Pale blooms, close-nestling in the dabbled snow,
Sweet woodland spirits, tremulous and frail,
Clad in soft garb-in timid loveliness

Through dead leaves peeping by the rugged rocks;
Ill can they bear the unfriendly time, the shocks
And buffets of the storms, the ruthless hail,
And whirling snows, and drenching, numberless.

One by one,

The whirling snows! With morning comes the sun;
Spangling the earth and air with glinting spears.
From emerald knolls the white veil disappears.
And, merrily, the snow-fed rillets run
Their sparkling, transient courses.
The forest streams grow loud with song that cheers
The glistening vales, the preening field-lark hears,
And pipes for joy of days not yet begun.
Uncertain are the skies. Precarious mirth
Rings in the drying thickets; on the peach,
Whose pink buds bloomed amidst the falling snows
The robin tries his note; the passing crows
Call down through films up-floating from the earth,
Towards the blue which they will never reach.

Towards the flashing blue-the crystalline,
Unfathomable sea of dazzling light,

Where rides the sun; soon are they vanquished quite
And only winds, low breathing, intervene
'Twixt the miraculous heavens and the scene
Of earth's enchantments. Every moment's flight
Brings the immortal wonder of life's might—
Within the hour the banks are tinged with green.

As Love comes, came the change—a quickening flame
Stole through the woodland-down yon slope of gray-
Among the russet leaves, and, following, came—
Though all was silent there but yesterday—

Soft-echoing on the air, a warbling clear

The blue-bird's voice!-The Spring! The Spring is here!

IN MEMORIAM

From 'The Shadows of the Trees.'

'Tis morning, and the gateway of the sun
Swings open; and across the summer land
Comes the resplendent Day. On every hand
The bright, fleet-footed beams, in gladness, run
Along the late-reaped fields, and one by one,

The vales, the dewy slopes, the trees that stand
Upon the hills, by languid breezes fanned,
Take on the glory of new life begun.
But she that should behold it—she is still.

Wrapped in the rayless shadow, mute she lies.
She heeds no more the songs upon the hill;

She wakes not to the wonder in the skies.
She, that was fair as is the summer's day;
Even with the summer she hath passed away.

The flower falls with the grain, and in the sheaf
The opening rose is gathered; she that stood
Like some young tree amidst the summer wood,
Clad in fresh bloom, hath found a day as brief;
No more she knoweth, now, of joy or grief;
Alike to her, the evil and the good.

So sleeps she, in immortal maidenhood-
That she, indeed, is dead, is past belief.
Come, O ye loving winds of heaven, and bring
Across the spaces, perilous and wide,
Some tidings from the spirits that abide
Beyond our love and our remembering!

In tearful hope we bide, ere yet shall fall
The voiceless shadow which awaits us all.

'Tis evening; and the great sun disappears

Beyond the Benson Hills. Alone she sleeps, While twilight gathers on the tangled steeps. Her bed is heaped with roses, wet with tears, And over her a sheltering tree up-rears.

Far in the vale the river slowly creeps,

And soft winds whisper from the heavenly deeps, "With Him one day is as a thousand years.'

The silence deepens on the sacred hill;

As in a dream, the noiseless branches sway; The world, and all it holds of good and ill,

Grows less and less, and strangely fades away; While from the pale stars comes the whispering still, "A thousand years, with Him, is as one day."

SONNETS OF SIMILITUDE

From The Shadows of the Trees.'

Life is a rich-robed angel, winged with light,
Whose will is still to leave us. No estate-
Gold-crowned, or starred with jewels—may bid her wait,
Nor fix a charmed delay upon her flight.

Life is a rainbow circle, through whose bright
And changing hues-blown by the breath of fate-
The myriad motes pass, quickly; soon or late,
The magic round, itself, will vanish quite.

Life is a voice, low-toned and sweet, that calls
Amidst the immortal solitudes, and they

That start, as from a dream, scarce can they say

I come I come! when lo! the silence falls.

Life is a gift which no soul may refuse;

A priceless gift—a pearl-which whoso wears must lose.

Life is a darkness. They that walk therein
Set foot, each instant, on an unknown ground.
Life is a song, for which was never found
The fitting music; few are they that win
Even one true note, amidst the jangling din

Of nameless chords in which that strain is drowned.
Life is a wordless riddle, and so profound
That wisest guessers end where they begin.

