hat I could not fathom it.

This sorrow bringing laughter, and joy tears,
Conflicting things we cannot understand;
This constant longing for great length of years,
That brings but weary limb and feeble hand;

Eyes that are dim, and saddened, lowly life;
These hot-waged wars, squalid with cries of pain,
This joy in contest and this thirst for strife,
In which both suffer, and there is no gain;

Strong love that ere long turns to stronger hate,
Sin leading into good, good into sin--
In very truth do lambs with tigers mate.
The world is wide, and strange things are therein.

_Fortnight_, 1887.

ON BRYANT'S "THANATOPSIS"

GEORGE LYNDE RICHARDSON '88

A great thought came to a great singer's heart,
Out of the grandeur of the changeless hills--
A thought whose greatness e'en in our day fills
Men's minds with nobler feeling. All his art
He lavished on the poem that he wrought,
That it might be, through all the years of time,
An inspiration, to all men, sublime,
And nor for fault of his hand come to naught.
So it hath been. The singer lieth dead;
His words live on. And still the mountains stand,
And all men say who know them, in that land--
And through all ages, it will still be said--
Not gold that perisheth, from deep-hid veins,
They give us, but the thought that aye remains.

_Literary Monthly_, 1887.

SUMMER SONG[1]

TALCOTT M. BANKS '90

Come, friend scholar, cease your bending
Over books with eager gaze;
Time it were such work had ending,--
Well enough for rainy days.
Out with me where sunlight pours,
Life to-day is out of doors!

Busy? Pshaw! what good can reach you
Frowning o'er that dog-eared page?
Yonder rushing brook can teach you
More than half your Classic Age.
Banish Greeks and Siren shores,
Let your thoughts run out of doors!

Rest we here where none can spy us,
Deep in rippling fields of grass;
Scented winds blow softly by us,
Lazy clouds above us pass;
Higher yet my fancy soars--
All my soul is out of doors!

_Literary Monthly_, 1888.

[Footnote 1: Copyright, 1907, by T.M. Banks. With permission.]

THE BACKWARD LOOK[1]

TALCOTT M. BANKS '90

Once on a bright October day,
I took the road whose winding track
Leads up among the hills away
Across Taconic's shaggy back,
Leaving the valley broad and fair
For barren heights in u