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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9356d87 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #55447 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55447) diff --git a/old/55447-0.txt b/old/55447-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 4cfade3..0000000 --- a/old/55447-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,9718 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Younger American Poets, by Jessie Belle -Rittenhouse - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: The Younger American Poets - - -Author: Jessie Belle Rittenhouse - - - -Release Date: August 28, 2017 [eBook #55447] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS*** - - -E-text prepared by Emmy, MWS, Carol Brown, and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made -available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) - - - -Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this - file which includes the original illustrations. - See 55447-h.htm or 55447-h.zip: - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55447/55447-h/55447-h.htm) - or - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55447/55447-h.zip) - - - Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - https://archive.org/details/youngeramericanp00rittuoft - - -Transcriber’s note: - - Text in italics is surrounded by underscores, _like this_. - - - - - -THE YOUNGER AMERICAN - -POETS - - - - -[Illustration: Richard Hovey] - - -THE YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS - -by - -JESSIE B. RITTENHOUSE - -Illustrated with Portraits - - - - - - - -Boston -Little, Brown, and Company -1904 - -Copyright, 1904, -By Little, Brown, and Company. - -All rights reserved - -Published October, 1904 - -The University Press -Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. - - - - - To - - LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON - - WHO HAS ENRICHED AMERICAN LITERATURE WITH HER SONG, - AND MY LIFE WITH HER FRIENDSHIP, - THESE STUDIES OF THE YOUNGER POETS - ARE INSCRIBED - WITH THE WARM AFFECTION OF - JESSIE B. RITTENHOUSE - - - - - -FOREWORD - - -TO attempt, in one volume, to cover the entire field of present-day -poetry in America, will be recognized the more readily as impossible -when one reflects that in Mr. Stedman’s American Anthology over five -hundred poets are represented, of whom the greater number are still -living and singing. - -One may scarcely hope, then, in the space of one volume, to include -more than a representative group, even when confining his study to the -work of the younger poets, for within this class would fall the larger -contingent named above. It has therefore been necessary to follow a -general, though not arbitrary, standard of chronology, of which the -most feasible seemed that adopted by Mr. Archer in his admirable study -of the English “Poets of the Younger Generation,”—the including only -of such as have been born within the last half-century, and whose -place is still in the making. The few remaining poets whose art has -long since defined itself, such as Mr. Aldrich, Mr. Stedman, and -Mrs. Moulton, need no further interpretation; nor does the -long-acknowledged work of Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, nor that of James -Whitcomb Riley, whose final criticism has been pronounced in every -heart and at every hearth. - -The work of Mr. Edwin Markham, the poet of democracy, whose fraternal -songs embody many of the latter-day ideals, and that of John B. Tabb, -the lapidary of modern verse, who cuts with infinite care his delicate -cameos of thought, were also beyond the chronological scheme of the -volume. Nor of those who fell within its scope could a selection be -made that would not seem to some invidious, since it must chance among -so great a number that many would be omitted who should, with equal -right, have been included; it returns, therefore, to the earlier -statement, that one must confine himself to a representative group, -with whose work he chance to be most familiar, and upon which he has, -therefore, the truer claim to speak. - -It seemed, also, that the volume would have more value if it gave to a -smaller number such a study as would differentiate and define their -work, rather than to a larger group the passing comment of a few -paragraphs. It was a great regret, however, that circumstances -incident to the copyrights prevented me from including the admirable -work of William Vaughn Moody, which reveals by its breadth, -penetration, and purpose, the thinker and not the dreamer. Indeed, Mr. -Moody’s work, in its vitality of touch, fine imagination, and -spiritual idealism, proves not only the creative poet but one to whom -the nobler offices of Art have been entrusted, and the critic given to -inquiring why the former times were better than these may well keep -his eye upon the work of Mr. Moody. - -It was also a regret that those inexorable arbiters, space and time, -deprived me of the privilege of including the strongly individual work -of Helen Gray Cone; the artistic, thoughtful verse of Anna Hempstead -Branch; the sincere and sympathetic song of Virginia Woodward Cloud; -the spiritual verse of Lilian Whiting, with its interpretation of the -higher imports; the heartening, characteristic notes of Theodosia -Garrison; and the recently issued poems of Josephine Dodge Daskam, -which prove beyond peradventure that the Muses, too, were at her -christening,—indeed, the “Songs of Iseult Deserted,” which form a -group in her volume, are lyrics worthy of any hand. - -Had it been possible in the space at command, I should also have had -pleasure in considering the work of Frank Dempster Sherman, who is not -only an accomplished lyrist, but who has divined the heart of the -child and set it to music; the cheer-giving songs of Frank L. Stanton, -fledged with the Southland sunshine and melody; and the verse-stories -of Holman F. Day, bringing from the pines of Maine their pungent aroma -of humor and pathos. Mr. Day covers an individual field, representing -such phases of New England life as have been little celebrated -hitherto, even by writers of fiction. He is familiar with every corner -of Maine from the mountains to the sea, and writes of humanity in the -concrete, sketching his types equally from the lumber camp or from the -sailors and fishermen of the shore. In his latest volume they are -drawn from the “Kin o’ Ktaadn,” and hold their way throughout its -pages with a reality provoking both laughter and tears; indeed, one -must seek far to find a keener humor, or one more infectious, than -that of Mr. Day, or a more sympathetic penetration into the pathos of -life. The heart is the book of his reading, and, in turn, the heart is -the book of his writing. - -There is no attempt in these studies of the younger poets to group -them into schools, to define them in relation to one another, or to -hazard prophecies concerning them. Each is considered in his present -accomplishment, whether the work be fresh from the pen, or come -bringing with it the endorsement of time, since the song of yesterday -may carry farther than that already borne on the wings of the years, -and has equal claim to consideration in a volume devoted to the work -of the younger singers; for only by such consideration shall we learn -what is being done in our own day. - -J. B. R. - - - - - CONTENTS - - - PAGE - - FOREWORD vii - - I. RICHARD HOVEY 1 - - II. LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE 27 - - III. BLISS CARMAN 46 - - IV. LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY 75 - - V. GEORGE E. SANTAYANA 94 - - VI. JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY 110 - - VII. CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 132 - - VIII. EDITH M. THOMAS 151 - - IX. MADISON CAWEIN 177 - - X. GEORGE E. WOODBERRY 196 - - XI. FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES 212 - - XII. ALICE BROWN 235 - - XIII. RICHARD BURTON 248 - - XIV. CLINTON SCOLLARD 269 - - XV. MARY MCNEIL FENOLLOSA 290 - - XVI. RIDGELY TORRENCE 299 - - XVII. GERTRUDE HALL 315 - - XVIII. ARTHUR UPSON 325 - - BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 347 - - - - - LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - - - RICHARD HOVEY _Frontispiece_ - - LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE _Facing page_ 28 - - BLISS CARMAN “ “ 48 - - LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY “ “ 76 - - JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY “ “ 112 - - CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS “ “ 134 - - MADISON CAWEIN “ “ 178 - - GEORGE E. WOODBERRY “ “ 198 - - FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES “ “ 214 - - ALICE BROWN “ “ 236 - - RICHARD BURTON “ “ 250 - - CLINTON SCOLLARD “ “ 270 - - MARY MCNEIL FENOLLOSA “ “ 292 - - RIDGELY TORRENCE “ “ 300 - - - - -The Younger American Poets - - - - -I - -RICHARD HOVEY - - -RICHARD HOVEY was a poet of convictions rather than of fancies, in -which regard he overtopped many of his contemporaries who were content -to be “enamored architects of airy rhyme.” Hovey was himself a skilful -architect of rhyme, an imaginative weaver of fancy; but these were not -ends, he does not stand primarily for them. He stands for comradeship; -for taking vows of one’s own soul; for alliance with the shaping -spirit of things; for a sane, wholesome, lusty manhood; a hearty, -confident surrender to life. - -He is the poet of positivism, virile, objective, and personal to a -Whitmanesque degree, and answers to many of the qualifications laid -down by Whitman for the testing of an American poet. His performance -is eminently of the sort to “face the open fields and the seaside;” it -does “absorb into one;” it “animates to life,” and it is of the -people. It answers also to the query, “Have you vivified yourself from -the maternity of these States?” for Hovey was an American of the -Americans, and his patriotic poems are instinct with national pride, -though one may dissent from certain of his opinions upon war. - -Hovey, to the degree of his development when his hand was stayed, was -a finely balanced man and artist. The purely romantic motives which -form the entire basis, for example, of Stephen Phillips’ work, and -thus render him a poet of the cultured classes and not of the people, -were foreign to the spirit of Hovey. He, too, was recasting in -dramatic form some of beauty’s imperishable traditions; but this was -only one phase of his art, it did not cause him to approach his own -time with less of sympathy; and while he had not yet come deeply into -the prophet gifts of song, their potency was upon him, and in the -Odes, which contain some of his strongest writing, his passion for -brotherhood, for development through comradeship, finds splendid -expression. In the best known of his odes, “Spring,” occurs this -stirring symbol: - - For surely in the blind deep-buried roots - Of all men’s souls to-day - A secret quiver shoots. - - * * * * * - - The darkness in us is aware - Of something potent burning through the earth, - Of something vital in the procreant air. - -It is in this ode, with the exception of his visioning of “Night” in -_Last Songs from Vagabondia_, that the influence of Whitman upon Hovey -comes out most prominently; that is, the influence of manner. The -really vital influence is one much less easily demonstrated, but no -less apparent to a student of both poets. It is not of the sort, -however, to detract from the originality of Hovey, but rather an -intensifying of his characteristics, a focalizing of his powers, and -is in accordance with Whitman’s declaration that - - “He most honors my style - Who learns under it to destroy the teacher.” - -Hovey’s own nature was so individual that he rarely failed to destroy -the teacher, or he was perhaps unconscious of having one; but in the -opening lines of the ode in question the Whitman note is unmistakable: - - I said in my heart, “I am sick of four walls and a ceiling. - I have need of the sky. - I have business with the grass. - I will up and get me away where the hawk is wheeling, - Lone and high, - And the slow clouds go by. - - * * * * * - - Spring, like a huntsman’s boy, - Halloos along the hillsides and unhoods - The falcon in my will. - The dogwood calls me, and the sudden thrill - That breaks in apple blooms down country roads - Plucks me by the sleeve and nudges me away. - The sap is in the boles to-day, - And in my veins a pulse that yearns and goads.” - -Could volumes of conventional nature poetry set one a-tingle like -this? The crowning excellence of Hovey’s nature poems is that they are -never reports, they do not describe with far-sought imagery, but are -as personal as a poem of love or other emotion. Such passionate -surrender, such intimate delight as finds expression, for example, in -“The Faun,” could scarcely be more communicative and direct. It -becomes at once our own mood, an interchange which is the test of art: - - … And I plunge in the wood, and the swift soul cleaves - Through the swirl and the flow of the leaves, - As a swimmer stands with his white limbs bare to the sun - For the space that a breath is held, and drops in the sea; - And the undulant woodland folds round me, intimate, fluctuant, free, - Like the clasp and the cling of waters, and the reach and the effort - is done;— - There is only the glory of living, exultant to be. - -In such words as these one loses thought of the merely picturesque, -their infection takes hold upon him, particularly in that line -befitting the forest spirit as a garment, in which - - The undulant woodland folds round me, intimate, fluctuant, free,— - -a line wherein the idea, feeling, movement, and diction are wholly at -one. It is impossible for Richard Hovey to be aloof and analytical in -any phase of his work, and when he writes of nature it is as the -comrade to whom she is a mystic personality. A stanza of “The Faun” -illustrates this; still in the wood, he asks: - - Oh, what is it breathes in the air? - Oh, what is it touches my cheek? - There’s a sense of a presence that lurks in the branches. - But where? - Is it far, is it far to seek? - -The first two collections of the _Vagabondia_ books contain Hovey’s -most spontaneous nature verse; they have also some of the lyrics by -which he will be known when such a rollicking stave as “Barney McGee,” -at which one laughs as a boyish exuberance, is forgotten. The quips of -rhyme and fancy that enliven the pages of the earlier volumes give -place, in the _Last Songs_, to a note of seriousness and artistic -purpose which sets the collection to an entirely different key; not -that the work is uniformly superior to that of the former songs, but -it is more earnest in tone; dawn is giving place to noon. - -From the second collection may be cited one of the lyric inspirations -that sometimes came to Hovey, all warmth and color, as if fashioned -complete in a thought. It is called “A Sea Gypsy,” and the first of -its quatrains, though perhaps not more than the others, has a haunting -charm: - - I am fevered with the sunset, - I am fretful with the bay, - For the wander-thirst is on me - And my soul is in Cathay. - - There’s a schooner in the offing, - With her topsails shot with fire, - And my heart has gone aboard her - For the Islands of Desire. - - I must forth again to-morrow! - With the sunset I must be - Hull down on the trail of rapture - In the wonder of the sea. - -Aside from the dramas, and the noble elegy, “Seaward,” Hovey’s most -representative work is found in his collection, _Along the Trail_, -which opens with a group of battle-hymns inspired by the -Spanish-American war. With the exception of “Unmanifest Destiny,” and -occasional trumpet notes from the poem called “Bugles,” these -battle-songs are more or less perfunctory, nor are they ethically the -utterance of a prophet. There is the old assumption that because war -has ever been, it ever will be; that because the sword has been the -instrument of progress in past world-crises, it is the divinely chosen -arbiter. There is nothing of that development of man that shall find a -higher way, no visioning of a world-standard to which nations shall -conform; it is rather the celebration of brawn, as in the sonnet -“America.” The jubilant note of his call of the “Bugles,” however, -thrills with passionate pride in his country as the deliverer of the -weak, for the ultimate idea in Hovey’s mind was his country’s -altruism; but, as a whole, the battle-songs lack the larger vision and -are unequal in workmanship, falling constantly into the commonplace -from some flight of lyric beauty. The best of them, and a worthy best, -both in conception and in its dignified simplicity, is “Unmanifest -Destiny,” which follows: - - To what new fates, my country, far - And unforeseen of foe or friend, - Beneath what unexpected star, - Compelled to what unchosen end, - - Across the sea that knows no beach - The Admiral of Nations guides - Thy blind obedient keels to reach - The harbor where thy future rides! - - The guns that spoke at Lexington - Knew not that God was planning then - The trumpet word of Jefferson - To bugle forth the rights of men. - - To them that wept and cursed Bull Run, - What was it but despair and shame? - Who saw behind the cloud the sun? - Who knew that God was in the flame? - - Had not defeat upon defeat, - Disaster on disaster come, - The slave’s emancipated feet - Had never marched behind the drum. - - There is a Hand that bends our deeds - To mightier issues than we planned, - Each son that triumphs, each that bleeds, - My country, serves Its dark command. - - I do not know beneath what sky - Nor on what seas shall be thy fate; - I only know it shall be high, - I only know it shall be great. - -Hovey’s themes are widely diverse, but they are always of the -essential purports. He seems not only integral with nature, but -integral with man in his ardor of sympathy for his fellows, and the -swift understanding of all that makes for achievement or defeat. He -had the splendid nonchalance that met everything with confident ease, -and made his relation to life like that of an athlete trained to -prevail. Not to be servile, not to be negative, not to be vague,—these -are some of the notes of his stirring song. Even in love there is a -characteristic dash and _verve_, a celebration of comradeship as the -keynote of the relation, that makes it possible for him to write this -sonnet, so refreshing and wholesome, and so far removed from the -mawkish or effeminate: - - When I am standing on a mountain crest, - Or hold the tiller in the dashing spray, - My love of you leaps foaming in my breast, - Shouts with the winds and sweeps to their foray; - My heart bounds with the horses of the sea, - And plunges in the wild ride of the night, - Flaunts in the teeth of tempest the large glee - That rides out Fate and welcomes gods to fight. - Ho, love, I laugh aloud for love of you, - Glad that our love is fellow to rough weather,— - No fretful orchid hothoused from the dew, - But hale and hardy as the highland heather, - Rejoicing in the wind that stings and thrills, - Comrade of ocean, playmate of the hills. - -And that other sonnet, “Faith and Fate,” with its Valkyr spirit, and -its words like ringing hoofbeats: - - To horse, my dear, and out into the night! - Stirrup and saddle and away, away! - Into the darkness, into the affright, - Into the unknown on our trackless way! - -And closing with one of his finest lines— - - East, to the dawn, or west or south or north! - _Loose rein upon the neck of Fate—and forth!_ - - -What valor in that line—“Loose rein upon the neck of Fate—and forth!” -This is the typical mood, but I cannot refrain, before considering the -last phase of his work, the dramas, from quoting another sonnet in -another mood, because of its beauty and its revelation of the -spiritual side of his nature: - - My love for thee doth take me unaware, - When most with lesser things my brain is wrought, - As in some nimble interchange of thought - The silence enters, and the talkers stare. - Suddenly I am still and thou art there, - A viewless visitant and unbesought, - And all my thinking trembles into nought, - And all my being opens like a prayer. - Thou art the lifted Chalice in my soul, - And I a dim church at the thought of thee; - Brief be the moment, but the mass is said, - The benediction like an aureole - Is on my spirit, and shuddering through me - A rapture like the rapture of the dead. - -“The Quest of Merlin,” Hovey’s first incursion into drama, and indeed -one of his earliest works, having been issued in 1891, is most -illustrative of his defects and least of his distinctions. It is -unnecessary to the subsequent dramas, though serving as an -introduction to them, and has in itself very little constructive -congruity. In the songs of the fairies, the dryads, the maenads, there -is often a delicate airy beauty; but the metrical lapses throughout -the drama are so frequent as to detract from one’s pleasure in the -verse. This criticism is much less apposite to the subsequent works of -the cycle. - -Hovey’s Arthurian dramas must be judged by the manner rather than -motif, by the situations through which he develops the well-known -story, and the dramatic beauty and passion of the dialogue, since the -theme is his only as he makes it his by the art of his adaptation. He -has given us the Arthur of Malory, and not of Tennyson, the Arthur of -a certain early intrigue with Morgance, the Queen of Orkney, outlived -in all save its effect, that of bitterness and envy cherished by her -against the young Queen Guinevere, and made use of as one of the -motives of the drama. - -While Tennyson’s Arthur, until the final great scene with Guinevere in -the convent, and Bedivere by the lake, has a lay-figure personality, -placidly correct, but unconvincing,—in these scenes, and in the -general ideal of the Round Table, as developed by Tennyson, there is -such profound spiritual beauty that Arthur has come to dwell in a -nebulous upper air, as of the gods. It is a shock, then, to see him -brought down to earth, as he is in Hovey’s dramas. However, the lapses -are but referred to as incidental to the plot, not occurring during -its action, and Arthur becomes to us a human, magnanimous personality, -commanding sympathy, if he does not dominate the imagination as does -Tennyson’s hero. The handicap under which any poet labors who makes -use of these legends, even though vitalizing them with a new touch, -and approaching them from a new standpoint, is that the Tennyson -touch, the Tennyson standpoint, has so impressed itself upon the -memory that comparison is inevitable. - -The fateful passion of Lancelot and Guinevere is enveloped by Tennyson -in a spiritual atmosphere; but in the dramas of Hovey, while -delicately approached, it lacks that elevation by which alone it lives -as a soul-tragedy, and not as an intrigue. There is, indeed, a strife -for loyalty on the part of Lancelot, when he returns from a chivalrous -quest and learns that the King’s bride is his unknown Lady of the -Hills; but it is soon overborne by Galahault’s assurance that Arthur -is to Guinevere— - - A mere indifferent, covenanted thing, - -and that she - - Is as virgin of the thought of love - As winter is of flowers. - -Ere this declaration, Lancelot, in conflict with himself, had -exclaimed: - - Oh, Galahault, for love of my good name, - Pluck out your sword and kill me, for I see - Whate’er I do it will be violence— - To soul or body, others or myself! - -But to Galahault’s subtle arguments he opposes an ever-weakening will, -and seeing the Queen walking in the garden, exquisite in beauty, - - As if a rose grew on a lily’s stem, - So blending passionate life and stately mien,— - -he is persuaded to seek her, and, ere the close of the interview, half -confessions have orbed to full acknowledgment by each. The scene is -artistically handled, especially in the ingenuous simplicity of -Guinevere. - -Hovey occasionally makes the mistake of robbing some vital utterance -of its dramatic value by interlarding it with ornament. True emotion -is not literary, and Guinevere, meeting Lancelot alone at the lodge of -Galahault, for the first time after their mutual confession, having -come hither disguised and by a perilous course, would scarcely have -chosen these decorative words: - - Oh, do not jar with speech - This perfect chord of silence!—Nay, there needs - Thy throat’s deep music. Let thy lips drop words - Like pearls between thy kisses; - -and Lancelot, of the overmastering passion, would scarcely have -babbled this reply: - - Thy speech breaks - Against the interruption of my lips - Like the low laughter of a summer brook - Over perpetual pebbles. - -But when the crisis of the play is reached, when the court is rife -with rumors of the Queen’s disloyalty, and Lancelot and Guinevere, -under imminent shadow of exposure, meet by chance in the throne -room,—there is drawn a vital, moving picture, one whose art lies in -revealing the swift transition from impulse to impulse through which -one passes when making great decisions. First, the high light is -thrown upon the stronger side of Guinevere, in such meditative -passages as these, tinged with a melancholy beauty: - - We have had a radiant dream; we have beheld - The trellises and temples of the South, - And wandered in the vineyards of the Sun:— - ’Tis morning now; the vision fades away - And we must face the barren norland hills. - - _Lancelot._ And must this be? - - _Guinevere._ Nay, Lancelot, it is. - How shall we stand alone against the world? - - _Lancelot._ More lonely in it than against! - What’s the world to us? - - _Guinevere._ The place in which we live. - We cannot slip it from us like a garment, - For it is like the air—if we should flee - To the remotest steppes of Tartary, - Arabia, or the sources of the Nile,— - It still is there, nor can it be eluded - Save in the airless emptiness of death. - -And fortressed with resolve, she speaks of war, of rending the -kingdom, of violating friendships, of desecrating the family bond, to -all of which Lancelot opposes his own desires: - - And I— - I, too, defend it when it _is_ a family, - As I would kneel before the sacred Host - When through the still aisles sounds the sacring bell; - But if a jester strutted through the forms - And turned the holy Mass into a mock, - Would I still kneel, or would I rise in anger - And make an end of that foul mimicry? - -This but adds strength to Guinevere’s argument, - - Believest thou, then, the power of the Church? - The Church would give our love an ugly name. - - _Lancelot._ Faith, I believe, and I do not believe. - The shocks of life oft startle us to thought, - Rouse us from acquiescence and reveal - That what we took for credence was but custom. - - _Guinevere._ You are Arthur’s friend, your love— - Stands this within the honor of your friendship? - - _Lancelot._ Mother of God—have you no pity? - - _Guinevere._ I would - I could be pitiful, and yet do right. - Alas, how heavy—your tears move me more - Than all—(what am I saying? Dare I trust - So faint a heart? I must make turning back - Impossible); - -and with a final resolve she adds: - - But know the worst! I jested— - I—God!—I do not love you. Go! ’Twas all - Mockery—wanton cruelty—what you will—lechery!— - I— - - (_Lancelot looks at her dumbly, then slowly turns to go. As he draws -aside the curtain of the doorway_—) - - _Guinevere._ Lancelot! - - _Lancelot._ What does the Queen desire? - - _Guinevere._ Oh, no, I am not the Queen—I am - Your wife! - Take me away with you! Let me not lie - To you, of all—my whole life is a lie, - To one, at least, let it be truth. I—I— - O Lancelot, do you not understand? - I love you—Oh, I cannot let you go! - -This swift change of front, this weakening, this inconsistency, is yet -so human, so subtly true to life, under such a phase of it, that the -entire scene vibrates with emotion which gathers force in the -declaration of Guinevere: - - Love, I will fly with thee where’er thou wilt! - -and reaches its climax in the sudden strength with which Lancelot -meets the Queen’s weakness. During her pleading that he should leave -her, his selfish wish had been uppermost; but her weakness recalls him -to himself and evokes his latent loyalty to the King: - - Speak not of flight; I have played him - False—the King, my friend. - I ne’er can wipe that smirch away. - At least I will not add a second shame - And blazon out the insult to the world. - -And Guinevere, casting about for her own justification, replies: - - What I have given thee was ne’er another’s. - How has another, then, been wronged? - -To which Lancelot: - - What’s done - Is done, nor right nor wrong, as help me, Heaven, - Would I undo it if I could. But more - I will not do. I will not be the Brutus - To stab with mine own hand my dearest friend. - It must suffice me that you love me, sweet, - And sometime, somewhere, somehow must be mine. - I know not—it may be in some dim land - Beyond the shadows, where the King himself, - Still calling me his friend, shall place your hand - In my hand, saying, “She was always thine.” - -No surplusage, no interposition of the merely literary, cumbers this -scene, which immediately precedes the final one, in which Lancelot and -the Queen are publicly accused before the King, sitting with Guinevere -beside him on the throne. - -The opportunity for a great dramatic effect is obvious; but through -the magnanimity of Arthur, in waiving the impeachment, and exonerating -from suspicion the Queen and Lancelot, the effect is not of the clash -and din order, in fact, it is anti-climax in action, the real climax -being a spiritual one whose subtlety would be lost on the average -audience. - -Lancelot (half aside, partly to Guinevere and partly to himself): - - Be less kingly, Arthur, - Or you will split my heart—not with remorse— - No, not remorse, only eternal pain! - Why, so the damned are! - -Guinevere (half apart): - - To the souls in hell - It is at least permitted to cry out. - -Whatever one may think of the ethical side of the play as wrought out -by Hovey, there is no question of its human element. As a whole, “The -Marriage of Guenevere” leaves upon one a more concrete and vital -impression than do the other dramas of the cycle, though it has less -of action and intricacy of plot than the succeeding one, “The Birth of -Galahad,” and would probably, for stage purposes, be less effective. - -The action of the latter play takes place chiefly with Arthur’s army -occupied in the siege of Rome, and unfolds an ingenious plot, turning -upon the capture of Dagonet, the Queen’s jester, who has been sent -with a letter to Lancelot, informing him of the birth of his son, and -announcing that Guinevere, having left the child with her friend, the -Princess Ylen, had set out to join the army. The Romans at once -conceive the plan of holding Dagonet; capturing the Queen for the -palace of Caesar; and giving to Lancelot the alternative of forsaking -Arthur, placing himself at the head of the army and becoming tributary -king of Britain, with Guinevere as his queen; or of being publicly -dishonored by the conveyance to Arthur of the incriminating letter. -All of which was artfully planned, and might have been executed as -artfully, had not Dagonet, the jester, in an act of jugglery, stolen -the Emperor’s cloak and escaped, and, in the guise of a scrivener, -attached himself to the service of a young poet of Caesar’s household. - -Guinevere is captured by the Romans, and after many unsuccessful -machinations on Caesar’s part to subdue her to his will, and on the -part of his advisers to win Lancelot to their ends, the letter, which -may, according to the law of Britain, bring death to the Queen and -banishment to Lancelot, is given to Dagonet to copy for Caesar, and is -burned by the jester with the taper given him to heat the waxen -tablet. Then comes on apace the sacking of Rome by Arthur; the taking -of the city; the rescue of Guinevere by Lancelot; the slaying of -Caesar and the crowning of Arthur as Emperor of Rome with Guinevere as -Empress. The scene closes with the entrance of a messenger with -letters from Merlin, to Arthur and Guinevere, scanning which the Queen -says apart to Lancelot: - - All’s well with him. - -Thus ends the drama, again with no suspicion on the part of Arthur -that his faith has been betrayed, and with no remorse on the part of -Guinevere at having betrayed it, only increasing joy in the love of -Lancelot. It is Lancelot himself who has the conflict, and in his -character lies the strength of the drama. - -It is evident that Hovey intended to create a flesh-and-blood Arthur, -to eliminate the sanctimonious and retain the ideal; but the task -proved too difficult, and after opening the reader’s eyes to the human -weaknesses of the King, thereby inflicting a shock, he returns to the -other extreme, lifts him again into upper air, and leaves him abstract -and unconvincing. Lancelot, on the contrary, if too palpably human at -the start, grows into a more spiritual ideal, and when for the first -time he meets Guinevere transfigured with maternal joy, he greets her -with these exquisite words: - - How great a mystery you seem to me - I cannot tell. You seem to have become - One with the tides and night and the unknown. - My child … your child … whence come? By - What strange forge - Wrought of ourselves and dreams and the great deep - Into a life? I feel as if I stood - Where God had passed by, leaving all the place - Aflame with him. - -And again he says, - - The strangeness is - That I, who have not borne him, am aware, - I, too, of intimacy with his soul. - -The dramas abound in quotable passages, nor are they lacking in those -that make the judicious grieve. The work is unequal; but as a whole it -lives in the imagination, and remains in the memory, especially “The -Marriage of Guenevere,” in that twilight of the mind where dwell all -mystic shapes of hapless lovers. - -The last of the dramatic cycle, “The Masque of Taliesin,” is regarded -by most of Mr. Hovey’s critics as the high-water mark of his verse, -and it has certainly some of the purest song of his pen, and -profoundest in thought and conception; but it has also passages of -unresolved metaphysics, whose place, unless the poet had the patience -to shape them to a finer issue, should be in a Greek philosophy. - -The Masque turns upon the quest of the Graal by Percival, and is in -three scenes, or movements, set in the forest of Broceliande, Helicon, -and the Chapel of the Graal. It introduces the Muses, Merlin, Apollo, -Nimue, King Evelac, guardian of the Graal, and lesser mortals and -deities, but chief in interest, Taliesin, a bard, through whom are -spoken the finest passages of the play. As the work is cast in the -form of a Masque, to obviate the need of adhering to a strict dramatic -structure, one may dispense with a summary of its slight plot, and -look, instead, at the verse. - -The passages spoken by Apollo to Taliesin, in other words, Inspiration -defining itself to the poet, are full of glowing thought: - - Greaten thyself to the end, I am he for whose breath thou art - greatened; - Perfect thy speech to a god’s, I am he for whom speech is made - perfect; - And my voice in the hush of thy heart is the voice of the tides of - the worlds. - Thou shalt know