Life is a tree, whose countless leaves, diverse,
Flaunt in the sun of hope through one brief day;
Whose blooms seem half-divine, despite the curse
Beneath whose touch they fail and fade away.
Life is a woven mantle, soft and fair,

Which we put on with tears and put off in despair.

W

STOCKTON AXSON

OODROW WILSON was born in Staunton, Virginia, Decem

ber 28, 1856. His father was the Rev. Joseph R. Wilson, one of the stalwart men of the Southern Presbyterian Church. His mother, born Jessie Woodrow, was of Scotch-Irish blood, her forebears having been notable figures in the Scottish Church; one of them, because of his theological staunchness, incurred the liberal satire of Robert Burns, and another wrote the 'History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution.' The Wilsons and the Woodrows were men of convictions, habits of study, and firm temper, qualities inherited by the man in whom the names are combined.

Woodrow Wilson had his preparatory education from private schools and private tutors in Augusta, Georgia; Columbia, South Carolina; and Wilmington, North Carolina, and was afterward a student in four colleges: Davidson, Princeton, the University of Virginia, and Johns Hopkins University. He studied under many masters, but none so strongly influenced his intellectual development as his father.

Dr. Joseph Wilson was a man of unusual force in speech and action, impatient of dulness, more impatient of loose thinking and careless speaking. He was accustomed to say that men who were slovenly in conversation could not expect to be impressive in public speech. His own private talk showed that he practised his theory. Without pedantry or self-consciousness, he spoke in words of weight which measured thoughts of value. Even his badinage was memorable. His conversation was never bookish but always revealed the man trained to think and to speak.

The point is dwelt upon because it was the discipline this man gave his son, added to the son's native capacity, that assisted that distinction in thought and speech which all persons of discrimination remark in Woodrow Wilson's utterances, public or private. It is frequently said, "There is no use in trying to argue with Woodrow Wilson-he defeats all opponents." Every man likes to do what he does well, and Woodrow Wilson may sometimes, like Dr. Johnson, "talk for victory"; but, being a busier man than Dr. Johnson, he usually talks in order to dispose of business. By supplementing

his early training with the study of law, he has learned how to go to the core of a question, strip it of all remote relationships, and express his conclusions clearly and convincingly. In his earlier writings he cultivated literary style, but in later years he has written and spoken with little premeditation of phraseology. His vocabulary is large and under command, and his sense of word-values is unerring. Art has become unconscious, and he blends matter and manner as they must be blended for all finest effects in spoken or written discourse. One is occasionally struck by an unusual word, but close attention shows that Woodrow Wilson is not a wordmonger but a word-master.

He passed through the freshman class in Davidson College and then went to Princeton for four years, being graduated with the class of 1879. The move was fortunate, for it gave him at an impressionable age an opportunity to understand the Northern, as well as the Southern, point of view, and prepared the way for the breadth of sympathy that has been so marked in his historical writings. Books, archives, and documents gave him his material, but firsthand understanding of both sections enabled him to write the history of the great conflict between the States in such a manner that his books have practically never been charged with sectionalism from either side. He was among the earlier young Southern men to see clearly that the South was in fact as in name a part of the Union, that the glory of its history never was to be forgotten, its secession never to be apologized for, that its great tragedy was sweetened by valor and patience, but that unless the tragedy was to be futilely prolonged the South must throw in its lot heartily with the Union. Five or six years after graduation he wrote in his first book: "Whether these sections [the East, the South, and the West] are to be harmonious or dissentient depends almost entirely upon the methods and policy of the federal government. If that government be not careful to keep within its own proper sphere, and prudent to square its policy by rules of national welfare, sectional lines must and will be known; citizens of one part of the country may look with jealousy and even with hatred upon their fellow citizens of another part; and faction must tear and dissension distract a country which Providence would bless, but which man may curse." It was thus that the young political philosopher, born and bred in the South and educated in the North, saw that the prosperity of each section lies in the integrity of the whole.

It was, however, with no premeditation of being a historian that he went North. He remained Southern by instinct, and intended to merge his fortunes with those of the South. With this intent he studied law for a little less than two years (1879-1880) at the