It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath— It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with Death On some scarred slope of battered hill, When Spring comes round again this year And the first meadow-flowers appear. God knows ’twere better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Where love throbs out in blissful sleep, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear ... But I’ve a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town, When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous. _Willard Wattles_ Willard (Austin) Wattles was born at Bayneville, Kansas, July 8, 1888. He received his A.B. at the University of Kansas in 1909 and, since 1910, has divided his time between teaching English and harvesting wheat. His first book was an anthology, _Sunflowers: A Book of Kansas Poems_ (1914), to which he also contributed. _Lanterns in Gethsemane_ (1918) consists, almost entirely, of mystical and religious poems. There is, however, little of the sermonizing unction and less cant in these fresh pages. There is an unusual vibrancy here; a warm buoyance that glows against its theological background. Many of Wattles’s verses have the peculiar grace of a parable joined to a nursery rhyme; “The Builder,” “Jericho” and a few others seem like scraps of the Scripture rendered by Mother Goose. THE BUILDER[59] Smoothing a cypress beam With a scarred hand, I saw a carpenter In a far land. Down past the flat roofs Poured the white sun; But still he bent his back, The patient one. And I paused surprised In that queer place To find an old man With a haunting face. “Who art thou, carpenter, Of the bowed head; And what buildest thou?” “Heaven,” he said. CREEDS How pitiful are little folk— They seem so very small; They look at stars, and think they are Denominational. _T. S. Eliot_