good poem is that the page symbols make me do something to myself in a way that pleases me; what I mean when I say that I do not like a thing is that the marks do something unpleasant to me. It is my own action and its effects are on me; I like it or I do not.

All this grows out of what some philosophers have called the egocentric predicament. My universe centers around me. Your universe centers around you. No man can possibly live without believing that he is the center of things as they are; otherwise he would simply pass out and give himself up to an unkind and cruel fate. The sun shines for him; the earth yields its increase for him; other people come and go concentric to him; if he stops living, the universe stops too. Psychologically this means in terms of enjoying literature that the printed page symbols in one case make him do things he likes and in other cases things he does not like. As I read, the meanings that come to me are my meanings, and the rest of the world has nothing to say about it while I am reading by myself. When I try to read to others, however, that is another matter which will be discussed later. But so long as I read to myself, my own interpretation is all-encompassing. And I will like any given printed page composition which makes me do things I like to do.

Now, of course, a printed page can make us do funny. things to ourselves. A printed page with song notations on it makes a skilled singer do certain things but makes an unskilled singer do quite different things. Both can get equal enjoyment out of what they are doing because they are doing it their own way and for themselves; but when they start singing it for somebody else, it is not so good for the unskillful. So with interpreting a poem. In reading "Crossing the Bar" to yourself you have to use hidden speech in such a way as to please yourself with your hidden way of reading it. If you read it the way it suits you, you like the poem. If you read it a way that does not suit you, you blame the author or the poem itself. But when you try to read it aloud to somebody else, the very way you like to read it to yourself

may be quite the worst thing you could do to delight someone else.

From the following list, memorize the poem which you like best; prove that you like it by the way you read it to the class.

Some one came knocking

At my wee, small door;
Some one came knocking,

I'm sure-sure-sure;

I listened, I opened,

I looked to left and right,
But nought there was a-stirring
In the still dark night;
Only the busy beetle
Tap-tapping in the wall,
Only from the forest

The screech-owl's call,

Only the cricket whistling

While the dewdrops fall,

So I know not who came knocking,

At all, at all, at all.

WALTER DE la Mare.

THE LONELY ROAD 2

So long had I travelled the lonely road,
Though, now and again, a wayfaring friend

Walked shoulder to shoulder, and lightened the load,

I often would think to myself as I strode,

No comrade will journey with you to the end.

And it seemed to me, as the days went past,
And I gossiped with cronies, or brooded alone,
By wayside fires, that my fortune was cast

To sojourn by other men's hearths to the last,
And never to come to my own hearthstone.

1 From Poems by Walter de la Mare. By permission of Henry Holt and Co., publishers.

2 Copyright, 1916, by The Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission.

The lonely road no longer I roam.
We met, and were one in the heart's desire.
Together we came through the wintry gloain
To the little old house by the cross-ways home;
And crossed the threshold, and kindled the fire.
WILFRED W. GIBSON.

Wash over me, God, with your piney breeze,

And your moon's wet-silver pool;

Wash over me, God, with your wind and night,

And leave me clean and cool.

LEW SARETT.

INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

From The Box of God. By permission of Henry Holt and Co., publishers, and of the author.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate;

I am the captain of my soul.

WILLIAM E. HENLEY.

TEARS, IDLE TEARS

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather in the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!
TENNYSON.

4 THE WAY OF A STAR

A strange thing in a star to be putting a sorrow on me, And I sitting quiet with no dark heart at all,

From Poetry (Chicago). By permission.

But a wonder on me for the simple things,

Like the way of the day to come and the night to fall,

And the wind that is blind to the eye and a sting to the flesh,

And is leaping over the bog to howl on the sea;

Or just the glad way of the gorse to be smelling sweet . . .

And a little star to be putting a sorrow on me.

CHARLOTTE ARTHUR.

MEETING AT NIGHT

The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed in the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,

And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

BROWNING.

The Interpreter's Three Problems

In the study of interpretation we must begin with this picture of marks on the page compelling us to do certain things that we like or do not like to do. Then we must recognize that when we do these same things for others, but aloud, we have no assurance that the sounds we make will do to them something so pleasant and delightful as what we have done to ourselves. Two new factors enter in. First, I must be able when talking aloud to use speech symbols in a way that will do to the listener what the page symbols have done to me; that is, I must be skilled in speaking aloud. Second, I must know whether the other person will like it even if I do do to him what I think I want to do; I may do exactly what I want to him in my attempt to delight him but still may bore