it is I when I speak, as the foot knows the rock that - it treads on, - As the sea knows the moon, as the sap knows the place of the sun in - the heavens, - As the cloud knows the cloud it must meet and embrace with caresses - of lightning. - When thou hearest my voice, thou art one with the hurl of the stars - through the void, - One with the shout of the sea and the stampede of droves of the wind, - One with the coursers of Time and the grip of God’s hand on their - harness; - And the powers of the night and the grave shall avail not to stand - in thy path. - -Genius and its invincible assurance could scarcely be defined better -than in this passage. - -The Masque contains a litany spoken by King Evelac, and responded to -by the choristers at the Chapel of Graal, which is one of its -achievements, in point of beauty, though too long to quote, and lyrics -of great delicacy are scattered throughout the work; but in the more -spiritual passages, spoken chiefly by Taliesin, one gets the finer -quality of the verse, as in this noble query addressed to Uriel, the -angel who holds the flaming sword before the Graal: - - Thou who beholdest God continually, - Doth not his light shine even on the blind - Who feel the flood they lack the sense to see? - The lark that seeks him in the summer sky - Finds there the great blue mirror of his soul; - Winged with the dumb need of he knows not what, - He finds the mute speech of he knows not whom. - Is not the wide air, after the cocoon, - As much God as the moth-soul can receive? - Doth not God give the child within the womb - Some guess to set him groping for the world, - Some blurred reflection answering his desire? - We, shut in this blue womb of doming sky, - Guess and grope dimly for the vast of God, - And, eyeless, through some vague, less perfect sense, - Strive for a sign of what it is to see. - -Had one space to follow Mr. Hovey’s philosophy in the more -metaphysical passages, though fashioned less artistically, the -individuality of his thought in its subtler and more speculative -phases would be revealed, but to trace it adequately one must needs -have the volume before him, rather than such extracts as may be given -in a brief study. I must therefore, in taking leave of his work, -content myself with citing the exultant lines with which the volume -closes, the splendid death-song lifting one on the wave of its -ecstatic feeling: - - Unaware as the air of the light that fills full all its girth, - Yet crowds not an atom of air from its place to make way; - Growing from splendor to splendor, from birth to birth, - As day to the rose of dawn from the earlier gray; - As day from the sunrise gold to the luminous mirth - Of morning, and brighter and brighter, till noon shall be; - Intense as the cling of the sun to the lips of the earth, - And cool as the call of a wind on the still of the sea, - - Joy, joy, joy in the height and the deep; - Joy like the joy of a leaf that unfolds to the sun; - Joy like the joy of a child in the borders of sleep; - Joy like the joy of a multitude thrilled into one. - - * * * * * - - Stir in the dark of the stars unborn that desire - Only the thrill of a wild, dumb force set free, - Yearn of the burning heart of the world on fire - For life and birth and battle and wind and sea, - Groping of life after love till the spirit aspire, - Into Divinity ever transmuting the clod, - Higher and higher and higher and higher and higher - Out of the Nothingness world without end into God. - - Man from the blindness attaining the succor of sight, - God from his glory descends to the shape we can see; - Life, like a moon, is a radiant pearl in the night - Thrilled with his beauty to beacon o’er forest and sea; - Life, like a sacrifice laid on the altar, delight - Kindles as flame from the air to be fire at its core! - Joy, joy, joy in the deep and the height! - Joy in the holiest, joy evermore, evermore! - - - - -II - -LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE - - -MISS LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE is an Elizabethan, not by affectation, -but by temperament. Sidney and Lovelace and Herrick and Marlowe are -her contemporaries, though she moves among them as a gray-robed figure -among gay cavaliers and knights, so restrained is her mood, so -delicate in its withholding. - -Her first collection is aptly named, _A Handful of Lavender_, for the -fragrance of the elder time pervades it impalpably, as the scent of -lavender makes sweet the linen of some treasured chest. How Miss Reese -has been able, in the hurly-burly of American life, to find some -indesecrate corner, some daffodiled garden-close, holding always the -quiet and the glint of sunshine out of which these songs have come, is -an enigma worth a poet’s solving. She is a Southern woman, which may -furnish some clew to the repose of her work. There is time down there -to ripen, to let life have its own way of enrichment with one. She has -been content to publish three books of verse—although the first is now -incorporated with the second—in the interval in which our Northern -poets would have produced a half-dozen; nor does she much concern -herself, when once the captive melodies are freed, as to their flight. -She knows there are magnetic breezes in the common air, charméd winds -that blow unerringly, and in whose upper currents song’s wings are -guided, as the carrier-doves’, to their appointed goal. - -There is a delicate harmony between Miss Reese’s poems and their -number, a nicety of adjustment between quality and quantity, that -bespeaks the artist. She has the critic’s gift of appraising her own -work before it leaves her hand, and thus forestalls much of the -criticism that might otherwise attend it. The faculty of self-analysis -would be a safety-valve to the high-pressure speed at which most -literature of to-day is produced—but, alas, the few that employ it! -“Open the throttle and let it drive!” is the popular injunction to the -genius within, and wherever it drives, one is expected to follow. How -refreshing it is, then, to come upon work with calm upon it!—work that -came out of time, culture, and artist-love, and trusts its -appreciation to the same standards. - -[Illustration: Lizette Woodworth Reese] - -Miss Reese’s verse shows constant affinity with Herrick, though it is -rarely so blithe. It has the singing mood, but not the buoyant one, -being tempered by something delicate and remote. The unheard melodies -within it are the sweetest; it pipes to the spirit “ditties of no -tone.” Even its least rare fancies convey more than they say, and it -must be confessed that much so-called poetry says more than it -conveys. Whitman’s mystical words: “All music is what awakes from you -when you are reminded by the instruments,” applies equally well to -poetry, to poetry of suggestion, such as Miss Reese’s. Yesterday’s -parted grace has been transmuted to poetry within us all, but it is a -voiceless possession, speaking to us in the soul. Miss Reese’s poems, -by a line or two, perhaps, put one in swift possession of that -vanishing beauty within himself. It floods back, perchance in tears, -but it is ours again. Take almost a random citation, for this quality -is rarely absent from her poems, whether they summon Joy or Pain,—her -lines “To A White Lilac”: - - I know you, ghost of some lone, delicate hour, - Long-gone but unforgot; - Wherein I had for guerdon and for dower - That one thing I have not. - - Unplucked I leave your mystical white feather, - O phantom up the lane; - For back may come that spent and lovely weather, - And I be glad again! - -To analyze this, would be to pluck the mystical white feather that a -poet left untouched, that it might recall the grace of “some lone, -delicate hour, long-gone but unforgot;” but the soul of such an hour -has subtilized for each of us in that spiritual memory-flower, and it -needs no more than the opening line of this poem to invest the -disillusioned day with a mood the same—yet not the same. Miss Reese -has put it in two lines in her “Song of the Lavender Woman”: - - Oh, my heart, why should you break at any thoughts like these? - So sooth are they of the old time that they should bring you ease. - -In another brief poem, the spirit of grief, that transmutes itself at -last to music, to odor, to sunsets and dawns, becomes vital again in -the scent of the box, the garden shrub. The lines show Miss Reese’s -susceptibility to impression from the most intangible sources: - - Dark, thinned, beside the wall of stone, - The box dripped in the air; - Its odor through my house was blown - Into the chamber there. - - Remote and yet distinct the scent, - The sole thing of the kind, - As though one spoke a word half meant - That left a sting behind. - - I knew not Grief would go from me - And naught of it be plain, - Except how keen the box can be - After a fall of rain. - -Miss Reese’s art is its apparent lack of art, of conscious effort. Her -diction is as simple in the mere store of words which she chooses to -employ, as might be that of some poet to whom such a store was his -sole equipment; but what is that fine distinction between _simplesse_ -and _simplicité_? One recognizes in her vocabulary the subtlest art of -choice and elimination, art that is temperament, however, that selects -by intuitive fitness and not by formulas or deliberate trying of -effects. The words she employs are thrice distilled and clarified, -until they become the essence of lucidity, and this essence in turn is -crystallized into form in her poems. Perhaps they have, for some, too -little warmth and color; they are not the rich-dyed words of passion, -they are rather the white, delicate words of memory, but no others -would serve as well. - -In reading certain poems of Miss Reese’s, such as “Trust,” or her -lines “Writ In A Book Of Elizabethan Verse,” the clarity of the -language recalls a passage in a letter of Jean Ingelow’s in which she -exclaims: “Oh that I might wash my words in light!” The impression -which many of these lyrics convey is that Miss Reese _has_ washed her -words in light, so clear, so pure is their beauty. Take, for -illustration, the much-quoted lines “Love Came Back At Fall O’ Dew,” -and note the art and feeling achieved almost wholly in monosyllabic -words: - - Love came back at fall o’ dew, - Playing his old part; - But I had a word or two, - That would break his heart. - - “He who comes at candlelight, - That should come before, - Must betake him to the night - From a barréd door.” - - This the word that made us part - In the fall o’ dew; - This the word that brake his heart— - Yet it brake mine, too! - -A lyric imbued with charm, and into which a heart history is -compressed, and yet employing but five or six words of more than one -syllable! Is this not clarifying to a purpose? The lines called -“Trust,” illustrate with equal minuteness the gift of putting into the -simplest words some truth that seems to speak itself without calling -attention to language or form, and, though having less of charm, they -illustrate the point in question, that of absolute simplicity without -insipidity. This is not, however, to be taken as advice to all poets -to cultivate the monosyllabic style. Because Miss Reese can achieve -such an effect through it, when she chooses, as “Love Came Back At -Fall O’ Dew,” does not argue that another poet would not corrupt it to -nursery babble, nor would it be desirable to strive for it in any -case. Song is impulse, not effort, and back of it is temperament. Miss -Reese is a poet-_singer_; she is at her best in the pure lyric, the -lyric that could be sung, and therefore her most artistic poems are -such as are the least ornate, but have rare distinction in the purity, -fitness, and individuality of her words. - -Very few modern lyrics possess the singing quality. The term “lyric -verse,” as used to-day, is a misnomer. It is as intricate in form and -phrase as if not consecrated to the lyre by poets in the dawn of art. -The divorce between poetry and song grows more absolute year by year; -composers search almost vainly through modern volumes of verse for -lyrics that combine the melody and feeling, the spontaneity and grace, -indispensable to song. It is not that the modern poet is unable to -produce such, but that he does not choose. It has gone out of fashion, -to state the case quite frankly, to write with a singing cadence; -something rare and strange must issue from the poet’s lips, something -inobvious. Art lurks in surprises, and the poet of to-day must be a -diviner of mysteries, a searcher of secrets, in nature and humanity -and truth, and a revealer of them in his art, though he reveal -ofttimes but to conceal. - -Poetry grows more and more an intellectual pleasure for the cultured -classes, less and less a possession of the people. Elizabethan song -was upon the lips of the milkmaids and market-women, the common ear -was trained to grace and melody; but how many of the country folk of -to-day know the involved numbers of our poets, or, knowing, could -grasp them? Who is writing the lays of the people? One can only answer -that few are writing them because the spirit of poetic art has -suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange, and the poet of -to-day would be fearful of his laurels should he write so artless a -song as “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” or “Come live with me and -be my love,” and yet these are beads that Time tells over on the -rosary of Art. - -The question is too broad to discuss here. We should all agree, -doubtless, as to the increasing separation between poetry and song, -the increasing tendency of verse to appeal to the cultured classes; -but as to the desirability of returning to the simpler form, adapting -theme and melody to the common ear—how many modern poets would agree -upon that? There is a middle ground, however; the reaction against the -highly ornate is already felt, and a finer art may be trusted to bring -its own adjustments until poetry will again become of universal -appeal. - -And how does this pertain to Miss Reese? It pertains in that her ideal -is the very return to clear, sympathetic song of which we have spoken. -She would recapture the blitheness of Herrick, the valor of Lovelace, -would lighten song’s wings of their heaviness and shift Care and -Wisdom to more prosaic burden-bearers. While the reminiscent mood is -prevalent in her work, it is not melancholy, but has rather the -iridescent glint of smiles and tears. Joy never quite departs, -although “with finger at his lip, bidding adieu.” Miss Reese’s strife -is toward a valiant cheer, whose passing she deplores in the poem -called “Laughter”: - - Spirit of the gust and dew, - Herrick had the last of you! - Empty are the morning hills. - Herrick, he whose hearty airs - Still are heard in our dull squares; - Herrick of the daffodils! - - * * * * * - - Now the pulpit and the mart - Make an unquiet thing of Art, - For we trade or else we preach; - Even the crocus,’stead of song, - Serves for text the April long; - Thus we set it out of reach. - -There is heartier food than ambrosia in this stanza. It is true that -when we use the crocus for a text we set it out of reach, or, in -common phrase, when poetry becomes didactic, Art flees. A dew-fresh -song would teach the crocus’ lesson, or many another lesson, without a -hint of teaching it, merely by beauty; by the creed of Keats. Pope’s -didactic, sententious lines are gone; but Keats, who never pointed a -moral in his life, sings on eternally. Miss Reese too is votary to -beauty for its own sake; she gives one the flower, and he may extract -the nectar for himself. The nectar is always there for one’s -distilling into the truth which is the essence of things. She does not -herself extract and distil it, for hers is the art of suggestion. - -Having this creed of song, Miss Reese’s themes are not widely -inclusive. They are, however, the universal themes,—love, beauty, -reverence, remembrance, joy that has been tempered to cheer, having -met pain by the way; for, as we have said, no encounter with pain—and -her poems give abundant evidence of such encounter—has been able to -subdue the valor of her spirit, or to quench the joy at the springs of -her feeling, albeit the buoyant, brimful joy has given place to -acquiescent cheer. - -There is a certain quality in Miss Reese’s poems, a quaintness, an -elder grace, that is wholly unique. It is the union of theme, -phraseology, and atmosphere. The two former have been considered, but -the spirit, after all, is in the last, in that which analysis cannot -reach. One selects a poem from _A Quiet Road_ illustrative of this art -of correlating Then and Now, making quick the dead in memory and hope, -and sets about to analyze it,—when, lo, as if one had prisoned a white -butterfly, it escapes, leaving only the dust of its wing in one’s -hand! Miss Reese’s poems are not to be analyzed, they are to be felt; -that, too, is the creed of her song. Is it difficult to feel these -delicate lines called “The Road of Remembrance”?— - - The old wind stirs the hawthorn tree; - The tree is blossoming; - Northward the road runs to the sea, - And past the House of Spring. - - The folk go down it unafraid; - The still roofs rise before; - When you were lad and I was maid, - Wide open stood that door. - - Now, other children crowd the stair, - And hunt from room to room; - Outside, under the hawthorn fair, - We pluck the thorny bloom. - - Out in the quiet road we stand, - Shut in from wharf and mart, - The old wind blowing up the land, - The old thoughts at our heart. - -Miss Reese’s growth, as shown in her two volumes, is so marked that -while _A Handful of Lavender_ has the foreshadowing of her later work, -and also some notably fine poems,—such as “That Day You Came,” “The -Last Cricket,” “A Spinning Song,” and “The Old Path,”—it has not the -same perfectly individual note that pervades _A Quiet Road_. The -personal mark, the artist-proof mark, upon nearly everything in the -later collection, is frequently absent from the first. That part of _A -Handful of Lavender_ first issued as _A Branch of May_ is naturally -the least finished of Miss Reese’s work. It is unsure and yet -indicative of that— - - Oncoming hour of light and dew, - Of heartier sun, more certain blue, - -which shines in her later work. - -“The Death Potion,” from the first collection, is a case in point: it -is strong in idea, and here and there in execution, but its metre is -faulty, and it departs so often from the initial measure that one who -has set himself in tune with that is thrown from the key, and in -adapting himself to the changed rhythm loses the pleasure of the poem. - -It must be said, however, that such lack of metrical sensitiveness is -very rare even in the earlier poems. In general, they are of -unimpeachable rhythm; indeed, the singing note is so much Miss Reese’s -natural expression that it creeps into this sonnet, “The Old Path,” -and turns it in effect to a lyric: - - O Love! O Love! this way has hints of you - In every bough that stirs, in every bee, - Yellow and glad, droning the thick grass through, - In blooms red on the bush, white on the tree; - And when the wind, just now, came soft and fleet, - Scattering the blackberry blossoms, and from some - Fast darkening space that thrush sang sudden sweet, - You were so near, so near, yet did not come! - Say, is it thus with you, O friend, this day? - Have you, for me that love you, thought or word? - Do I, with bud or bough, pass by your way; - With any breath of brier or note of bird? - If this I knew, though you be quick or dead, - All my sad life would I go comforted. - -_A Handful of Lavender_ shows the tendency of most young poets to -affect the sonnet, a tendency laudable enough if one be a natural -sonneteer. Miss Reese has many finely conceived and well-executed -sonnets, but few that are unforgettably fine, as are many of her -lyrics. That she recognizes wherein her surest power lies is obvious -from the fact that, whereas _A Handful of Lavender_ contains some -thirty-two sonnets, _A Quiet Road_ contains but twelve. Those of -nature predominated in the former, nature for its own sake; but in the -latter there is far less accent upon nature and more upon life. - -They show in technique, also, Miss Reese’s firmer, surer touch and -greater clarity. There are certain sonnets in _A Handful of Lavender_, -such as “A Song of Separation,” and “Renunciation,” warmer in feeling -than the later ones and equal to them in manner; but in general the -mechanism is much more apparent—one _does_ occasionally see the wires, -which is never the case in the later work. - -“The Look of the Hedge,” or these lines called “Recompense,” will -illustrate the ease and lucidity of her sonnets in _A Quiet Road_: - - Sometimes, yea, often, I forget, forget; - Pass your closed door with not a thought of you, - Of the old days, but only of these new; - I sow; I reap; my house in order set. - Then of a sudden doth this thing befall, - By a wood’s edge, or in the market-place, - That I remember naught but your dead face, - And other folk forgotten, you are all. - When this is so, oh, sooth the time and sweet! - And I, thereafter, am like unto one - Who from the lilac bloom and the young year - Comes to a chamber shuttered from the street, - Yet heeds nor emptiness nor lack of sun, - For that the recompensing Spring is near! - -There are excellently wrought sonnets in the first volume, indeed, the -majority of them are not without fine lines or true feeling, but the -gain in command of the form has been marked. When all is said, -however, one comes back to _A Quiet Road_ for the songs it holds, and -for these he treasures it. Miss Reese has epitomized, in her lines -“Writ In A Book Of Elizabethan Verse,” her own characteristics under -those of the earlier singers, sounded the delicate notes of her own -reed, when she says: - - Mine is the crocus and the call - Of gust to gust in shrubberies tall; - The white tumult, the rainy hush; - And mine the unforgetting thrush - That pours its heart-break from the wall. - - For I am tears, for I am Spring, - The old and immemorial thing; - To me come ghosts by twos and threes, - Under the swaying cherry-trees, - From east and west remembering. - - O elder Hour, when I am not, - Gone out like smoke from road and plot, - More perfect Hour of light and dew, - Shall lovers turn away from you, - And long for me, the Unforgot! - -Surely they will, for clear, pure song keeps its vibrancy, and the -note to which is set the quaintness of such words as these in Miss -Reese’s poem “A Pastoral,” will not easily be forgotten: - - Oho, my love, oho, my love, and ho, the bough that shows, - Against the grayness of mid-Lent, the color of the rose! - The lights o’ Spring are in the sky and down among the grass; - Bend low, bend low, ye Kentish reeds, and let two lovers pass! - - The plum-tree is a straitened thing; the cherry is but vain; - The thorn but black and empty at the turning of the lane; - Yet mile by mile out in the wind the peach-trees blow and blow, - And which is stem and which is bloom, not any maid can know. - - The ghostly ships sail up to town and past the orchard wall; - There is a leaping in the reeds; they waver and they fall; - For lo, the gusts of God are out; the April time is brief; - The country is a pale red rose, and dropping leaf by leaf. - - I do but keep me close beside and hold my lover’s hand; - Along the narrow track we pass across the level land; - The petals whirl about us and the sedge is to our knees; - The ghostly ships sail up, sail up, beyond the stripping trees. - - When we are old, when we are cold, and barréd is the door, - The memory of this will come and turn us young once more; - The lights o’ Spring will dim the grass and tremble from the sky; - And all the Kentish reeds bend low to let us two go by! - -Miss Reese’s work in _A Quiet Road_ is so uniformly quotable that one -distrusts his judgment in the matter of choice, and having cited one -poem as representative comes suddenly upon another that might have -served him better; such an one, perhaps, is that to Robert Louis -Stevenson, in its penetrative feeling, showing Miss Reese to be a -diviner of spirits. One need hardly be told that she is of the “mystic -fellowcraft” of Stevenson, and although the very name of the valorous -one has become a sort of fetich among his lovers everywhere, one would -go far to find him set forth more bravely than in this characterization, -of which a part must suffice to show the quality: - - In his old gusty garden of the North, - He heard lark-time the uplifting Voices call; - Smitten through with Voices was the evenfall— - At last they drove him forth. - - Now there were two rang silverly and long; - And of Romance, that spirit of the sun, - And of Romance, spirit of youth, was one; - And one was that of Song. - - Gold-belted sailors, bristling buccaneers, - The flashing soldier, and the high, slim dame, - These were the Shapes that all around him came,— - That we let go with tears. - - His was the unstinted English of the Scot, - Clear, nimble, with the scriptural tang of Knox - Thrust through it like the far, strict scent of box, - To keep it unforgot. - - No frugal Realist, but quick to laugh, - To see appealing things in all he knew, - He plucked the sun-sweet corn his fathers grew, - And would have naught of chaff. - - David and Keats and all good singing men, - Take to your hearts this Covenanter’s son, - Gone in mid-years, leaving our years undone— - Where you do sing again! - -There! I have repented me and quoted it all, to preserve the unity. - -To be rare and quaint without being fantastic, to have -swift-conceiving fancy that turns into poetry the near-by thing that -many overlook—this is Miss Reese’s gift. You shall not go to her for -ethics, philosophy, nor for instruction of any kind, for that is -contrary to her creed; but you shall go to her for truth, truth that -has become personal through experience; go to her for beauty, uplift, -and refreshment, and above all for the recovery of the departed mood. - - - - -III - -BLISS CARMAN - - -THE presence of Mr. Carman, a Canadian singer, among a group of poets -of the States, needs no explanation; so identified is he with the -artistic life of the younger generation on this side the border that -we have come to forget his earlier allegiance, and to consider his -work, most of which has been produced here, as distinctly our own. But -while it is gratifying to feel that so much of his verse has drawn its -inspiration from nature and life as we know them, one could little -spare Mr. Carman’s first book of lyrics, _Low Tide on Grand Pré_, -which is purely Canadian—set in the air of the “blue North summer.” - -It lacks as a collection the confident touch of his later work, but is -imbued with an indefinable delicacy; it withholds the uttermost word, -and its grace is that of suggestion. Especially is this true of the -initial poem, a lyric with a poignant undernote calling one back -thrice and again to learn its spell. - -It has been Mr. Carman’s method to issue at intervals small volumes -containing work of a related sort; but it is open to question whether -this method of publishing, with the harmony which results from -grouping each collection under a certain key, may not have a -counterbalancing danger in the tendency toward monotony. As a matter -of fact, Mr. Carman has a wide range of subject; but unless one be -ever taking a bird’s-eye view of his work, it is likely to seem -restricted, owing to the reiterance of the same note in whatever -collection he chance to have in hand. A case in point is that -furnished by _Ballads of Lost Haven_, one of his most characteristic -and fascinating volumes, a very wizardy of sea moods, yet it has no -fewer than four poems, succeeding one another at the close of the -collection, prefiguring death under the titles of “The Shadow -Boatswain,” “The Master of the Isles,” “The Last Watch,” and -“Outbound.” - -Each of these is blended of mystery, lure, and dread; each conveys the -feeling it was meant to convey; but when the four poems of similar -motive are grouped together, their force is lost. The symbols which -seem in each to rise as spontaneously from the sea as its own foam, -lose their magic when others of like import, but different phrasing, -crowd closely upon them. For illustration, the “Shadow Boatswain” -contains these fine lines: - - Don’t you know the sailing orders? - It is time to put to sea, - And the stranger in the harbor - Sends a boat ashore for me. - - * * * * * - - That’s the Doomkeel. You may know her - By her clean run aft; and then - Don’t you hear the Shadow Boatswain - Piping to his shadow men? - -And “The Master of the Isles,” immediately following, opens in this -equally picturesque, but essentially similar, manner: - - There is rumor in Dark Harbor, - And the folk are all astir; - For a stranger in the offing - Draws them down to gaze at her, - - In the gray of early morning, - Black against the orange streak, - Making in below the ledges, - With no colors at her peak. - -[Illustration: Bliss Carman] - -While each of the poems develops differently, and taken alone has a -symbolistic beauty that would fix itself in the memory, when the two -are put together and are followed by two others cognate in theme, the -lines of relief have melted into one indistinct image. This effect of -blurring from the grouping of related poems is not so apparent in any -collection as in the sea ballads, as the subject-matter of the other -volumes is more diversified and the likelihood of employing somewhat -the same imagery is therefore removed; but while Mr. Carman has a very -witchery of phrase when singing of the sea, and his words sting one -with delight like a dash of brine, one would, for that very reason, -keep the impression vivid, forceful, complete, and grudges the merging -of it into others and yet others that shall dissipate it or transform -it to an impalpable thing. - -Judging them individually, it is doubtful if Mr. Carman has done -anything more representative, more imbued with his own temperament, -than these buoyant, quickening songs that freshen one as if from a -plunge in the sea, and take one to themselves as intimately. The -opening poem sets the key to the collection: - - I was born for deep-sea faring; - I was bred to put to sea; - Stories of my father’s daring - Filled me at my mother’s knee. - - I was sired among the surges; - I was cubbed beside the foam; - All my heart is in its verges, - And the sea wind is my home. - - All my boyhood, from far vernal - Bourns of being, came to me - Dream-like, plangent, and eternal - Memories of the plunging sea. - -And what a gruesome, eerie fascination is in this picture at whose -faithfulness one shudders: - - Oh, the shambling sea is a sexton old, - And well his work is done. - With an equal grave for lord and knave, - He buries them every one. - - Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip, - He makes for the nearest shore; - And God, who sent him a thousand ship, - Will send him a thousand more; - But some he’ll save for a bleaching grave, - And shoulder them in to shore,— - Shoulder them in, shoulder them in, - Shoulder them in to shore. - -How the swing of the lines befits the action, and how it puts on grace -in this stanza, - - Oh, the ships of Greece and the ships of Tyre - Went out, and where are they? - In the port they made, they are delayed - With the ships of yesterday. - -The remaining strophes tempt one beyond what he is able, especially -this characterization, - - Oh, a loafing, idle lubber to him - Is the sexton of the town; - -but we must take a glance at the ballads, at the “Nancy’s Pride,” that -went out - - On the long slow heave of a lazy sea, - To the flap of an idle sail, - - * * * * * - -and - - … faded down - With her creaking boom a-swing, - Till a wind from the deep came up with a creep, - And caught her wing and wing. - - * * * * * - - She lifted her hull like a breasting gull - Where the rolling valleys be, - And dipped where the shining porpoises - Put ploughshares through the sea. - - * * * * * - - They all may home on a sleepy tide - To the sag of an idle sheet; - But it’s never again the Nancy’s Pride - That draws men down the street. - -But the fishermen on the Banks, in the eerie watches of the moon, -behold this apparition: - - When the light wind veers, and the white fog clears, - They see by the after rail - An unknown schooner creeping up - With mildewed spar and sail. - - Her crew lean forth by the rotting shrouds, - With the Judgment in their face; - And to their mates’ “God save you!” - Have never a word of grace. - - Then into the gray they sheer away, - On the awful polar tide; - And the sailors know they have seen the wraith - Of the missing Nancy’s Pride. - -There have been spectral ships since visions were, but few conjured so -vividly that one may almost see the - - crew lean forth by the rotting shrouds - With the Judgment in their face, - -and watch them as - - into the gray they sheer away - On the awful polar tide. - -The poem illustrates Mr. Carman’s gift of putting atmosphere into his -work. A line may give the color, the setting, for an entire poem,—a -very simple line, as this, - - With her creaking boom a-swing, - -or, “To the sag of an idle sheet,” which fixes at once the impression -of a sultry, languorous air, one of those, half-veiled, -“weather-breeder” days one knows so well. - -From a narrative standpoint the ballads are spirited, there is always -a story worth telling; but they are occasionally marred by Mr. -Carman’s prolixity, the besetting sin of his art. He who can crowd so -much into a line is often lacking in the faculty of its appraisal, and -frequently a crisp, telling phrase or stanza is weakened by the -accretion that gathers around it. Beauty is rarely wanting in this -accretion, but beauty that is not organic, not structurally necessary -to the theme, becomes verbiage. Walter Pater has said it all in his -fine passage: “For in truth all art does but consist in the removal of -surplusage, from the last finish of the gem-engraver blowing away the -last particle of invisible dust, back to the earliest divination of -the finished work to be, lying somewhere, according to Michael -Angelo’s fancy, in the rough-hewn block of stone.” It is not Mr. -Carman’s divination of the finished work to be that is at fault; one -feels that the subject is clearly visioned in his mind at the outset, -but that it proves in some cases too alluring to his fancy. His work -is not artificial; he is not fashioning poetic bric-à-brac to adorn -his verse; sincerity is writ large upon it; but his mood is so -compelling that he is carried on by the force of momentum, and -finding, when the impulse is spent, so much beauty left behind, he has -not the heart to destroy it. - -One pardons this over-elaboration in _Ballads of Lost Haven_ because -of the likelihood of coming upon a pungent phrase, like a whiff of -kelp, that shall transform some arid spot to the blue leagues of sea; -and for such a poem as “The Ships of St. John,” with no superfluous -lines, with a calm, sabbatic beauty, one is wholly Mr. Carman’s -debtor. - -_Behind the Arras_ has proven a stumbling-block and rock of offence to -some of Mr. Carman’s readers, because of its recondite character. They -regard it