HANNA OTIS BRUN.

FEBRUARY 10.

SANTA BARBARA.

  A golden bay ’neath soft blue skies,
  Where on a hillside creamy rise
  The mission towers, whose patron saint
  Is Barbara—­with legend quaint.

HELEN ELLIOTT BANDINI,
in __History of California._

Dare to be free.  Free to do the thing you crave to do and that craves the doing.  Free to live in that higher realm where none is fit to criticise save one’s self.  Free to scorn ridicule, to face contempt, to brave remorse.  Free to give life to the one human soul that can demand and grant such a boon—­one’s own self.

MIRIAM MICHELSON,
in Anthony Overman.

FEBRUARY 11.

  In Carmel pines the summer wind
    Sings like a distant sea. 
  O harps of green, your murmurs find
    An echoing chord in me! 
  On Carmel shore the breakers moan
    Like pines that breast the gale. 
  O whence, ye winds and billows, flown
    To cry your wordless tale?

GEORGE STERLING,
in A Wine of Wizardry and Other Poems.

OAKLAND—­BERKELEY—­ALAMEDA.

  O close-clasped towns across the bay,
  Whose lights like gleaming jewels stray,
  A ruby, golden, splendid way,
    When day from earth has flown. 
  I watch you lighting night by night,
  O twisted strands of jewels bright,
  The altar-fires of home, alight—­
    I who am all alone.

GRACE HIBBARD,
in Forget-me-nots from California.

FEBRUARY 12.

  On the Berkeley Hills for miles away
  I went a-roaming one winter’s day,
  And what do you think I saw, my dear? 
  A place where the sky came down to the hill,
  And a big white cloud on the fresh green grass,
  And bright red berries my basket to fill,
  And mustard that grew in a golden mass—­
  All on a winter’s day, my dear!

CHARLES KEELER,
in Elfin Songs of Sunland.

FEBRUARY 13.

THE SUNSET GUN AT ANGEL ISLAND

  A touch of night on the hill-tops gray;
  A dusky hush on the quivering Bay;
  A calm moon mounting the silent East—­
  White slave the day-god has released;
    Small, scattered clouds
      That seemed to wait
    Like sheets of fire
      O’er the Golden Gate. 
  And under Bonita, growing dim. 
  With a seeming pause on the ocean’s rim,
  Like a weary lab’rer, smiles the sun
  To the booming crash of the sunset gun.

LOWELL OTUS REESE.

FEBRUARY 14.

MY VALENTINE.