softly as in the days of the old maestros. And so given into our hands, its pores all full of music, stained, like the meerschaum, through and through, with the concentrated hue and sweetness of all the harmonies which have 5 kindled and faded on its strings.

Now I tell you a poem must be kept and used, like a meerschaum, or a violin. A poem is just as porous as the meerschaum; the more porous it is, the better. I mean to say that a genuine poem is capable of absorbing an in10 definite amount of the essence of our own humanity, its tenderness, its heroism, its regrets, its aspirations, so as to be gradually stained through with a divine secondary color derived from ourselves. So you see it must take time to bring the sentiment of a poem into harmony with 15 our nature by staining ourselves through every thought and image our being can penetrate.

From The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

meerschaum (mēr'shawm): a pipe made from a porous substance which will float on water. Hence its German name meaning "sea foam." Aphrodi'te: Venus, the goddess of love, who, according to one legend, was born of the foam of the sea. pallida Mors (păl i da môrs): pale death. Nicotian: having to do with nicotine, the active principle of tobacco. —umbered: stained brown. — Amati: (à mä ́tĭ) and Stradivarius : famous Italian violin makers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their violins are highly prized to-day.— maestro (mä äs'trð): a master in music. · virtuoso (vẽr tú ō'so): a collector of curiosities; sometimes, a skilled musician. — dilettante: one who follows some art for amusement only.

THE POETS

ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY

ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY (1844-1881) was a British poet.

NOTE. The wonderful part played by the Song of the Marseillaise in the French Revolution is an illustration of the poet's meaning. The dream of a composer inspired a spirit of liberty which led to the overthrow of a kingdom.

We are the music makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea breakers
And sitting by desolate streams,
World-losers and world-forsakers

On whom the pale moon gleams,
Yet we are the movers and shakers

Of the world forever, it seems.

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We in the ages lying

In the buried past of the earth
Built Nineveh with our sighing,

And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying
Or one that is coming to birth.

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,

Sails the unshadowed main,

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings

In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,

And coral reefs lie bare,

15 Where the cold sea maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;

Wrecked is the ship of pearl!

And every chambered cell,

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,

20 As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,

Before thee lies revealed,

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

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Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year's dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap, forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born

Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!

While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

Siren: a sea nymph who lured sailors to destruction by her singing. Triton one of the Greek sea gods who was supposed to blow a shell trumpet to soothe the waves.

At the top of the woods, which do not climb very high upon this cold ridge, I struck leftward by a path among the pines until I hit on a dell of green turf, where a streamlet made a little spout over some stones to serve me 5 for a water tap. The trees were not old, but they grew thickly round the glade; there was no outlook, except northeastward upon distant hilltops, or straight upward to the sky; and the encampment felt secure and private like a room. By the time I had made my arrangements and 10 fed the donkey, the day was already beginning to decline.

I buckled myself to the knees into my sack and made a hearty meal, and as soon as the sun went down I pulled my cap over my eyes and fell asleep,