as something esoteric that only the initiate may grasp, -whereas its mysticism is half whimsical, and requires no -superconsciousness to divine it. Mr. Carman is founding no cult; it -pleases him for the nonce to mask his thought in symbols, and there -are, alas, minds of the rectangular sort that have no use for symbols! -It is a book containing many strong poems, such as “Beyond the Gamut,” -“Exit Anima,” and “Hack and Hew,”—a book of spiritual enigmas through -which one catches hints of the open secret, ever-alluring, -ever-eluding, and follows new clews to the mystery, immanent, yet -undivined. - - Earth one habitat of spirit merely, - I must use as richly as I may,— - Touch environment with every sense-tip, - Drink the well and pass my wander way,— - -says this sane poet who holds his gift as a tribute, whose philosophy -is to affirm and not deny: - - O hand of mine and brain of mine, be yours, - While time endures, - To acquiesce and learn! - For what we best may dare and drudge and yearn, - Let soul discern. - -And who through the grime and in the babel still sees and hears, - - Always the flawless beauty,—always the Chord - Of the Overword, - Dominant, pleading, sure, - No truth too small to save and make endure; - No good too poor! - -This is the vision that shall lighten our eyes, quicken our ears, and -restore our hope,—the vision which we expect the poet to see and to -communicate. He must make the detached and fragmentary beauty a -typical revelation; the relative must foreshadow the absolute, as the -moon’s arc reveals by its mystic rim the fulness to which it is -orbing. It is not by disregarding the tragic, the sombre, the -inexplicable, that Mr. Carman comes into his vision. Pain has more -than touched him; it has become incorporate in him. _Low Tide on Grand -Pré_ has its poignant note; _Ballads of Lost Haven_, its undertone; -_Behind the Arras_, its overtone, its sublimation. - -Mr. Carman’s work is more subjective than that of many of the younger -poets without being less objective, as the Vagabondia books attest. In -one mood he is the mystic, dwelling in a speculative nebula of -thought, in another the realist concerning himself only with the -demonstrable, and hence his work discloses a wide range of affinities. -He is not a strongly constructive thinker, but intuitional in his -mental processes, and his verse demands that gift in his readers. -Without it what could one make of “The Juggler” but a poem of -delicious color and music? If its import were none other than appears -upon the face of it, it would still be admirable, but as a symbol of -the Force projecting us, it is a subtle bit of art. - -Mr. Carman’s sensitiveness to values of rhythm keeps his verse free -from lapses in that direction. He never, to my memory, makes use of -the sonnet, which shows critical judgment, as the lyric is his -temperamental medium. The apogee of his art is in his diction, which -has a predestined fitness, and above all a personal quality. To quote -Pater again, he has “begotten a vocabulary faithful to the coloring of -his own spirit,” and one cannot mistake even a fragment of his verse. -Now and again one comes upon an archaic expression, as “A _weird_ is -in their song,” using the ancient noun-form, or upon such a -meaningless solecism, at least to the uninitiate, as “illumining this -_quench_ of clay,” but in general Mr. Carman does not find it -necessary to go outside the established limits of the language for -variety and force in diction. He has a genius for imagery, and -conjures the most unsullied fancies from every aspect of nature. The -Vagabondia books are abrim with them, and while there are idle lines -and padded stanzas, there are few of the poems that do not strike true -flashes here and there, few that miss of justification, while their -gay and rollicking note heartens one and bids him up and join in the -revel. - -There are others in a graver key, such as Hovey’s “At the End of the -Day,” and Carman’s “The Mendicants,” and “The Marching Morrows;” and -certain lyric inspirations, such as the “Sea Gypsy,” by Hovey, and the -“Vagabond Song,” by Carman, that have not been bettered by either, -that could not well be bettered within their limits. The former has -been quoted in the study of Hovey; the latter is equally an -inspiration. Within the confines of two stanzas Mr. Carman has -suggested what volumes of nature-verse could never say. He does not -analyze it to a finish, nor let the magic slip through his fingers; -under his touch it subtilizes into atmosphere and thus communicates -the incommunicable: - - There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood— - Touch of manner, hint of mood; - And my heart is like a rhyme, - With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time. - - The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry - Of bugles going by. - And my lonely spirit thrills - To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills. - - There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir; - We must rise and follow her, - When from every hill of flame - She calls and calls each vagabond by name. - -Throwing aside all that is ephemeral in the Vagabondia books, all mere -boyish ebullition, there is a goodly residuum of nature-poetry of the -freshest and most unhackneyed sort. It is the blithe, objective type; -eyes and ears are its informers, and it enters into one’s mood with a -keen sense of refreshment. Who does not know the impulse that prompted -these lines? - - Make me over, mother April, - When the sap begins to stir! - When thy flowery hand delivers - All the mountain-prisoned rivers, - And thy great heart beats and quivers - To revive the days that were, - Make me over, mother April, - When the sap begins to stir! - -The temper of the Vagabondia books is thoroughly wholesome; courage -and cheer dominate them; in short, they are good to know; and while it -is not vitally necessary to remember all they contain, one would be -distinctly the loser should he forget such poems as “Non Omnis Moriar” -or “The Deserted Inn” from _The Last Songs_. - -The collection of Memorabilia, _By the Aurelian Wall_, takes its title -from the burial-place of Keats, and includes “A Seamark,” the fine -threnody on Stevenson; a thrilling eulogy of Phillips Brooks; a -spiritual, poetic visioning of Shelley under the symbol of “The White -Gull;” a Bohemian lyric to Paul Verlaine, and other things equally -well-wrought. Some of them need distilling; the poem to Shelley, in -particular, volatilizes to the vanishing-point—but what haunting -sweetness it carries with it! To be sure, Shelley is elusive, and -Matthew Arnold’s “beautiful but ineffectual angel, beating in the void -his luminous wings in vain,” has come to dominate the popular fancy in -regard to him. Mr. Carman’s poem, though touched with this mood, is -not set to it, and he has several stanzas which have in them the -essence of Shelley’s spirit,—the real Shelley, the passionate -idealist, the spent runner who, falling, handed on the torch. - -The Stevenson threnody is probably the best of the elegies, as Mr. -Carman is by temperament one of the Stevenson brotherhood, and no -subject could better command him. That “intimate and magic name,” a -password to fellowship, conjures many a picture of him— - - Whose courage lights the dark’ning port - Where every sea-worn sail must come. - -Mr. Carman has singular power to visualize a scene; one becomes an -eye-witness of it as of this: - - But I have wander-biddings now. - Far down the latitudes of sun, - An island mountain of the sea, - Piercing the green and rosy zone, - - Goes up into the wondrous day. - And there the brown-limbed island men - Are bearing up for burial, - Within the sun’s departing ken, - - The master of the roving kind. - And there where time will set no mark - For his irrevocable rest, - Under the spacious melting dark, - - With all the nomad tented stars - About him, they have laid him down - Above the crumbling of the sea, - Beyond the turmoil of renown. - -This island procession to the mountain, leaving the master to his -“irrevocable rest,” - - Under the spacious melting dark, - With all the nomad tented stars - About him, - -is an artist’s picture not easily forgotten. - -Mr. Carman’s three volumes in the projected “Pipes of Pan” series, -including thus far _The Book of the Myths_, _The Green Book of the -Bards_, and _The Sea Children_, make new disclosures of his talent, -and the title poem “Pipes of Pan,” is a bit of anointed vision that -would waken the dullest eyes from lethargy as to the world around -them. There is necromancy in Mr. Carman’s words when the outer world -is his theme; something of the thrill, the expectancy in the heart of -growing things, the elation of life, comes upon one as he reads the -“Pipes of Pan.” It is a nobler vision than illumined Vagabondia days, -revealing - - Power out of hurt and stain - To bring beauty back again, - -and showing the - - Scope and purpose, hint and plan - Lurking in the Pipes of Pan, - -as well as the sheer delight that we noted in Vagabondia. - -It seems that every mood of every creature has been divined and -uttered, uttered with deep love, with a human relatedness that melts -the barriers between life and life, whether in man or in - - All the bright, gay-colored things - Buoyed in air on balanced wings. - -This relatedness, and all the molding influences of nature leading us -on from beauty to strength, are developed in Mr. Carman’s poem until -they become to us religion. We realize that at heart we are all -pantheists, and that revelation antedates the Book; that the law is -written on the leaves of roses as well as on tables of stone,—a -testament both new and old, given for our learning that we might have -hope. - -The remaining poems of _The Book of the Myths_ are not the best things -Mr. Carman has done, though renewals of classic verse-forms in the -Sapphic and other metres, and often picturesque in story. “The Lost -Dryad” is the most attractive, “The Dead Faun” the least so, to my -ears; but perhaps from lack of sympathy with the subject-matter I -cannot think the collection, with the exception of the poem “Pipes of -Pan,” is of especial value. It is not to be named, still excepting the -above poem, with its companion volume, _The Green Book of the Bards_, -which contains some of the strongest work of Mr. Carman’s pen as to -subject and thought, but which has one pronounced limitation,—its -monotony of form. - -The entire volume, with a sole exception, and that not marked, is -written in the conventional four-line stanza, in which so much of Mr. -Carman’s work of late has been cast. Within this compass, the -accomplishment is as varied as to theme and diction, as that of his -other work; but when one sings on and on in the same numbers, it -induces a state of mental indolence in the reader, and presupposes a -similar state in the writer. The verse goes purling musically along, -until, as running water exercises an hypnotic spell, one is hypnotized -by the mere melody of the lines, and comes to consciousness to find -that he has no notion what they are about, and must re-read them to -find out. To be sure, the poems will bear reviewing, and will make new -disclosures whenever one returns to them; but had they greater variety -as to manner, their appeal would be stronger, as the mind would be -startled to perception by unexpectedness, instead of lulled by the -same note in liquid reiterance. It is quite possible that Mr. Carman -has a principle at stake in this,—it may indeed be a reactionary -measure against over-evident mechanism, a wholesome desire for -simplicity. Now simplicity is one of the first canons of art, but -variety in metre and form is another canon by no means annulling the -first. One may have variety to the superlative degree, and never -depart from the fitness and clearness that spell simplicity. - -Were _The Green Book of the Bards_ relieved by contrasts of form, it -would rank with the finest work of Mr. Carman’s pen, as the individual -poems have strong basic ideas,—such as the “Creature Catechism,” full -of pregnant thought, and speaking a vital, spiritual word as to the -mystic union of the creative Soul with the creatures of feather and -fin and fleece. The marked evolution of Mr. Carman’s philosophy of -life, as influenced by his growing identity with nature, comes out so -strongly in the “Pipes of Pan” series, and in _The Word at Saint -Kavin’s_, as almost to reveal a new individuality. He had gone out in -the light-foot, light-heart days of Vagabondia, holidaying with the -woods and winds; glad to be quit of the gyves, to drink from the -wayside spring, eat of the forest fruit, sleep ’neath the tent of -night, and dream to the rune of the pines. He had sought nature in a -mood of pagan joy; but the wayside spring had excited a thirst it -could not quench, and the forest fruit a hunger it could not allay, -and the blithe seeker of freedom and delight became at length the -anointed votary, and lingered to watch the God at work shaping life -from death, and expressing His yearning in beauty. - -The mere objective delight of the earlier time has grown steadily into -the subjective identity with every manifestation of the Force that -operates within this world of wonder and beauty, from the soul of man, -shaping his ideals and creating his environment, to the butterfly -whose sun-painted wings, set afloat in the buoyant air, are upheld by -the breath of God. Coming into the finer knowledge, through long -intimacy with the earth and its multitudinous life, fulfilling itself -in joy,—Mr. Carman has come at length to - - readjust - The logic of the dust, - -and to shape from it a creed and law for his following, which he has -put into the mouth of Saint Kavin for expounding. The opening stanzas -of the volume give the setting and note: - - Once at St. Kavin’s door - I rested. No sigh more - Of discontent escaped me from that day. - For there I overheard - A Brother of the Word - Expound the grace of poverty, and say: - - Thank God for poverty - That makes and keeps us free, - And lets us go our unobtrusive way, - Glad of the sun and rain, - Upright, serene, humane, - Contented with the fortune of a day. - -The poem follows simple, but no less picturesque phrase, as becomes -Saint Kavin, and is, from the technical side, quaint and artistic. On -the philosophical, it develops at first the initial thought that one -shall “keep his soul” - - Joyous and sane and whole - -by obeying the word - - That bade the earth take form, the sea subside, - -and that - - When we have laid aside - Our truculence and pride, - Craven self-seeking, turbulent self-will,— - -we shall have found the boon of our ultimate striving,—room to live -and let our spirits grow, and give of their growth and higher gain to -another. Here is the giving that turns to one’s own enrichment: - - And if I share my crust, - As common manhood must, - With one whose need is greater than my own, - Shall I not also give - His soul, that it may live, - Of the abundant pleasures I have known? - - And so, if I have wrought, - Amassed or conceived aught - Of beauty, or intelligence or power, - It is not mine to hoard; - It stands there to afford - Its generous service simply as a flower. - -The poem then broadens into a dissertation upon the complexities of -life, one’s servitude to custom and “vested wrong,” the lack of -individual courage to - - Live by the truth each one of us believes, - -and turns, for illustration of the nobler development and poise, back -to nature, and the evolutionary round of life through which one traces -his course and kinship. These stanzas are among the finest spoken by -the wise Brother of the Word. After citing the strength and serenity -of the fir-trees, and what a travesty upon man’s ascent it were, did -one bear himself less royally than they, he adverts to the creature -kin-fellows whose lot we have borne: - - I, too, in polar night - Have hungered, gaunt and white, - Alone amid the awful silences; - And fled on gaudy fin, - When the blue tides came in, - Through coral gardens under tropic seas. - - And wheresoe’er I strove, - The greater law was love, - A faith too fine to falter or mistrust; - There was no wanton greed, - Depravity of breed, - Malice nor cant nor enmity unjust. - - Nay, not till I was man, - Learned I to scheme and plan - The blackest depredation on my kind, - Converting to my gain - My fellow’s need and pain - In chartered pillage, ruthless and refined. - - Therefore, my friends, I say - Back to the fair sweet way - Our Mother Nature taught us long ago,— - The large primeval mood, - Leisure and amplitude, - The dignity of patience strong and slow. - - Let us go in once more - By some blue mountain door, - And hold communion with the forest leaves; - Where long ago we trod - The Ghost House of the God, - Through orange dawns and amethystine eves! - -Then follows a glad picturing of the allurements of this place of -return, a more thoughtful one of its requitals, and the infinitude of -care bestowed upon every task to which the Master Craftsman sets his -hand, and orbs into a vision of the soul enlarged by breathing the -freer air and by regaining therefrom her “primal ecstasy and poise.” -It traces also the soul’s commission, - - To fill her purport in the ampler plan. - -Altogether the Word is admirably expounded by Saint Kavin, and one is -distinctly the gainer for having rested at his door to learn not only -the grace of joyousness, but the means to that grace. - -In his latest work, constructing from the “fragments” of Sappho lyrics -that should bear as close relation to the original as an imagination -imbued with the Sapphic traditions and a temperament sympathetically -Greek would enable him to do,—Mr. Carman undertook a daring task, but -one whose promise he has made good, as poetry, however near it may -approach to the imagined loveliness of those lost songs of the -Lesbian, which have served by their haunting beauty to keep vital her -memory through twenty-five centuries in which unnumbered names have -gone to oblivion. - -Of the “Ode to Aphrodite,” the most complete Sapphic poem extant, many -translations and paraphrases have been made, those by Edwin Arnold, -John Addington Symonds, Ambrose Philips, Swinburne, etc., being among -the finest; and were there space it would be interesting to show by -comparison that Mr. Carman’s rendering of the Ode ranks well with the -standard already set. - -Of the fragments, also, while perhaps no previous attempt has been -made to give an imaginative recast to so large a number of them, many -have been incorporated by Swinburne in his “Anactoria,” and fugitive -stanzas in the work of Rossetti, Tennyson, Byron, and others, attest -this source. To refashion them, however, after the manner, as Mr. -Roberts says in his introduction to the volume, of a sculptor -restoring a statue by Praxiteles from the mere suggestion of a hand or -a finger,—is a work of artistic imagination demanding the finest -sympathy, taste, and kinship with the theme, as well as the poet’s -touch to shape it; and while no one may pronounce upon the fidelity of -the work, beyond its Greek spirit and command of the Sapphic metres, -together with the interpretation of the original fragment, it has -great charm of phrase and atmosphere and a certain pensive beauty even -in the most impassioned stanzas, setting them to a different note from -that usually met in Sapphic paraphrases; as in these lines: - - O heart of insatiable longing, - What spell, what enchantment allures thee, - Over the rim of the world - With the sails of the sea-going ships? - - And when the rose petals are scattered - At dead of still noon on the grass-plot, - What means this passionate grief,— - This infinite ache of regret?[1] - -Among the most familiar of the fragments is that of the “apple -reddening upon the topmost bough,” which Rossetti has put into -charming phrase, together with its companion verse upon the wild -hyacinth; but while these lines are of haunting charm, they do not -make a complete stanza, the comparison being unknown; whereas Mr. -Carman, in recasting the fragment, has supplied a logical complement -to the lines and symmetrized them, together with their companion -illustration, to a lyric. His rendering, too, while less musical, from -being unrhymed, is picturesque and concise, each word being made to -tell as a stroke in a sketch: - - Art thou the topmost apple - The gatherers could not reach, - Reddening on the bough? - Shall not I take thee? - - Art thou a hyacinth blossom - The shepherds upon the hills - Have trodden into the ground? - Shall not I lift thee? - -The first Rossetti stanza ends with a fantastic play upon words -explaining that, although the gatherers did not get the coveted apple, -they - - Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now, - -which, although a pleasant poetical mix-up, is hardly in keeping with -the dignity of the comparison, which dignity Mr. Carman has well -preserved. - -Another fragment made familiar by adaptation is that to Hesperus, -expanded by Byron into one of the great passages of “Don Juan.” Mr. -Carman gives a more compact rendering and again brings the lines to -such a close as shall render them a complete lyric. They scarcely vie -in beauty with the Byron passage, which is one of the surest strokes -of his hand, but have their own charm and grace: - - Hesperus, bringing together - All that the morning star scattered,— - - Sheep to be folded in twilight, - Children for mothers to fondle,— - - Me, too, will bring to the dearest, - Tenderest breast in all Lesbos. - -The fragment, “I loved thee, Athis, in the long ago,” has been -expanded by Mr. Carman into a poem of reminiscent mood, the long, -slow-moving pentameter enhancing the effect of pensive meditation -which the lines convey. Many of the fragments are of a blither note, -having the variety which distinguishes the original. - -Mr. Carman has exercised a fine restraint in his treatment of the -fragments. They are not over-ripe in diction, nor over-elaborated, and -while there is a certain atmosphere of insubstantiality about many of -them, as could scarcely fail to result from the attempt to restore, by -imagination alone, what had existence but in tradition, they justify -themselves as artistic poetry, which is the only consideration of -moment. - - - [1] From Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics. Copyright, 1903, by - L. C. Page & Co. - - - - -IV - -LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY - - -SOME critic has said of Miss Guiney’s work, that to come suddenly upon -it among other volumes of modern poetry is like coming upon a Greek -temple in an American woodland; and the comparison is an apt one, -though the temple should scarcely be Greek, for while the feeling and -structure of the work are classic in atmosphere, they are not warm -enough, sensuous enough, to be Greek. It would, indeed, be hard to say -with what race classicism Miss Guiney’s work is tinctured. Rather say -that she is a classic by temperament and has drawn to herself, as by -chemical affinity, such things as are rare and choice in the world of -books and life, and has fused them in the alembic of her own nature, -until the resultant blend is something new and strange, having a racy -tang and a flavor all its own, and yet with a hint of all the elements -that went to its compounding. - -Most minds take on learning by a miscellaneous accretion that results -in information without individuality, but Miss Guiney hives in many -fields and lands the quaint, the picturesque, the beautiful, to which -her temperament calls her unerringly, and can no more be tempted to -range outside her limit of attraction than a bee to waste his precious -hours dipping into bloom that holds no nectar for him. To be sure, -Miss Guiney’s range of attraction is wide, but it enlarges its own -confines, and does not reach out to alien territory. It follows as a -corollary to this fact that unless one be in the range of attraction -with Miss Guiney, the subjects which claim her thought may be more or -less alien to him, and the restrained, wholly individual manner of her -work may be equally alien to his nature. He may require more warmth, -more abandon, more of the element of to-day and to-morrow in the theme -and mood; for Miss Guiney has little to do with the times and -conditions in which she finds herself; contemporary life is only -incidentally in her verse, and one would have difficulty from it in -declaring her day and generation. Her poetry demands that synchronism -of temperament by which one responds to her mood independent of the -time or place to which it transports him. - -[Illustration: Louise Imogen Guiney] - -Take, for illustration, “A Friend’s Song for Simoisius,” with its -charm of music, its beauty of expression, and its crystal clarity. Few -would be unconscious of the poetic side of it; but to how many would -the subject appeal? What’s Simoisius to them or they to Simoisius that -they should weep for him? Let, however, this feeling for the -atmosphere of myth and legend be added, and what charm do the lines -take on: - - The breath of dew, and twilight’s grace, - Be on the lonely battle-place; - And to so young, so kind a face, - The long, protecting grasses cling! - (Alas, alas, - The one inexorable thing!) - - In rocky hollows cool and deep, - The bees our boyhood hunted sleep; - The early moon from Ida’s steep - Comes to the empty wrestling-ring, - (Alas, alas, - The one inexorable thing!) - - Upon the widowed wind recede - No echoes of the shepherd’s reed, - And children without laughter lead - The war-horse to the watering. - (Alas, alas, - The one inexorable thing!) - - Thou stranger, Ajax Telamon! - What to the loveliest hast thou done, - That ne’er with him a maid may run - Across the marigolds in spring? - (Alas, alas, - The one inexorable thing!) - - * * * * * - - The world to me has nothing dear - Beyond the namesake river here: - O Simois is wild and clear! - And to his brink my heart I bring; - (Alas, alas, - The one inexorable thing!) - -The rhyme scheme in this poem has a distinct fascination to the ear; -there is music in the lucid words and in the rhythmic lines, climaxing -in each stanza, and, moreover, every stanza is a picture, with a -concrete relation to the whole. The poem illustrates several of Miss -Guiney’s characteristics: first, the compactness of her verse. It is -never pirouetting merely to show its grace; in other words, she does -not let the unity of the idea escape in a profusion of imagery. She -uses figure and symbol with an individual freshness of conception, but -always that which is structural with the thought, so that one can -rarely detach a stanza or even fugitive lines of her poems without a -loss of value. She develops the theme without over-developing it, -which is the restraint of the artist. The above poem illustrates, -also, the white light which she throws upon her words when clarity and -simplicity are demanded by the form; whereas, in sonnets, in her -dramatic poem, “A Martyr’s Idyl,” and in other forms of verse, her -work is sometimes lacking in that clear, swiftly communicative quality -which poetry should possess; but in her lyric inspirations, where the -form and melody condition the diction, one may note the perfect -clarity and flexibility which she attains, without loss of the rare -and picturesque word-feeling that belongs so inseparably to her. - -The stanzas to “Athassal Abbey,” the “Footnote To A Famous Lyric,” the -delicate “Lilac Song,” and many others blend the finer qualities of -word and metre. With the exception of the last poem, however, they -have not the emotional warmth that imbues several other of her lyrics, -as the two “Irish Peasant Songs,” which are inspirations of sheer -beauty, especially the first, in its subtlety of race-temperament and -personal mood, left unanalyzed,—for a further hint would destroy -it,—but holding spring and tears and youth in its wistful word and -measure: - - I knead and I spin, but my life is low the while, - Oh, I long to be alone, and walk abroad a mile, - Yet if I walk alone, and think of naught at all, - Why, from me that’s young, should the wild tears fall? - - The shower-stricken earth, the earth-colored streams, - They breathe on me awake, and moan to me in dreams, - And yonder ivy fondling the broke castle-wall, - It pulls upon my heart till the wild tears fall. - - The cabin door looks down a furze-lighted hill, - And far as Leighlin Cross the fields are green and still; - But once I hear the blackbird in Leighlin’s hedges call, - The foolishness is on me, and the wild tears fall! - -It is not surprising that William Black should have quoted this poem -in one of his volumes, for it is certainly one of the most exquisite -and temperamental of folk-songs. The second is wholly different in -note, brimming over with the exuberance of the Celtic imagination, and -fresh as the breath of spring which inspires it: - - ’Tis the time o’ the year, if the quicken-bough be staunch, - The green, like a breaker, rolls steady up the branch, - And surges in the spaces, and floods the trunk, and heaves - In little angry spray that is the under-white of leaves; - And from the thorn in companies the foamy petals fall, - And waves of jolly ivy wink along a windy wall. - - * * * * * - - ’Tis the time o’ the year in early light and glad, - The lark has a music to drive a lover mad; - The downs are dripping nightly, the breathéd damps arise, - Deliciously the freshets cool the grayling’s golden eyes, - And lying in a row against the chilly North, the sheep - Inclose a place without a wind for tender lambs to sleep. - -The out-of-door atmosphere which Miss Guiney has managed to infuse -into these lines is fairly palpable. What sense of moisture in the -dew-heavy air is in the second stanza, and what elation and buoyancy -of returning life vitalizes the first! While on this phase of her work -there is another poem as magnetically charged, and full of ozone, but -its objective side incidental to a subjective query which nature and -science force to the lips: - - The spur is red upon the briar, - The sea-kelp whips the wave ashore; - The wind shakes out the colored fire - From lamps a-row on the sycamore; - The tanager with flitting note - Shows to wild heaven his wedding-coat; - The mink is busy; herds again - Go hillward in the honeyed rain; - The midges meet. I cry to Thee - Whose heart - Remembers each of these: Thou art - My God who hast forgotten me. - - Bright from the mast, a scarf unwound, - The lined gulls in the offing ride; - Along an edge of marshy ground, - The shad-bush enters like a bride. - Yon little clouds are washed of care - That climb the blue New England air, - And almost merrily withal - The tree-frog plays at evenfall - His oboe in a mossy tree. - So, too, - Am I not Thine? Arise, undo - This fear Thou hast forgotten me. - -From the nature side these lines are pictures, taken each by each they -are free-hand strokes with pigment. Note the picturesque quality, for -illustration, in the words, - - Bright from the mast, a scarf unwound, - The lined gulls in the offing ride, - -and their imaginative vision with no hint of the fantastic; for one -need only have it glimpsed before him to know that he has seen the -same effect a score of times. Miss Guiney comes to the world without, -as if no eyes but hers had looked upon it; she brings no other image -upon the lens of her vision, and hence the imprint is as newly -mirrored, and as fresh with each changing view as a moving reflection -upon the surface of the water. - -The subjective touch in the above poem: - - I cry to Thee, - Whose heart - Remembers each of these: Thou art - My God who hast forgotten me!