WAYNE GARD

Song

Illinois College

You ask me why I love you, sweet?
What makes me worship at your feet?

Then tell me why this hawthorn tree
Produced the blossoms that you see;

And tell me why these thrushes here
Are making music for your ear;

You tell me why the sky is blue
And then, perhaps, I'll answer you.

Bag O' Dreams

JAMES J. SWEENEY

Georgetown College

I had a little bag of dreams

Whose cord I loosed when I was young,
A tiny, slaty, fairy thing,

By spider spun of dried bat's wing,
And spilled a hundred poppied streams.
That o'er those dawn-fresh seasons flung
Dim rosy mists of visioning.

I ruled the lotus-blooming Nile

'Mid vultures white with gilded claws,
Where beryl-eyed crocodiles abound,

And rose-red ibises strut 'round;

Mine was the jade-cool tropic isle

Where shriek the brilliant-plumed macaws At peacocks perking on the ground.

I plucked a song from out God's heart
And trilled it on my throbbing lute,

A plaintive, poignant, aching strain,

A panged sobbing, soft as rain,

That dimmed with love-dew, worlds apart,

Two pairs of blue eyes beaming, mute

With dreamland love that ne'er would

wane.

But now my hair is thin and gray,

Frost powdered with the rime of years,
No more in me youth's ardor gleams,

For me no love-lamps burn fond beams,

And having all, I've naught today.
What webs of sorrow, seas of tears

Lay in that little bag of dreams!

ROSE HOLCOMB

Fabric

Elmira College

If fairies don't dance in the moonlight
And elves don't pass this way,
Who uses the toadstools to sit on

When they milk the milky way?

If there aren't any nymphs in the forest
Or dryads in the heart of a tree,
Who uses the puff balls to prink with
Or acorns as cups for tea?

If gnomes don't live in the tree stumps
And trolls don't even exist,

Who rides on the bat's wings at midnight
And fills the valleys with mist?

40969A

Villanelle

THOMAS H. JOHNSON

Dartmouth College

You shall come to me tonight

Softly, as the leaves are shed,

Swiftly, as the swallow's flight.

When the stars blaze out their light
And the sun's last glow is dead
You shall come to me tonight.

You shall come with youth's delight
To my heart, when day is fled;
Swiftly, as the swallow's flight.

When the dark obscures my sight
And the tulip bows her head
You shall come to me tonight.

Fast as falls the moonbeam's light
You shall come with golden tread,
Swiftly, as the swallow's flight.
Mistlike, rising from your bed
With your radiant arms outspread
You shall come to me tonight,
Swiftly, as the swallow's flight.