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And you, stirred with activity,

The spirit of those energetic days!

There was our back yard,

So plain and stripped of green,

With even the weeds carefully pulled away
From the crooked red bricks that made the walk,
And the earth on either side so black.

Autumn and dead leaves burning in the sharp air,
And winter comforts coming in like a pageant,
I shall not forget them:-

Great jars laden with the raw green of pickles, Standing in a solemn row across the back of the porch,

Exhaling the pungent dill;

And in the very center of the yard,

You, tending the great catsup kettle of gleaming

copper,

Where fat, red tomatoes bobbed up and down

Like jolly monks in a drunken dance.

And there were bland banks of cabbage that came by the wagon-load,

Soon to be cut into delicate ribbons

Only to be crushed by the heavy, wooden stompers. Such feathery whiteness-to come to kraut!

And after, there were grapes that hid their bright

ness

Under a gray dust,

Then gushed thrilling, purple blood over the fire; And enameled crab-apples that tricked with their fragrance

But were bitter to taste.

And there were spicy plums and ill-shaped quinces, And long string beans floating in pans of clear

water

Like slim, green fishes.

And there was fish itself,

Salted, silver herring from the city..

And you moved among these mysteries,
Absorbed and smiling and sure;

Stirring, tasting, measuring,

With the precision of a ritual.

I like to think of you in your years of power-
You, now so shaken and so powerless-

High priestess of your home!

Reprinted by permission of, and by special arrangement with, B. W. Huebsch, Inc., New York. Copyrighted.

The Two Houses

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy is an English writer, born in 1840. He first wrote novels, among them "Tess of the D'Urbervilles," and did not take up poetry until he was nearly sixty. His collected poems were published by The Macmillan Company, New York, in 1919.

This poem may be read as direct conversation, yet there must be something of dignity and solitude and deep philosophy in the manner of its rendering.

IN the heart of night,

When farers were not near,

The left house said to the house on the right, "I have marked your rise, O smart newcomer here!"

Said the right, cold-eyed:

"Newcomer here I am,

Hence haler than you with your cracked old hide, Loose casements, wormy beams, and doors that jam.

"Modern my wood,

My hangings fair of hue;

While my windows open as they should

And water-pipes thread all my chambers through.

"Your gear is gray,

Your face wears furrows untold."

"Yours might," mourned the other, "if you held, brother,

The Presences from aforetime that I hold.

"You have not known

Men's lives, deaths, toils, and teens;
You are but a heap of stick and stone:
A new house has no sense of the have-beens.

"Void as a drum

You stand: I am packed with these; Though, strangely, living dwellers who come See not the phantoms all my substance sees!

"Visible in the morning

Stand they, when dawn crawls in; Visible at night; yet hint or warning

Of these thin elbowers few of the inmates win.

"Babes new brought forth

Obsess my rooms; straight-stretched Lank corpses, ere outborne to earth;

Yes, throng they as when first from the void upfetched!

"Dancers and singers

Throb in me now as once;

Rich-noted throats and gossamered flingers Of heels; the learned in love-lore, and the dunce.

"Note here within

The bridegroom and the bride,

Who smile and greet their friends and kin, And down my stairs depart for tracts untried.

"Where such inbe,

A dwelling's character

Takes theirs, and a vague semblancy

To them in all its limbs and light and atmosphere.

"Yet the blind folk,

My tenants, who come and go

In the flesh mid these, with souls unwoke, Of such sylph-like surrounders do not know."

"Will the day come,"

Said the new-built, awestruck, faint, "When I shall lodge shades dim and dumb, And with such spectral guests become acquaint?"

"That will it, boy;

Such shades will people thee,
Each in his misery, irk, or joy,

And print on thee their presences as on me!"

Reprinted by permission of, and by special arrangement with, The Macmillan Company. Copyrighted by The Macmillan Company.

The Chaperon

Henry Cuyler Bunner

Henry Cuyler Bunner, for several years the editor of Punch, was born at Oswego, New York, in 1855, and died at Nutley, New Jersey, in 1896. His poems are noted for their grace and lightness of touch.

Youth and coquetry predominate in this poem, but there is an undertone of tragedy which should not be neglected.

I TAKE my chaperon to the play

She thinks she is taking me.

And the gilded youth who owns the box,
A proud young man is he;

But how would his young heart be hurt
If he could only know

That not for his sweet sake I go

Nor yet to see the trifling show;

But to see my chaperon flirt!

Her eyes beneath her snowy hair,
They sparkle young as mine;
There's scarce a wrinkle in her hand
So delicate and fine.

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