— - -articulates the cry which life wrings at sometime from each of us, -noting the infinite solicitude that writes self-executing laws in the -hearts of the creatures, while man goes blundering after intimations -and dreams. One comes at times face to face with the necessity to -justify the ways of God to man, when he notes throughout nature the -unerring certainty of instinct, and the stumbling fallibility of -reason. He questions why the bee excels him in wisdom and force and -persistence, in shaping conditions for its maintenance, and in -intuitions of destiny; or why the infinite exactness that established -the goings of the ant in the devious ways of her endeavor should have -left man to follow so fatuous a gleam as human intuition in finding -his own foot-path among the tortuous ways of life. And these queries -Miss Guiney’s poem raises, though not with arraignment, rather with -the logical demand: - - As to a weed, to me but give - Thy sap! lest aye inoperative - Here in the Pit my strength shall be: - And still, - Help me endure the Pit until - Thou wilt not have forgotten me. - -There is sinew and brawn in Miss Guiney’s work; she is not dallying in -the scented gardens of poesy, but entering the tourney in valorous -emprise. Not a man of them who can meet fate in a braver joust than -she, and he must needs look well to his armor if he come off as -unscathed. She never stops to bewail the prick of the spear, though it -draw blood, but enters the field again for the - - “Hope not compassed, and yet not void.” - -There is tonic in her work for the craven heart, a note to shame one -back to the ranks. Each is a “Recruit” and should take to himself this -marching order: - - So much to me is imminent: - To leave Revolt that is my tent, - And Failure, chosen for my bride, - - And into life’s highway be gone - Ere yet Creation marches on, - Obedient, jocund, glorified: - - And, last of things afoot, to know - How to be free is still to go - With glad concession, grave accord, - - Nor longer, bond and imbecile, - Stand out against the Gradual Will, - The guessed ‘Fall in’! of God the Lord. - -And the plea of Saint George, awaiting the hour to essay his quest, - - O give my youth, my faith, my sword, - Choice of the heart’s desire: - A short life in the saddle, Lord! - Not long life by the fire,— - -sets one’s sluggish blood in responsive motion,—as do the succeeding -lines: - - I fear no breathing bowman, - But only, east and west, - The awful other foeman - Impowered in my breast. - The outer fray in the sun shall be, - The inner beneath the moon; - And may Our Lady lend to me - Sight of the dragon soon. - -At the outset of her work Miss Guiney sang an electrifying song of -which men begrudged her the glory, being theft of Jove’s thunder. It -was hight valiantly “The Wild Ride,” and has the spirit of all the -knights and troopers in Christendom packed within its tense and -vibrant lines: - - _I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses, - All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses; - All night from their stalls, the importunate tramping and neighing._ - - Let cowards and laggards fall back! but alert to the saddle, - Straight, grim, and abreast, go the weather-worn galloping legion, - With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him. - - The trail is through dolor and dread, over crags and morasses; - There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us: - What odds? we are knights, and our souls are but bent on the riding. - - _I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses, - All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses; - All night from their stalls, the importunate tramping and neighing._ - - We spur to a land of no name, outracing the storm-wind; - We leap to the infinite dark, like the sparks from the anvil, - Thou leadest, O God! all’s well with Thy troopers that follow! - -“The Kings” and “The Perfect Hour” are other trumpet notes of Miss -Guiney’s, illustrating the individuality of her point of view and the -personality of her expression. - -A poet’s words may be wind-blown feathers, or they may be flint-tipped -arrows singing to a mark. The defect with much of present-day poetry -is that it is not aimed, it is content to be a pretty flight of -feathers, blown by the breath of fancy, and reaching no vital spot. - -To test Miss Guiney’s marksmanship with words, one may separate her at -once from the class who are flying airy illusions nowhither, for she -concentrates, instead of diffusing, and has, at the outset, a definite -point in view. She works upon the arrow principle, but now and again -glances from the mark. In such a poem as “The Recruit,” in “The Wild -Ride,” or the “Saint George” quoted from, in her stirring poem -“Sanctuary,” beginning, - - High above Hate I dwell, - O storms! farewell, - -and in many others, she cleaves straight to her aim with no -deflection. The same may be said of many of her lighter poems, the -charming “Lilac Song,” or this delicately wrought love-song, speeding -to the heart: - - When on the marge of evening the last blue light is broken, - And winds of dreamy odor are loosened from afar; - Or when my lattice opens, before the lark has spoken, - On dim laburnum-blossoms, and morning’s dying star, - - I think of thee (O mine the more if other eyes be sleeping!) - Whose great and noonday splendor the many share and see, - While, sacred and forever, some perfect law is keeping - The late and early twilight alone and sweet for me. - -In poems of this kind and in deeper ones from the spiritual side of -her nature, as well as in those of valor and daring, she uses such -words as are tipped with a penetrative point; but in some of her -sonnets, such as “The Chantry,” in a narrative poem, such as “The -Vigil in Tyrone,” though not without picturesque quality, in “The -Squall,” despite its frequently fine imagery, and often in the -dramatic poem, “A Martyr’s Idyl,” the words are too much weighted to -carry to the mark; they suggest undue care in selection which -interposes between the motive of the poem and the sympathy of the -reader. One pauses to consider the words; and the initial impulse, -like a spent shell, falls at his feet. Miss Guiney’s diction is, in -the main, peculiarly crisp and apposite; but she does not always hold -to the directness of appeal that distinguishes her truest work, but -withdraws herself into subtleties, often beautiful, but too remote. “A -Martyr’s Idyl” is a dramatically conceived incident, well wrought as -to scene and character, and having many passages of great beauty; but -the effort to keep the expression to the manner of the time results in -a lack of flexibility in the style that is now and then cumbrous. On -the whole, it is not in a dramatic poem of this sort that Miss Guiney -best reveals herself, but in such inspirations as she has taken— - - Neither from sires nor sons, - Nor the delivered ones, - Holy, invoked with awe. - -Her best work answers, by practical demonstration, her own query: - - “Where shall I find my light?” - - “Turn from another’s track, - Whether for gain or lack, - Love but thy natal right. - Cease to follow withal, - Though on thine upled feet - Flakes of the phosphor fall. - Oracles overheard - Are never again for thee, - Nor at a magian’s knee - Under the hemlock tree, - Burns the illumining word.” - -The term “original” is one to be used charily and with forethought, -but it is one that belongs without danger of challenge to Miss -Guiney’s work. There is a distinct quality, both of treatment and -conception, that is hers alone, a rare, unfamiliar note, without -reminiscent echoes. While it has a certain classic quaintness, it has -also vitality and concrete forcefulness. - -Her metrical command is varied, and she employs many forms with -assurance of touch. She has a group of Alexandrian songs in _A -Roadside Harp_, most of them with beauty of measure and atmosphere. -Here, in three lines, is a rhythmic achievement: - - Me, deep-tresséd meadows, take to your loyal keeping, - Hard by the swish of sickles ever in Aulon sleeping, - Philophron, old and tired, and glad to be done with reaping! - -How the “swish of sickles” conveys their very sound! This ability to -put into certain words both the music and the picture distinguishes -Miss Guiney. In her sonnet upon the “Pre-Reformation Churches about -Oxford,” even the names that would seem to suggest an inartistic -enumeration are made to convey the sense of sabbatical sweetness and -calm and to visualize the scene. - -_The Sonnets Written at Oxford_ mark, as a whole, her finest work in -this form, although the twelve London sonnets are full of strong lines -and images, and several of them, such as “Doves” and “In The Docks,” -take swift hold upon one’s sympathy. The former flashes a picture at -the close, by way of rebuke to the over-solicitous mood, which is not -only charming from the artistic side, but opens the eyes in sudden -content and gladness. - - Ah, if man’s boast, and man’s advance be vain, - And yonder bells of Bow, loud-echoing home, - And the lone Tree foreknow it, and the Dome, - The monstrous island of the middle main; - If each inheritor must sink again - Under his sires, as falleth where it clomb - Back on the gone wave the disheartened foam— - I crossed Cheapside, and this was in my brain. - - What folly lies in forecasts and in fears! - Like a wide laughter sweet and opportune, - Wet from the fount, three hundred doves of Paul’s - Shook their warm wings, drizzling the golden noon, - And in their rain-cloud vanished up the walls. - “God keeps,” I said, “our little flock of years.” - -This note of spiritual assurance appears throughout Miss Guiney’s -work, speaking in her sonnet, “The Acknowledgment,” and again and -again in other poems. She has the mystic’s passion for the One Good, -the One Beauty— - - O hidden, O perfect, O desired, the first and the final fair!— - -and gives it impassioned expression in the lines, “Deo Optimo Maximo,” - - All else for use, one only for desire; - Thanksgiving for the good, but thirst for Thee: - Up from the best, whereof no man need tire, - Impel Thou me. - - Delight is menace, if Thou brood not by, - Power a quicksand, Fame a gathering jeer. - Oft as the morn, (though none of earth deny - These three are dear,) - - Wash me of them, that I may be renewed, - Nor wall in clay mine agonies and joys; - O close my hand upon Beatitude! - Not on her toys. - -And here at the last is the tenderest Nativity song for which -dedicated words were ever found; so quaint, so gentle, so reverent, so -blended of sweet and sad. The second stanza is an artist’s grouping -from life: - - The Ox he openeth wide the doore - And from the snowe he calls her inne, - And he hath seen her Smile therefore, - Our Lady without sinne. - Now soone from sleepe - A starre shall leap, - And soon arrive both King and Hinde; - _Amen_, _Amen_: - But O, the place co’d I but find! - - The Ox hath husht his voyce and bent - Trewe eyes of Pitty ore the Mow, - And on his lovelie Neck, forspent, - The Blessed lays her Browe. - Around her feet - Full Warme and Sweete - His Bowerie Breath doth meeklie dwell; - _Amen_, _Amen_: - But sore am I with Vaine Travél! - - The Ox is Host in Juda’s stall, - And Host of more than onelie one, - For close she gathereth withal - Our Lorde, her littel Sonne: - Glad Hinde and King - Their Gyfte may bring, - But wo’d to-night my Teares were there; - _Amen_, _Amen_: - Between her Bosom and His hayre! - -To sum up Miss Guiney’s work, as well as one may, in a sentence,—it -has no flaccid thought. There is fibre in all she writes; fibre and -nerve. Were the fervor and passion which she throws into her songs of -valor to be diffused throughout her verse, making its appeal more -intimate and personal, she would speak more widely, but scarcely to -more appreciative readers than now delight in her individuality. - - - - -V - -GEORGE E. SANTAYANA - - -“EMOTION recollected in tranquillity,” perfectly defines the work of -Mr. George Santayana. He is a musing philosopher environed by himself. -He - - ‘shuts himself in with his soul - And the shapes come eddying forth,’ - -shapes that have no being in the world of sense, but are rather -phantasms materialized in the ether of dreams. There is no evidence in -Mr. Santayana’s work that he is living in America in the twentieth -century—and upon his own testimony he is not; he has withdrawn from -the importunity of things: - - Within my nature’s shell I slumber curled, - Unmindful of the changing outer skies,— - -and in this inviolate seclusion he enamels the pearl with the nacre of -his own spirit. - -Mr. Santayana’s poet-kinsmen are not to be found in contemporary -literature; he is alone in the midst of the singers as regards -temperament and attitude toward life. His school is that of beauty; -his time that of the gods; his faith the sanctity of loveliness; and -his creed the restoration of the fair. He would shut out all the -obtrusive shows of nature and life, and dwell in the Nirvana of his -own contemplation: - - A wall, a wall around my garden rear, - And hedge me in from the disconsolate hills; - Give me but one of all the mountain rills, - Enough of ocean in its voice I hear. - Come no profane insatiate mortal near - With the contagion of his passionate ills; - The smoke of battle all the valleys fills, - Let the eternal sunlight greet me here.— - -and once enshrined in this Nirvanic close, where the strife of living -had merged into the poise of being, he would repeople the desolated -earth and air with the forms of his imagination: - - A thousand beauties that have never been - Haunt me with hope and tempt me to pursue; - The gods, methink, dwell just behind the blue; - The satyrs at my coming fled the green. - The flitting shadows of the grove between - The dryads’ eyes were winking, and I knew - The wings of sacred Eros as he flew, - And left me to the love of things not seen. - ’Tis a sad love, like an eternal prayer, - And knows no keen delight, no faint surcease, - Yet from the seasons hath the earth increase, - And heaven shines as if the gods were there. - Had Dian passed, there could no deeper peace - Embalm the purple stretches of the air. - -It is no exaggeration to say that were Mr. Santayana in a cloister, or -upon a mid-sea island with his books and dreams, he could scarcely be -less in touch with the passing world than he is in the midst of the -clamor and insistence of modern life, where he keeps the tranquillity -of the inner silence as if there were no voices dinning in his ears. -He is subjective to the degree of transfusing himself with another’s -consciousness, and looking upon his own nature from an impersonal -standpoint: - - There we live o’er, amid angelic powers, - Our lives without remorse, as if not ours, - And others’ lives with love, as if our own,— - -says one of the sonnets, imaging the passion-stilled world of -reflection. - -There is a subtlety in Mr. Santayana’s processes of thought that -demands intuitive divination on the part of the reader; there is so -little objectivity to the idea that its essence may almost escape him. -His illustrative symbolism is almost never drawn from nature or the -world of men and events, but from the treasure of beauty at the depth -of his spirit, where, by some mystic chemistry, he has separated all -the elements not in harmony with him. There must at some time have -been reaction and repulsion, ferment and explosion, in the laboratory -of Mr. Santayana’s mind; but he awaited the subsidence of the action; -awaited the period when emotion, thought, and learning had distilled -and crystallized before he shaped them forth before the world. - -This gives to his work a certain fixity both of mood and form; his -thoughts are as gems that flash without heat, not the ruby-hearted, -passion-dyed gems, but the pale topaz or the amber, holding the -imprisoned glow of reflection. If this may seem to limit Mr. -Santayana’s achievement, it is not so intended, but rather to reveal -his distinction. He is not only a true poet, but one of rare -accomplishment; his work, however, is for those who are deeply -subjective, who trance themselves with the beautiful as an anodyne for -pain; those who subordinate to-day to the storied charm of yesterday, -and look backward to the twilight of the gods, rather than forward to -the renewing sunrise. It is not for those whose creed of poetry is -that it should be all things to all men; that life, in travail to -deliver truth, should utter its cries through the poet. It is for -those who know that poetry can no more be adapted to all than could -the spoken words of a great teacher reach equally the diverse minds of -a multitude whom he might address; and that while it may be the office -of one poet to interpret the struggles, the activities, the aims of -life, it may be equally the part of another to penetrate to that calm -at the depth of the soul where throes have brought forth peace. Not -only are there various natures to whom poetry speaks, but natures -within natures, so that all poets speak to different phases of our -consciousness: some to the mind,—and here the range is infinite,—some -to the heart, and some to the soul, and of the last is Mr. Santayana. -He is for the meditative hours when we are sounding the depths of -ourselves and come back to the surface of things, bringing with us the -unsatisfied pain of being. Hours when we turn instinctively to a -sonnet like this to find our mood expressed: - - I would I might forget that I am I, - And break the heavy chain that binds me fast, - Whose links about myself my deeds have cast. - What in the body’s tomb doth buried lie - Is boundless; ’tis the spirit of the sky, - Lord of the future, guardian of the past, - And soon must forth to know his own at last. - In his large life to live, I fain would die. - Happy the dumb beast, hungering for food, - But calling not his suffering his own; - Blesséd the angel, gazing on all good, - But knowing not he sits upon a throne; - Wretched the mortal, pondering his mood, - And doomed to know his aching heart alone. - -The much-mooted, but vaguely understood, sub-conscious mind, speaks in -this sonnet in terms of the conscious. It is a subtle bit of -philosophy, but not more so than several others in the same sequence -which show the evolution of Mr. Santayana’s attitude toward life. One -may not in a brief space follow out the clews to this development, -whose beginning was in religious emotion: - - * * * * * - My sad youth worshipped at the piteous height - Where God vouchsafed the death of man to share; - His love made mortal sorrow light to bear, - But his deep wounds put joy to shaméd flight, - And though his arms outstretched upon the tree, - Were beautiful, and pleaded my embrace, - My sins were loth to look upon his face. - So came I down from Golgotha to thee, - Eternal Mother; let the sun and sea - Heal me, and keep me in thy dwelling-place. - -The succeeding sonnet traces the winding of the new way, the -reluctance, the - - … many farewell pious looks behind, - And dumb misgivings where the path might wind, - And questionings of nature, as I went,— - -which every life duplicates as it leaves its well-guarded walls of -belief and ventures out upon undiscovered ways. The pain of letting go -the old, the loneliness of the new, the alien look of all the heights -that encompass one, and the psychology of that impulse by which one is -both impelled to retrace his way and withheld from it,—are suggested -by the sonnet. In the next occurs one of Mr. Santayana’s finest lines, -the counsel - - To trust the soul’s invincible surmise. - -It would be difficult to define intuition more succinctly than this. -It is not, as less subtle poets would have put it, the soul’s -assurance that one is to trust; this would be to assume, for what -assurance have we but that which Mr. Santayana has so subtly termed -the “invincible surmise”? - -Lines which lead one out into speculative thought are frequent in Mr. -Santayana’s sonnets. His philosophy is constructive only in so far as -it unifies a succession of moods and experiences; but it is pregnant -with suggestion to a psychological mind. One of the sonnets which -questions: - - Of my two lives, which should I call the dream? - Which action vanity? which vision sight?— - -after declaring that - - Some greater waking must pronounce aright - -and blend the two visions to one seeing, continues: - - Even such a dream I dream, and know full well - My waking passeth like a midnight spell, - But know not if my dreaming breaketh through - Into the deeps of heaven and of hell. - I know but this of all I would I knew: - Truth is a dream, unless my dream is true. - -The thought in this passage is elusive, but it is more than a play -upon words. It is another way of putting the question, which shall be -trusted, which shall become the reality, the objective or the -subjective world? One knows that his “waking,” his sense perception, -is transitory, that it apprehends but the present, which “passeth like -a midnight spell,” but how far does the other and finer sight penetrate - - Into the deeps of heaven and of hell? - -No answer from the void to this query, but by the mystical conclusion -that - - Truth is a dream, unless my dream is true. - -In simpler phrase, unless the vision and conviction are to be trusted, -unless, to revert to Mr. Santayana’s former words, the soul’s -“invincible surmise” be taken as truth, that which we know as truth is -but a phantasm. - -The sonnet sequence is the intimate record of an individual soul in -its evolving spiritual life, and has the significance belonging only -to art which interprets a personality, an experience, in whose -development one finds some clew to his own labyrinth. It reveals the -many phases of speculation, reflection, questioning, through which one -passes in the transition from beliefs indoctrinated in the mind at its -earliest consciousness, to convictions which follow thought liberated -by life, by intimacy with nature, and by recognition of its own -spiritual authority. It is the winning of this conviction, with its -attendant seeking and unrest, allayed by draughts from the wayside -springs of beauty, memory, and imagination,—which comprises the record -of the first sonnet sequence, whose conclusions, as “strewn thoughts” -springing along the way, are gathered into a final chaplet for the -brows of the “Eternal Mother,” Nature, whose peace he sought when he -came down from Golgotha, and whose larger meaning, synonymous with the -primal freedom of the soul, is conveyed in the sonnet: - - These strewn thoughts, by the mountain pathway sprung, - I conned for comfort, till I ceased to grieve, - And with these flowering thorns I dare to weave - The crown, great Mother, on thine altar hung. - Teach thou a larger speech to my loosed tongue, - And to mine opened eyes thy secrets give, - That in thy perfect love I learn to live, - And in thine immortality be young. - The soul is not on earth an alien thing - That hath her life’s rich sources otherwhere; - She is a parcel of the sacred air. - She takes her being from the breath of Spring, - The glance of Phœbus is her fount of light, - And her long sleep a draught of primal night. - -Aside from Mr. Santayana’s philosophical sonnets he has a second -sequence, upon love, which, too, is philosophically tinged. In the -matter of beauty this is perhaps the more finished and artistic work; -but I have chosen rather to dwell upon the subtlety of his -speculations in those phases of thought less universally treated of by -poets than is love. It has not been possible, however, to follow the -sequence in its order, or to present more than certain individual -notes of its philosophy. - -Thus far it has been the matter, rather than the manner, of Mr. -Santayana’s verse that has been considered; but before glancing at the -later sonnet sequence, what of his touch upon the strings of his -instrument? One can scarcely have followed the extracts quoted without -noting the mellow suavity, the ease, the poise of his work. There is -everywhere assurance of expression, nothing tentative, nothing -halting. His lines are disposed by the laws of counter-point into -well-ordered cadences where nothing jars; his words are rich and -mellifluous, in short, he has, as a sonneteer, a finish, a classical -command of the vehicle reminiscent of Petrarch and Camoens. The sonnet -is, by the nature of the case, a somewhat inadaptable instrument, and -yet it is susceptible of great individuality, as one may note by -recalling an intricate sonnet by Rossetti and a sweeping, sonorous one -by Milton. The criticism which is, perhaps, most apposite to Mr. -Santayana’s sonnets is that they are “faultily faultless;” they are so -finished that one would welcome a false note now and then, that -suggested a choke in the voice, or a heart-beat out of time. - -There is an atmosphere about all of Mr. Santayana’s work that conveys -a sense of wandering in the moonlight; it is tempered, softened, -stilled; it is like an Isis-veil cast over the eyes; but at times one -becomes oppressed with the consciousness of himself, and of the -impalpable visions glimpsed in the wan light, and longs to snatch the -veil away and flee to the garish world again. One may seek Mr. -Santayana’s poetry when his mood demands it, and it will be as a -cooling hand in fever; but when the pulse of being is low, and one -needs the touch to vitalize, he must turn to others, for Mr. -Santayana’s work is not charged with the electricity that thrills. - -Because he is not inventive in metre nor sufficiently light in touch, -Mr. Santayana is not a lyrist. He has scarcely any purely lyrical -verse in his collections, and what is contained in them is too lacking -in spontaneity to be classed with his best work. It is not wanting in -lines of beauty and in English undefiled; but the sense of tone and -rhythm, except of the smoothly conventional sort, is absent. There are -no innovations in form and the impulse is too subdued for a true -lyric. That called “Midnight” has more warmth than the others. Several -of his odes in the Sapphic metre have great charm, especially the -first. His elegiac verse has often rare elevation of thought; but it, -also, has too set a measure, too much of the “formed style” to be -vital. It brings well-conceived, well-imaged thought, as in this -stanza: - - How should the vision stay to guide the hand, - How should the holy thought and ardour stay, - When the false deeps of all the soul are sand, - And the loose rivets of the spirit, clay? - -but it rarely shocks one into thinking for himself. - -In relation to diction, there are few American writers who use English -of such purity and finish as does Mr. Santayana; but it is the -scholar’s English, the English drawn from familiarity with the great -masters and models, and hence lacks the creative flexibility, the -quick, warm, ductile adaptability, that a much less accomplished poet -may give to his words. It keeps to the accepted canons, the highest, -the purest, and uses the consecrated words of literature with an -artist’s touch; but the racy idiom, the word which some daring poet -coined yesterday in an exigent moment—with these it has naught to do. - -Mr. Santayana has several dramatic poems, “The Hermit of Carmel,” “The -Knight’s Return,” and a dialogue between Hermes and Lucifer, in which -the latter relates the details of his banishment from heaven for his -daring arraignment and interrogation of God. The dialogue has little -dramatic coloring; one hearing it read aloud would have difficulty in -determining from the outward change of expression and personality -where Lucifer leaves off speaking and Hermes begins, but it puts into -the mouth of Lucifer some words full of the challenge of thought, and -speaks through both some beautiful fantasies, such as this reply of -Lucifer to Hermes’ question as to the state of bliss in which the -angels dwell: - - A doubtful thing - Is blessedness like that…. - Their raptured souls, like lilies in a stream - That from their fluid pillow never rise, - Float on the lazy current of a dream. - -Mr. Santayana has not written “The Hermit of Carmel” or “The Knight’s -Return” with a theatrical manager in view. They are stories told in -verse, tales of gentle melancholy, pleasant to the ear; but when all -is said, one returns to his sonnets as the true expression of his -nature and the consummation of his gifts. He is a sonneteer, by every -phase of his temperament and every canon of his art. His work in all -other forms is cultivated, philosophical, finely finished, but -pervaded by an atmosphere of cultured conventionality; whereas in the -sonnet he finds a medium whose classic distinction and subtlety are so -harmonized to his nature and his characteristic mode of thought, that -it becomes to him the predestined expression. A glance, then, in -closing, at the flexile phrases, the psychological analyses of the -later sonnet sequence, turning chiefly upon love. - -But, first, let me cite from one of the earlier sonnets, an image -drawn from this theme, a jewel-like flash of beauty, not to be -overlooked. The first line of the metaphor is commonplace; but note -the succeeding ones: - - Love but the formless and eternal Whole - From whose effulgence one unheeded ray - Breaks on this prism of dissolving clay - Into the flickering colors of thy soul. - -This is defining the individual spirit in exquisite terms. - -The second sequence teems with beautiful passages, now and again with -a note of the _trovatore_, as in the sestett of this sonnet: - - Yet why, of one who loved thee not, command - Thy counterfeit, for other men to see, - When God himself did on my heart for me - Thy face, like Christ’s upon the napkin, brand? - O how much subtler than a painter’s hand - Is love to render back the truth of thee! - My soul should be thy glass in time to be, - And in my thought thine effigy should stand. - Yet, lest the churlish critics of that age - Should flout my praise, and deem a lover’s rage - Could gild a virtue and a grace exceed, - I bid thine image here confront my page, - That men may look upon thee as they read, - And cry: “Such eyes a better poet need!” - -This has art and charm, but in contrast note the impassioned nobility -of utterance which imbues the one that follows. Here are lines of pure -emotion and beauty: - - We needs must be divided in the tomb, - For I would die among the hills of Spain, - And o’er the treeless, melancholy plain - Await the coming of the final gloom. - But thou—O pitiful!—wilt find scant room - Among thy kindred by the northern main, - And fade into the drifting mist again, - The hemlocks’ shadow, or the pines’ perfume. - Let gallants lie beside their ladies’ dust - In one cold grave, with mortal love inurned; - Let the sea part our ashes, if it must, - The souls fled thence which love immortal burned, - For they were wedded without bond of lust, - And nothing of our heart to earth returned. - -Such sonnets as this mark Mr. Santayana as a master of this form, and -while his other work has value, it is as a sonneteer that he has made -his really individual contribution to literature. - - - - -VI - -JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY - - -A BEAUTIFUL and delicate art is that of Miss Josephine Preston -Peabody, but somewhat elusive of analysis, so much is its finer part -dependent upon the intuition which one brings to it; for Miss Peabody -is a poet-mystic, sensitive to impressions from which the grosser part -has slipped away,—impressions which come to her clothed upon with a -more ethereal vesture than the work-a-day garment of thought,—and -while she would fain reveal their hidden import, they often elude her -and grow remote in the telling, as if fearful of betraying too openly -their secret. - -Her first volume, _The Wayfarers_, revealed at the outset a poet’s -imagination, and a technique so finished that it had already the touch -of the artist, but its vision was that of the novice who looks at the -morning from beneath her white veil and wonders at the world of sin -and strife and passion whose pain has never reached her. It was the -work of one who had not yet met her revealing crisis, not yet been -identified to herself, of one reaching out after truth with the -filament of fancy until the ductile thread had often been spun too far -before it found anchorage. The volume was, in short, an exquisite -conjecture as to life, whose baffling, alluring mystery only now and -again flashed upon her an unveiled glance of its eyes. This is not, -however, to say that the conjecture was vain; indeed, the initial -poem, “The Wayfarers,” in which, perhaps, it was most definitely -embodied, is a thoughtful, suggestive song holding many truths worth -pondering, and in phrasing and technique wrought with so much grace -that it might stand beside any work of the later volumes. Indeed, this -statement is apposite to nearly all the work in the first collection, -which in that regard presents an unusual distinction, having from the -first on its technical side a maturity that seemed not to belong to -the tentative work of a young poet; it was, however, over-ornate, -lacking directness and simplicity, and inclining to excess of -elaboration in theme, so that one often became entangled in the weft -of poetic artifice and lost the clew of thought. Take as a random -illustration the following stanzas from the poem entitled “The -Weavers,” under which Miss Peabody symbolizes the elusive hopes and -fancies that come by night, weaving their weft of dreams: - - Lo, a gray pallor on the loom - Waxeth apace,—a glamourie - Like dawn outlooking, pale to see - Before the sun hath burst to bloom; - Wan beauty, growing out of gloom, - With promise of fair things to be. - - * * * * * - - The shuttle singeth. And fair things - Upon the web do come and go; - Dim traceries like clouds ablow - Fade into cobweb glimmerings, - A silver, fretted with small wings,— - The while a voice is singing low. - -Of the eight remaining stanzas several are equally lacking in anything -that may be grasped, and while there is a certain art in imaging the -elusive fancies which the weavers bring, there should be some more -definite fancy or ideal to embody, rather than the mere intent to make -beautiful lines. This is, perhaps, an extreme instance of the -over-elaboration of the first volume, though it distinguishes the long -poem which gives its name to the collection, and appears in many of -the lyrics. - -[Illustration: Josephine Preston Peabody] - -Miss Peabody is an inventive metrist, and her sense of rhythm is -highly developed, or rather it is innately correct, being manifest -with equal grace in the first collection; witness the music of these -stanzas from “Spinning in April”: - - Moon in heaven’s garden, among the clouds that wander, - Crescent moon so young to see, above the April ways, - Whiten, bloom not yet, not, yet, within the twilight yonder; - All my spinning is not done, for all the loitering days. - - Oh, my heart has two wild wings that ever would be flying! - Oh, my heart’s a meadow-lark that ever would be free! - Well it is that I must spin until the light be dying; - Well it is the little wheel must turn all day for me! - - All the hill-tops beckon, and beyond the western meadows - Something calls me ever, calls me ever, low and clear: - A little tree as young as I, the coming summer shadows,— - The voice of running waters that I ever thirst to hear. - - Oftentime the plea of it has set my wings a-beating; - Oftentime it coaxes, as I sit in weary wise, - Till the wild life hastens out to wild things all entreating, - And leaves me at the spinning-wheel, with dark, unseeing eyes. - -The poem has several other stanzas equally charming, but which detract -from the artistic structure of the song by over-spinning the thought. - -Among the simple, sincere lyrics which prevail more by their feeling -than mechanism, are “One That Followed,” “Horizon,” “Dew-Fall,” -“Befriended,” “The Song of A Shepherd-Boy at Bethlehem,” and the two -stanzas called, “After Music,” whose intimate beauty renders them -personally interpretative. - - I saw not they were strange, the ways I roam, - Until the music called, and called me thence, - And tears stirred in my heart as tears may come - To lonely children straying far from home, - Who know not how they wandered so, nor whence. - - If I might follow far and far away - Unto the country where these songs abide, - I think my soul would wake and find it day, - Would tell me who I am, and why I stray,— - Would tell me who I was before I died. - -There is a mystical touch here in note with the opening reference to -the subtlety of Miss Peabody’s sources of inspiration. - -In the first volume is also a sonnet from the heart and to the heart, -for who has not known the weariness that comes of long striving to -image, or interpret the beautiful, and yet is loth to commit his -unfulfilled dream to the oblivion of sleep. The sonnet is called, “To -the Unsung.” - - Stay by me, Loveliness; for I must sleep. - Not even desire can lift such wearied eyes; - The day was heavy and the sun will rise - On day as heavy, weariness as deep. - Be near, though you be silent. Let me steep - A sad heart in that peace, as a child tries - To hold his comfort fast, in fingers wise - With imprint of a joy that’s yet to reap. - Leave me that little light; for sleep I must, - —And put off blessing to a doubtful day— - Too dull to listen or to understand. - But only let me close the eyes of trust - On you unchanged. Ah, do not go away, - Nor let a dream come near, to loose my hand. - -Altogether, Miss Peabody’s first book of verse revealed strength, -feeling, and imagination, though tentative in its philosophy, as the -initial work of a young poet must necessarily be, and having but a -slight rooting in life. - -The second volume, _Fortune and Men’s Eyes_, opens with a cleverly -written one-act play, turning upon an adventure of two maids of honor -at Elizabeth’s court, with Master W. S., a player, whose identity is -not far to seek, and William Herbert, son of the Earl of Pembroke, the -scene being laid at the tavern of the Bear and the Angel, whither -Mistress Anne Hughes and Mary Fyton have resorted on a merry escapade -under cover of seeing the people celebrate the fête of the Bear. - -The atmosphere of the time is well reproduced, the dialogue of the -tapsters cleverly done, and the final scene between the Player and -Mary is full of dramatic intensity. - -In her second volume, Miss Peabody has also a dramatic monologue -called, “The Wingless Joy,” which, though now and again Browningesque -in tone, has many felicitous images and shows a true insight into -human motive. - -The lyrics in the second volume form a less important part of the -collection, though there are several, such as “The Source,” “The -Survivor,” “Psyche in the Niche,” and “In the Silence,” which rank -with Miss Peabody’s best work, particularly the last, illustrating the -truth that the Spirit manifests at the need, even the dumb and -undivining need, and not alone at the call: - - Where did’st Thou tarry, Lord, Lord, - Who heeded not my prayer? - All the long day, all the long night, - I stretched my hands to air. - - “There was a bitterer want than thine - Came from the frozen North; - Laid hands upon my garment’s hem - And led me forth. - - “It was a lonely Northern man, - Where there was never tree - To shed its comfort on his heart, - There he had need of me. - - “He kindled us a little flame - To hope against the storm; - And unto him, and unto me, - The light was warm.” - - And yet I called Thee, Lord, Lord— - Who answered not, nor came: - All the long day, and yesterday, - I called Thee by Thy name. - - “There was a dumb, unhearing grief - Spake louder than Thy word, - There was a heart called not on me, - But yet I heard. - - “The sorrow of a savage man - Shaping him gods, alone, - Who found no love in the shapen clay - To answer to his own. - - “His heart knew what his eyes saw not - He bade me stay and eat; - And unto him, and unto me, - The cup was sweet. - - “Too long we wait for thee and thine, - In sodden ways and dim, - And where the man’s need cries on me - There have I need of him. - - “Along the borders of despair - Where sparrows seek no nest, - Nor ravens food, I sit at meat,— - The Unnamed Guest.” - -Before leaving the second volume there is one other poem of which I -cannot refrain from quoting a part, to show the subtlety with which a -phase of the psychology of sentiment has been grasped and analyzed in -these lines called “The Knot”: - - Oh, I hated me, - That when I loved you not, yet I could feel - Some charm in me the deeper for your love: - Some singing-robe invisible—and spun - Of your own worship—fold me silverly - In very moonlight, so that I walked fair - When you were by, who had no wish to be - The fairer for your eyes! But at some cost - Of other life the hyacinth grows blue, - And sweetens ever…. So it is with us, - The sadder race. I would have fled from you, - And yet I felt some fibre in myself - Binding me here, to search one moment yet— - The only well that gave me back a star,— - Your eyes reflecting. And I grew aware - How worship that must ever spend and burn - Will have its deity from gold or stone; - Till that fain womanhood that would be fair - And lovable,—the hunger of the plant— - Against my soul’s commandment reached and took - The proffered fruit, more potent day by day. - -And the lines which follow close with the wholly feminine query, - - Will you not go?