Angel and guardian at the gate,
Master of Death and King of Fate.
Perhaps more musical and exquisite in its technic is the following (by Edith M. Thomas in the Century), yet one looks in vain for the note of positive assurance that sings and rings out of the poem just quoted. Now one expects in poetry something more than rhymed philosophy, of course, and sheer beauty of rhythm has more than once endowed paucity of thought with an almost immortality. But the content is important, none the less. In the preceding poem one feels a mighty conviction forcing its way through every limitation to the goal of expression. The work of the older and better known poetess is more clearly poetic—to those who know the path and know the way its Sphinx-like questionings evoke their own answer in the deeps of consciousness. To the many, however, the first poem must reveal more.
THE UNKNOWING
I know not where I am:
Beneath my feet a whirling sphere,
And overhead (and yet below)
A crystal rampart cutting sheer—
The traveling sun its oriflam.