THE SWAN-SONG OF SEPTEMBER.

     This fine sonnet is from Lyric Leaves, poems by S. Gertrude
     Ford. 2s. 6d. net (postage 2d.). (C.W.  Daniel, Ltd., 3 Tudor
     Street, London, E.C.)

     Sing out thy swan-song with full throat, September,
       From a full heart, with golden notes and clear! 
       No rose will wreathe thee; yet the harebell’s here,
     And still thy crown of heath the hills remember. 
     Bright burns thy fire, e’en to its latest ember,
       The sunset fire that lights thee to thy bier,
       Flaming and failing not, albeit so near
     Dun-robed October waits, and grey November. 
     And though, at sight of thee, a chill change passes
     Through wood and wold, on leaves and flowers and grasses,
       Thy beauty wanes not; thou hast ne’er grown old;
     Death-crowned as Cleopatra, lovely lying
     Even to the end; magnificently dying
       In pomp of purple and in glare of gold.

 S. GERTRUDE FORD.

 THE QUEST FOR BEAUTY.

If you have travelled at all frequently on certain of the London “tube” railways you may occasionally have noticed, facing you in the carriage, a small framed poster which for beauty and imaginative power has, I should think, never been surpassed in advertising art.  If the first sight of it did not make you catch your breath you will not, I am afraid, be interested in this article.

The poster represents a rich landscape, in which noble tree-forms show sombre against a tumultuous sky—­the latter an architectural mass of pale cloud, spanned by a vivid rainbow.  Across the lower part of the picture is a scroll, on which are written, in musical notation, two bars from Chopin’s Twentieth Prelude.  At the top are the words, Studies in Harmony:  it is an advertisement of Somebody & Co.’s wall-papers.

In both colour and design this poster is very beautiful.  It would be scarcely less so without the rainbow; but “the dazzling prism of the sky” not only intensifies the subtle harmony of colour throughout the picture:  it turns the poster into a symbol.  And the artist might well have stopped there; only, you see, he had an inspiration.  When he wrote across the picture those eight descending chords from the immortal Largo he made of the poster—­a poem.

 I do not know anything about the artist who conceived this
 advertisement of wall-papers.  I do not even know his name.  But I
 believe him to be the herald of an invasion.

 The invasion of life by beauty.