ter relationship.

There's a fellow in your office
Who complains and carps and whines
Till you'd almost do a favor
To his heirs and his assigns.
But I'll tip you to a secret
(And this chap's of course involved)--
He's no foeman to be fought with;
He's a problem to be solved.

There's a duffer in your district
Whose sheer cussedness is such
He has neither pride nor manners--
No, nor gumption, overmuch.
'Twould be great to up and tell him
Where to go. But be resolved--
He's no foeman to be fought with,
Just a problem to be solved.

This old earth's (I'm sometimes thinking)
One menagerie of freaks--
Folks invested with abnormal
Lungs or brains or galls or beaks.
But we're not just shrieking monkeys
In a dim, vast cage revolved;
We're not foemen to be fought with,
Merely problems to be solved.

_St. Clair Adams_.

PROSPICE

Here the poet looks forward to death. He does not ask for an easy death;
he does not wish to creep past an experience which all men sooner or
later must face, and which many men have faced so heroically. He has
fought well in life; he wishes to make the last fight too. The poem was
written shortly after the death of Mrs. Browning, and the closing lines
refer to her.

Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore.
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!

_Robert Browning_.

THE G