Having been an expert collector and student of Japanese prints, Ficke has written two books on this theme. His intellectual equipment is reinforced by a strong sense of satire. Writing under the pseudonym “Anne Knish,” he was one of the co-authors (with Witter Bynner) of _Spectra_ (1916), which, caricaturing some of the wilder outgrowths of the new poetry, was taken seriously by a majority of the critics and proved to be a brilliant hoax. PORTRAIT OF AN OLD WOMAN She limps with halting painful pace, Stops, wavers and creeps on again; Peers up with dim and questioning face, Void of desire or doubt or pain. Her cheeks hang gray in waxen folds Wherein there stirs no blood at all. A hand, like bundled cornstalks, holds The tatters of a faded shawl. Where was a breast, sunk bones she clasps; A knot jerks where were woman-hips; A ropy throat sends writhing gasps Up to the tight line of her lips. Here strong the city’s pomp is poured ... She stands, unhuman, bleak, aghast: An empty temple of the Lord From which the jocund Lord has passed. He has builded him another house, Whenceforth his flame, renewed and bright, Shines stark upon these weathered brows Abandoned to the final night. THE THREE SISTERS Gone are the three, those sisters rare With wonder-lips and eyes ashine. One was wise and one was fair, And one was mine. Ye mourners, weave for the sleeping hair Of only two, your ivy vine. For one was wise and one was fair, But one was mine. SONNET There are strange shadows fostered of the moon, More numerous than the clear-cut shade of day.... Go forth, when all the leaves whisper of June, Into the dusk of swooping bats at play; Or go into that late November dusk When hills take on the noble lines of death, And on the air the faint, astringent musk Of rotting leaves pours vaguely troubling breath. Then shall you see shadows whereof the sun, Knows nothing—aye, a thousand shadows there Shall leap and flicker and stir and stay and run, Like petrels of the changing foul or fair; Like ghosts of twilight, of the moon, of him Whose homeland lies past each horizon’s rim.... _Badger Clark_