scientific persons, and we insist on taking our own way. Our blood beats fully only at this season, and not even the extortioners' bills can daunt us. Let us break into poetry and flout the maudlin enthusiasts who prate of spring. With a ripple of leaves and a twinkle of streams The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise, And the winds are one with the clouds and beams-- Midsummer days! Midsummer days! The dusks grow vast in a purple haze, While the West from a rapture of sunset rights, Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise-- Midsummer nights! O Midsummer nights! * * * * * The wood's green heart is a nest of dreams, The lush grass thickens and springs and sways, The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams-- Midsummer days! Midsummer days! In the stilly fields, in the stilly way, All secret shadows and mystic lights, Late lovers, murmurous, linger and gaze-- Midsummer nights! O Midsummer nights! * * * * * There's a swagger of bells from the trampling teams, Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze, The rich ripe rose as with incense steams-- Midsummer days! Midsummer days! A soul from the honeysuckle strays, And the nightingale, as from prophet heights, Speaks to the Earth of her million Mays-- Midsummer nights! O Midsummer nights! And it's oh for my Dear and the charm that stays-- Midsummer days! Midsummer days! And it's oh for my Love and the dark that plights-- Midsummer nights! O Midsummer nights! There is a burst for you! And we will let the poets of spring, with their lambkins and their catkins and the rest, match this poem of William Henley's if they can. The royal months are ours, and we love the reign of the rose. When the burnished tints of bronze shine on the brackens, and the night-wind blows with a chilly moan from the fields of darkness, we shall have precious days to remember, and, ah, when the nights are long, and the churlish Winter lays his fell finger on stream and grass and tree, we shall be haunted by jolly memories! Will the memories be wholly pleasant? Perchance, when the curtains are drawn and the lamp burns softly, we may read of bright and beautiful things. Out of doors the war of the winter fills the roaring darkness. It may be that Hoarsely across the iron ground The icy wind goes roaring past, The powdery wreaths go whirling round Dancing a measure to the blast. The hideous sky droops darkly down In brooding swathes of misty gloom, And seems to wrap the fated town In shadows of remorseless doom.