Golden movements of planets in heaven's high vaults

Till one lives in all that which acts, struggles and thrills

And avidly opens one's heart to the law That rules, dread and stern, the whole universe o'er!

He also, in the spirit of a truly nationalist poet, portrays the march of industrial warfare and shows the price we pay for it all. Never entirely releasing the memories of his childhood with its meadows green, he resented the approach of the devouring "city tentacles" and in mournful stanzas he sings the death of the open plain.

In certain moments this poet has sung of love with a beautiful tenderness, thus showing the influence of his own happy marriage, but to him essentially love is the relaxation, not the inspiration of life.

In hours like these, when through our dream of bliss

So far from all things not ourselves we move, What lustral blood, what baptism is this

there;

Adoring something, what, we cannot say,
More pure than we are and more far away,
With spirit fervent and most guileless grown,
How we are mingled and dissolved in one;
Ah, how we live each other, in the unknown!
Oh, how absorbed and wholly lost before
The presence of those hours supreme one lies!
And how the soul would fain find other skies
To seek therein new gods it might adore;
Oh, marvelous and agonizing joy,

Audacious hope whereon the spirit hangs,
Of being one day

Once more the prey,

Beyond even death, of these deep, silent pangs?

During these latter years his work has been a refutation of all his early excesses -the mystical element is again in control and he deals with his miller, blacksmith, and the cord-maker in the Flemish fields with a renewed art. Recognition of his great genius has come, too, and the Belgians woke up to find they had a poet, in some ways the greatest since Victor Hugo, to whom he has often been compared because of their prophetic outlook on life, their splendid vigor of diction, and their genuine passion for humanity.

Ironically enough, Emile Verhaeren is best known through the biography of his German friend and translator, Stefan Zweig. A volume of selected poems has recently been rendered in English verse by Alma Strattell. But to attempt to render the irridescent charm and subtle adjustment of word values of this gifted Belgian into any other tongue is practically to create a new and different poem.

No greater proof of the poet's spiritual development could be had than his recent poem on the destruction of the Rheims cathedral which follows in full. A year ago, perhaps, Verhaeren would have thought of the cathedral merely as a beautiful piece of architecture. But now that it has suffered from an invading army, he remembers the high use for which it was intended. The destruction of the sacred images and vessels reminds him, in spite of all his indifference to formalized religion that these things were not mere works of art.

Across the country. When tall towers lay
Their shadowy pall
Upon his way
He enters, where

The solid stone is hollowed deep by all
Its centuries of beauty and of prayer.
Ancient French temple! thou whose hundred
kings

Watch over thee, emblazoned on thy walls
Tell me, within thy memory-hallowed halls
What chant of triumph or what war song
rings?

Thou hast known Clovis and his Frankish
train

Whose mighty hand Saint Remy's hand did keep,

And in thy spacious vault perhaps may sleep
An echo of the voice of Charlemagne.
For God thou hast known fear, when from
His side

Man wandered, seeking alien shrines and new,
But still the sky was bountiful and blue
And thou wast crowned with France's love
and pride.

Sacred thou art from pinnacle to base
And in thy panes of gold and scarlet glass
The setting sun sees thousandfold his face.
Sorrow and joy in stately silence pass
Across thy walls, the shadow and the light;
Around thy lofty pillars tapers white
Illuminate, with delicate sharp flames,
The brows of saints with venerable names
And in the night erect a fiery wall.
A great but silent fervor burns in all
Those simple folk who kneel, pathetic, dumb,
And know that down below beside the Rhine-
Cannon, horses, soldiers, flags in line-
With blare of trumpets mighty armies come.
Suddenly, each knows fear.

Swift rumors pass, that every-one must hear.
The hostile banners blaze against the sky
And by the embassies mobs rage and cry.
Now war has come and peace is at an end.
On Paris town the German troops descend.
They are turned back and driven to Cham-
pagne.

And now as to so many weary men,
The glorious temple gives them welcome,
when

At night time at the bottom of the plain.
At once they set their cannon in its way.
There is no gable now, nor wall
That does not suffer night and day,
As shot and shell in crushing torrents fall
The stricken tocsin quivers through the tower;
The triple nave, the apse, the lonely choir
Are circled, hour by hour,

With thundering bands of fire

And death is scattered broadcast among men.
And then

That which was splendid with baptismal grace
The stately arches soaring into space
The transepts, columns, windows gray and
gold,

The organ in whose tones the ocean rolled,
The crypts of mighty shades the dwelling
places,

The Virgin's gentle hands, the Saints' pure faces,

All, even the pardoning hands of Christ, the Lord,

Were struck and broken by the wanton sword Of sacrilegious lust.

