Four miles she walked, and home again, _Sexts_ To sit through half the afternoon And hear a feeble crone complain. But when she saw the frosty moon _Nones_ And lakes of shadow on the hill, Her maiden dreams grew bright as noon. She threw her pitying apron frill _Vespers_ Over a little trembling mouse When the sleek cat yawned on the sill In the late hours and drowsy house. _Evensong_ At last, too tired, beside her bed She fell asleep--her prayers half said. Is not this one of the high functions of poetry, to interpret the life the poet knows best, and to interpret it always in terms of the eleventh and twelfth commandments? Observe she loves the sister-mother, and she loves the mouse as well as the cat. There is no reason why those who love birds should not love cats as well; is a cat the only animal who eats birds? It is a diverting spectacle, a man with his mouth full of squab, insisting that cats should be exterminated. A woman who has done much for the advance of English poetry in America by her influence on public critical opinion, is Jessie B. Rittenhouse. She is a graduate of Genesee Wesleyan Seminary in Lima, New York, taught Latin and English in Illinois and in Michigan, and for five years was busily engaged in journalism. In 1904 she published a volume of criticism on contemporary verse, and for the last fourteen years has printed many essays of interpretation, dealing with the new poets. I dare say no one in America is more familiar with the English poetry of the twentieth century than she. She has been so occupied with this important and fruitful work that she has had little time to compose original verse; but any one who will read through her volume, _The Door of Dreams_, will find it impossible not to admire her lyrical gift. She has not yet shown enough sustained power to give her a place with Anna Hempstead Branch or with Sara Teasdale; but she has the capacity of putting much feeling into very few words.