—and yet, why will you go? - -It is a human bit of dramatic analysis, and reduces inconsistent -femininity to a common denominator. - -In her third volume, _Marlowe_, a drama, founded upon the life of the -lovable but erratic poet and playwright, Miss Peabody essayed an -ambitious undertaking, but one which, as literature, carries its full -justification. As drama, one must qualify. In characterization, aside -from Marlowe himself, who comes before one vividly, there is a lack of -sharp definition. Nashe, Lodge, Peele, and Green, Marlowe’s fellow -playwrights and friends, might, from the evidence of the dialogue, be -the same character under different names, so alike are they in speech -and temperament. Next to Marlowe himself, Bame, who through jealousy -becomes his enemy, and brings on the final tragedy, is the most -individually drawn. Of the women characters, the drama presents -practically but one,—Alison, the little country maid who loves Marlowe -secretly, and becomes in a way his good angel,—as “Her Ladyship” of -the Court, object of his adoration, is introduced but twice in the -play, and that veiled, so that only for a moment at the last may one -see the beauty that—under guise of Helen—inspired Marlowe’s lines: - - Was this the face that launched a thousand ships - And burned the topless towers of Ilium! - -While the two brief comings of “Her Ladyship” impart an artistic touch -of mystery, it is to be doubted if in a play so intangible a heroine -could become a vital factor, and if she were not, the woman element of -the drama must be sustained wholly by Alison, the little “Quietude,” -who, until the one beautiful scene with Marlowe after her marriage, -remains an artless undeveloped child, with too little color, too weak -a human pulse-beat, to compel interest and sympathy. She is delicately -drawn, in her unsophisticated sweetness and purity, and the inner -strength of her nature is finely shown at the last, but up to this -period of revelation one does not feel her; she lacks the touch of -life essential to a character in drama. - -In plot the work presents somewhat the same limitation. It is, until -the two final scenes, after Marlowe’s downfall, literature without -action: nothing happens in the earlier part of the play to create an -element of suspense forelooking to the developments at the close. -Marlowe’s triumphs are detailed to one another by his friends, but -they are not _shown_ in some great scene where he might receive the -acclamations of the people and so contrast sharply with his downfall -at the end: story suffices for action. The sentiment of the play -presents also no intricacies: Alison, although loving Marlowe, is not -for a moment a factor of love in his life, since he neither suspects -her attachment nor reciprocates it, and hence the jealousy of her -suitors has no effect either upon him or upon the supposed audience. -“Her Ladyship” is not pitted against Alison, since the latter knows -that Marlowe’s heart is given to his veiled divinity; hence there are -no complexities arising from the love-element. For the purpose of -acting, therefore, the play seems to me to lack movement, suspense, -variety of characterization, and, except in the drawing of Marlowe, -definiteness of type. It has, however, a strong and vivid scene at the -close, leading up to and including Marlowe’s tragic death, and a scene -of rare beauty and of intense dramatic reality, of which I shall speak -later, in the visit of Marlowe to Alison after his downfall. - -On the side of literature, the drama contains work of admirable -strength and quality, work that in its beauty of phrase and subtlety -of penetration is not unworthy to be put into the mouth of Marlowe of -the “mighty line.” Miss Peabody never falls into the Shakespearizing -strain which many writing of that epoch assume; her dialogue is vivid, -direct, and full of original imagery, as when Marlowe speaks of Alison -as having for him— - - Snowflake pity, - Destined to melt and lose itself in fire - Or ever it can cool my tongue, - -and thus describes her: - - Why, she was a maid - Of crystalline! If you looked near enough, - You’d see the wonder changing in her eyes - Like parti-colored marvels in a brook, - Bright through the clearness! - -Note now in contrast the impassioned words in which he pictures his -divinity: - - Hers is the Beauty that hath moved the world - Since the first woman. Beauty cannot die. - No worm may spoil it. Unto earth it goes, - There to be cherished by the cautious spring, - Close folded in a rose, until the time - Some new imperial spirit comes to earth - Demanding a fair raiment; and the earth - Yields up her robes of vermeil and of snow, - Violet-veinéd—beautiful as wings, - And so the Woman comes! - -And this beautiful passage addressed to her after the triumph of -“Faustus”: - - Drink my song. - Grow fair, you sovran flower, with earth and air; - Sip from the last year’s leaves their memories - Of April, May, and June, their summer joy, - Their lure for every nightingale, their longing. - -And finally these words spoken to her in splendid scorn, after his -downfall and her rejection: - - I took you for a Woman, thing of dust,— - I—I who showed you first what you might be! - But see now, you were hollow all the time, - A piece of magic. Now the air blows in, - And you are gone in ashes. - -At once the most beautiful and artistically drawn scene is that -previously referred to, in which Marlowe, his star in eclipse, visits -Alison after her marriage. Here is a dramatic situation, human and -vital, and Miss Peabody has developed it with rare feeling and skill. -The picture of Marlowe in his disgrace and despondency, coming to the -woman who had believed in him, and whose love had shone upon his -unseeing eyes, is drawn with fine delicacy and pathos. In the flash of -revelation that comes to him from her white spirit, he speaks these -words: - - Thou hast heard - Of Light that shined in darkness, hast thou not? - And darkness comprehended not the Light? - So. But I tell thee why. It was because - The Dark, a sleeping brute, was blinded first, - Bewildered at a thing it did not know. - - * * * * * - - Have pity on the Dark, I tell you, Bride. - For after all is said, there is no thing - So hails the Light as that same blackness there, - O’er which it shines the whiter. Do you think - It will not know at last?—it will not know? - -Those, too, are noble passages, though too long to quote, in which -Marlowe unburdens his overcharged heart to Alison, and intrusts to her -faith the keeping of that higher self she had divined in him; and when -Marlowe, early in the scene, referring to his misfortunes, says: - - You do not know - The sense of waking down among the dead, - Hard by some lazar-house,— - -note the hidden meaning in Alison’s reply: - - Nay; but I know - The sense of death. And then to rise again - And feel thyself bewildered, like a spirit - Out of the grave-clothes and the fragment strewings. - -Passages of subtle significance, wistful, tender, and pathetic, -distinguish this scene. - -Miss Peabody has visualized Marlowe clearly wherever he appears, and -created him as the lovable, impulsive, generous-spirited, but -ill-starred genius that he was. It is a life-study, in its conflicts, -its overthrown ideals, its appealing humanity, and should take its -place as one of the permanent interpretations of his character. - -Many of her critics have found in Miss Peabody’s latest volume, _The -Singing Leaves_, an inspiration and charm exceeding that of her former -work, and in delicacy, lyrical ease, simplicity, and ideality it must -be accounted one of her truest achievements; but there is about the -volume an impalpability, an airy insubstantiality, which renders it -elusive and unconvincing. The mystical subtlety hitherto noted in Miss -Peabody’s work has, in the latest volume, grown, until many of the -poems have so little objectivity that they float as iris-tinted flecks -of foam upon the deep of thought. They have beauty of spirit, beauty -of word; but their motive is so subtle, their thought so intangible, -that while they charm one in the reading, they have, with a few -exceptions, melted into vapor, gone the way of the foam, when once the -eye has left them. One feels throughout the volume an ingenuous -simplicity, a _naïveté_, that is, in many of her poems, exceedingly -charming, but which, becoming the pervasive note of the collection, -communicates to it a certain artificial artlessness, as if June, -disregarding the largess of the rose, yearned back to April and the -violet; in short, the poems seem to me, with a few exceptions, to lack -moving, vital impulse, and to bring few warmly imbued words from life. -They are as the pale moon-flower, growing in the stillness of dreams, -rather than the rose dyed with the blood of the heart. - -But what is, to me, the limitation of the volume,—its over-subtilized -mood and lack of definite, moving purpose,—must, to many of its -readers, be granted to be its distinction; and for their very -impalpability these delicate Leaves, that vibrate with impulse as -ethereal as that which moves the aspen when the wind is still, have -for many the greater charm. - -To glance, then, at some of the finer achievements of the volume, one -finds among the lyrics several turning upon love that catch in -artistic words an undefined mood, such as “Forethought” and “Unsaid,” -or in captivating picture-phrase, a blither fancy, such as “The -Enchanted Sheepfold,” or, stronger and finer than these, that vision -of love called “The Cloud,” which enfolds truth and wraps the heart in -its whiteness. One can scarcely fancy a more exquisite bit of imagery -in which to clothe the thought of these lines: - - The islands called me far away, - The valleys called me home. - The rivers with a silver voice - Drew on my heart to come. - - The paths reached tendrils to my hair - From every vine and tree. - There was no refuge anywhere - Until I came to thee. - - There is a northern cloud I know, - Along a mountain crest. - And as she folds her wings of mist, - So I could make my rest. - - There is no chain to bind her so - Unto that purple height; - And she will shine and wander, slow, - Slow, with a cloud’s delight. - - Would she begone? She melts away, - A heavenly joyous thing. - Yet day will find the mountain white, - White-folded with her wing. - - * * * * * - - And though love cannot bind me, Love, - —Ah no!—yet I could stay - Maybe, with wings forever spread, - —Forever, and a day. - -Here is delicacy enshrining one of the deeper truths of life. - -Many of the lyrics have a seventeenth-century lilt, but not of -imitation. There are no echoes in Miss Peabody’s song, its note, -measure, and spirit are entirely her own, and a random stanza would -carry its identification, so individual is her touch. Of the -seventeenth-century mood, however, are “The Song Outside,” -“Forethought,” “The Top of the Morning,” “The Blind One,” and other -poems. - -Nearly all the lyrics in _The Singing Leaves_ are very brief, showing, -in their compactness and restrained use of imagery, just the opposite -method from that prevailing in Miss Peabody’s first book, _The -Wayfarers_. So marked is the contrast that, but for the personality -imbuing them, they might have been written by another hand. Whereas -the diction also in the earlier work inclined to beauty for its own -sake, the reaction to its present simplicity is the more marked. It is -doubtless for this reason that many of the poems carry with them a -note of conscious ingenuousness, as if their simplest effects had been -deliberately achieved. Not so, however, such poems as “The Inn,” “The -Drudge,” “Sins,” “The Anointed,” “The Walk,” whose words are quick -with native impulse, as the trenchant lines of the third: - - A lie, it may be black or white; - I care not for the lie: - My grief is for the tortured breath - Of Truth that cannot die. - - And cruelty, what that may be, - What creature understands? - But O, the glazing eyes of Love, - Stabbed through the open hands! - -Two poems contained in _The Singing Leaves_ are of a note far more -serious and vital than that of their fellows: the first, “The Ravens;” -the second, and to my thinking, the more important, “The Fool,” which -from the standpoint of strength, feeling, forceful expression, -idealism, and the portrayal of human nature, seems to me the -achievement of the book. It holds a truth bitten in with the acid of -experience: - - O what a Fool am I!—Again, again, - To give for asking: yet again to trust - The needy love in women and in men, - Until again my faith is turned to dust - By one more thrust. - - How you must smile apart who make my hands - Ever to bleed where they were reached to bless; - —Wonder how any wit that understands - Should ever try too near, with gentle stress, - Your sullenness! - - Laugh, stare, deny. Because I shall be true,— - The only triumph slain by no surprise: - True, true, to that forlornest truth in you, - The wan, beleaguered thing behind your eyes, - Starving on lies. - - Build by my faith; I am a steadfast tool: - When I am dark, begone into the sun. - I cry, ‘Ah, Lord, how good to be a Fool:— - A lonely game indeed, but now all done; - —And I have won!’ - -Here speaks a word from life worth a score of “Charms: To Be Said In -The Sun,” or other fanciful unreality; and because of such poems as -this, fibred in human motive, one feels by contrast in many of the -others that Miss Peabody has been playing with her genius, casting -“Charms” and “Spells,” which are mere poetic sorcery. - -Miss Peabody has a rare sympathy with child-life, and her group of -poems of this nature could not well be bettered. With the exception of -a line now and then which may be a bit beyond the expression of a -child, they are fidelity itself to the moods that swayed _The Little -Past_. “Journey,” “The Busy Child,” and “The Mystic” are among the -best, though none could be spared, unless, perhaps, “Cakes and Ale.” -Still another with the true child-feeling is that called “Late,”—a -tender little song which, because of its brevity, must suffice to -represent the group: - - My father brought somebody up, - To show us all asleep. - They came as softly up the stairs - As you could creep. - - They whispered in the doorway there - And looked at us awhile, - I had my eyes shut up, but I - Could feel him smile. - - I shut my eyes up close, and lay - As still as I could keep; - Because I knew he wanted us - To be asleep. - -Miss Peabody’s work, considered in its entirety, is distinguished by -an art of rare grace and delicacy, by imagination and vision, -susceptibility to the finer impressions, and by an ever-present -ideality; and while it lacks somewhat the element of personal emotion -and passion, it has a sympathy subtle and spiritual, if less intimate -in its revealing. - - - - -VII - -CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS - - -MR. CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS presents so marked an example of evolution -in the style of his work and the sources of his inspiration, that he -has from volume to volume, like the nautilus, “changed his last year’s -dwelling for the new,” and having entered the “more stately mansion” -has “known the old no more.” - -The first chamber which he fashioned for himself in the House of Art -could not long contain him, as its walls were built of myths and -traditions, incapable of further expansion. This was the period of -_Orion and Other Poems_, such as “Ariadne,” “Memnon,” and “Launcelot -And The Four Queens,” work done prior to 1880 and creditable to the -initial effort of a young collegian. - -The second lodging was scarcely more permanent; though structured less -in myth, and showing a gain in workmanship, it was still too narrow a -dwelling for an expanding spirit, and did little more than give -foretokens of that which should succeed it. The volume contained, -however, one admirable composition, one that remains as vital and -apposite as when it was written,—the stirring stanzas to Canada. -Indeed, the fine courage, the higher loyalty that distinguishes this -appeal, lifts it from the mere grandiloquent utterance of a young man -with over-hasty convictions, to a noble arraignment, and leads one to -wonder why other poets of her domain do not turn their pens to -revealing her to herself as does this fine utterance. - -Mr. Roberts’ third volume, _Songs of the Common Day_, bore almost no -relation to its predecessors, and might have been the work of a -different hand, as regards both subject and style. Legend and myth had -wholly disappeared, and experience had begun to furnish the raw -material, the flax, for the poet’s spindle and distaff which earlier -effort had been making ready. Not yet, however, had the work the -virility and tang that smack in the very first line of its successor, -_The Book of the Native_. It was graceful, artistic singing, but -lacking, except in a few instances, the large free note that sounds in -the later work. Among its lyrics is one of exquisite tenderness, as -sad and sweet as Tennyson’s “Break, break, break,” and in the sifting -of the volume, this remains, perhaps, the sand of gold: - - Grey rocks and greyer sea, - And surf along the shore— - And in my heart a name - My lips shall speak no more. - - The high and lonely hills - Endure the darkening year— - And in my heart endure - A memory and a tear. - - Across the tide a sail - That tosses and is gone— - And in my heart the kiss - That longing dreams upon. - - Grey rocks and greyer sea, - And surf along the shore— - And in my heart the face - That I shall see no more. - -The simplicity and pathos of this lyric render it unforgettable. - -[Illustration: Charles G. D. Roberts] - -“The Tide on Tantramar,” from the third volume, a ballad of the sea -and the salt marshes, transfers to the page the keen pungence of the -brine, as do the descriptive stanzas of Tantramar used illustratively -in the “Ave” to Shelley. There is noble work in this elegy, and while -it wanders over a good deal of Canadian territory, making inspired -observations of nature before it discloses their relation to the -subject—when the comparison is reached it is apposite, and the poem -shows an insight into the character of Shelley that is gratifying, in -view of the vagueness usually associated with his name. - -Other _Songs of the Common Day_, forelooking to the later poet, are -“The Silver Thaw,” “Canadian Streams,” and “The Wood Frolic,” having -the first-hand, magnetic touch distinguishing every line of Mr. -Roberts’ out-of-door verse in that volume which first truly reveals -him,—_The Book of the Native_. So conscious is one of a new force in -this book that it would seem to represent another personality. Its -opening poem, “Kinship,” turns for inspiration, - - Back to the bewildering vision - And the border-land of birth; - Back into the looming wonder, - The Companionship of Earth, - -and puts the query to nature: - - Tell me how some sightless impulse, - Working out a hidden plan, - God for kin and clay for fellow, - Wakes to find itself a man. - - Tell me how the life of mortal, - Wavering from breath to breath, - Like a web of scarlet pattern - Hurtles from the loom of death. - - How the caged bright bird, Desire, - Which the hands of God deliver, - Beats aloft to drop unheeded - At the confines of forever. - - Faints unheeded for a season, - Then outwings the farthest star, - To the wisdom and the stillness - Where thy consummations are. - -This sounds the keynote to _The Book of the Native_, which is equally -concerned with the enigmas of the soul and the mysteries of nature. -The questing spirit is abroad in it; the unquenched faith, the -vitality, the hidden import of life is in it; and while its -metaphysics do not go to the point of developing a definite -philosophy, they set one to thinking for himself, which is a better -service. “Origins,” a speculation as to our coming from “the enigmatic -Will,” and the “Unsleeping,” a vision of the Force brooding over -life,—are among the strongest poems of this motive. To cite the second: - - I soothe to unimagined sleep - The sunless bases of the deep, - And then I stir the aching tide - That gropes in its reluctant side. - - I heave aloft the smoking hill: - To silent peace its throes I still. - But ever at its heart of fire - I lurk, an unassuaged desire. - - I wrap me in the sightless germ - An instant or an endless term; - And still its atoms are my care, - Dispersed in ashes or in air. - - I hush the comets one by one - To sleep for ages in the sun; - The sun resumes before my face - His circuit of the shores of space. - - The mount, the star, the germ, the deep, - They all shall wake, they all shall sleep. - Time, like a flurry of wild rain, - Shall drift across the darkened pane. - - Space, in the dim predestined hour, - Shall crumble like a ruined tower. - I only, with unfaltering eye, - Shall watch the dreams of God go by. - -What a fine touch in the lines declaring that - - Time, like a flurry of wild rain, - Shall drift across the darkened pane! - -Mr. Roberts has the rare pictorial gift of flashing a scene before one -without employing an excess of imagery, and never that which is -confused or cumbrous. His style is nervous, magnetic, direct, and has, -in his later work, very little superfluous tissue. This statement, -has, of course, its exceptions, but is sufficiently accurate to be -made a generalization, and in no case is it better shown than in the -descriptive poems of the Canadian country in _The Book of the Native_. -What is there about Canada that sets the blood of her poets a-tingle -and lends magic to their fingers when writing of her? What is there in -Grand Pré’s “barren reaches by the tide,” or in the marshes of -Tantramar, that such a spell should wait upon them, calling the roamer - - “Back into the looming wonder, - The Companionship of Earth”? - -With the American poets of the present day, despite their feeling for -nature, it is rather her beauty in the abstract than any particular -locality with which they chance to be associated, that inspires -them,—though Mr. Cawein, in his allegiance to Kentucky, furnishes a -marked exception to this statement,—but the Canadian poets, with a -passion like that of a lover, sing of the haunts that knew their first -devotion: now with a buoyant infectious note, now with a reminiscent -sadness; in short, the Canadian poets seem to have a sympathetic -identity with their country, an interchange of personality by which -they reciprocally express each other. - -Particularly is this true of Bliss Carman, Duncan Campbell Scott, and -Charles G. D. Roberts; and it was equally true of Archibald Lampman, -whose untimely passing lost to Canada one of her anointed singers, to -whose high promise justice has hardly yet been done. To illustrate Mr. -Roberts’ nature-sympathy, and susceptibility to the mood of the year, -let me put in contrast parts of two poems from _The Book of the -Native_. The first belongs to the racy note pervading a good deal of -the nature-verse of to-day, of which the Vagabondia books set the -fashion: it is called “Afoot,” but might with equal aptness be named -the “Processional,” since the second is the “Recessional”: - - Comes the lure of green things growing, - Comes the call of waters flowing,— - And the wayfarer desire - Moves and wakes and would be going. - - Hark the migrant hosts of June - Marching nearer noon by noon! - Hark the gossip of the grasses - Bivouacked beneath the moon! - - Hark the leaves their mirth averring; - Hark the buds to blossom stirring; - Hark the hushed, exultant haste - Of the wind and world conferring! - - Hark the sharp, insistent cry - Where the hawk patrols the sky! - Hark the flapping, as of banners, - Where the heron triumphs by! - -Note the picturesque phrase and the compulsive, quickstep note in the -lines above, as of the advancing cohorts of spring, and in contrast -the slow movement, the sadness of the retreating year, in these -beautiful “Recessional” stanzas: - - Now along the solemn heights - Fade the Autumn’s altar-lights; - Down the great earth’s glimmering chancel - Glide the days and nights. - - Little kindred of the grass, - Like a shadow on a glass - Falls the dark and falls the stillness; - We must rise and pass. - - We must rise and follow, wending - Where the nights and days have ending,— - Pass in order pale and slow, - Unto sleep extending. - - Little brothers of the clod, - Soul of fire and seed of sod, - We must fare into the silence - At the knees of God. - - Little comrades of the sky, - Wing to wing we wander by, - Going, going, going, going, - Softly as a sigh. - -And to make the season-cycle complete, and also to show the delicacy -of imagination with which Mr. Roberts invests every changing aspect of -his well-loved outer world, here are two stanzas on “The Frosted Pane”: - - One night came Winter noiselessly, and leaned - Against my window-pane. - In the deep stillness of his heart convened - The ghosts of all his slain. - - Leaves, and ephemera, and stars of earth, - And fugitives of grass,— - White spirits loosed from bonds of mortal birth, - He drew them on the glass. - -Fancies as exquisite as this bespeak the true poet. “The Trout Brook” -and “The Solitary Woodsman” are other inspirations as individual. - -Mr. Roberts’ fifth volume, _New York Nocturnes_, as its name implies, -was a decided departure from his former work, showing his versatility, -but what is more to the purpose, his recognition of the dramatic -element, the human, vital poetry in the babel of the streets. One -could wish that the _Nocturnes_ penetrated more profoundly into the -varied phases of life in the great seething city, that, in short, they -sounded other deeps than those of love; but Mr. Roberts has succeeded -in conveying that sense of isolation in a throng, that heavy -loneliness and reaction, throwing one back upon his own spiritual -personality, which belongs to the bewildering city night, and from -which the finer companionships of love arise as a refuge and need. - -The _Nocturnes_ have the city’s over-soul incarnate in them; for in -the last analysis, the commerce, the art, the ambition, the strife, -the defeat, that one may term the city’s life, are but as hands and -feet to minister to the spirit of love. The first of the _Nocturnes_ -suggests this: - - I walk the city square with thee, - The night is loud; the pavements roar. - Their eddying mirth and misery - Encircle thee and me. - - The street is full of lights and cries: - The crowd but brings thee close to me, - I only hear thy low replies; - I only see thine eyes. - -The “Nocturne of Consecration” is impassioned and full of -spirituality; it is, however, too long to quote, which is -unfortunately the case with the “Nocturne of the Honeysuckle,” another -of the finer poems. “At the Station” is instinct with movement, -reproducing the picture of the swiftly changing throngs, and conveying -the eager expectancy of the hour of meeting. The _Nocturnes_ have also -a group of miscellaneous poems, and the volume as a whole, while less -virile than _The Book of the Native_, owing to the difference in -theme, is distinguished by refinement of feeling and artistry. - -In _The Book of the Rose_ Mr. Roberts has done some excellent work, -and some, alas, that strikes a decided note of artificiality. The -least real and convincing of the poems is that called “On the Upper -Deck,” which opens the volume. The first stanza is subtly phrased, and -also the lyric which occurs midway of the poem; but the dialogue -between the lovers is honeyed poetizing rather than genuine emotion. I -find few heart-throbs in it, but rather a melodramatic sentimentality -from whose flights one is now and again let down to the common day -with summary despatch, as in the parenthetical clause of the stanza -which follows: - - Let us not talk of roses. Don’t you think - The engine’s pulse throbs louder now the light - Has gone? The hiss of waters past our hull - Is more mysterious, with a menace in it? - And that pale streak above the unseen land, - How ominous! a sword has just such pallor! - (Yes, you may put the scarf around my shoulders.) - Never has life shown me the face of beauty - But near it I have seen the face of fear. - -It may be that an obtuse man upon the deck of a steamer would -interrupt his sweetheart’s flight of poesy to envelop her in a shawl, -but the details of the matter may well be left to the imagination. It -is doubtless one of those passages which seem to a writer to give -reality to a picture, but afterward smile at him sardonically from the -printed page. Mr. Roberts inclines elsewhere in the same poem to be -too explicit; after a most exalted declaration, he says: - - No, do not move! Alone although we be - I dare not touch your hand; your gown’s dear hem - I will not touch lest I should break my dream - And just an empty deck-chair mock my longing. - -Here again it was scarcely necessary to qualify the chair, and indeed -the whole passage savors of melodrama. These are, however, only such -lines as show that to the one relating a matter the least incident may -appear to lend reality to the setting, whereas to the reader the -detail may violate taste. - -The opening stanza, mentioned as one of the truly subtle bits of the -poem in question, has these fine lines: - - As the will of last year’s wind, - As the drift of the morrow’s rain, - As the goal of the falling star, - As the treason sinned in vain, - As the bow that shines and is gone, - As the night cry heard no more,— - Is the way of the woman’s meaning - Beyond man’s eldest lore. - -This stanza and the lyric below, which is sung as an interlude to the -dialogue, go far toward redeeming the over-ripe sentiment of the poem: - - O Rose, blossom of mystery, holding within your deeps - The hurt of a thousand vigils, the heal of a thousand sleeps, - There breathes upon your petals a power from the ends of the earth, - Your beauty is heavy with knowledge of life and death and birth. - - O Rose, blossom of longing—the faint suspense, and the fire, - The wistfulness of time, and the unassuaged desire, - The pity of tears on the pillow, the pang of tears unshed,— - With these your spirit is weary, with these your beauty is fed. - -The remaining poems of the volume are much more artistic than the -first, with the exception of the passages last quoted. “The Rose of -Life” is artistically wrought as to form and metre, and subtle in -analysis; but, because of its length and that it voices somewhat the -same thought as the lyric above, the former must serve to show with -what delicacy of interpretation he approaches a theme so well worn, -but ever new, as that of the rose. It is chiefly on the symbolistic -side that Mr. Roberts considers the subject; and while one may feel -that the sentiment cloys at times when a group of poems using the rose -as an image are bracketed together, this is the chief criticism of the -volume, as the lyrics following the opening poem, “On the Upper Deck,” -have both charm and art, and one hesitates between such an one as, “O -Little Rose, O Dark Rose,” and the one immediately following it, “The -Rose of My Desire.” This, perhaps, has a more compelling mood, though -no greater charm of touch than the other: - - O wild, dark flower of woman, - Deep rose of my desire, - An Eastern wizard made you - Of earth and stars and fire. - - When the orange moon swung low - Over the camphor-trees, - By the silver shaft of the fountain - He wrought his mysteries. - - The hot, sweet mould of the garden - He took from a secret place - To become your glimmering body - And the lure of your strange face. - - From the swoon of the tropic heaven - He drew down star on star, - And breathed them into your soul - That your soul might wander far— - - On earth forever homeless, - But intimate of the spheres, - A pang in your mystic laughter, - A portent in your tears. - - From the night’s heat, hushed, electric, - He summoned a shifting flame, - And cherished it, and blew on it - Till it burned into your name. - - And he set the name in my heart - For an unextinguished fire, - O wild, dark flower of woman, - Deep rose of my desire! - -Metrically the poem jars in the line, - - And breathed them into your soul, - -departing as it does from the general scheme of the third lines, and -rendering it necessary to make “soul” bisyllabic in order to carry the -metre smoothly, and in accord with its companion verses. “Spirit” -would have fitted the metrical exigency better, leaving the final -unaccented syllable as in the majority of the lines, but would not -have lent itself to repetition in the succeeding line as does -“soul,”—so “who shall arbitrate”? Mr. Roberts rarely offends the ear -in his metres, but instead his cadences are notably