_Profiles from China_ (1917) is a series of sketches of people, scenes and incidents observed in the interior. Written in a fluent free verse, the poems in this collection are alive with color and personality. The succeeding _Body and Raiment_ (1919) is less integrated, more derivative and diffuse. And yet, in spite of certain obvious echoes, individual poems like “The Drug Clerk,” “The Steam Shovel” and a few others are worthy to stand beside her distinguished first volume. THE MOST-SACRED MOUNTAIN Space, and the twelve clean winds of heaven, And this sharp exultation, like a cry, after the slow six thousand steps of climbing! This is Tai Shan, the beautiful, the most holy. Below my feet the foot-hills nestle, brown with flecks of green; and lower down the flat brown plain, the floor of earth, stretches away to blue infinity. Beside me in this airy space the temple roofs cut their slow curves against the sky, And one black bird circles above the void. Space, and the twelve clean winds are here; And with them broods eternity—a swift, white peace, a presence manifest. The rhythm ceases here. Time has no place. This is the end that has no end. Here when Confucius came, a half a thousand years before the Nazarene, he stepped, with me, thus into timelessness. The stone beside us waxes old, the carven stone that says: _On this spot once Confucius stood and felt the smallness of the world below._ The stone grows old. Eternity Is not for stones. But I shall go down from this airy space, this swift white peace, this stinging exultation; And time will close about me, and my soul stir to the rhythm of the daily round. Yet, having known, life will not press so close, And always I shall feel time ravel thin about me. For once I stood In the white windy presence of eternity. THE DRUG CLERK The drug clerk stands behind the counter Young and dapper and debonair.... Before him burn the great unwinking lights, The hectic stars of city nights, Red as hell’s pit, green as a mermaid’s hair. A queer half-acrid smell is in the air. Behind him on the shelves in ordered rows With strange, abbreviated names Dwell half the facts of life. That young man knows, Bottled and boxed and powdered here, Dumb tragedies, deceptions, secret shames, And comedy and fear.