drama, for all its splendid surface, and magnificent pride in beauty and ornament and contending powers, had, like the Russian, a barbarism at its core.

And yet, when all is said, the young Elizabethan is no more content with this Russian art and its realism than the Athenian is. He does not bring so much poise and sophistication, and so much security in the world, as the Greek can bring to Chekhov; but he brings his imagination and energy. And though he cannot describe his judgment of this realism as completely as the other can, he is, though less scornful, far more restive than the Greek. What finally maddens the Elizabethan about this realism is its deliberate limitations. Why should we decide in this manner what life is? The slender melody of despair that comes sometimes in Chekhov seems to the Elizabethan too gray and relaxed. The pity seems too quiet and fatalistic for his uses. The humor, the comedy, in Chekhov is sure and searching; he likes it, but he would like it to go further. What this Elizabethan wants, as the Greek in his way wants, is a larger statement of the idea; he wants what to him is the poetic. He has not patience to settle into this delicate and sensitive conveyance of human life, but must have a vastly more heightened world of passions, beauty, images, words. And out of such a world as this he demands, as the Greek does in his way, that at great moments great inclusive visual images or forms of action be created-as when Oedipus enters with his blinded eyes, or Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep, or King Lear wandering in the storm-in which the moment and all its implications is summed up and brought into a complete statement not only for the mind but also for the eyes.

And Chekhov's tragedy has for the Elizabethan far too much defeat. Out of such a muted violence and pressure of life he does not get his tragic beauty; this is not his poetry. He will not stop with this subtle and quivering revelation of what happens when a man's vitality, and the rush and fire of it, runs into the actual world about him. The thing that concerns him is what happens when the actual world about him runs into his vitality.

STARK YOUNG.

THE REVELATION OF RAPHAEL

BY KATHARINE LEE BATES

Hearken, and trust my words. Behold I am
Of the Archangels, of the Shining Seven
Who have one only thought, one song, one deed,
To worship God. Glory to God, our God!

He dwelleth in eternal light. He leads
The gleaming constellations up the sky.
The meteors and comets feel His hand
Upon their blazing reins.

He is the Lover

Of all that live. The spirits of all men,
Though far they stray, perverse, on lonely ways,
Are of His household, even as little children.
The forest brotherhoods, set free from terror,
Sport in His garden, happiest when His feet
May walk among them. He is Lord of all,
The tame, the wild, the souls of those that fly

In the glad air, that swim in the glad waters,

That graze in the glad fields. The flowers whose tints
Are dear to Him, the trees His psalmodists,

The curious, shy denizens of ocean

From proud leviathan to living towers
Of coral, even down to those dim growths
Still unaware of being. all rejoice
In their Creator, worshipping His law
With that best worship of obedience.
In every life He lives, urging it upward;
The reptile rises to the bird; the wolf
Becomes the collie, guardian of men's flocks;
The criminal ascendeth to the saint.

The sweetness of His law excels all sweetness;

To do His will is Paradise and Peace.

I am Raphael, the Healer of the Earth,

Sent forth of God to comfort human hearts
And cure them of their griefs, for He is mindful
Of man, whom He hath made but little lower
Than us, His angels, and hath crowned with honor.
VOL. CCXVII.-No. 808

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The bright, imperishable, singing spheres
Look wistfully on man, who falls to rise,
Whose soul was kindled at the central fire
And, burning wildly in the winds of earth,
Is yet divine. Glory to God, to God!

My task it is to heal this troubled earth
With reverence, with law, with loving kindness,
Purge it from greed and envy, falsehood, scorn,
Hate, cruelty, and all the brood of hell.
When martyrs in the fiery furnace walk,
I walk beside them and I cool the flames.
'Tis I present the prayers of saints before
The Throne of God; the psalms of David poured
Their fragrance from the censer I uplifted.

Farewell, for I arise to Him that sent me.

Swifter than those four steeds that down the air
Hurtle the splendid chariot of storm,

The Wind, the Rain, the Sleet, the Lightning, swifter
Than hope and fear and dream and death I speed
At the great bidding unto souls in sorrow;
But that keen flight is slow to my return
To Him whose essence draweth up mine own,
Even as the Sun draws up the dew. Farewell.
The clouds allure me and the ether calls me;
The pathways of the stars are lighted for me;
I bear your adoration up to God,

Beyond the pillars of the crystal heavens,
The chambers of the hoarfrost and the snow,
The stalls wherein the thunder-steeds are lodged,
Each ruled by its firm bridle of command,
Beyond Arcturus and his sons, beyond
The golden treasuries of the Pleiades,
Armored Orion and the mystic river

That mortals, marvelling, call the Milky Way,
Beyond the azure, star-embroidered veil

That the Four Seraphs weave between your world
Of space and time and our eternity.

On to the place where no flesh walks, I bear
The breath of your thanksgiving, on and on,
Beyond all hunger, thirst, and pain, and terror,
To the upper heaven whose palaces gleam out
With pinnacles and columns of sheer flame,

To that high dwelling, unconfined and clear, Whence God looks forth on all His circling globes, Shaping their shining destinies. And you,

You who have known the dimness and the dark,
Shall yet behold those walls that are no walls
But iridescent glow of jewels, praising

Our God with dancing color, even as life
Best praises Him with beauty, joy and love.
Glory to God!

THE IDLE SINGER

BY ANNE GOODWIN WINSLOW

Not that I may be understood;

Who understands the stream that slips

With endless music on its lips

Through the still wood?

Who listens when the night winds blow

Through those high harps the poplars string?

And the low song the rushes sing

Does any know?

And where the waves with milky hands

Touch the curved viol of the shore,

And the old chords break evermore,
Who understands?

But should the ritual be dumb
And the long invocation cease?—
Still let us breathe of that far peace

That may not come!

TWO POEMS

BY BERNICE LESBIA KENYON

THE BUILDER

This loveliness is builded of despair;
This tower of white strength was made to fall.
O creeping Dust, that folds and covers all
With cloak of shadow we would scorn to wear,
Come not too soon along the level air!
The stones are firm that make the tower wall,
And the unyielding steel runs thin and tall
Into the clouds, and with the sun is fair.

Dust that was Beauty of an ancient art,—
Grey Threatener! My plans bespoke no gleam
Of steel that has to rust,-no mortared seam
For finger-strength of yours to pull apart!
(I think it is more wise for those who dream
To keep their beauty hidden in the heart.)

DEFIANCE

My song shall flow unceasing as the tide,
And words make their defiance to the sun;
I am caparisoned in ancient pride,
Dowered for battles lost or battles won.

And through all fleeting days, at my right hand
Waits earth's mad beauty, timelessly arrayed;
And on my left pale clouds like pillars stand,
Bearing their strength to keep me unafraid.

For I have put my trust in passing things,-
In loveliness that melts before a breath,

In thoughts washed shining at the mind's clear springs,-
These are eternal in the face of death;

And armed with these, their splendor and their truth,
I shall be strong, and keep immortal youth,