_I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses, All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses; All night from their stalls, the importunate tramping and neighing._ Let cowards and laggards fall back! but alert to the saddle, Straight, grim, and abreast, go the weather-worn galloping legion, With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him. The trail is through dolor and dread, over crags and morasses; There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us: What odds? we are knights, and our souls are but bent on the riding. _I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses, All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses; All night from their stalls, the importunate tramping and neighing._ We spur to a land of no name, outracing the storm-wind; We leap to the infinite dark, like the sparks from the anvil, Thou leadest, O God! all’s well with Thy troopers that follow! “The Kings” and “The Perfect Hour” are other trumpet notes of Miss Guiney’s, illustrating the individuality of her point of view and the personality of her expression. A poet’s words may be wind-blown feathers, or they may be flint-tipped arrows singing to a mark. The defect with much of present-day poetry is that it is not aimed, it is content to be a pretty flight of feathers, blown by the breath of fancy, and reaching no vital spot. To test Miss Guiney’s marksmanship with words, one may separate her at once from the class who are flying airy illusions nowhither, for she concentrates, instead of diffusing, and has, at the outset, a definite point in view. She works upon the arrow principle, but now and again glances from the mark. In such a poem as “The Recruit,” in “The Wild Ride,” or the “Saint George” quoted from, in her stirring poem “Sanctuary,” beginning, High above Hate I dwell, O storms! farewell, and in many others, she cleaves straight to her aim with no deflection. The same may be said of many of her lighter poems, the charming “Lilac Song,” or this delicately wrought love-song, speeding to the heart: When on the marge of evening the last blue light is broken, And winds of dreamy odor are loosened from afar; Or when my lattice opens, before the lark has spoken, On dim laburnum-blossoms, and morning’s dying star, I think of thee (O mine the more if other eyes be sleeping!) Whose great and noonday splendor the many share and see, While, sacred and forever, some perfect law is keeping The late and early twilight alone and sweet for me.