e sun upon thy beauty throws
No kiss--the dawn no dew.

Thou knowest not the love-warm marl
Of Earth, but dead and white
The wastes wherein thy roots ensnarl
Ere thou art freed in light.

Where blighted dawns, with twilight blent,
Die pale, thou liftest strong,
A tongue of crimson, eloquent
With one unceasing song.

O Life in vasts of death! O Flame
That thrills the stark expanse;
Let Love and Longing be thy name!
Love and Renunciance.

HERMAN SCHEFFAUER,
in _Looms of Life._

AUGUST 28.

IN A CALIFORNIA GARDEN.

Thro' the green cloister, folding us within.
The leaves are audible--our ear to win;
They whisper of the realm of old Romance.
Of sunny Spain, and of chivalric France;
And poor Ramona's love and her despair,
Thrill, like Aeolian harp, the twilight air--
So the dear garden claims its mystic due.
Linking the legends of the Old and New.

FRANCES MARGARET MILNE,
in _The Grizzly Bear Magazine, June_, 1909.

AUGUST 29.

The evening primrose covers the lower slopes with long sheets of
brightest yellow, and from the hills above, the rock-rose adds its
golden bloom to that of the sorrel and the wild alfalfa, until the
hills almost outshine the bright light from the slopes and plains. And
through all this nods a tulip of delicate lavender; vetches, lupins
and all the members of the wild-pea family are pushing and winding
their way everywhere in every shade of crimson, purple and white. New
bell-flowers of white and blue and indigo rise above the first, which
served merely as ushers to the display, and whole acres ablaze with
the orange of the poppy are fast turning with the indigo of the
larkspur. The mimulus alone is almost enough to color the hills.

T.S. VAN DYKE,
in _Southern California._

AUGUST 30.

THE MARIPOSA LILY.

Insect or blossom? Fragile, fairy thing,
Poised upon slender tip, and quivering
To flight! a flower of the fields of air;
A jeweled moth; a butterfly, with rare
And tender tints upon his downy wings,
A moment resting in our happy sight;
A flower held captive by a thread so slight
Its petal-wings of broidered gossamer
Are light as the wind, with every wind astir,
Wafting sweet odor, faint and exquisite.
O dainty nursling of the field and sky.
What fairer thing looks up to heaven's blue
And drinks the noontide sun, the dawning's dew?
Thou winged bloom! thou blossom-butt