This poem is, as you may know, a sonnet. Notice the number of lines, the meter, and the rhyme-scheme, referring to page 139 for a review of the sonnet form. Notice how the thought changes at the ninth line. Find a sonnet in one of the good current magazines. How can you recognize it? Read it carefully. If it is appropriate, bring it to class, and read and explain it to your classmates. Why has the sonnet form been used so much by poets? If you can find it, read the sonnet on _The Sonnet_, by Richard Watson Gilder. COLLATERAL READINGS For references on Lincoln, see pages 50 and 51. For portraits of Richard Watson Gilder, and biographical material, consult: Current Literature, 41:319 (Portrait); Review of Reviews, 34: 491 (Portrait); Nation, 89:519; Dial, 47:441; Harper's Weekly, 53:6; World's Work, 17:11293 (Portrait); Craftsman, 16:130, May, 1909 (Portrait); Outlook, 93:689 (Portrait). For references to material on the sonnet, see page 140. A FIRE AMONG THE GIANTS JOHN MUIR (From _Our National Parks_) In the forest between the Middle and East forks of the Kaweah, I met a great fire, and as fire is the master scourge and controller of the distribution of trees, I stopped to watch it and learn what I could of its works and ways with the giants. It came racing up the steep chaparral-covered slopes of the East Fork cañon with passionate enthusiasm in a broad cataract of flames, now bending down low to feed on the green bushes, devouring acres of them at a breath, now towering high in the air as if looking abroad to choose a way, then stooping to feed again,--the lurid flapping surges and the smoke and terrible rushing and roaring hiding all that is gentle and orderly in the work. But as soon as the deep forest was reached, the ungovernable flood became calm like a torrent entering a lake, creeping and spreading beneath the trees where the ground was level or sloped gently, slowly nibbling the cake of compressed needles and scales with flames an inch high, rising here and there to a foot or two on dry twigs and clumps of small bushes and brome grass. Only at considerable intervals were fierce bonfires lighted, where heavy branches broken off by snow had accumulated, or around some venerable giant whose head had been stricken off by lightning.