The ghostly ships sail up to town and past the orchard wall; There is a leaping in the reeds; they waver and they fall; For lo, the gusts of God are out; the April time is brief; The country is a pale red rose, and dropping leaf by leaf. I do but keep me close beside and hold my lover’s hand; Along the narrow track we pass across the level land; The petals whirl about us and the sedge is to our knees; The ghostly ships sail up, sail up, beyond the stripping trees. When we are old, when we are cold, and barréd is the door, The memory of this will come and turn us young once more; The lights o’ Spring will dim the grass and tremble from the sky; And all the Kentish reeds bend low to let us two go by! Miss Reese’s work in _A Quiet Road_ is so uniformly quotable that one distrusts his judgment in the matter of choice, and having cited one poem as representative comes suddenly upon another that might have served him better; such an one, perhaps, is that to Robert Louis Stevenson, in its penetrative feeling, showing Miss Reese to be a diviner of spirits. One need hardly be told that she is of the “mystic fellowcraft” of Stevenson, and although the very name of the valorous one has become a sort of fetich among his lovers everywhere, one would go far to find him set forth more bravely than in this characterization, of which a part must suffice to show the quality: In his old gusty garden of the North, He heard lark-time the uplifting Voices call; Smitten through with Voices was the evenfall— At last they drove him forth. Now there were two rang silverly and long; And of Romance, that spirit of the sun, And of Romance, spirit of youth, was one; And one was that of Song. Gold-belted sailors, bristling buccaneers, The flashing soldier, and the high, slim dame, These were the Shapes that all around him came,— That we let go with tears. His was the unstinted English of the Scot, Clear, nimble, with the scriptural tang of Knox Thrust through it like the far, strict scent of box, To keep it unforgot. No frugal Realist, but quick to laugh, To see appealing things in all he knew, He plucked the sun-sweet corn his fathers grew, And would have naught of chaff. David and Keats and all good singing men, Take to your hearts this Covenanter’s son, Gone in mid-years, leaving our years undone— Where you do sing again! There! I have repented me and quoted it all, to preserve the unity. To be rare and quaint without being fantastic, to have swift-conceiving fancy that turns into poetry the near-by thing that many overlook—this is Miss Reese’s gift. You shall not go to her for ethics, philosophy, nor for instruction of any kind, for that is contrary to her creed; but you shall go to her for truth, truth that has become personal through experience; go to her for beauty, uplift, and refreshment, and above all for the recovery of the departed mood. III