EST MORTEM Yes, it is the garden gate; You cannot open it; 'tis locked, And has been since one day in late October When 1 found my last, sweet, smiling poppy Torn and bleeding, The ground all strewn with scarlet poppies' petals. Like scattered drops of blood. I gathered them, and kissed each one, apart, And locked my garden gate. I have not entered since; I do not like to see the place Where all my flowers died. It is so white and cold and dead and still -But if you wish-here is the key. I carry it always; see it is small and gold. Oh, please-do not step there! Last spring-a yellow daffodil Grew there, each day more beautiful, Until one fateful day in June I found a teardrop in the golden cup. The next day-when I came-'twas dead- See, here the forget-me-nots grew. How cold and bare the spot is now. You remember That summer when I left for Montreal You sent a lovely bunch-so fragrant; I have loved them since, and always plant them in my garden now. See, how the starlight falls upon my rose-bush. Dear roses, I love them best of all. They go to sleep, and dream-the others die- See, how the snow makes ghostly phantoms of them. Here is the pool, how cold it looks, how still. Poor little pool, it used to be So warm and friendly- I have seen it in June Lulling the baby stars to sleep, Crooning softly as it lapped against the shore. But now-now it is so cold, So dark and still- Dear heart, even the stars are gone, Everything's gone, but you and me. Come, I will lock the garden gate. I will carry the key near my heart. -Jennie Brown THE GEOLOGIST He has acquired somewhere on his grim road The hardness of his mountains. Long, grave years upon their stony sides Testing cleavage, gravity and strength Have ground in him a separateness from men: A piercing gaze that sets us ill at ease Like pinkish moths against black ebony- Unknowing what their weak arms paw upon. He goes through darkened halls, a figure Strange;, He teaches things that underneath the sky He wrested from the ground. Striding somewhere on solitary steeps. He found a God of whom we have not dreamed. A God whose majesty and mastery Exceedeth what our woven minds have grasped. Here in the humming bickerings of thought We have not sensed the same stupendousness Pulse in the eddies of our little spheres. No place was left for the Immensity, The God to whom his hickory strength cou'd bow. Like unto a lone crag, hardy, rugged, grand; Gray hues, and stolid, lined and worn by time We find him come into his sphere and out again. Still immutable his life goes on; Unobstrusive, unrenowned, uncrowned! He walks with dignity and ponderousness, Aisle by aisle among his cased-in rocks Steady and unchanging as are they, He is earthy like the browned old earth. Unmoved by human longings, passions, fires. But pause-deep in the earth a thousand things Exist, unthought, unsearched for, unrevealed. -Maude Johns.