true. - -Aside from the poems upon love, filling the first division of _The -Book of the Rose_ it has a miscellaneous group, of which the two that -best represent it, to my fancy, are so widely diverse that their mere -mention in juxtaposition is amusing; nevertheless they are the lines -“To An Omar Punch Bowl,” and the reverent Nativity Song, “When Mary, -the Mother, Kissed the Child.” The haunting couplets of the former are -by no means of the convivial sort, but the essence of memory and -desire, the pathos of this dust that is but “wind that hurries by,”—is -in them. However, to be quoted, they need their full context, as does -the Nativity Song mentioned. - -Mr. Roberts has a rare sympathy with childhood, and a gift of reaching -the hearts of the little ones; the “Sleepy Man” and “Wake-up Song” -could scarcely be improved; note the picturing in the former and the -drowsihood in its falling cadences: - - When the Sleepy Man comes with the dust on his eyes - (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) - He shuts up the earth, and he opens the skies. - (So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!) - - He smiles through his fingers, and shuts up the sun; - (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) - The stars that he loves he lets out one by one. - (So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!) - - He comes from the castles of Drowsy-boy Town; - (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) - At the touch of his hand the tired eyelids fall down. - (So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!) - - * * * * * - - Then the top is a burden, the bugle a bane, - (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) - When one would be faring down Dream-a-way Lane. - (So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!) - - When one would be wending in Lullaby Wherry - (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) - To Sleepy Man’s Castle by Comforting Ferry. - (So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!) - -Mr. Roberts has collected his several volumes, exclusive of _The Book -of the Rose_, into one, eliminating such of the earlier work as falls -short of his standard of criticism, and adding new matter showing -growth and constantly broadening affinity with life. He manifests more -and more the potentialities of his nature, and while all of his later -work does not ring equally true, the majority of it is instinct with -sincerity and high idealism, and one may go to it for unforced, -unconventional song, having art without trammels, for a breath of the -ozone of nature, and for suggestive thoughts upon life and the things -of the spirit. Its creed is epitomized in the following lines, -pregnant with suggestion to the votary of Art, the creed of the -idealist, and yet the truer realist: - - Said Life to Art: I love thee best - Not when I find in thee - My very face and form, expressed - With dull fidelity. - - But when in thee my longing eyes - Behold continually - The mystery of my memories - And all I crave to be. - - - - -VIII - -EDITH M. THOMAS - - -AN earnest idealist is Miss Edith Thomas, who commits to her song a -vital word and sends it as a courier to arouse that drowsy -lodge-keeper, the soul, and bid him give ear to the importunate -message of life. Not by outwardly strenuous numbers, however, is this -end achieved; on the contrary, Miss Thomas is a quiet singer whose -thoughtful restraint is one of her chief distinctions. The spiritual -tidings which she intrusts to her song are destined to be delivered in -the silence of the soul; none the less are they sent to awaken it, and -none the less do they bide and knock at the door of one’s spirit until -one rise and open to them. - -The ideality of her work has been from the outset its most informing -quality; the thoughts beyond the thrall of words that pass, in -Maeterlinck’s phrase, “like great white birds, across the heart,” had -brushed with their unsullied wings the thoughts of every-day and left -a light upon them, giving assurance, when the art was still unshapen, -that the vision had been revealed. One seldom reads a poem by Miss -Thomas without bringing away from it a suggestive thought or a -spiritual stimulus, sometimes introduced so subtly that it breaks upon -one in the after-light of memory rather than at the moment of reading; -for Miss Thomas is not a homiletic singer, obtruding the moral. She is -too much the artist for that. She delivers no crass counsel, does no -obvious and commonplace moralizing; but she has the nature that -resolves every phase of life into its spiritual elements, and, seen -imaginatively, these elements are material for Art. When once they are -wrought into song by Miss Thomas, they have lost none of the force of -the original idea, none of the thought-giving value; but into them has -been infused the spiritual value in a subtly philosophical way, by -which the experience is resolved into its personal import to the soul. - -Miss Thomas has written many beautiful lyrics, but her characteristic -expression is too thoughtful to be set to the lighter and more purely -musical rhythms. She has a finely cultivated style, inventive in form, -and often employing richly cadenced measures, but one feels rather -that the cadence is well tested, the form well fitted to the theme, -than that the impulse created its own form and sang itself into being. -One cannot, however, generalize upon such varied work as that of Miss -Thomas. Because one feels back of the work the thinker, the analyst, -weighing even the emotion in the balance of reflection, is not to say -that the work is cold or unemotional; on the contrary, it is deeply -human and sympathetic, and in such inspirations as are drawn directly -from life it is often highly impassioned; but in many of the poems the -motive is drawn from some classic source, such as, “At Seville,” -“Ulysses at the Court of Alcinous,” “The Roses of Pieria,” “Timon to -the Athenians,” “The Voice of the Laws,” being Socrates’ reply to -Crito,—and while each of these poems, and particularly the last, has -both beauty and strength, they naturally lack the warmth and impulse -that accompany more personal themes. - -As compared with the large body of Miss Thomas’ work, that for which -the inspiration has been sought far afield is slight; but it is -sufficient to set the mark of deliberate intent upon many of the poems -and detract from the spontaneity of the work as a whole. Miss Thomas -is so accomplished and ready a technician that the temptation to -utilize such allusions and themes from literature as have artistic -possibilities, is a strong one; nor is it one to be deprecated, except -in the ultimate tendency that one shall let the inspiration from -without take precedence of that within, thus quenching one’s own -creative faculty. With Miss Thomas such a result is far distant, if -not impossible, for life is to her the vital reality, and the majority -of her themes are drawn from its passing drama; but there is also the -other phase of her art, and a sufficiently prominent one to be noted. -Her work falls under two distinct heads,—poetry of the intellect and -poetry of the heart,—and while her most emotional verse has a fine -subtlety of thought, and her most intellectual a subtlety of emotion, -making them not crassly one or the other, none the less is the -distinction apparent, and it is easy to put one’s hand upon the work -into which her own temperament has entered and which her creative -moods have shaped. Upon Art itself she has written some of her most -luminous poems, holding genius to be one with that force by which - - The blossom and the sod - Feel the unquiet God, - -and exclaiming to a doubting votary, - - Despair thine art! - Thou canst not hush those cries, - Thou canst not blind those eyes, - Thou canst not chain those feet, - But they a path shall beat - Forth from thine heart. - Forth from thine heart! - There wouldst thou dungeon him, - In cell both close and dim— - The key he turns on thee, - And out he goeth free! - Despair thine art! - -In her poem, “The Compass,” she carries the reasoning farther, and -declares that if one is to wait upon the Force within and give it -freedom, he shall also be trusted to follow where it leads, knowing -that if temporarily deflected it will adjust itself to the truth as -surely as the compass, thrown momentarily out of poise, searches and -finds its compelling attraction. Aside from the analogy in the lines, -the dignity of their movement, the harmonious fall of the cæsura, and -the fine blending of word and tone, render them highly artistic: - - Touch but with gentlest finger the crystal that circles the Mariner’s - Guide— - To the East and the West how it drifts, and trembles, and searches on - every side! - But it comes to its rest, and its light lance poises only one self-same - way - Since ever a ship spread her marvellous sea-wings, or plunged her - swan-breast through the spray— - For North points the needle! - - Ye look not alone for the sign of the lode-star; the lode-stone too - lendeth cheer; - Yet one in the heavens is established forever, and one is compelled - through the sphere. - What! and ye chide not the fluttering magnet that seemeth to fly its - troth, - Yet even now is again recording its fealty’s silent oath— - As North points the needle! - - Praise ye bestow that, though mobile and frail as a tremulous spheret - of dew, - It obeys an imperial law that ye know not (yet know that it guideth - most true); - So, are ye content with its fugitive guidance—ye, but the winds’ and - waves’ sport!— - So, are ye content to sail by your compass, and come in fair hour to - your port; - For North points the needle! - - And now, will ye censure, because, of compulsion, the spirit that - rules in this breast, - To show what a poet must show, was attempered, and touched with a - cureless unrest, - Swift to be moved with all human mutation, to traverse passion’s - whole range? - Mood succeeds mood, and humor fleets humor, yet never heart’s drift - can they change, - For North points the needle! - - Inconstant I were to that Sovereign Bidding (why or whence given - unknown), - Failed I to tent the entire round of motive ere sinking back to my - own: - The error be yours, if ye think my faith erring or deem my allegiance - I fly; - I follow my law and fulfil it all duly—and look! when your doubt - runneth high— - North points the needle! - -These lines illustrate Miss Thomas’ command of accurately descriptive -phrase: the compass is “mobile and frail as a tremulous spheret of -dew,” and touched never so lightly, “how it drifts, and trembles, and -searches on every side.” One feels that just these words, and no -others, convey at once the sense of its delicacy, and the almost -sentient instinct by which it seeks its attraction. Miss Thomas’ -diction in general shows rather fineness of discrimination in the -expressive value of words than a strenuous attempt to seek out those -which are “literary” and inobvious. There is rarely a word that calls -undue attention to itself; but when a passage or poem is analyzed, one -cannot but note the fine sense of values in its phraseology. Her -diction has elegance without conventionality, but one would scarcely -say that it is highly temperamental. It is flexible, colorful, -picturesque, but has not so strong a note of personality that one -meeting a poem of Miss Thomas’ by chance would be able to identify it -by its evidence of word and phrase, as one may often do in the work of -a poet. Miss Thomas’ marked individuality is rather in the essence of -her work, its motive, mood, and thought, than in its distinctive -style, which is too varied to be recognized by its touch. - -Now and again in her earlier work the influence of Emerson comes out -unmistakably. “A Reed Shaken With the Wind,” “Child and Poet,” and -“The Naturalist,” are distinctly Emersonian in manner and -atmosphere—the first especially so in its consecutive, unstanzaed -lines, and in the note pervading it. Whatever mannerisms of style Miss -Thomas acquired from Emerson were, however, quickly cast off; but with -his thought she could scarcely fail to have a continued kinship, if -not a debt, so much does her own work incline to the spiritually -philosophical. One may not trace influences at all definitely in her -work, though felt in its general enrichment and breadth. In -“Palingenesis,” from her last collection, she has done what poets -before her have done,—embody in song the theory of evolution; but it -has rarely been done better than in these stanzas, which seize the -spiritual side of the scientific fact and fuse it with the -imagination. It has been shudderingly foreboded that in this baldly -practical age the poet would come singing of science; but if he invest -it with the life and charm that pervade Miss Thomas’ incursion into -the realm, there is no immediate cause for alarm. Indeed, a scientific -truth, seen through the lens of a poet’s imagination, often takes on a -beauty that no conception of fancy could duplicate, witness Whitman’s -line: - - Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen, - -from a poem upon the same theme which inspires Miss Thomas’ stanzas: - - I dwelt with the God, ere He fashioned the worlds with their heart - of fire, - Ere the vales sank down at His voice or He spake to the mountains, - “Aspire!” - Or ever the sea to dark heaven made moan in its hunger for light, - Or the four winds were born of the morning and missioned on various - flight. - - In a fold of His garment I slept, without motion, or knowledge, or - skill, - While age upon age the thought of creation took shape at His will; - - * * * * * - - Part had I not in the scheme till He sent me to work on the reef. - Nude, in the seafoam, to clothe it with coralline blossom and leaf. - Patient I wrought—as a weaver that blindly plyeth the loom, - Nor knew that the God dwelt with me, there as I wrought in the gloom. - - Strength had I not till chiefdom supreme of the waters He gave; - Joyous I went—tumultuous; the billows before me I drave— - Myself as a surge of the sea when impelled by the driving storm; - Nor knew that the God dwelt with me, there in leviathan’s form. - - Lightness I had not till, decked with light plumes, He endued me with - speed— - Buoyant the hollow quill as the hollow stem of the reed! - And I gathered my food from the ooze, and builded my home at His word; - Nor knew that the God dwelt with me clothed in the garb of a bird. - - I trod not the earth till on plains unmeasured He sent me to rove, - To taste of the sweetness of grass and the leaves of the summer grove. - For shelter He hollowed the cave; fresh springs in the rock He - unsealed; - But I knew not the God dwelt with me that ranged as a beast of the - field. - Foresight I had not, nor memory, nor vision that sweeps in the skies, - Till He made me man, and bade me uplift my marvelling eyes! - My hands I uplifted—my cries grew a prayer—on the green turf I knelt, - And knew that the God had dwelt with me wherever of old I had dwelt! - - Wild is the life of the wave, and free is the life of the air, - And sweet is the life of the measureless pastures, unburdened of care; - They all have been mine, I upgather them all in the being of man, - Who knoweth, at last, that the God hath dwelt with him since all life - began! - - My heritage draw I from these—I love tho’ I leave them behind; - But shall I not speak for the dumb, and lift up my sight for the - blind? - I am kin to the least that inhabits the air, the waters, the clod; - They wist not what bond is between us, they know not the Indwelling - God! - For under my hands alone the charactered Past hath He laid, - One moment to scan ere it fall like a scroll into ashes and fade! - Enough have I read to know and declare—my ways He willkeep, - If onward I go, or again in a fold of His garment I sleep! - -There is no internal evidence in these strongly phrased and stirring -lines that a woman’s hand penned them; their vigor, grasp, and -resonant freedom of measure would do credit to Browning; and here one -may pause to observe the adaptability of Miss Thomas’ style to her -thought. In certain poems demanding the delicate airy touch, such as, -“Dew-Bells,” Titania herself could scarcely speak in lighter phrase, -nor could a tenderer, sweeter note be infused into a poem than has -been put into the lines: “The soul of the violet haunts me so,” or -into the poem incident to the query, “Is it Spring again in Ohio?”—but -when the thought demands virility of word and measure Miss Thomas has -a vivid energy of style, masculine in its force. One may argue that -there is no sex in poetry, that, coming close home for illustration, a -woman’s hand might have fashioned the work of Longfellow and Whittier; -but what of Lowell, Whitman, and Emerson? These names alone prove -sex-evidence in art; nor is any disparagement meant to Longfellow and -Whittier that their characteristic notes were of the gentler, sweeter -sort. We know they could be sufficiently robust upon occasion, -particularly the latter; but, in general, art obeys a temperamental -polarity giving evidence of the masculine or feminine mind that -produced it. Miss Thomas’ work in the main proves the woman, and the -typical woman, who has lived, suffered, joyed; drank, indeed, the -brimming beaker from the foam to the lees; but on her more -philosophical and intellectual side, in such poems as “The Voice of -the Laws,” or “The Flutes of the Gods” and in many others, she has all -a man’s virility. It is partly for this reason that her style is too -varied to be identified by a random poem, the temperamental -differences in the work are so marked, and the style changes so -entirely with them, as to elude classification under one head. - -For one of her heartening notes and quick-step measures take -“Rank-And-File” from her last volume, _The Dancers_: - - You might have painted that picture, - I might have written that song: - Not ours, but another’s, the triumph, - ’Tis done and well done—so ’long! - - You might have fought in the vanguard, - I might have struck at foul Wrong: - What matters whose hand was the foremost? - ’Tis done and well done—so ’long! - - So ’long, and into the darkness, - With the immemorial throng— - Foil to the few and the splendid: - All’s done and well done—so ’long! - - Yet, as we pass, we will pledge them— - The bold, and the bright, and the strong, - (Ours was never black envy): - All’s done and well done—so ’long! - -Miss Thomas is very keen to see what may be termed the subjectively -dramatic side of life,—all the subtlety of motive and impulse working -out of sight to shape the destiny, she sees with acute divination; but -constructively she lacks the dramatic touch. In “A Winter Swallow,” -her one definite incursion into this field, it cannot be said that she -has done such work as would represent her at her real value either in -the literary beauty of the lines, or in the insight displayed in the -characterization. - -So short a dramatic effort, however, could scarcely do more than -indicate the likelihood or unlikelihood of Miss Thomas’ success in a -more sustained plot; and while a theme having in itself warmer -elements of sympathy would doubtless create for itself a more moving -and vital art, there is very little to indicate that the effort would -be wisely spent. One is inclined more fully to this opinion by the -lack of dramatic impulse in Miss Thomas’ narrative poem turning upon -the story of Genevra of the Amieri, she who woke by night from the -death-trance to find herself entombed in the powerful vault of her -ancestors, and, being spurned from her father’s and her husband’s -doors, as a haunting spirit, took refuge at that of her former lover, -to whom, being adjudged by the law as dead, she was reunited. - -The mere skeleton of this story is palpitant with life; but in Miss -Thomas’ cultivated and beautiful recital, wherein the well-rounded, -suave pentameter falls never otherwise than richly on the ear, all the -vibrant, thrilling, terrifying elements of the story have been refined -away. When Genevra wakens in the tomb, and touches in the darkness the -human skeletons about her, and struggles to free herself from the -entangling cerements, and beats with superhuman strength at the -gratings until they yield to her hand, and to the outer stone until it -unseals at her terrified touch,—there are dramatic materials which -even history has infused with red blood; but either Miss Thomas does -not conceive the situation as having thrills and terrors, or has not -been able to impart them to her record, for she sums the matter up in -these two stanzas, illustrating, apparently, the Gentle Art of Being -Buried Alive: - - And now she dreams she lies in marble rest - Within the Amieri’s chapel-tomb, - With hands laid idly on an idle breast. - How sweetly can the carven lilies bloom, - As they would soften her untimely doom…. - Nay, living flowers are these that brush her cheek! - She starts awake amid the nether gloom, - From out dead swoon returning faint and weak; - No voice hath she, but none might hear her, could she speak. - - Vaguely she reaches from her stony bed; - The blessed moonbeam, gliding underground, - Like angel ministrant from heaven sped, - To rescue one in frosty irons long bound, - Cheers her new-beating heart, till she has found - Recourse of memory and use of will. - Then soon her feet are on the ladder-round, - The stone above gives way to patient skill; - And now the wide night greets her, bright, and lone, and still. - -The story of Genevra, as told by Miss Thomas, has often great beauty -of phrase, picturesque descriptive passages of Florentine life, -delicacy in the scene between the reunited lovers when Genevra seeks -Antonio’s gate, and fine pathos in the lines spoken by her father to -her supposed spirit returning to haunt him; in short, the poem has all -but the dramatic touch. The narrative force is lost in the poetic -elaboration. - -But although Miss Thomas has not the outward art of the dramatist, she -has, as earlier stated, a keenly intuitive sense of the spiritually -dramatic in passing life. Upon love she has written with so keen a -psychology that certain of the poems probe to the quick of that source -of pain; for it is not the lighter phase, already so well celebrated, -that she sings, but oftener the fateful, the inexplicable. For -illustration, the poem, “They Said,” presents the caprice of love by -which (they say), it goes to those who hold it most lightly, spend it -most prodigally, flee it to entice it, and yet weave snares to detain -it. The thrust of these stanzas is as delicately keen as a rapier -point: - - Because thy prayer hath never fed - Dark Atë with the food she craves; - Because thou dost not hate (they said), - Nor joy to step on foemen’s graves; - Because thou canst not hate, as we, - How poor a creature thou must be, - Thy veins as pale as ours are red! - Go to! Love loves thee not (they said). - - Because by thee no snare was spread - To baffle Love—if Love should stray, - Because thou dost not watch (they said), - To strictly compass Love each way: - Because thou dost not watch, as we, - Nor jealous Care hath lodged with thee, - To strew with thorns a restless bed— - Go to! Love loves thee not (they said). - - Because thy feet were not misled - To jocund ground, yet all infirm, - Because thou art not fond (they said), - Nor dost exact thine heyday term: - Because thou art not fond, as we, - How dull a creature thou must be, - Thy pulse how slow—yet shrewd thy head! - Go to! Love loves thee not (they said). - - Because thou hast not roved to wed - With those to Love averse or strange, - Because thou hast not roved (they said), - Nor ever studied artful change: - Because thou hast not roved, as we, - Love paid no ransom rich for thee, - Nor, seeking thee, unwearied sped. - Go to! Love loves thee not (they said). - - Ay, so! because thou thought’st to tread - Love’s ways, and all his bidding do, - Because thou hast not tired (they said), - Nor ever wert to Love untrue: - Because thou hast not tired, as we, - How tedious must thy service be; - Love with thy zeal is surfeited! - Go to! Love loves thee not (they said). - - * * * * * - -Every contradiction of passion is in this poem, and the very -refinement of satire, as well. In “The Domino,” Miss Thomas images, -with a pleasant humor, the various disguises under which one meets -Love, and symbolizes in “The Barrier” the infallible intuition, the -psychic sense, by which one feels a change not yet apparent. - -“A Home-Thrust,” wherein the inconstant one betrays himself by his -doubt of another’s constancy, and “So It Was Decreed,” are also among -the psychological bits of delineation; but for the less penetrative -but sweeter and more memorable note, there are two short poems, “Vos -Non Vobis,” and “The Deep-Sea Pearl,” tender, human, sufficiently -universal to appeal to all and artistically wrought. The first records -that, - - There was a garden planned in Spring’s young days, - Then, Summer held it in her bounteous hand; - And many wandered thro’ its blooming ways; - But ne’er the one for whom the work was planned. - And it was vainly done— - For what are many, if we lack the one? - - There was a song that lived within the heart - Long time—and then on Music’s wing it strayed! - All sing it now, all praise its artless art; - But ne’er the one for whom the song was made. - And it was vainly done— - For what are many, if we lack the one? - -The whole argument of Art versus Life is summed up in this poem. The -second lyric, of eight lines, is as delicate as the symbol it employs, -and globes within it, as the drop within the pearl, many a -life-history: - - The love of my life came not - As love unto others is cast; - For mine was a secret wound— - But the wound grew a pearl, at last. - - The divers may come and go, - The tides, they arise and fall; - The pearl in its shell lies sealed, - And the Deep Sea covers all. - -It is in such poems as bring from the heart of life a certain poignant -strain that Miss Thomas is at her best. She is not a melancholy -singer, but her work is too deeply rooted in the pain and unrest of -life to be joyous. A certain longing, an almost impalpable sadness, -pervades much of her verse. Nevertheless, it is not so emphasized as -to be depressing, and, indeed, adds just the touch of personality by -which one treasures that which he feels has been fused in experience. -This pertains to the more intimate phases of Miss Thomas’ work. Upon -death she has written with deep feeling and insight,—feeling all too -vital to be analyzed, such as renders Spring the season - - When that blithe, forerunning air - Breathes more hope than thou canst bear. - -Nature is often, in her verse, as it must be to any sympathetic mind, -a keener source of pain than of pleasure, instinct as it is with -memories, and flaunting before one’s thwarted dreams the infallible -fulfilment of its hopes; yet she has for it an intense passion, and -enters into its most delicate and undefined moods with swift -comprehension. - -“The Soul of the Violet,” previously referred to, is an illustration -in point, being a purely subjective treatment of a nature-suggestion. -When spring is yet too young for promise of bloom, and only in the -first respite from the snow, - - The brown earth raises a wistful face— - Whenever about the fields I go, - The soul of the violet haunts me so! - - I look—there is never a leaf to be seen; - In the pleachéd grass is no thread of green; - But I walk as one who would chide his feet - Lest they trample the hope of something sweet! - Here can no flower be blooming, I know— - Yet the soul of the violet haunts me so! - - Again and again that thrilling breath, - Fresh as the life that is snatched out of death, - Keen as the blow that Love might deal - Lest a spirit in trance should outward steal— - So thrilling that breath, so vital that blow— - The soul of the violet haunts me so! - - Is it the blossom that slumbers as yet - Under the leaf-mould dank and wet, - - * * * * * - - Or is it the flower shed long ago? - The soul of the violet haunts me so! - -The subjective touch in the final couplet gives the key-note to the -poem. - -Miss Thomas is indeed so subjective in her conception of some of the -profounder and more vital losses of life, the sense of the irrevocable -and irreparable is so keenly emphasized to her mind as to communicate -almost a hint of fatalism to certain of her poems, such as “Expiation” -and “A Far Cry To Heaven.” The latter is such an utterance, in its -impassioned tone, as might proceed from the lips of the Angel with the -Flaming Sword sent to bar one’s return to his desecrated Eden. The -ultimate effect of such a poem, however, is salutary, as the warning -outruns the scath, and one reading it will pay closer heed to the -import of the “white hour” of his life. On its technical side, the -poem has all the ease of an improvisation, and so at one are the metre -and thought that line succeeds line with a surge and a rhythm, as wave -follows wave to the shore: - - What! dost thou pray that the outgone tide be rolled back on the - strand, - The flame be rekindled that mounted away from the smouldering brand, - The past-summer harvest flow golden through stubble-lands naked and - sere, - The winter-gray woods upgather and quicken the leaves of last year?— - Thy prayers are as clouds in a drouth; regardless, unfruitful, they - roll; - For this, that thou prayest vain things, ’tis a far cry to Heaven, - my soul,— - Oh, a far cry to Heaven! - - Thou dreamest the word shall return, shot arrow-like into the air, - The wound in the breast where it lodged be balmed and closed for thy - prayer, - The ear of the dead be unsealed, till thou whisper a boon once - denied, - The white hour of life be restored, that passed thee unprized, - undescried!— - Thy prayers are as runners that faint, that fail, within sight of - the goal, - For this, that thou prayest fond things, ’tis a far cry to Heaven, - my soul,— - Oh, a far cry to Heaven! - - And cravest thou fondly the quivering sands shall be firm to thy - feet, - The brackish pool of the waste to thy lips be made wholesome and - sweet? - And cravest thou subtly the bane thou desirest, be wrought to thy - good, - As forth from a poisonous flower a bee conveyeth safe food? - For this, that thou prayest ill things, thy prayers are an anger-rent - scroll; - The chamber of audit is closed,—’tis a far cry to Heaven, my soul,— - Oh, a far cry to Heaven! - -For the strong, but aloe-tinctured draught of this poem, “Sursum -Corda” is the antidote. Here we have the same experience that went to -the making of the former poem, and touched it with bitterness, turned -to sweetness and a fervor of exaltation, when viewed from the hour of -illumination at the last. It is throughout a valiant, noble song, of -which the following lines show the spirit: - - Up and rejoice, and know thou hast matter for revel, my heart! - Up and rejoice, not heeding if drawn or undrawn be the dart - Last winged by the Archer whose quiver is full for sweeter than thou, - That yet will sing out of the dust when the ultimate arrow shall bow. - - * * * * * - - Now thou couldst bless and God-speed, without bitterness bred in thine - heart, - Loves, that, outworn and time-wasted, were fain from thy lodge to - depart: - Though dulled by their passing, thy faith, like a flower upfolded by - night, - New kindness should quicken again, as a flower feels the touch of new - light. - Ay, now thou couldst love, undefeated, with ardor instinct from pure - Love,— - Warmed from a sun in the heavens that knows not beneath nor above, - Nor distance its patience to weary, nor substance unpierce by its ray. - - * * * * * - - Now couldst thou pity and smile, where once but the scourge thou - wouldst lay; - Now to thyself couldst show mercy, and up from all penance arise, - Knowing there runneth abroad a chastening flame from the skies. - - Doubt not thou hast matter for revel, for once thou wouldst cage thee - in steel, - And, wounded, wouldst seek out the balm and the cordial cunning to - heal; - But now thou hast knowledge more sovran, more kind, than leech-craft - can wield: - Never Design sent thee forth to be safe from the scath of the field, - But bade thee stand bare in the midst, and offer free way to all scath - Piercing thee inly—so only might Song have an outgoing path. - - * * * * * - - But now ’tis not thine to bestow, to abide, or be known in thy place; - Withdraweth the voice into silence, dissolveth the form and the face. - Death—Life thou discernest! Enlarged as thou art, thy ground thou must - shift! - Love over-liveth. Throb thou forth quickly. Heart, be uplift! - -The hard-won philosophy of nearly all lives is summed up in these -stanzas, pregnant therefore with suggestion to those who have the -untrodden way before them, and full of uplift to those who have the -course behind them, and view it in retrospect as but “a stuff to try -the soul’s strength on.” - -Not only in this poem, but throughout her work, the evolution of Miss -Thomas’ philosophy of life is marked, had one time to trace its -growing significance. She has sounded many stops, touched many keys of -feeling and thought, so that one may do no more in a brief comment -than suggest the various phases of her widely inclusive song. - - - - -IX - -MADISON CAWEIN - - -IN nothing, more than in his attitude toward nature, does the modern -betray himself. Ours is the questioning age, the truth-seeking, the -scientific age; when, for illustration, Maeterlinck laid his -philosophy by to observe with infinite pains the habits of the bee and -to record, without the intrusion of too many deductions, the amazing -facts as nature passed them in review before his eyes,—he became the -naturalist-philosopher, selling days, not for speculations, but for -laws. To the poet also has come the desire which came to the -philosopher to demonstrate the truth within the beauty; to penetrate -to the finer law at the heart of things; in short, there has arisen -what one may term the poet-naturalist, and in the recent work of Mr. -Madison Cawein we have perhaps the most characteristic illustration -among our own poets of the younger school, of this phase of -nature-interpretation. - -Before considering it, however, one must trace briefly Mr. Cawein’s -evolutionary steps through the haunted ways of nature in its -imaginative and romantic phases, which enthralled him first, by no -means wholly, but predominantly, and of which he has left many records -in his volume, _Myth and Romance_. Of the more artistic poems, worthy -to be put in comparison with his later work, there are several from -the opening group of the collection, as these picturesque lines -containing the query: - - What wood-god, on this water’s mossy curb, - Lost in reflection of earth’s loveliness, - Did I, just now, unconsciously disturb? - I, who haphazard, wandering at a guess, - Came on this spot, wherein, with gold and flame - Of buds and blooms, the season writes its name.