"Jesus, ever good and gentle,

Wept our misery to see;
But he said to us, 'Accursed
Shall your souls forever be.'

"Phantoms of the night, arisen

From the grave, we wander weary, In these walls our penance wailing: (Miserere! Miserere!)

"It was sweet to lie entombed!Here, alas! how cold and dreary! And ah! the sunny fields of heaven! (Miserere! Miserere!)

"Dearest Savior, O forgive us

Our drear sin, for we are wearyLet us steal into thy heaven:

(Miserere! Miserere!)"

Thus in chorus sing the phantoms,
And at the organ over these

A long-dead player plays-his fingers
Wander wildly o'er the keys.

Jenny

My years are thirty-five; upon you

The suns of fifteen summers beam

But every time I see you, Jenny,
There wakes in me the olden dream.

Years ago when I was twenty,

I met a girl I thought was true;

Her look . . . and all . . was just like yours

She did her hair up just like you.

And when I had to leave for college,

I begged of her "to know my fate,"
And told her I'd return and claim her;
She said, "I love you. I will wait."

At Göttingen three years I studied
Hard, as only a lover can;
And then one day a gossip told me

She had just married another man.

Springtime was glad over field and forest,-
I remember, it was the first of May;
The birds sang sweet in the sunny weather,
And even the worms were warm in the clay.

But I alone was cold with anguish,

And weak, it seemed, with a fatal blight.
God knows what mortal agony

I suffered through that dreadful night.

But I got over it. I'm healthy;

My strength is like an oaken beam-
But every time I see you, Jenny,
There wakes in me the olden dream.

I Dreamed a False Sweet Dream

I dreamed a false sweet dream of youth that's squandered,—
Of the old home mansion on the mountain side;

And hand in hand with my dear love I wandered,
Down the steep pathway to the valley wide.

Her youth was cast about her like a vesture,
And in her merry eyes her youth was sweet;
She swayed, a dream of youth in every gesture,—
All grace and strength and charm from face to feet.

Her voice was low and gentle; her sweet spirit
Spoke in it, and revealed her heart's repose.—
Her sparkling wit and wisdom! Ah, to hear it
Breathe from her lips, like fragrance from a rose!

It was not idle fancy flashed upon me;

I did not rave-my heart was at command; But all her being meant to me, came on me, And lover-like I knelt and kissed her hand.

I half-recall a lovely lily blossom,

I think I plucked and laid it on her breast,
And whispered, "By this flower within thy bosom,
Be thou my wife, that I, too, may be blest!"

She may have answered-but I do not know it.
For I awoke! as always I awake,

Here on my bed of death, a dying poet,

Who have for years seen thus the morning break.

A Verse for Youth

Apples of gold o'er thy pathway are bending;
All is illusion; thy way lies ahead;

As the heroes of old, fight the fight to its ending,
Where the bright swords flash and the arrows are sped.

To do and to dare-there all hope lies before thee-
Alexander of old with the world at his feet!
For love have no care till the world's queens adore thee;
In the tent of thy triumph their praise will be sweet.

Earth's labor performed, every obstacle passed by us,-
O the deathly delight-the dear loss we have won!
Every battlement stormed-now the bed of Darius,
And a hero's repose in high Babylon!

An Interlude

All the pain with which I languish
In this little book has part;

Here you see, as 'twere, the anguish
Of a naked human heart.

THE POETIC TRAGEDY OF DANTE

BY ROGER SHERMAN LOOMIS

I am a devotee of the Middle Ages. Like Percival, I adored a knight the first time I saw one-in the pages of a picture book. When I read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, I found that even an ancestry of Connecticut Yankees could not prevent my sympathies from going out to Arthur's Quixotic and picturesque companionship. For me, there is no book like a thirteenth century illuminated manuscript, no stained glass like the windows of Chartres, no university like Oxford, no drinking song like "Mihi est propositum in taberna mori," no lovers like Tristram and Ysolt. Though I can relish Back to Methuselah or Main Street, somehow I find a completer zest in Jurgen or Domnei, where the modern satirist decks himself in cockscomb and bauble or the modern lover disguises himself as Dan Cupido.

Naturally the Divine Comedy fascinates me. But I cannot feel and think with Dante as I can with Chaucer or Langland or Villon or Gottfried von Strassburg or Petrarch. At least, it is only in those classic passages which all the world applauds that my mind and feeling yield wholly to the power of Dante's imagery and music. Perhaps this is my limitation; but I find almost universal among my acquaintance who genuinely love literature a sense that the Divine Comedy is a queer, a meaningless book. What is the explanation? Is Dante over our heads? Or have we left the thirteenth century, of which the Divine Comedy is the intellectual and moral expression, so far behind?

Of course, there are those critics, particularly vocal during the sexcentenary, who, not content with displaying the eternity of Dante's poetic genius at its best, set out to demonstrate the modernity of Dante's ideas. Let us see if they are right.