... But the wonder wavers-- The light goes out. I am in the void no more; changes are imminent. Time with a million beating wings Deafens the air in migratory flight Like the roar of seas--and is gone ... And a silence Lasts deafeningly. In darkness and perfect silence I wander groping in my agony, Far from the light lost in the upper ether-- Unknown, unknowable, so nearly mine. And the ages pass by me, Thousands each instant, yet I feel them all To the last second of their dragging time. Thus have I striven always Since the world began. And when it dies I still must struggle ... * * * * * The voice I knew so long ago, like a muffled echo under the sea Is coming nearer. Strong hands Grip mine. And words whose tones are warm with some forgotten consolation, Some unintelligible hope, Drag me upward in horrible mercy; And the cold once-familiar daylight glares into my eyes. He stands there, The white apostate monk, Speaking low lying words to soothe me. And I lift my voice out of its vales of agony And laugh in his face, Mocking him with astonishment of wonder. For he has denied; And I have come so near, so near to knowing ... Then as his hand touches me gently, I am drawn up from the lonely abysses, And suffer him to lead me back into the green valleys of the living. "True to Life" EDITH WYATT A recent sincere and beautiful greeting from Mr. John Galsworthy to THE LITTLE REVIEW suggests that the creative artist and the creative critic in America may wisely heed a saying of de Maupassant about a writer "sitting down before an object until he has seen it in the way that he alone can see it, seen it with the part of him which makes him This man and not That." Mr. Galsworthy adds: "And I did seem to notice in America that there was a good deal of space and not much time; and that without too much danger of becoming 'Yogis,' people might perhaps sit down a little longer in front of things than they seemed to do." What native observer of American writing will not welcome the justice of this comment? Surely the contemporary American poems, novels, tales, and critiques which express an individual and attentively-considered impression of any subject from our own life here are few: and these not, it would appear, greatly in vogue. Why? Everyone will have his own answer.