He dreams of honor and wealth and fame,
He smiles, and well he may;

For to Vickery once a sick man came
Who did not go away.

The day before the day to be,

"Vickery," said the guest,

"You know as you live what's left of meAnd you shall know the rest.

"You know as you live that I have come To what we call the end.

No doubt you have found me troublesome. But you've also found a friend;,

"For we shall give and you shall take
The gold that is in view;

The mountain there and I shall make
A golden man of you.

"And you shall leave a friend behind
Who neither frets nor feels;
And you shall move among your kind
With hundreds at your heels.

"Now this that I have written here
Tells all that need be told;

So, Vickery, take the way that's clear,
And be a man of gold."

Vickery turned his eyes again

To the far mountain-side,

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16

20

24

32

And wept a tear for worthy men
Defeated and defied.

Since then a crafty score of years
Have come, and they have gone;
But Vickery counts no lost arrears:
He lingers and lives on.

Blue in the west the mountain stands,
Familiar as a face.

Blue, but Vickery knows what sands
Are golden at its base.

He dreams and lives upon the day
When he shall walk with kings.
Vickery smiles-and well he may:
The life-caged linnet sings.

Vickery thinks the time will come

48

To go for what is his;

But hovering, unseen hands at home
Will hold him where he is.

There's a golden word that he never tells

And a gift that he will not show.

All to be given to some one else—
And Vickery not to know.

Edwin Arlington Robinson.

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56

44

40

36

OLD GREY SQUIRREL

A GREAT while ago, there was a school-boy.
He lived in a cottage by the sea.

And the very first thing he could remember
Was the rigging of the schooners by the
quay.

He could watch them, when he woke, from his window,

With the tall cranes hoisting out the freight. And he used to think of shipping as a sea-cook, And sailing to the Golden Gate.

For he used to buy the yellow penny dreadfuls, And read them where he fished for conger eels, And listened to the lapping of the water,

And the green and oily water round the keels.

12

There were trawlers with their shark-mouthed flat-fish,

And red nets hanging out to dry,

And the skate the skipper kept because he liked

'em,

And the landsmen never knew the fish to

fry.

16

There were brigantines with timber out of Norro

way,

Oozing with the syrups of the pine.

There were rusty dusty schooners out of Sunderland,

And ships of the Blue Cross line.

20

And to tumble down a hatch into the cabin
Was better than the best of broken rules;
For the smell of 'em was like a Christmas dinner,
And the feel of 'em was like a box of tools. 24

And, before he went to sleep in the evening,
The very last thing that he could see
Was the sailor-men a-dancing in the moonlight
By the capstan that stood upon the quay.

He is perched upon a high stool in London.
The Golden Gate is very far away.

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They caught him, and they caged him, like a squirrel. He is totting up accounts, and going grey.

He will never, never, never sail to 'Frisco.
But the very last thing that he will see
Will be sailor-men a-dancing in the sunrise
By the capstan that stands upon the quay.

To the tune of an old concertina,

By the capstan that stands upon the quay.

Alfred Noyes.

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36

ISAIAH BEETHOVEN*

THEY told me I had three months to live,
So I crept to Bernadotte,

And sat by the mill for hours and hours
Where the gathered waters deeply moving
Seemed not to move:

O world, that's you!

You are but a widened place in the river
Where Life looks down and we rejoice for her
Mirrored in us, and so we dream

And turn away, but when again

5

10

We look for the face, behold the low-lands
And blasted cotton-wood trees where we empty
Into the larger stream!

But here by the mill the castled clouds
Mocked themselves in the dizzy water;

15

And over its agate floor at night

The flame of the moon ran under my eyes
Amid a forest stillness broken

By a flute in a hut on the hill.

At last when I came to lie in bed

Weak and in pain, with the dreams about me, The soul of the river had entered my soul,

20

*Reprinted by permission of the author, from "Spoon River Anthology," copyright, 1915, by the Macmillan Company.