The soul that always loved the just and fair Granite and marble loud their woe confessed The silver monstrances that Popes had blessed, The chalices and lamps and crosiers rare Were seared and twisted by a flaming breath; The horror everywhere did range and swell, The guardian saints into this furnace fell And bitter fears and screams were stilled in death.

Around the flames armed hosts are skirmishing.

The burning sun reflects the lurid scene.
The German army fighting for its life
Rallies its torn and terrified left wing;
And, as they near this place
The imperial eagles see
Before them in their flight,
Here, in the solemn night

The old Cathedral to the years to be
Showing, with wounded arms their own dis-
grace.

HIS being funny is a serious matter. The joke-smith who commercializes his wares is dealing with a fickle public as well as with changing conditions and customs. What was chortled over yesterday may provoke only a tardy smile to-day and by to-morrow be fit only for the scrap-heap. For fun is like conventions, the product of the hour. The covert allusions of a current column of jokes would be wholly incomprehensible to the readers who were wont to chuckle over "Mr. Spoopendyke."

There even seems to have been no satisfactory definition of the word humor decided upon, for it is almost physiological in its origin and has taken on various colorings in succeeding generations. Each generation not only has its own idea of humor but thinks poorly of that which went before, due to a reaction as much as to any valid or improved theory.

Only a few weeks ago two well-known humorists representing this and the preceding generation died within a few hours of each other. Charles Heber Clark, known as "Max Adeler," died in Philadelphia at the age of seventy-four. His fame had literally "gone abroad"-for some years ago

the Emperor of Austria so thoroughly enjoyed a volume of his called "Out of the Hurly-Burly" that he sent the author a gold medal. Yet in commenting upon his work the press of to-day called it "slap-stick" and "antiquated," contrasting it with the more nimble wit of the present vogue.

The current reading public have mourned the early taking of George Fitch whose "Vest Pocket Essays" were known throughout the country. Born at Galva, Ill., in 1877, he graduated from Knox college and entered the journalistic field. About ten years ago he began to win fame with his "Transcripts" which appeared in a Peoria paper of that name. Four years ago, Mr. Fitch began to devote himself to a broader literary output and contributed to the leading periodicals, his stories of "Siwash University" and his many motor-boat tales having already appeared in book form. Whether the keenness and the up-to-theminute slang of the latter's work or the broader, more cumbersome type of humor which Max Adeler represented will catch the fancy of the newer generation or whether they in turn will both be ignored for yet a newer style, only time can prove.

Photo by Bain News Service

were to try to trace it by means of a mathematical curve or work it out on the x and y basis of algebraic lore, we would doubtless find that humor is wit minus the sting and plus the sympathy. For however nimble, caustic or telling a humorist may be, he who would outlast his day must catch the heart of his reader. This is but another proof that the springs of laughter and tears are closely akin and this art of appealing to the emotions may frequently be found in the uncultivated and unliterary, while it is withheld from those more cunning in their craft.

The English coffeehouses, the real precursors of club life, were nurseries of famous wits. An old number of "The Connoisseur" said of the Bedford coffee-house, which was under the piazza of Covent Garden: This coffee-house is every night crowded with men of parts. Almost every one you meet here is a politician, scholar and a wit." It was from such a place that Boswell recorded many of the witticisms of Johnson.

There is an intrinsic distinction between wit and humor which is difficult to express. The wit is the man who is sharp of tongue and ready with a rapier-thrust, regardless of the feelings of the other fellow, while he who possesses that invaluable gift, a sense of humor, may not be so facile of speech but never fails to grasp the "funny side" of unusual situations.

Lowell once said: "My idea of the distinction between wit and humor is that wit makes others laugh and humor ourselves cry sometimes."

There have been various other explanations of this subtle difference, but if we

The theater, too, has furnished a rich soil for wit and humor. The constant dealing in words of their own and others gives to actor and playwright a certain skill in the juggling of them. They are in constant practice and some of the best examples of wit have emanated from this source. Garrick and Hook were both famous as raconteurs and punsters. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, though noted as both a dramatist and a political and social figure of his day, is perhaps best known as a wit. Most of his