— - Ah me! could I have seen him ere alarm - Of my approach aroused him from his calm! - As he, part Hamadryad and, mayhap, - Part Faun, lay here; who left the shadow warm - As wild-wood rose, and filled the air with balm - Of his sweet breath as with ethereal sap. - -Or from the same group these charming glimpses of “an unseen presence -that eludes”:— - - Perhaps a Dryad, in whose tresses cling - The loamy odors of old solitudes, - Who, from her beechen doorway, calls; - - * * * * * - - Or, haply ’tis a Naiad now who slips, - Like some white lily, from her fountain’s glass, - While from her dripping hair and breasts and hips, - The moisture rains cool music on the grass. - - * * * * * - - Or now it is an Oread—whose eyes - Are constellated dusk—who stands confessed, - As naked as a flow’r; her heart’s surprise, - Like morning’s rose, mantling her brow and breast: - She, shrinking from my presence, all distressed - Stands for a startled moment ere she flies, - Her deep hair blowing, up the mountain crest, - Wild as a mist that trails along the dawn. - And is’t her footfalls lure me? or the sound - Of airs that stir the crisp leaf on the ground? - And is’t her body glimmers on yon rise? - Or dog-wood blossoms snowing on the lawn? - -[Illustration: Madison Cawein] - -Who shall deny both charm and accomplishment to these lines, -particularly to the glimpse of the dryad in her “beechen doorway,” but -on the next page of the same volume occurs this more realistic -apostrophe addressed to the “Rain-Crow,” giving a foretokening hint of -his later manner of observation, and who shall say that it has not a -truer charm and accomplishment? - - Can freckled August,—drowsing warm and blonde - Beside a wheat-shock in the white-topped mead, - In her hot hair the oxeyed daisies wound,— - O bird of rain, lend aught but sleepy heed - To thee? when no plumed weed, no feather’d seed - Blows by her; and no ripple breaks the pond, - That gleams like flint between its rim of grasses, - Through which the dragonfly forever passes - Like splintered diamond. - - Drouth weights the trees, and from the farmhouse eaves - The locust, pulse-beat of the summer day, - Throbs; and the lane, that shambles under leaves - Limp with the heat—a league of rutty way— - Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hay - Breathe from the panting meadows heaped with sheaves— - Now, now, O bird, what hint is there of rain, - In thirsty heaven or on burning plain, - That thy keen eye perceives? - - But thou art right. Thou prophesiest true. - For hardly hast thou ceased thy forecasting, - When, up the western fierceness of scorched blue, - Great water-carrier winds their buckets bring - Brimming with freshness. How their dippers ring - And flash and rumble! lavishing dark dew - On corn and forestland, that, streaming wet, - Their hilly backs against the downpour set, - Like giants vague in view. - - The butterfly, safe under leaf and flower, - Has found a roof, knowing how true thou art; - The bumble-bee, within the last half-hour, - Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart; - While in the barnyard, under shed and cart, - Brood-hens have housed.—But I, who scorned thy power, - Barometer of the birds,—like August there,— - Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair, - Like some drenched truant, cower. - -This, however, is airy imagination as compared with the naturalist -fidelity of much of Mr. Cawein’s work in _Weeds by the Wall_, _A Voice -on the Wind_, and in _Kentucky Poems_,—to which Mr. Edmund Gosse -contributes a sympathetic introduction,—books chiefly upon nature, -occasionally reverting to the mythological or more imaginative phase -of the subject, but in the main set to reveal the fact, with its aura -of beauty; for it is never the purely elemental side of a -nature-manifestation that presents itself to Mr. Cawein, but always -the fact haloed by its poetic penumbra. Indeed, the limitation of his -earlier work lay in the excess of fancy over reflection and art; but -his growth has been away from the romantic toward the realistic and -individual, and upon this side its best assurance for the future is -given. Mr. Cawein has yet far too facile a pen not to be betrayed by -it into excesses both of production and fancy. He writes too much to -keep to the standard set in his best work of the past two or three -years, and lacks still to a great degree the self-scrutiny which would -reject much that he includes; but granting all this, it must be -apparent to any reader of his work that he is not a singer making -verse for diversion, but one to whom poetry is the very breath of his -spirit, one who lives by this air, and can by no other; and while it -is one thing to be driven through vision-haunted days by beauty’s -urgence and unrest, and another to body forth the vision in the calm; -one thing to have had the mystery whispered by a thousand wordless -voices, and another to communicate it in terms of revealing truth—it -is notable in Mr. Cawein’s verse that he is teaching his hand to obey -him more surely each year, and is producing work that quickens one’s -perception of the world without, and adds to his sum of beauty. It is -serious work, work with purpose, and while its fancy still runs at -times to the fantastic, it shows so marked a growth in technique and -spirit from year to year that one may well let to-morrow take care of -to-morrow with a poet who brings to his art the ideal which inspires -Mr. Cawein. - -To return, then, to his distinctive field, Kentucky, and his -characteristic note of nature, one observes that a hand-book of the -flora of his state could doubtless be compiled from his poems, so do -they leave the beaten path in their range of observation; but it would -be a botany plus imagination and sympathy, analysts keener than -microscopes, and in it would be recorded the habits of the bluet, the -jewel-weed, the celandine, the black-cohosh, the bell-flower, the -lobelia, the elecampane, the oxalis, the touch-me-not, the -Indian-pipe, and many another unused to hear its name rehearsed in -song. - -One follows the feet of September to the forest - - Windowed wide with azure, doored with green, - Through which rich glimmers of her robe were seen— - Now, like some deep marsh-mallow, rosy gold; - Now like the great Joe-Pye-weed, fold on fold - Of heavy mauve; and now, like the intense - Massed iron-weed, a purple opulence; - -or wanders under the Hunter’s Moon to watch the frost spirits - - … with fine fingers, phantom-cold, - Splitting the wahoo’s pods of rose, and thin - The bittersweet’s balls o’ gold - To show the coal-red berries packed within. - -Autumn is apparently, however, little to his liking, and in his -attitude toward it he reveals the Southerner; for it is not only -Kentucky flora and fauna, but Kentucky climate which Mr. Cawein -celebrates, treating Autumn not with the buoyancy that to a Northerner -renders it a season of lusty infection, but almost wholly in its -aspect of sadness. In his volume called _Undertones_ he has a group of -poems upon the withdrawing year, sounding only this note, which is the -prevalent one when touching upon the same theme in his other volumes. -He glimpses - - … the Fall - Like some lone woman in a ruined hall - Dreaming of desolation and the shroud; - Or through decaying woodlands goes, down-bowed, - Hugging the tatters of her gipsy shawl; - -and speaks elsewhere of - - … the days gray-huddled in the haze; - Whose foggy footsteps drip. - -Winter is encountered with far scantier cheer, and rarely receives the -grace of salutation, as its face appears dire and malevolent to this -lover of the sun. To follow Mr. Cawein’s work with such a purpose in -view would be to present an interesting study in climatic psychology, -for though no mention were made of the section in which he writes, the -internal evidence is sufficient to localize the poems. Not alone the -gracious side of the Southern summer is presented, but the fearful -time of drouth when - - The hot sunflowers by the glaring pike - Lift shields of sultry brass; the teasel tops, - Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spike - Against the furious sunlight. Field and copse - Are sick with summer: now, with breathless stops, - The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beat - Their castanets: and rolled in dust, a team,— - Like some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream,— - An empty wagon rattles through the heat. - -This is vivid picturing and a fine touch of realism fused with -imagination which compares the team rolled in dust to - - “Some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream.” - -Immediately following the poem upon “Drouth,” of which there are -several stanzas sketched with minuteness, occurs one entitled “Before -the Rain,” opening with these pictorial lines: - - Before the rain, low in the obscure east, - Weak and morose the moon hung, sickly gray; - Around its disc the storm mists, cracked and creased, - Wove an enormous web, wherein it lay - Like some white spider hungry for its prey. - Vindictive looked the scowling firmament, - In which each star, that flashed a dagger ray, - Seemed filled with malice of some dark intent. - -The moon caught in its creased web of storm mists is another -well-visioned image. Mr. Cawein carries the record on to a third poem, -picturing the “Broken Drouth;” all are notable for the infusion of -atmosphere,—climatic atmosphere, in this case; and indeed of this -palpable sort there is plenty, infused into words that fairly parch -the page in such poems as “Heat,” or “To the Locust,” which give -abundant evidence that Mr. Cawein knows whereof he speaks and is not -supposing a case. The stanzas to “The Grasshopper” will deepen this -conviction when one looks them up in the volume called _Weeds by the -Wall_. - -Mr. Cawein has poems in celebration of many other of the creatures -whom he links in fellowship with man in his keenly observant verse. -“The Twilight Moth,” “The Leaf Cricket,” “The Tree Toad,” “The -Chipmunk,” and even the despised “Screech-Owl,” are observed and -celebrated with impartial sympathy and love. He shelters in the wood -during a summer rain to learn where each tiny fellow of the earth and -air bestows himself, and notes that the “lichen-colored moths” are -pressed “like knots against the trunks of trees;” that the bees are -wedged like “clots of pollen” in hollow blooms, and that the “mantis, -long-clawed, furtive, lean,” and the dragonfly are housed together -beneath the wild-grape’s leaves and gourds. Each creature’s haunt, -’neath rock or root, or frail roof-bloom, is determined as a -naturalist might lie in wait during the summer storm to record for -Science’s sake each detail of this forest tenantry. Imagination has, -however, touched it to beauty, while losing none of the fidelity. - -To the “Twilight Moth,” “gnome wrought of moonbeam fluff and -gossamer,” he addresses in another poem these delicate lines: - - Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on her state - Of gold and purple in the marbled west, - Thou comest forth like some embodied trait, - Or dim conceit, a lily-bud confessed; - Or, of a rose, the visible wish; that, white, - Goes softly messengering through the night, - Whom each expectant flower makes its guest. - - All day the primroses have thought of thee, - Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat; - All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly - Veiled snowy faces,—that no bee might greet - Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed;— - Keeping Sultana charms for thee, at last, - Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet. - - Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day’s - Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks - The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays - Nocturnes of fragrance, thy winged shadow links - In bonds of secret brotherhood and faith; - O bearer of their order’s shibboleth, - Like some pale symbol fluttering o’er these pinks. - -The final line of this stanza has a certain thinness, and in that -above, the ending which turns “sweet” to a noun is too evidently a -matter of expediency; but with these exceptions the stanzas are -charming, as are the unquoted ones following them. Before turning to -other phases of Mr. Cawein’s work, here is a glimpse of the “Tree -Toad,” pictured with quaint delicacy and fancy: - - Secluded, solitary on some underbough, - Or cradled in a leaf, ’mid glimmering light, - Like Puck thou crouchest: haply watching how - The slow toad stool comes bulging, moony white, - Through loosening loam; or how, against the night, - The glow-worm gathers silver to endow - The darkness with; or how the dew conspires - To hang at dusk with lamps of chilly fires - Each blade that shrivels now. - - * * * * * - - Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noon - Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover - And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune - Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over. - Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover - Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon - Of twilight’s hush, and little intimate - Of eve’s first fluttering star and delicate - Round rim of rainy moon! - - Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy horn - Inform the gnomes and goblins of the hour - When they may gambol under haw and thorn, - Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower? - Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall tower - The liriodendron is? from whence is borne - The elfin music of thy bell’s deep bass - To summon fairies to their starlit maze, - To summon them or warn. - -What a happy bit of realism is that of the toadstool “bulging, moony -white, through loosening loam”! The second of the stanzas may be too -Keats-like in atmosphere to have been achieved with unconsciousness of -the fact, be that as it may, it is a bit of sheer beauty, as the last -is of dainty fancy. - -But nature, either realistically or romantically, is not all that Mr. -Cawein writes of, though it must be said that his verse upon other -themes is so largely tinctured with his nature passion that one rarely -comes upon a poem whose illustrations are not drawn more or less from -this source, making it difficult to find lyrics wholly upon other -themes. Because of his opulent metrical variety, Mr. Cawein is less -lyrical than as if he sang in simpler measures. His lyrics, indeed, -are in the main his least distinguished work, having frequently, if -highly musical, too slight a motive; or if more consequent in motive, -not being sufficiently musical; or the melody may be unimpeachable and -the theme too romantic to have convincing value, as “Mignon,” “Helen,” -“The Quest,” “Floridian,” etc. Indeed, Mr. Cawein sounds the -troubadour note all too frequently in his lyrical love poems, which -are not without a lightsome grace of phrase and fancy, as becomes this -style of verse; but it is likely to be a superficial note, heard but -to be forgotten. He can, however, strike a deeper chord, as in the -poem called “The End of All,” or in that from an earlier volume, -bringing a poignant undertone in its strong, calm utterance, beginning - - Go your own ways. Who shall persuade me now - To seek with high face for a star of hope? - -and ending, - - Though sands be black and bitter black the sea, - Night lie before me and behind me night, - And God within far Heaven refuse to light - The consolation of the dawn for me,— - Between the shadowy bourns of Heaven and Hell, - It is enough love leaves my soul to dwell - With memory. - -In such notes as these controlled by the Vox Humana stop, Mr. Cawein -best reveals himself; another, coming from the heart rather than the -fancy, is “Nightshade,” from the volume called _Intimations of the -Beautiful_, a record of life’s bringing to judgment the late-proffered -love, unyielded when desired. - -“A Wild Iris” is in the later and finer manner, but although love is -the spirit of the song, it is embodied chiefly in terms of nature, and -would not reveal a different phase of his work from that already -shown. This, too, is the case with the two lighter lyrics, “Love In A -Day” and “In The Lane,” each with a most taking measure; the second a -rural song lilting into this note: - - When the hornet hangs in the hollyhock, - And the brown bee drones i’ the rose, - And the west is a red-streaked four-o’-clock, - And summer is near its close— - It’s—Oh, for the gate and the locust lane - And dusk and dew and home again! - -Mr. Cawein has frequent poems in celebration of the farm, not only its -picturesque cheer, but its dignity and finer idealism. “A Song For -Labor” is one of the best; also “Old Homes,” an idyllic picture of the -Southern plantation, with its gentle haze of reminiscence: - - Old homes among the hills! I love their gardens, - Their old rock-fences, that our day inherits; - Their doors, ’round which the great trees stand like wardens; - Their paths, down which the shadows march like spirits; - Broad doors and paths that reach bird-haunted gardens. - - I see them gray among their ancient acres, - Severe of front, their gables lichen-sprinkled,— - Like gentle-hearted, solitary Quakers, - Grave and religious, with kind faces wrinkled,— - Serene among their memory-hallowed acres. - - Their gardens, banked with roses and with lilies— - Those sweet aristocrats of all the flowers— - Where Springtime mints her gold in daffodillies, - And Autumn coins her marigolds in showers, - And all the hours are toilless as the lilies. - - * * * * * - - Old homes! old hearts! Upon my soul forever - Their peace and gladness lie like tears and laughter; - Like love they touch me, through the years that sever, - With simple faith; like friendship, draw me after - The dreamy patience that is theirs forever. - -Mr. Cawein blends the mood and the picture in the simple tenderness of -these lines, with their unstriving felicity. Kentucky’s more strenuous -side also finds a chronicler in his verse: the tragedies of its -mountains are told in one of the earlier volumes in such poems as “The -Moonshiner,” “The Raid,” and “Dead Man’s Run;” and in _Weeds by the -Wall_, in that graphic poem “Feud,” sketching with the pencil of a -realist the road to the spot - - … where all the land - Seems burdened with some curse, - -and where, sunk in obliterative growth of briers, burrs, and ragweed, -stands the - - … huddled house - Where men have murdered men, - -and where a terrified silence still broods, for - - The place seems thinking of that time of fear - And dares not breathe a sound. - -Mr. Howells, in an appreciation of Mr. Cawein’s work, after the -appearance of _Weeds by the Wall_, spoke of this poem declaring that -“What makes one think he will go far and long, and outlive both praise -and blame, is the blending of a sense of the Kentucky civilization in -such a poem as ‘Feud.’ Civilization may not be quite the word for the -condition of things suggested here, but there can be no doubt of the -dramatic and the graphic power that suggests it, and that imparts a -personal sense of the tragic squalor, the sultry drouth, the forlorn -wickedness of it all.” His poem “Ku Klux,” in a volume published some -time ago, is no less dramatic in touch and theme. Mr. Cawein knows how -to set his picture; the ominous portent of the night in which the dark -deed is done would be understood from these three lines alone: - - The clouds blow heavy towards the moon. - The edge of the storm will reach it soon. - The kildee cries and the lonesome loon. - -It may be said of Mr. Cawein’s work in general that it shows him to be -alert to impression, and gives abundant evidence that life presents -itself to him abrim with suggestion. Occasionally, as mentioned above, -he wanders too far into the romantic, or yields to the rhyming impulse -in a fallow time of thought; but when he throws this facile poetizing -by, and betakes himself to nature and life in the capacity of observer -and analyst, he produces work notable for its strength, fidelity, and -beauty. Metrically, in his earlier work he was influenced by various -poets he had read too well. “Intimations of the Beautiful,” occupying -a part of the volume bearing that name, would be one of his best -efforts, in thought and imaginative charm, were it not written in a -form developed from “In Memoriam,” so that one is haunted by the -metrical echo. The poem is devoted to interpretations of life and the -spirit, through nature; and has not a division without some revelation -from that book of the earth which Mr. Cawein has made his gospel. Its -observations, while couched in imagery that now and again tends to the -over-fanciful, are in the main consistent and artistic. - -In his recent books, however, he adventures upon his way, seeing -wholly by the light of his own eyes, and portraying by the skill of -his own hand, so that his work has taken on personality and -individuality with each succeeding volume. - -Its breath from the bourns of meadow and woodland brings with it a -stimulating fragrance, and one closes a book by Mr. Cawein, feeling -that he has been in some charmed spot under Southern skies where - - Of honey and heat and weed and wheat - The day had made perfume. - - - - -X - -GEORGE E. WOODBERRY - - “For he who standeth in the whole world’s hope - Is as a magnet; he shall draw all hearts - To be his shield, all arms to strike his blow.” - - -THESE words by Mr. George E. Woodberry sound the keynote to his art, -for he has set himself to disclose the immanence of beauty, of -strength; to mould the real to the ideal; and whether he fashions a -god, as in “Agathon,” or a patriot, as in “My Country,” he is -concerned only with the development of the spiritual potentialities. - -He comes to life, to poetry, enriched by a scholar’s culture, but -limited by his enrichment on the creative side of his art. He is too -well possessed of the immortal melodies to trust the spontaneous notes -of his own voice, and hence his verse on its technical side lacks -variety and freedom of movement. It has all the cultivated, classical -freedom, it flows ever in pure and true numbers; but the masters sing -in its overtones, and one catches himself hearkening to them as to Mr. -Woodberry himself. In other words, those innovations of form which -strongly creative thoughts usually bring with them, are not to be -found in Mr. Woodberry’s work. He has a highly developed sense of -rhythm and tone, and very rarely is any metrical canon violated; but -the strange new music, the wild free note, that showers down as if -from upper air, and sets one’s heart a-tingling, is seldom voiced -through him. The bird is caged; and while its song is true and -beautiful, one comes soon to know its notes and the range of its -melody. - -Mr. Woodberry has, however, something to say; and if he says it rather -with grace and cultivation as to form, than with any startling -surprises of artistic effect, his work in its essence, in its spirit, -is none the less creative, and upon this side its strength lies. It is -ethical and intellectual, rather than emotional, poetry. Though rising -often to an impassioned height, it is a passion of the brain, pure and -cold as a flood of moonlight. Even the songs of “Wild Eden,” and -others dealing with love, remain an abstraction; one does not get the -sense of personality, except in one or two of them, such as the lyric, -“O, Inexpressible As Sweet,” and in these few lines called “Divine -Awe”: - - To tremble when I touch her hands, - With awe that no man understands; - To feel soft reverence arise - When, lover-sweet, I meet her eyes; - To see her beauty grow and shine - When most I feel this awe divine,— - Whate’er befall me, this is mine; - And where about the room she moves, - My spirit follows her, and loves. - -But although one misses the sense of reality in the songs of love, the -ideality is for that reason the more apparent. Love that has -sublimated, taken on the rarer part, that has made a mystic -interchange with nature and with God, is celebrated in the fervid -poem, “He Ate The Laurel And Is Mad,” which marks one of the strongest -achievements in Mr. Woodberry’s work, and especially in a lyric it -contains, vibrating with a fine, compulsive melody. The lines -preceding the lyric relate the coming of Love into the heart of nature: - - And instant back his longing runs - Through bud and billow, through drift and blaze, - Through thought, through prayer, the thousand ways - The spirit journeys from despair; - He sees all things that they are fair, - But feels them as the daisied sod,— - This slumbrous beauty, this light, this room, - The chrysalis and broken tomb - He cleaveth on his way to God. - -[Illustration: George E. Woodberry] - -Then the poem breaks into this pæan, whose music outsings its thought -when pushed to analysis; this is one of Mr. Woodberry’s metrical -exceptions that prove the rule. Here is sheer music making fine but -not extraordinary thought seem great, whereas in the majority of his -work it is the thought to which one listens rather than the melody; -but to the lyric, - - I shall go singing over-seas; - “The million years of the planets increase; - All pangs of death, all cries of birth, - Are clasped at one by the heart of the earth.” - - I shall go singing by tower and town: - “The thousand cities of men that crown - Empire slow-rising from horde and clan, - Are clasped at one by the heart of man.” - - I shall go singing by flower and brier: - “The multitudinous stars of fire, - And man made infinite under the sod, - Are clasped at one by the heart of God.” - - I shall go singing by ice and snow: - “Blow soon, dread angel, greatly blow, - Break up, ye gulfs, beneath, above, - Peal, time’s last music,—‘love, love, love!’” - -Of his recent volume in which he gathers his most representative work, -“The North Shore Watch,” a threnody published some years ago, remains -one of the truest poems in sincerity and sympathy of expression,—not -only an idyl of remembered comradeship, but of the sea in its many -moods; and here one may note that of Mr. Woodberry’s references to -nature, those of the sea are incomparably the finest, and exhale an -invigorating savor of the brine. They are scattered through “The North -Shore Watch,” but because of the stately sadness of the verse are less -representative of his characteristic note than are these buoyant lines -which open the poem “Seaward”: - - I will go down in my youth to the hoar sea’s infinite foam; - I will bathe in the winds of heaven; I will nest where the white - birds home; - Where the sheeted emerald glitters and drifts with bursts of snow, - In the spume of stormy mornings, I will make me ready and go; - Where under the clear west weather the violet surge is rolled, - I will strike with the sun in heaven the day-long league of gold; - Will mix with the waves, and mingle with the bloom of the sunset bar, - And toss with the tangle of moonbeams, and call to the morning star; - And wave and wing shall know me a seachild even as they, - Of the race of the great seafarers, a thousand years if a day. - -These lines have the bracing ozone of the east wind; it is good to -fill one’s lungs with their freshening breath. In another sea-song, -“Homeward Bound,” an exultant, grateful hymn, Mr. Woodberry speaks of -steering - - “Through the weird, red-billowing sunset” - -and of falling asleep in the “rocking dark,” and with the dawn, - - Whether the purple furrow heaps the bows with dazzling spray, - Or buried in green-based masses they dip the storm-swept day, - Or the white fog ribbons o’er them, the strong ship holds her way - -These are pictures in strong color, freehand records with pigment, of -which Mr. Woodberry’s sea-verse contains many duplicates. He paints -the sea as an impressionist, catching her evanescent moods. Aside from -the pictorial art of the poem from which the lines above are taken, it -thrills with the gladness that abides with one coming - - Home from the lonely cities, time’s wreck, and the naked woe, - Home through the clean great waters where freemen’s pennants blow, - Home to the land men dream of, where all the nations go. - -Mr. Woodberry is an American, and ever an American, whatever tribute -he may pay at longer dedicated shrines. His ode to “My Country” is an -impassioned utterance, full of ideality, and pride in things as they -are, not lacking, however, in the prophetic vision of what they shall -be. He trusts his country without reservation, recognizes her greater -commission in what has terrified many poets,—the absorption of the -Eastern isles,—and bids her be swift to yield her benefits: - - O, whisper to thy clustered isles - If any rosy promise round them smiles; - O, call to every seaward promontory - If one of them, perchance, is made the cape of glory. - -In technique the ode has a fine sweep and movement; it thrills with -flights of feeling, as in these lines near the close,— - - And never greater love salutes thy brow - Than his, who seeks thee now. - Alien the sea and salt the foam - Where’er it bears him from his home; - And when he leaps to land, - A lover treads the strand. - -The ode is somewhat marred by prolixity, and now and again by the -declamatory impulse getting the better of the creative; but granting -this it remains a fine rhapsody, redeeming the time to those who think -the days are evil, and more than ever proving Mr. Woodberry the -idealist, if not, indeed, the prophet. In the Emerson Ode, read at the -centenary in Boston, there is poem-for-occasion utterance until one -reaches the fourth division, where the rhetoric gives way to the -pensive note, - - I lay the singing laurels down - Upon the silent grave, - -and grows from this into a glimpsing of Emerson’s most characteristic -thought, to which Mr. Woodberry sings his own indebtedness. This -philosophical résumé has value as critical interpretation and as -tribute to whom tribute is due, but it lacks the vital spark as -poetry. Odes of this sort are no gauge of a poet’s merit, and although -Mr. Woodberry does not reveal his weakness in writing of this sort, -neither does he to any marked degree reveal his strength. It is work -of conventional creditability, reaching occasionally some flight of -pure poetry, but pervaded in general by the perfunctory note that -results from coercing the muse; and here one may interpolate the wish -that all poems-for-occasion might be “put upon the list,” for it is -certain, not only that the majority of them “never would be missed,” -but that poetry would rebound from a most inert weight if lightened of -them; nor is this in any sense personal to Mr. Woodberry, whose -“Emerson Ode” is a far stronger piece of work than are most -compositions of a similar nature. In the “Player’s Elegy,” in the ode -written for the dedication of Alumni Hall at Phillips Exeter Academy, -and in the several poems addressed to his fellow-professors at -Columbia, there are also passages of spontaneous force and beauty, and -the high motive of all must not be lost sight of, but, taken as a -whole, this group of poems could scarcely figure in an appraisal of -the individuality of his work. - -It is on the spiritually philosophical side of his nature that Mr. -Woodberry makes his strongest appeal. He is not primarily a poet of -love, nor of nature, nor a melodist making music for its own sake; he -is an eager, questing follower of the ideal; proclaimer of the truth -that - - The glamour of God hath a thousand shapes - And every one divine. - -When he interprets the mystery of love, or turns to the world without, -it is the immanence of the divine that haunts him: - - Over the grey leagues of ocean - The infinite yearneth alone; - The forests with wandering emotion - The thing they know not intone. - -He is, indeed, the spirit’s votary, and the ultimate purport of his -message is the recognition of one’s own spirit force. His poem, “Nay, -Soul,” rebukes the weakness that looks on every side for that which is -within; the nature that, seeking props, falls by the way; or, craving -understanding, loses the strength that comes of being misunderstood. -It subtly divides the legitimate gifts of sympathy from those which -weakness demands, and reveals the impossibility of coercing life, or -love, or any good to which one’s nature is not so magnetized that it -comes to him unentreated. These are potent lines:— - - Nay, Soul, thy shame forbear! - Between the earth and sky - Was never man could buy - The bread of life with prayer, - Not though his brother there - Saw him with hunger die. - - His life a man may give, - But, not for deepest ruth, - Beauty, nor love, nor truth - Whereby himself doth live. - Come home, poor fugitive! - Art thou so poor, forsooth? - - * * * * * - - Thy heart—look thou aright! - Fear not the wild untrod, - Nor birth, nor burial sod! - Look, and in native light, - Bare as to Christ’s own sight, - Living shalt thou see God. - -The dramatic poem, “Agathon,” which is builded upon the philosophy of -Plato, is perhaps the most thoughtful and thought-inciting work in the -newly collected volume. It is in no sense of the word dramatic, but -doubtless cast in this form from its wider adaptability to the -contrasts of thought. The poem is too lengthy to follow an analysis of -its philosophy, which is wrought out with subtle elaboration, smacking -too much at times of a logical demonstration, but in the main leavened -with imaginative phrase. Its poetic climax is in the apostrophe which -follows the statement that - - The sweetest roamer is a boy’s young heart. - -The lines form a blank-verse lyric with a rich cadence and movement: - - O youngest Roamer, Hesper shuts the day, - White Hesper folded in the rose of eve; - The still cloud floats, and kissed by twilight sleeps; - The mists drop down, and near the mountain moor; - And mute the bird’s throat swells with slumber now; - And now the wild winds to their eyries cling. - - * * * * * - - O youngest Roamer, wonderful is joy, - The rose in bloom that out of darkness springs; - The lily folded to the wave of life, - The lotus on the stream’s dark passion borne. - - * * * * * - - Ah, fortunate he roams who roameth here, - Who finds the happy covert and lies down, - And hears the laughter gurgling in the fount, - And feels the dreamy light imbathe his limbs. - No more he roams, he roams no more, no more. - -These lines are reminiscent of Tennyson’s “Princess” in their metrical -note, particularly in the final couplet of the first stanza, with the -“dying fall” of the cadence, bringing to mind: - - Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost, - And like a ghost she glimmers on to me. - -Mr. Woodberry’s poetic affiliation with Tennyson comes out -unmistakably in various other poems, leaving no doubt as to one of the -masters who sing in his over-tones. Here, for illustration, is a -transfusion with Tennyson’s “Tears, Idle Tears.” One stanza of the -flawless lyric reads: - - Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns - The earliest pipe of half-awaken’d 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. - -And Mr. Woodberry says: - - O hidden-strange as on dew-heavy lawns - The warm dark scent of summer-fragrant dawns; - O tender as the faint sea-changes are, - When grows the flush and pales the snow-white star; - So strange, so tender, to a maid is love. - -The mere fact of employing the Tennyson metre, especially when rhymed, -would not give the sense of over-assimilation of the other’s work were -it not for the marked correspondence in the diction and atmosphere, -the first line of Tennyson’s lyric being expanded into the opening -couplet of Mr. Woodberry’s