"These for you, so small and young, In your hand and heart and tongue." "Yes," murmured Cassandra, to whom Psyche's reading of the poem brought a deeper tinge of sadness for the fate of the poet-patriot, "they were very wrong in the method, but somehow very, very right in the deed." “Isn't that a paradox?" asked Jason. 66 "That's her privilege, being a woman," I explained, “ and doubly her privilege speaking about Irishmen. But I think I see her point. Ireland may be under the spell of the patriot, but the world is honoring and praising the poet. Would it be surprising, after all, if the world takes from Sir Roger Casement's sonnet Hamilcar Barca' the final meaning of that explosive Easter Sunday?" And I read these lines: 6 Thou that did'st mark from Heirote's spacious hill Eurythmic vastness to that stronghold torn From foes above, below, where, though forlorn, "I would like to know," Jason asked, "if we are to cherish the patriot or the poet in Mr. Viereck's book of Armageddon? I have never believed that Mr. Viereck was a true poet, and I am sure he has not proved himself a very good patriot — that is, to the country in which he has become a citizen, and which has permitted his egotism to have the freest play." "Strangely enough," I replied, "to me Mr. Viereck has proved himself a better poet in this book of Armageddon, than in any volume he has published. Of course, I don't at all subscribe to his opinions, and his betrayal of our national hospitality; but I do think his emotions, disagreeable as they may be, are genuine in this book, which they did not seem to be in those earlier, frothy emanations of his. He has never written anything more genuine than the little poem called The Doubles." " "And so he is to be forgiven for such poems as 'Wilhelm II., Prince of Peace,' 'The Neutral,' 'Italy 1915,' and 'The German American to His Adopted Country,' because he writes so lovely a thing as The Doubles '?" asked Jason. 6 6 "They determine their own worth," I answered, without compromise to either point of view. "Yes," scoffed Jason, "the delicious irony of 'Wilhelm II., Prince of Peace,' which I am not going to quote because I deliberately court anger now and then, is a commendable poetic virtue — when it is fortified with truth. But this poem holds to fact the kind of truth which Prussian paternalism has to democracy." I had no comment to make. We were all a little irritated in remembering the tone of the verses, and thought it best to let Jason's remarks pass. Psyche presently spoke. It was in a key wholly unexpected. "Oh, life is better than we make it," she said, " and, after all, a lapse in any direction does not wholly spoil the harmony of existence. I suppose, war is only a lapse on a gigantic scale. Browning was right to make Pippa joyous and prophetic. What's all wrong to-day will be all right to-morrow!" " 6 V PEACOCK PIE WE had fallen into a desultory discussion on the way to the grove on the prodigality of nature. The woods had never been so wonderful as this year. The carpeting of moss on the ground was lovely, and of a rich shade of green, clustered thick with tiny flowers, all of whose names I did not know, as the heavens are with stars. They were of all shapes and colors, from a wine red star to a delicate pale green trumpet. The mountain laurel was profuse, and in one swampy hollow where we found it on a rainy day, its transparent pink and white blossoms gave me a Watteau-like emotion of fragility. The underbrush here was very tangled, making a network of vines and foliage about the fallen branches and tree trunks; and I rather cherish the picture of Psyche, breaking through brush high as her waist, and getting thoroughly wet, in gathering great armfuls of the secluded blossoms. The open spaces in woods. were full of the largest daisies I had ever seen. Poets have called the daisies regal, but these were the first that my eyes beheld really having the pomp of sceptre and crown. Their stems were stately and tall, and their great long petals made a circle of bright shields around the gorgeous golden domes. The ashes from the forest fires of the previous year had fertilized all this beauty in the flowers, ferns and moss. The incessantly wet spring retarding the blossoming of flowers had preserved odors and colors in their freshness and perfection beyond the calendar period of maturity. "Nature is a wonderful artist," remarked Psyche, holding in her fingers a wild orchid she plucked from the bank of the stagnant stream along the car tracks we crossed on our way from The Farm. "Man can never make anything so beautiful for all his subtle devising of materials." "That's a truth it seems almost foolish to question," I commented. "But the more astonishing speculation to engage my interest, is the remarkable anthologist which nature proves herself to be." "Nature creates, but does she select?" asked Cassandra. "We speak of man creating- in music, painting, sculpture, poetry in all the arts; but does he? Doesn't he merely select and copy? You remember in that stupendous poem by Anna Hempstead Branch, Nimrod,' she says that 'Man has never created a new virtue.' Well, did man ever create a new beauty? All the virtues and all the beauties were here when he came, or arrived in his evolution at a mental or spiritual state where he could distinguish and appreciate them. Then he found them, both the virtues and the beauties, so necessary to his happiness that he began to |