“Why does the poet choose to sing? No impulse ever stirred in me The wish to make myself a thing To which all mocking gibes might cling.” _Perhaps he sees more than you see._ “Why should this fool go crying out The secrets of his soul? In steel I case myself, nor care to shout Those things one does not talk about.” _Perhaps he feels more than you feel._ “If I had wisdom to impart, I’d say the thing, and let it go, Not trifle with a foolish art And make a motley of my heart.” _Perhaps he knows more than you know._ [Illustration] SUBMARINE MOUNTAINS BY CALE YOUNG RICE Under the sea, which is their sky, they rise To watery altitudes as vast as those Of far Himalayan peaks impent in snows, And veils of cloud and sacred deep repose. Under the sea, their flowing firmament, More dark than any ray of sun can pierce, The earthquake thrust them up with mighty tierce, And left them to be seen but by the eyes Of awed imagination inward bent. Their vegetation is the viscid ooze, Whose mysteries are past belief or thought. Creation seems around them devil-wrought, Or by some cosmic urgence gone distraught. A-down their precipices, chill and dense With the dank midnight, creep or crawl or climb Such tentacled and eyeless things of slime, Such monster shapes as tempt us to accuse Life of a miscreative impotence. About their peaks the shark, their eagle, floats In the thick azure far beneath the air, Or downward sweeps upon what prey may dare Set forth from any silent, weedy lair. But one desire on all their slopes is found, Desire of food, the awful hunger strife; Yet here, it may be, was begun our life, Here all the dreams on which our vision dotes In unevolved obscurity were bound. Too strange it is, too terrible! And yet It matters not how we were wrought, or whence Life came to us with all its throb intense, If in it is a Godly Immanence. It matters not,--if haply we are more Than creatures half conceived by a blind force That sweeps the universe in a chance course: For only in Unmeaning Might is met The intolerable thought none can ignore. [Illustration] A VISIT TO WHISTLER BY MARIA TORRILHON BUEL In May, 1899, we were two women in Paris for hats, gowns, and the season’s show of pictures. I was under the wing of a handsome matron who had a latent desire to see herself transferred to canvas should she chance upon a painter with an appealing portrait of some other woman. Through friends, several great studios were opened to us, and we grew more and more enterprising, until one day my guide and mentor, suddenly turning to me, said, “Let us visit Whistler!”