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A SONNET LETTER

BY GRACE HAZARD CONKLING

I

WHEN in the spires of waves the small bells ring
And are half smothered by the thrusting bow,
When your dark-coultered ship is the only plough
To turn a purple furrow for the spring,
When April is a seagull following

The twisted lanes of foam, not caring how
Green buds expect her in the orchards now,
You will be free as any living thing.

The wind's brief kiss should satisfy your mouth.

Oh, you will be contented I dare say!

And meanwhile since I must not love you south,
I'll try to love a trifle north by east,
And keep the weather for my heart at least
Invariable while you are away.

II

I'll feel the air blow chill to trouble me
As tanagers are troubled by the cold,
Just up from Mexico, and all that gold
Poured down like daffodils upon the sea.
For I am warm now: I have memory
Of shining globes of surf forever rolled
Up a steep beach of tropic sand. I hold
The shell I found and hid away to be

Proof that we two were there: a seashell rosed
By some rich season underneath the wave.
You never knew I had it nor supposed
My love could dredge it up after the storm
Of one such furious breaker. I am warm
Possessing what you never knew you gave.

III

Now that I tell you, do you want it back?
Here in my hand I hold the fluted sea:
Here is the symbol of a tyranny

In wrinkled rose with lacquer of thin black.
Take my full meaning and you will not lack
Chords for the surf that crumbles, melody
Bright-scaled as netted mackerel, caught in three
Or four songs wilder than the moon's wild track
Across wind-broken water through the dark.
You know the shell is only a way of speech
For lapse of passionate breath, for the clear spark
Of rapture shared and lost, for the strange core
Of music heard that we shall hear no more
When we forget the breakers and the beach.

IV

I wish that you had taught me how to spend
My tropic colors for one subtle gray

To match the dove's in iridescent play
Of rainy light on pearl and light's soft end.
I must disguise myself: I must pretend
The north prevails at last and has its way.
My very songs whatever I may say
Will seem not to remember you, my friend.
Since I have been alone my whole life long,
It should be easier to let you go
Out of my sight and put you in a song.
But how reveal the secret of your brow
Or those grave eyes that find me even now?
And if they do, I need not tell you so.

V

If you should see a porpoise leaping clear,
No matter when it is, oh think of me!
Some other life that is what I shall be.
I'll cross with ships a hundred times a year,
I'll nudge the ribs of liners lifting sheer
As fabulous whales yet hug my liberty,
And burrow with a snout of ebony

Under the swaying schooners and the queer
Rust-tarnished sulky tramps that stagger and roll,
Hearing the bow draw breath and the foam rustle,
Or whirl at evening from the sea's control
Into the light and dare the setting sun

To plunge and race with me and wallow in fun,
A thing of fluent bone and golden muscle.

VI

More than these moments I must not demand.
Hours are another matter and your own.
I'll trust the busy sea to let you alone,
And London will not know it when you land.
It is too simple almost to understand
That you should go: for me the monotone
When music might have been, for you the drone
Of traffic down the pavement of the Strand.
You will be friends again with towers of bells
And horny pointing fingers of wise clocks
Among the smoke and tangled river-smells
Where Tilbury sprawls along the oily Thames
And ships have gone to sleep and tumult hems
Them in to dream the dark dream of the docks.

VII

You are right to be so homesick for the towers,
And I am wrong to look too deep within.
This is the season when new things begin,
And turf betrays the finger-prints of flowers.
Tell me, my dear, how to invest the hours.
What shall I see? The copper moon worn thin,
Or a taut ship strung like a violin?

Rain-gilded streets or poplars striped with showers?
Come with me . . . you must say

Down by St. Paul's in Paternoster Row,

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come along with me,

There is a little shop. What can it be?

Old books perhaps? Old prints? Nothing at all
Depending in the least upon St. Paul?

I'll have to ask the pigeons if they know.

VIII

Quickly before the broken wave falls down

Show me the world blown like a moth through space,
Yet share with me the drama of a place,

Let me not lose you: share with me the town. . .
Bridges and primrose-market and the frown
Where houses doubt the spring, and ruffled lace
Of April leaves, their shadows on your face. . .
Quickly before the falling wave can drown
All leaves and flowers and every day and night
We two have known and music and the pang
When music stops. I need to be concrete
Even with illusion, need to invent delight;
And liked the blackbird first because he sang
The number on a door in Cockspur Street.

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SAMUEL BUTLER AND EVOLUTION

BY W. L. MACDONALD

BUTLER'S chief contribution to the doctrine of Evolution can be traced to the section of Erewhon entitled "The Book of the Machines." These chapters in turn go back to a separate article published by Butler in The New Zealand Press bearing the significant title Darwin among the Machines. To the young writer of twenty-seven such rollicking with a serious subject appeared to savor too much of presumption, audacity, levity, especially since it apparently ridiculed a man whom he respected, and a theory which he then accepted without reservation. On the publication of Erewhon Butler wrote a sort of apology to Darwin to the effect that the subject of machines was "obviously an absurd theory without a particle of serious meaning, written simply to show how easy it is to be plausible and to defend an absurd proposition by a little ingenuity." The disclaimer is no doubt true up to a certain point. But when we consider how in these chapters there lay the germ of Life and Habit, Unconscious Memory, Evolution Old and New and Luck or Cunning? we are forced to the conclusion that Butler's apology contained the twilight of a reservation. The germ developed into an original theory, insistence upon which in season and out of season led to a quarrel with the great Darwin, and made Butler an Ishmaelite among scientists.

"The Book of the Machines" is "only just" motivated by the episode of the watch which occurs quite early in Higg's adventures in Erewhon, Machines, all but the simplest, had been destroyed five hundred years before, and his possession of a watch was a capital crime. Before leaving the country he was able to get possession of a reprint of the treatise which caused the destruction of machines. This document began by calling attention to the fact that consciousness as we know it at one time did not exist. At one time fire, at another rock, at still another plant life was the last word in consciousness. Was it not possible then

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