And a meeting and a parting

Were destined there to be.

"It was a winter night

Beneath the starry sky,

And words of love and longing

Borne on the winds went by.

"I buried there my heart,

Where the waves for ever die,

Where the trodden leaves are silent,

O years forgotten lie."

This piece is characterized by a disconnectedness which steadily increases and becomes bewildering when we reach the last line, in which it is impossible to discover any trace of connection to what goes before.

These are the worst specimens of student poetry, and I wonder why the editors of the college papers ever let them get into their columns. If such as these appear in print, what stuff must the editorial waste-baskets contain! Undergraduate poets seem to have a poor command of language, and this gives rise to repetitions, and gives an air of awkwardness and carelessness to many of their compositions; we often find words put in merely for rhymes or to fill out the stanza, and a general lack of careful revision is painfully evident. I have noticed that the last stanza, - often the last line of the last stanza, - contains the worst faults in the piece, as though the "divine afflatus" had all escaped before the poet reached his period.

Let us see if we cannot find some more encouraging example. "Popping the Question" is a little descriptive piece, very prettily written. I saw it first in a book of selections, and did not suspect that it was written by a student. In a more serious vein is a piece called "Forebodings;" it is full of fine feeling, and called forth an answer from one of the professors. "The Old Professor" is a pathetic poem, and is well worth reading. "The Bells of Venice" is a fine piece. I will quote the last stanza: -

"'Tis a wondrous, golden music streams from Venice's brazen bells,

Like the honeyed speech of Nestor, as the olden poet tells; 'Tis the mem'ry of its freedom in the halcyon days of yore Wafted from the fallen Venice, Hadria's mighty queen no more."