O lady of the long robes, the slow folds flowing-- Lady of the white breast, the dark and lofty head-- Dwells there any wonder, the way that thou art going-- Or goest thou toward the dead? So calm thy solemn steps, so slow the long lines sweeping Of garments pale and ghostly, of limbs as grave as sleep-- I know not if thou, spectre, hast love or death in keeping, Or goest toward which deep. Thou layest thy robes aside with gesture large and flowing-- Is it for love or sleep--is it for life or death? I would my feet might follow the path that thou art going, And thy breath be my breath. V PILLAR-PRINT BY HARUNOBU From an infinite distance, the ghostly music! Few and slender the tones, of delicate silver, As stars are broidered on the veil of evening.... He passes by, the flute and the dreaming player-- Slow are his steps, his eyes are gravely downcast; His pale robes sway in long folds with his passing. Out of the infinite distance, a ghostly music Returns--in slender tones of delicate silver, As stars are broidered on the veil of evening. "The Dark Flower" and the "Moralists" MARGARET C. ANDERSON _The Dark Flower_, by John Galsworthy. (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.) A book that has beauty as it's given to few books to achieve it has been the innocent cause of more ignorant, naïve, and stupid condemnation than anything published for a long time. Even the English critics--who usually avoid these shallows--in several cases hit the rocks with awful force. And all because a man with the soul of the old gods chose to tell, quite simply and with inexpressible beauty, the truth about an artist. _The Dark Flower_ was everybody's opportunity to deepen his vision, but nearly everybody decided to look upon it as an emotional redundancy. Perhaps this doesn't do some of them justice: I believe a good many of them considered it positively dangerous! My quite spontaneous tribute to Galsworthy's Mark Lennan--before I'd heard anyone discuss him--was that here was a man a woman would be glad to trust her soul to. And, in view of how silly it is for a woman to trust her soul to anyone but herself, I still insisted that one could do it with Mark Lennan: because he'd not take charge of anyone's soul!--his wife's least of all. Of course, to love a man of his sort would mean unhappiness; but women who face life with any show of bravery face unhappiness as part of the day's work. It remains to decide whether one will reach high and break a bone or two over something worth having, or play safe and take a pale joy in one's unscarred condition. With Mark Lennan a woman would have had--à la Browning--her perfect moment; and such things are rare enough to pay well for, if necessary.