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'Let go the Cross' - GERTRUDE RUNSHON.

I heard a strange voice in the distance calling
As from a star an echo might be falling.

It spoke four syllables, concise and brief,...

EXPLANATORY
...

I thought my heart was death chilled,
I thought its fires were cold;
But the new love, the new love,
It warmeth like the old.

I thought its rooms were shadowed
With the gloom of endless night;...

Oh! give me the night, the dark, dark night,
The night with never a star.
When the stars are veiled and the moon has sailed
Beyond the horizon's bar.
When thought grows weary of groping its way...

In a land beyond sight or conceiving,
In a land where no blight is, no wrong,
No darkness, no graves, and no grieving,
There lies the great ocean of song.
And its waves, oh, its waves unbeholden...

Good-bye to the cradle, the dear wooden cradle
The rude hand of Progress has thrust it aside.
No more to its motion o'er sleep's fairy ocean,
Our play-weary wayfarers peacefully glide.
...

The fields were bleak and sodden. Not a wing
Or note enlivened the depressing wood,
A soiled and sullen, stubborn snowdrift stood
Beside the roadway. Winds came muttering...

All alone with my heart to-night
I sit, and wonder, and sigh.
What is she like, is she dark, or light,
This other woman who has the right
To love him better than I?
...

With ever some wrong to be righting,
With self ever seeking for place,
The world has been striving and fighting
Since man was evolved out of space.
Bold history into dark regions...

Fling my past behind me, like a robe
Worn threadbare in the seams, and out of date.
I have outgrown it. Wherefore should I weep
And dwell up on its beauty, and its dyes
Of Oriental splendour, or complain...

I fling my past behind me, like a robe
Worn threadbare in the seams, and out of date.
I have outgrown it. Wherefore should I weep
And dwell upon its beauty, and its dyes
Of Oriental splendor, or complain...

Angel of Peace, the hounds of war,
Unleashed, are all abroad,
And war's foul trade again is made
Man's leading aim in life.
Blood dyes the billow and the sod;
The very winds are rife...

[In Edgar Allan Poe's story, 'The Pit and the Pendulum,' the victim is bound hand and foot, face upturned to a huge, knife-edged pendulum which swings back and forth across his body, the blade dropping closer to his heart at ea...

The pessimistic locust, last to leaf,
Though all the world is glad, still talks of grief.

You remember the hall on the corner?
To-night as I walked down street
I heard the sound of music,
And the rhythmic beat and beat,
In time to the pulsing measure
Of lightly tripping feet.
...

In the rosy light of my day's fair morning,
Ere ever a storm cloud darkened the west,
Ere even a shadow of night gave warning
When life seemed only a pleasure quest,
Why then all humour and comedy scorning -...

If you listen you will hear, from east to west,
Growing sounds of discontent and deep unrest.
It is just the progress-driven plough of God,
Tearing up the well-worn custom-bounded sod;...

Oh, you who read some song that I have sung,
What know you of the soul from whence it sprung?

Dost dream the poet ever speaks aloud
His secret thought unto the listening crowd?
...

What is the explanation of the strange silence of American poets
concerning American triumphs on sea and land?
Literary Digest.

Why should the poet of these pregnant times...

I said I would have my fling,
And do what a young man may;
And I didn't believe a thing
That the parsons have to say.
I didn't believe in a God
That gives us blood like fire,...