Of spring's childhood; the fierce unpitying pour Of low-hung leaden clouds; the evermore Prophetic beauty of the sunset storm, Transfigured into color and to form Across the sky. O wondrous changing rain! Changeful and full of temper as man's life; Impetuous, fierce, unpitying, kind again, Prophetic, beauteous, soothing, full of strife: Through all thy changing passions hear not we Th' eternal note of the Unchanging Sea? --_Laura Spencer Portor_ Nothing is worse than bad poetry, unless it be bad art of every kind, of which the world today is having a surfeit. That we find a greater abundance of wretched verse, however, than of wretched painting and sculpture, and that there are still those who think that the poet's equipment need consist of little more than an unbalanced emotionalism, we may attribute perhaps to the fact that the pen and ink are readier to hand with the majority than palette and brush or calipers and modeling tool. Conceit and ignorance, working together, have made "to write poetry" almost a reproach. The remedy would seem to be to diffuse a few simple truths, such as that true poetry has nothing to do with emotionalism, nor sentimentality, nor bad spelling, nor with metres that "interfere," like a clumsy horse's feet; and that where one in ten thousand who care for poetry may try to write it and succeed, the rest will fail and will neglect their proper duties besides. It is so in art, in literature generally, in music, in all things--the safe path is to drop the gleam and fire and fragrance of the soul-touch into one's life _in the shape of a more courageous performance of the daily task, whatever it may be_, and be content with that, which is the greatest thing in the world, anyway. If the Muse should decide to pick us out, willy nilly, she has ways of letting us know. Poesy has its technic, as has all art, and sentimental ignorance can never hope to pose as inspiration among those who know. The real point to be emphasized is that this is part of a certain outreaching on idealistic lines of which the wholly remarkable work of the young women of the present generation in music, composition, painting, and sculpture, constitutes other parts. And this outreaching towards an art expression along various lines is so general, and is so differentiated in essence from the results of ordinary scholastic work or the general movement for the higher education of woman, that it cannot justly be ignored.