Boy with the happy face and hurrying feet, Who with thy friendly cap’s salute Sendest bright hail across the college street, If thou couldst see my answering lips, how mute, How loth to take thy student courtesy! What truth have I for thee? Rather thy wisdom, lad, impart, Share thy gift of strength with me. Still with the past I wrestle, but the future girds thy heart. Clutter of shriveled yesterdays that clothe us like a shell, Thy spirit sloughs their bondage off, to walk newborn and free. All things the human heart hath learned--God, heaven, earth, and hell-- Thou weighest not for what they were, but what they still may be. Whether the scholar delve and mine for faith-wreck buried deep, Or the priest his rules and holy rites, letter and spirit, keep, Toil or trust in breathless dust, they shall starve at last for truth; Scholar and priest shall live from thee, who art eternal youth. Holier if thou dost tread it, every path the prophets trod; Clearer where thou dost worship, rise the ancient hymns to God; Not by the priest but by thy prayers are altars sanctified; Strong with new love where thou dost kneel, the cross whereon Christ died. _Yale Review_ _John Erskine_ THE LAGGARD SONG I had no heart to write to thee in prose, The sadness in me sore demanded song; But the song came not,--laggard as the birds, That will not sing us back the little leaves. O winter of my heart--when comes the spring? I am sore weary of these deathlike days, This shroud unheaving of eternal snow,-- O winter of my heart--when comes the spring? ’Tis time to answer, O nightingale,-- ’Tis thine to sing the winter all away, Release the world from bondage, and bring back The sound of many waters and of trees, And little sleeping lives anumb with cold,-- Yea! all the resurrection of the world. O winter of my heart! O nightingale! _Harper’s_ _Richard Le Gallienne_ GROTESQUE With the first light on the skyline came the rapping of the sickles And the brown arms of the reapers bent to toil another morn; Close beside me in the glimmer, in the golden sweep and shimmer, Knelt a reaper strange among us, crooning thro’ the ragged corn: “Born of sorrow, Gone to-morrow-- Gone to lie in yonder valley where their fathers long have lain; Men who know not ship nor sabre, Each but drudges by his neighbor, And the fields wherein they labor are a heritage of pain!”