours!

HELEN GRAY CONE.

ON

NCE more a singing soul's most airy vessel
Hath on its journey sped;

Once more we linger by the shadowy waters,
Mourning a spirit fled.

Yet, lingering here, we catch the tender vision
Of Beauty, throned above,

As fondly welcoming a spirit laden

With beauty and with love;

For she who left us hath with love deep freighted Her spirit's ample powers

She filled her life, her very name with beauty.

Like a rare urn with flowers.

ALLAN EASTMAN CROSS.

A RARE, sweet daughter of a wondrous race

She flamed with all the old-time prophet's fire, And woke again the echoes of that lyre

That from the haunted Saul the clouds could chase,
In her own might the heart of Miriam trace,
Or Deborah, aroused to holy ire

When her loved people did her soul inspire;
Yet lacked she nothing of a woman's grace.
Would she had lived to right her people's wrongs,
To thrill and lift them, with her grand soul's might,
And make them worthy of her noble thought!
But let her Israel still sing her songs,

And in her counsels learn to find delight, And not in vain her suffering soul has wrought.

MINOT JUDSON Savage.

FIRE from high, holy heaven down-drawn,

By her strong soul and true,

Flashed over Israel, a sudden dawn

With star-song wild and new,

A moment silent in her fair, firm hand

The harp of David lay,

Then gulfs of hopeless, sorrowing years were spanned

When she began to play,

Hers was a woman's song, whose martial force

All preludes down-hurled

Razed every wall that barred its noble course

Around the hindering world.

On far blood-hallowed hills the trampled dust
Of patriarch sires did glow,

And matchless swords, long buried in their rust,
Leaped eager for the blow.

In their lone tombs the Hebrew heroes heard,
The prophets felt and knew.

How once again divinest courage stirred

The genius of the Jew.