A GROUP OF POEMS

BY ROBERT FROST

After being almost unheard for two years, Robert Frost is speaking again, in the old strain that will be unmistakable to readers of his “North of Boston." But Mr. Frost has not really been silent during this period. He has been producing more work of the type that has made him regarded on both sides of the ocean as one of the authentic voices of American literature. In the group of new poems which he here presents the broad range of his work is represented—as Mr. Frost himself puts it, "big bear, little bear, and middle-sized bear."

Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)-
Though some savants make earth include the sky,
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.

And so she said to Laban, "You have done

A good deal right: don't do the last thing wrong.
Don't make me lie with those two other women."

Laban said, No, he would not make her lie
With any one but that she had a mind to.
If that was how she felt, of course, he said.
She went her way. But Laban having caught
This glimpse of lingering person in Eliza,
And anxious to make all he could of it

With something he remembered in himself,

Tried to think how he could exceed his promise,

And give good measure to the dead, though thankless.
If that was how she felt, he kept repeating.
His first thought under pressure was a grave
In a new boughten grave plot by herself,
Under he didn't care how great a stone:
He'd sell a yoke of steers to pay for it.
And weren't there special cemetery flowers,
That once grief sets to growing, grief may rest:
The flowers will go on with grief awhile,
And no one seem neglecting or neglected?
A prudent grief will not despise such aids.
He thought of evergreen and everlasting.
And then he had a thought worth many of these.
Somewhere must be the grave of the young boy
Who married her for playmate more than helpmate,
And sometimes laughed at what it was between them.
How would she like to sleep her last with him?
Where was his grave? Did Laban know his name?

He found the grave a town or two away,
The headstone cut with John, Beloved Husband,
Beside it room reserved, the say a sister's,
A never-married sister's of that husband,
Whether Eliza would be welcome there.

The dead was bound to silence: ask the sister.
So Laban saw the sister, and, saying nothing

Of where Eliza wanted not to lie,

And who had thought to lay her with her first love,
Begged simply for the grave. The sister's face
Fell all in wrinkles of responsibility.

She wanted to do right. She'd have to think.

Laban was old and poor, yet seemed to care;
And she was old and poor-but she cared, too.
They sat. She cast one dull, old look at him,
Then turned him out to go on other errands
She said he might attend to in the village,
While she made up her mind how much she cared-
And how much Laban cared-and why he cared
(She made shrewd eyes to see where he came in).

She'd looked Eliza up her second time,
A widow at her second husband's grave,
And offered her a home to rest awhile
Before she went the poor man's widow's way,
Housekeeping for the next man out of wedlock.
She and Eliza had been friends through all.
Who was she to judge marriage in a world
Whose Bible's so confused up in marriage counsel?
The sister had not come across this Laban;
A decent product of life's ironing-out;

She must not keep him waiting. Time would press
Between the death day and the funeral day.
So when she saw him coming in the street

She hurried her decision to be ready

To meet him with his answer at the door.

Laban had known about what it would be

From the way she had set her poor old mouth,

To do, as she had put it, what was right.

She gave it through the screen door closed between them: "No, not with John. There wouldn't be no sense.

Eliza's had too many other men."

All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.
I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,
I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse
By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse.
(If certain it wouldn't be idle to call

I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall
And warn them away with a stick for a gun.)
I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun.
(We made it secure against being, I hope,
By setting it out on a northerly slope.)

No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm;
But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm.
"How often already you've had to be told,

Keep cold, young orchard. Good-by and keep cold.
Dread fifty above more than fifty below."

I have to be gone for a season or so.

My business awhile is with different trees,

Less carefully nurtured, less fruitful than these,

And such as is done to their wood with an ax—
Maples and birches and tamaracks.

I wish I could promise to lie in the night
And think of an orchard's arboreal plight

When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)
Its heart sinks lower under the sod.

But something has to be left to God.

OT

FOR ONCE, THEN, SOMETHING

THERS taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs Always wrong to the light, so never seeing Deeper down in the well than where the water Gives me back in a shining surface picture Me myself in the summer heaven godlike, Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs. Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb, I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture, Through the picture, a something white, uncertain, Something more of the depths-and then I lost it. Water came to rebuke the too clear water. One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, Blurred it, blotted it out. Truth? A pebble of quartz?

What was that whiteness?
For once, then, something.

THE BEAUTY AND THE BOLSHEVIST

A STORY IN THREE PARTS-PART III.

BY ALICE DUER MILLER

SYNOPSIS OF FIRST AND SECOND PARTS. Moreton, the young editor of a radical newspaper, learns that his brother, David, has become engaged to the daughter of William Cord, a millionaire, who stands for everything to which he is opposed. In order to prevent this alliance with the despised capitalist class, he hurries to Newport to see his brother. He arrives by boat at two o'clock in the morning, and, adventuring through the town, he comes to a great house where a ball is still in progress. He steals up on the veranda where, unobserved, he is struck by the beauty and charm of a girl who is apparently paying little attention to the love-making of her partner.

Moreton wanders off to the beach at dawn and goes in swimming. He again encounters the girl of the balcony, who is herself out for an early plunge. Each entirely ignorant as to who the other may be, they enter into a conversation. She confesses that she is tired of the empty life she leads, and he promises her a position on his newspaper. They make an appointment for the afternoon, though all he knows of her is her telephone number and her first name, Crystal.

Crystal, who turns out to be Cord's other daughter, is pursued by the conventional Eddie Verriman, whom Moreton had seen with her the night of the ball. Verriman is greatly worried at Crystal's socialistic tendencies. Her father philosophically refuses to share this anxiety. Crystal learns from him that her swimming companion is David Moreton's brother, and the two on a picnic discover a closer friendship developing between them.

S

As they drove back she revealed an

other plan to him—she was taking him for a moment to see a friend of hers. He protested. He did not want to see any one but herself, but Crystal was firm. He must see this woman; she was their celebrated parlor Bolshevist. Ben hated parlor Bolshevists. Did he know any? No. Well, then. Anyhow, Sophia would never forgive her if she did not bring him. Sophia adored celebrities. Sophia who? Sophia Dawson. The name seemed dimly familiar to Ben, and then he remembered. It was the name on the thousand-dollar check for the strike sufferers that had come in the day before.

They drove up an avenue of little oaks to a formidable palace built of gray stone, so smoothly faced that there was not a crevice in the immense pale façade. Two men in knee-breeches opened the double doors and they went in between golden grilles and rows of tall white lilies. They were led through a soundless hall, and up stairs so thickly carpeted that the feet sank in as in new-fallen snow, and finally they were ushered through a small painted door into a small painted

room, which had been brought all the way from Sienna, and there they found Mrs. Dawson-a beautiful, worn, worldweary Mrs. Dawson, with one streak of gray in the front of her dark hair, her tragic eyes, and her long violet and black draperies-a perfect Sibyl.

Crystal did not treat her as a Sibyl, however. "Hullo, Sophie!" she said. "This is my brother-in-law's brother, Ben Moreton. He's crazy to meet you. You'll like him. I can't stay because I'm dining somewhere or other, but he's not."

"Will he dine with me?" said Mrs. Dawson in a wonderful deep, slow voice -"just stay on and dine with me. alone?"

Ben began to say that he couldn't, but Crystal said yes, that he would be delighted to, and that she would stop for him again about half past nine, and that it was a wonderful plan, and then she went away.

Mrs. Dawson seemed to take it all as a matter of course. "Sit down, Mr.. Moreton," she said. "I have a quarrel with you."