stanza, and the final lines of each having -so similar a terminology. Shelley is a much more operative force in -Mr. Woodberry’s poetry than Tennyson, but rather in temperamental -kinship than in a technical way. Mr. Woodberry could scarcely fail to -have a keen sympathy with the passionate art of Shelley, who lived in -the ideal, subtilized and sublimated beyond all reach but that of -longing, but who yet set his hand and brain to the strife about him. -In his earlier work Mr. Woodberry occasionally shows the Shelley -influence in technique and theme, but not in his later verse. One can -scarcely understand his leaving in a definitive collection of his work -the poem “Love at the Door,” whose obligations to Taylor’s “Bedouin -Love Song” and Shelley’s “I arise from dreams of thee,” are about -equally distributed. Most poets have their early experiments in the -reshaping of forms and themes, but they should be edited out of -representative collections. The poem is scarcely a creditable -assimilation of the models in question, and does scant justice to Mr. -Woodberry’s later poetry, making the query more inevitable why he -should have left it in the volume, which is in the main so finished -and ripe a work. Occasionally one comes upon poems, or passages, which -a keener self-criticism would have eliminated, as the line from -“Taormina,” declaring that - - Front more majestic of sea-mountains nowhere is there uplifted the - whole earth through,— - -whose legitimate place is in a rhetorical textbook, as an exercise in -redundance. Mr. Woodberry is occasionally allured by his theme until -the song outruns the motive, but he rarely pads a line like this; even -poetic hyperbole has a limit. - -In picturesque imagery his work is finely individualized; witness the -figurative beauty of the following lines: - - The ocean, storming on the rocks, - Shepherds not there his wild, wet flocks. - The soaring ether nowhere finds - An eyrie for the wingéd winds; - Nor has yon glittering sky a charm - To hive in heaven the starry swarm; - And so thy wandering thoughts, my heart, - No home shall find; let them depart. - -The two sonnets “At Gibraltar” represent, perhaps, as fine an -achievement as distinguishes Mr. Woodberry’s work. It would, indeed, -be difficult to surpass them in American literature of to-day in -strength, passion, or ideality: - - - I - - England, I stand on thy imperial ground, - Not all a stranger; as thy bugles blow, - I feel within my blood old battles flow— - The blood whose ancient founts in thee are found. - Still surging dark against the Christian bound - Wide Islam presses; well its peoples know - Thy heights that watch them wandering below; - I think how Lucknow heard their gathering sound. - I turn, and meet the cruel, turbaned face. - England, ’tis sweet to be so much thy son! - I feel the conqueror in my blood and race; - Last night Trafalgar awed me, and to-day - Gibraltar wakened; hark, thy evening gun - Startles the desert over Africa! - - - II - - Thou art the rock of empire, set mid-seas - Between the East and West, that God has built; - Advance thy Roman borders where thou wilt, - While run thy armies true with His decrees. - Law, justice, liberty—great gifts are these; - Watch that they spread where English blood is spilt, - Lest, mixed and sullied with his country’s guilt, - The soldier’s life-stream flow, and Heaven displease! - Two swords there are: one naked, apt to smite, - Thy blade of war; and, battle-storied, one - Rejoices in the sheath, and hides from light. - American I am; would wars were done! - Now westward, look, my country bids good-night— - Peace to the world from ports without a gun! - -Whether in his travels or in the quiet of his own contemplation, the -emphasis of Mr. Woodberry’s thought is upon the noble, the essential, -the beautiful. Although not a strongly creative poet in form, he is a -highly cultivated poet, and hands on the nobler traditions of art; and -if now and then he wraps another’s “singing robe” about him, it is but -an external vesture, leaving the soul of his thought unchanged. - - - - -XI - -FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES - - -MR. FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES is one of the younger poets about whose -work there is no veneer. This is not to imply that it lacks finish, -but rather that the foundation is genuine; it reflects its native -grain, and not an overlaid polish. One feels back of the work the -probity and directness that underlie all soundly conditioned -literature; for while Mr. Knowles has the poet’s passion for the -beauties of the art he essays, the primary value is always in that to -be conveyed rather than in the medium of transmission. - -This sincerity is at once Mr. Knowles’ distinction and his danger. He -is so manifestly in earnest that one feels at times in his work a -certain lack of the imaginative leaven which should lighten the most -serious thought; to put it in a word, there is often an over-strenuous -note in his poetry; but were it put to a choice between this mood and -the honeyed artificialities to which one is often treated, there would -be no hesitancy in choosing the former, for - - The poet is not fed on sweets; - Daily his own heart he eats,— - -not morbidly, but finding within his own spirit daily manna, and -living by this aliment and not by the mere nectar of things. -Everything in life bestows this manna and daily renews it; and the -poet is he who assimilates and transmutes it to personal needs until -his thought is fed from his own heart as in Emerson’s couplet. - -This is Mr. Knowles’ ideal of growth, evidenced by the eager interest -and open sympathy with which he seeks from life its elements of truth, -and from experience its developing properties. It is, of course, an -ideal beyond his present attainment, probably beyond his ultimate -attainment, gauged by absolute standards, for the “elements of truth” -are hardly to be separated from life by one magnet. They are variously -polarized, and though one may possess the divining wand that shall -disclose the nature and place of certain of them, there is no wand -polarized for all; but it is the poet’s part to pass that magnet of -truth which is his by nature over the field of life, that it may -attract therefrom its range of affinities, and this Mr. Knowles is -doing. - -Before taking up his later work, however, we may glance at his matin -songs, _On Life’s Stairway_, which have many indicative notes worthy -of consideration. This volume, that called forth from John Burroughs, -Richard Henry Stoddard, Joaquin Miller, and others, such hearty -commendation, has an individuality that makes itself felt. First, -perhaps, one notes its spontaneity and the evident love of song that -is its primal impulse. The fancy is fresh and sprightly, not having -yet thought’s heavier freight; the optimism is robust, the loyalty to -one’s own time impassioned and absolute, and the democracy and -Americanism distinguishing it are of the commendable, if somewhat -grandiloquent, type belonging to youthful patriotism. Another feature -of Mr. Knowles’ work, manifest in both volumes, is that its -inspiration is from life rather than nature, which is refreshing in -view of the fact that the reverse obtains with most of the younger -poets. When, however, he comes to this theme, it is with a lightness -of touch and a pleasant charm of mood that give to the few poems of -this subject an airy delicacy and an unpremeditated note, as in these -lines: - -[Illustration: Frederic Lawrence Knowles] - - Nature, in thy largess, grant - I may be thy confidant! - - * * * * * - - Show me how dry branches throw - Such blue shadows on the snow; - Tell me how the wind can fare - On his unseen feet of air; - Show me how the spider’s loom - Weaves the fabric from her womb; - Lead me to those brooks of morn - Where a woman’s laugh is born; - Let me taste the sap that flows - Through the blushes of a rose,— - Yea, and drain the blood which runs - From the heart of dying suns; - Teach me how the butterfly - Guessed at immortality; - Let me follow up the track - Of Love’s deathless zodiac - Where Joy climbs among the spheres - Circled by her moon of tears. - -In his poems upon love, Mr. Knowles touches some of his truest and -surest notes; those in the second volume have a broader and more -sympathetic appeal, and yet have not lost the confessional note which -alone gives value to the subject. They are not invariably of a more -inspired touch than are several in the first collection, such as “Lost -Knowledge,” “A Song for Simplicity,” and “Love’s Prayer;” now and -again they combine some newly minted phrase flashing with unsullied -lustre, with such as have passed from hand to hand in the dulling -commerce of language; but it is perhaps too much to demand that all -fancies shall be newly stamped with the die of imagination. One of Mr. -Knowles’ strongest poems from the group in question is entitled -“Love’s World;” but for greater brevity I shall quote instead these -charming lines which introduce the collection called _Love Triumphant_: - - Helen’s lips are drifting dust, - Ilion is consumed with rust; - All the galleons of Greece - Drink the ocean’s dreamless peace; - Lost was Solomon’s purple show - Restless centuries ago; - Stately empires wax and wane— - Babylon, Barbary and Spain— - Only one thing, undefaced, - Lasts, though all the worlds lie waste - And the heavens are overturned. - —Dear, how long ago we learned! - - There’s a sight that blinds the sun, - Sound that lives when sounds are done, - Music that rebukes the birds, - Language lovelier than words, - Hue and scent that shame the rose, - Wine no earthly vineyard knows, - Silence stiller than the shore - Swept by Charon’s stealthy oar, - Ocean more divinely free - Than Pacific’s boundless sea,— - Ye who love have learned it true. - —Dear, how long ago we knew! - -Of this group, however, it is in the sonnet, “If Love Were Jester at -the Court of Death,” that Mr. Knowles’ most genuine inspiration has -visited him. - -The conception of the sonnet is unique, and its opening line of -epigrammatic force and suggestiveness: - - If Love were jester at the court of Death, - And Death the king of all, still would I pray, - “For me the motley and the bauble, yea, - Though all be vanity, as the Preacher saith, - The mirth of love be mine for one brief breath!” - Then would I kneel the monarch to obey, - And kiss that pale hand, should it spare or slay; - Since I have tasted love, what mattereth! - But if, dear God! this heart be dry as sand, - And cold as Charon’s palm holding Hell’s toll, - How worse! how worse! Scorch it with sorrow’s brand! - Haply, though dead to joy, ’t would feel _that_ coal; - Better a cross and nails through either hand, - Than Pilate’s palace and a frozen soul! - -Here are originality, strength, and white heat of feeling, though the -sestett is less artistic than the octave, which holds the creative -beauty of the sonnet. - -Of the lyrical poems in the second volume there are many clear of -tone, having not only a pure, enunciative quality musically, but also -color and picturesqueness, as that beginning: - - With all his purple spoils upon him - Creeps back the plunderer Sea, - -with its succession of pictures such as these: - - O bandit, with the white-plumed horsemen, - Raiding a thousand shores, - Thy coffers crammed with spars and anchors - And wave-defeated oars! - -Admirable phrasing is that of “wave-defeated oars”! But before taking -up the more strenuous side of his work, there is another lyric rich in -melody and emotion,—a lyric in which one feels the under-current of -passion. It is named, “A Song of Desire”: - - Thou dreamer with the million moods, - Of restless heart like me, - Lay thy white hands against my breast - And cool its pain, O Sea! - - O wanderer of the unseen paths, - Restless of heart as I, - Blow hither from thy caves of blue, - Wind of the healing sky! - - O treader of the fiery way, - With passionate heart like mine, - Hold to my lips thy healthful cup - Brimmed with its blood-red wine! - - O countless watchers of the night, - Of sleepless heart like me, - Pour your white beauty in my soul, - Till I grow calm as ye! - - O sea, O sun, O wind and stars, - (O hungry heart that longs!) - Feed my starved lips with life, with love, - And touch my tongue with songs! - -Mr. Knowles is a modern of the moderns, and his Whitmanesque -conviction that “we tally all antecedents;” that “we are the scald, -the oracle, the monk, and the knight;” that “we easily include them -and more,”—finds expression in each of his volumes, in poems ranging -from boyish fustian, at which he would now smile, to the noble lines -of “Veritas” and other poems in the later work. There are certain -subjects that hold within them percussion powder ready to explode at -the touch of a thought,—subjects which, to one’s own peculiar -temperament, seem to be provocative of a fulminant outburst whenever -one collides with them, and this is such an one to Mr. Knowles. -However, it is well to be shaken up occasionally by such detonating -lines as these: - - We have sonnets enough, and songs enough, - And ballads enough, God knows! - But what we need is that cosmic stuff - Whence primitive feeling glows, - - Grown, organized to the needs of rhyme - Through the old instinctive laws, - With a meaning broad as the boughs of time - And deep as the roots of cause. - - It is passion and power that we need to-day, - We have grace and taste full store; - We need a man who will say his say - With a strength unguessed before:— - - * * * * * - - Whose lines shall glow like molten steel - From being forged in his soul, - Till the very anvil shall burn to feel - The breath of the quenchless coal! - - Your dainty wordsters may cry “Uncouth!” - As they shrink from his bellows’ glow; - But the fire he fans is immortal youth, - And how should the bloodless know! - -One will hardly deny that this is sound doctrine, as are the stanzas -necessarily omitted, which trace the qualifications of the bard of -to-day. Assuredly one touches the question of questions when he seeks -the cause for the apparent waning of poetic inspiration in our own -time. There is certainly no wane in the diffusion of the poetic -impulse; but the poet who is answering the great questions of the age, -speaking the indicative words of the future,—to quote Mr. Knowles, - - A voice whose sagas shall live with God - When the lyres of earth are rust,— - -is hardly being heard at the present hour. There are voices and voices -which proclaim truths, but the voice that enunciates Truth in its -larger utterance—as it is spoken, for example, in the words of -Browning—seems not to find expression in our day. From this the -impression has come to prevail that Art is choking virility of -utterance, and that a wholly new order of song must grow from newer -needs,—song that shall express our national masculinity, our robust -democracy, our enlarged patriotism, and our sometimes bumptious -Americanism; that labor must have its definite poet, and the “hymn to -the workman’s God” contain some different note from that hitherto -chanted. To put it in Mr. Knowles’ stirring words from another poem: - - In the ink of our sweat we will find it yet, - The song that is fit for men! - - And the woodsman he shall sing it, - And his axe shall mark the time; - And the bearded lips of the boatman - While his oarblades fall in rhyme; - - And the man with his fist on the throttle, - And the man with his foot on the brake, - And the man who will scoff at danger - And die for a comrade’s sake; - - And the Hand that wrought the Vision - With prairie and peak and stream - Shall guide the hand of the workman - And help him to trace his dream!— - - Till the rugged lines grow perfect, - And round to a faultless whole; - For the West will have found her singer - When her singer has found his soul. - -These are fine, swinging strophes, proclaiming the modern ideal from -Whitman to Kipling that “the song that is fit for men” must have in it -some robust timbre, some resonant fibre, unheard before; that a -sturdier race of bards must arise, “sprung from the toilers at the -bench and plough,”—that, in fine, the new America must have a more -orotund voice to sing her needs. - -This has a convincing plausibility on the face of it; but do the facts -bear it out,—are virility and democracy and modernity the essential -elements of the “song that is fit for men”? If so, then Whitman, who -is the apogee of the elemental and democratic, or Kipling, whose tunes -blare in one’s ears like the horns of a band, and whose themes are -aggressively of the day and hour, would be the ideal types of the -new-day poet, and we should find the sturdy laborer and the common -folk in general coming to these sources for refreshment, inspiration, -and aid in tracing their dreams; but, on the contrary, Whitman, by a -frequent paradox of letters, is a poet for the most cultivated and -deeply reflective minds. Only such can understand and embrace his -universality, and, on the poetic side, enjoy his splendid diction and -the wave-like sweep of his rhythms. His formlessness, which was -reactive that he might come the nearer to the common heart, is one of -the chief barriers that prevent this contact. The unlettered nature, -more than all others, demands the ordered symmetry of rhythm as a -focus and aid to thought; it demands elemental beauties as well as -truths, and hence not only is Whitman ruled out by his own measure, -but Kipling also, for again it needs the broadly cultivated mind to -take at his true and at his relative value a poet like Kipling. The -common mind might be familiar with some poem of occasion, the English -laborer might be found singing “Tommy Atkins;” but Kipling’s finer -shadings would escape in the beat of his galloping tunes and in the -touch-and-go of his subjects. - -If, then, Kipling, who outmoderns the moderns in singing what is -presumably a song fit for men, and if Whitman, who is as robustly, -democratically American as a poet can well be, and trumpeting ever -that note,—if these poets do not reach the typical man, if they are -not the ones to whom the stalwart laborer comes, or the busy man of -affairs, there must be a need anterior to that of which they sing; -song must spell something else besides virility, democracy, -achievement. It evidently is not the men who _do_, not the men who -_act_, that write “the song of fact” for the laborer and the great -class of our strong, sincere, common folk. They do not want the song -of fact more than do we; they have no other dream to trace than have -we. They want the primal things,—love, hope, beauty, the transforming -ideal; they want the carbon of their daily experience turned to the -crystal; and for this they go to a poet like Burns, who spoke the -universal tongue, who took the common ideals and touched them simply, -tenderly, not strenuously, to a new form at the will of his fancy. You -shall find the boatman or the woodsman knowing his Burns, often his -Shakespeare, for he is quick to grasp the human element, or his Scott, -for he loves romance, when the strident cry of a Kipling, or of a -modern idealist singing of democracy, or of the newer needs of the -laborer himself, will be wholly lost on him; and hence this note -that one is meeting so often in the recent poets seems to me to be a -false and superfluous one. - -The “song that is fit for men” is _any_ song that has the essence of -truth and beauty in it, and no other _is_ fit for men, no matter where -sung. We have not evolved a new _genus homo_ by our conquest of arms; -our democracy is not changing human nature; we need virility in song, -as Mr. Knowles has said in the earlier poem quoted; we need that -“cosmic stuff whence primitive feeling glows,” but we need beauty and -spirituality to shape it. Poetry must minister first of all to the -inner life. Tennyson and Browning were not concerned with matters of -empire, or the passing issues of the day; they were occupied with the -essential things,—things of humanity and of the soul, that shall -outlast empire, democracy, or time. Heaven forefend that our bards -shall spring from a race - - Unkempt, athletic, rude, - Rough as the prairies, tameless as the sea, - -rather let them spring from the very ripest, richest-natured class of -men and women, not servile to custom, but having the breadth of -vision, the poise, the fine and harmonious development that flowers -from the highest cultivation, whether in the schools or in life. It -did not emasculate the work of Browning or Milton or Goethe, nor of -our own Lowell, or many another, that he had the most profound -enrichment that education and traditional culture could give him. -Originality is not crushed by cultivation, nor will native impulse go -far without it. The need is of a poet who shall divine the underlying -harmonies of life, who shall stimulate and develop the higher nature, -and disclose the alchemizing truth that shall transmute the gross ore -of experience into the fine metal of character and spiritual -beauty,—such a poet as Mr. Knowles himself may become when his -idealism shall have taken on that inner sight of the mystic which now -he shows so definitely in certain phases of his work. - -He is readier in general to see life’s benign face than its malign -one, even though shapen by pain and guilt; and this brings us to the -group of poems from his new volume, _Love Triumphant_, turning upon -Sin and Remorse, and presenting an element of human passion at once -the most provocative of degradation and the most susceptible of -spiritual elevation. - -Whitman approached this theme from the cosmic standpoint as he would -approach any of the universalities of life, not specifically from the -spiritual side, in its destiny-shaping effects. It is from this side -that Mr. Knowles essays its consideration, presenting chiefly the -reactive, retributive phase of guilt,—the sudden spiritual isolation -of the soul that has sinned, as if the golden doors that opened on the -world had transformed to iron bars imprisoning the soul within its -cell of memory. This sense of detachment, of having unwittingly -plucked oneself from the flowering beauty of life, of being -irrevocably cut off from sap and stem, which is the first and most -palpable phase of guilt, predominates in several of the poems. To -consider it first, then, the stanzas called “Lost” may be cited as -illustrative: - - Night scattered gold-dust in the eyes of Earth, - My heart was blinded by the excess of stars - As, filled with youth and joy, I kept the Way. - - The solitary and unweaponed Sun - Slew all the hosts of darkness with a smile, - And it was Dawn. And still I kept the Way. - - The winds, those hounds that only God can leash, - Bayed on my track, and made the morning wild - With loud confusion, but I kept the Way. - - The hours climbed high. Peace, where the zenith broods, - Fell, a blue feather from the wings of Heav’n. - Lo! it was Noon. And still I kept the Way. - - At length one met me as my footsteps flagged,— - Within her eyes oblivion, on her lips - Delirious dreams—and I forgot the Way. - - And still we wander—who knows whitherward, - Our sandals torn, in either face despair, - Passion burnt out—God! I have lost the Way! - -Here is strong and vivid imagery, especially in the third stanza, - - The winds, those hounds that only God can leash, - -which is a bold and fine stroke not merely in its metaphorical -phrasing, but as a symbol of human passions. The entire poem is a -vivid piece of symbolism; it is, however, but one phase of the -subject, and in “One Woman” and “Sin’s Foliage” one comes again face -to face with the same phase, with that terrible memory-haunted -eidolon, the visage of one’s own defaced soul. It is in the poem -“Betrayed” that a truer perspective begins to be manifest, of which -one stanza— - - Yet were his hands and conscience clean; - Some monstrous Folly rose unseen - To teach him crimes he could not mean— - -introduces a truth that strikes deeper than the mere spell of -impulse,—a truth that suggests the mystery of election in crime: -whether one is wholly responsible for the choice which in a moment -becomes the pivotal event of his destiny, or whether what Maeterlinck -has called the “conniving voices that we cherish at the depths of us” -summoned the event, and impelled him inevitably toward its hazard; -and, further, whether these voices are not often the commissioned -voices, calling one thus to arouse from the somnolence of his soul. On -the morrow of the hour in which he has - - … fallen from Heav’n to Hell - In one mad moment’s fateful spell, - -and finds himself in the isolation of his own spirit,—consciousness -will awaken, life will be perceived, sympathy will be born, and Pain, -with the daily transfiguring face, will companion him, until in the -years he again meet Love and the other fair shapes of his destiny. -Since no one remains in the hell to which he has fallen, but by his -own choosing, Life rebukes the Art that leaves this sense of finality; -for the hour of tragedy is rather the beginning than the end, and -often so manifestly the birth of the soul into spiritual consciousness -that it may well seem that apparent sin is the mere agency of the -higher forces of the nature, the shock that displaces ignorance and -smug self-complacency and both humanizes and deifies the soul. - -In other poems of the group, however, the developing power of sin, and -the remedial forces which it evokes for the renewal of the nature, are -dwelt upon, so that the poems are redeemed at the last from the -impression of hopeless finality which obtained in the earlier ones. - -Few of the younger poets have a more vital and personal conviction of -spiritual things than Mr. Knowles, and its evolution is interesting to -note. There is abundant evidence in his earlier verse that he was bred -after the strictest letter of the law; but while his faith was “fixed -to form,” it was seeking “centre everywhere,” and the later volume -widens to an encompassing view worthy the vision of a poet,—the view -that finds nothing impervious to the irradiation of spirit. It is -variously sung, but most nobly, perhaps, in the following poem: - - In buds upon some Aaron’s rod - The childlike ancient saw his God; - Less credulous, more believing, we - Read in the grass—Divinity. - - From Horeb’s bush the Presence spoke - To earlier faiths and simpler folk; - But now each bush that sweeps our fence - Flames with the awful Immanence! - - To old Zacchæus in his tree - What mattered leaves and botany? - His sycamore was but a seat - Whence he could watch that hallowed street. - - But now to us each elm and pine - Is vibrant with the Voice divine, - Not only from but in the bough - Our larger creed beholds Him now. - - To the true faith, bark, sap and stem - Are wonderful as Bethlehem; - No hill nor brook nor field nor herd - But mangers the incarnate Word! - - * * * * * - - Again we touch the healing hem - In Nazareth or Jerusalem; - We trace again those faultless years; - The cross commands our wondering tears. - - Yet if to us the Spirit writes - On Morning’s manuscript and Night’s, - In gospels of the growing grain, - Epistles of the pond and plain, - - In stars, in atoms, as they roll - Each tireless round its occult pole, - In wing and worm and fin and fleece, - In the wise soil’s surpassing peace,— - - Thrice ingrate he whose only look - Is backward focused on the Book, - Neglectful what the Presence saith, - Though He be near as blood and breath! - - The only atheist is one - Who hears no voice in wind or sun, - Believer in some primal curse, - Deaf in God’s loving universe! - -Mr. Knowles has not embraced the diffusive faith that has no faith to -stay it, but is endeavoring to read the newer meaning into the older -truths, which is the present-day office of singer and seer. In the -matter of personal valor, of optimistic, intrepid mood, Mr. Knowles’ -work is altogether commendable. He awaits with buoyant cheer what lies -beyond the turn o’ the road. His poem “Fear,” from the first -collection, was widely quoted at the time because of its heartening -tone, and in his new volume, “A Challenge,” “A Twofold Prayer,” and -many another sounds the same invincible note. “Laus Mortis” is a hymn -to death holding within it the truer acceptation of that natural and -therefore kindly change: - - Nay, why should I fear Death, - Who gives us life, and in exchange takes breath? - - He is like cordial Spring - That lifts above the soil each buried thing; - - Like autumn, kind and brief— - The frost that chills the branches frees the leaf; - - Like winter’s stormy hours - That spread their fleece of snow to save the flowers. - - The lordliest of all things, - Life lends us only feet, Death gives us wings. - - Fearing no covert thrust, - Let me walk onward, armed in valiant trust; - - Dreading no unseen knife, - Across Death’s threshold step from life to life! - - O all ye frightened folk, - Whether ye wear a crown or bear a yoke, - - Laid in one equal bed, - When once your coverlet of grass is spread, - - What daybreak need you fear?— - The Love will rule you there that guides you here! - - Where Life, the sower, stands, - Scattering the ages from his swinging hands, - - Thou waitest, Reaper lone, - Until the multitudinous grain hath grown. - - Scythe-bearer, when Thy blade - Harvests my flesh, let me be unafraid. - - God’s husbandman thou art, - In His unwithering sheaves, O bind my heart! - -Mr. Knowles’ work is virile, earnest, individual, free from -affectation or imitation; modern in spirit, recognizing the -significance of to-day, and its part in the finer realization of -to-morrow; sympathetic in feeling, and spiritual in vision. Its -limitations are such as may be trusted to time, being chiefly incident -to the earnestness noted above, which now and again borders on -didacticism. Excess of conviction is, however, a safer equipment for -art than a philosophy already parting with its enthusiasms by the -tempering of life, being more likely to undergo the shaping of -experience without losing the vital part. - - - - -XII - -ALICE BROWN - - -MISS ALICE BROWN has published but one volume of verse; but we live in -feelings, not in titles on a cover, and it is possible to prove -oneself a poet in one volume of verse, or in one poem thereof. When -Miss Brown some years ago paid this tribute at the toll-gate of song -by a small volume entitled _The Road to Castaly_, it created no -inconsiderable comment among lovers of poetry, and there were not -wanting those who saw in it as definite gifts as Miss Brown possesses -in fiction; but despite the generous recognition which the collection -won, she has not seen fit to follow it with others, and with the -exception of occasional poems in the magazines, it remains the sole -representation of this phase of her work. Yet within a range of -seventy pages she has gathered a stronger group of poems than might be -winnowed from several collections of some of those who cultivate verse -more assiduously. Nor is this to declare that from cover to cover of -her volume the inspired touch is everywhere manifest; doubtless the -seventy pages would have gained in strength by compression to fifty. -It is, however, to declare that within this compass there is a true -accomplishment, at which we shall look briefly. - -First, then, the work has personality and magnetism, bringing one at -once into sympathetic interchange with the writer. The feeling is not -insulated by the art, but is imbued with all the warmth of speech; -there are no “wires” but the live wires of vibrant words, conducting -their current of impulse directly to the reader. One feels that Miss -Brown has written verse not as a pleasant diversion, nor yet with -painful self-scrutiny, but only when her nature demanded this form of -expression, and hence the motive shapes the mechanism, rather than the -reverse. - -[Illustration: Alice Brown] - -Miss Brown’s poems are not primarily philosophical, not ethical to the -degree of being moralistic; but they have a subtly pervasive -spirituality, and in certain lyrics, such as “Hora Christi,” a rare -depth of religious emotion. They are records of moods: of the soul, of -passing life, of the psychic side of death, of the mutability of love, -of ecstatic surrender to nature, of loyalty to service,—in short, they -are poems of the intuitions and sympathies, and warm with personality. -Perhaps the most buoyant note in the book is that in celebration of -the joys of escape from town to country; from the thrall of -paving-stones and chimney-pots to the indesecrate seclusion of the -pines, where the springy pile of the woodland carpet gives forth a -pungent odor to the tread; and where, in Miss Brown’s delicate phrase, - - the ferns waver, wakened by no wind - Save the green flickering of their blossomy mind. - -To read Miss Brown’s “Morning in Camp” is to take a vacation without -stirring from one’s armchair,—a vacation by a mountain lake engirt -with pine forests, with one’s tent pitched below the “spice-budded” -firs and “shimmering birches,” guarded by - - … the mountain wall - Where the first potencies of dawning fall, - -and within sight of the shore where - - … the water laps the land, - Encircling her with charm of silvery sand; - -and where one may lie at dawn in his “tent’s white solitude,” -conscious of - - … the rapt ecstatic birth - Renewed without: the mirrored sky and earth, - Married in beauty, consonant in speech, - And uttering bliss responsive each to each. - -Miss Brown’s rapt poems in celebration of nature range from the -impassioned dignity of her stanzas picturing a “Sunrise on Mansfield -Mountain” to fancies so delicate that they seem to be caught in -gossamer meshes of song. The poems are somewhat inadaptable to -quotation, as several of the best, such as “Wood-Longing,” “Pan,” and -“Escape,” are written in stanzas whose exuberant impulse carries them -so far that they may not be excised midway without destroying a -climax. Upon a first reading of some of these periods they give one an -impression of being over-sustained; but the imagery is clear, and upon -a second reading one is likely to catch the infection of the lines and -be borne on with them to the reversal of his first judgment. -“Wood-Longing” thrills with the passion of - - … the earth - When all the ecstasy of myriad birth - Afflicts her with a rapturous shuddering, - -and celebrating escape from the thraldom of books, it demands of the -soul: - - Spirit, what wilt thou dare, - Just to be one with earth and air? - To read the writing on the river bed, - And trace God’s mystical mosaic overhead? - - * * * * * - - O incommunicable speech! - For he who reads a book may preach - A hundred sermons from its foolish rote - And rhyme reiterant on one dull note. - But he who spends an hour within the wood - Hath fed on fairy food; - And who hath eaten of the forest fruit - Is ever mute. - Nothing may he reveal. - Nature hath set her seal - Of honor on anointed lips; - And one who daring dips - His cup within her potent brew - Hath drunk of silence too. - What doth the robin say, - And what the martial jay? - Who’ll swear the bluebird’s lilt is all of love, - Or who translate the desolation of the dove? - For even in the common speech - Of feathered fellows, each to each, - Abideth still the primal mystery, - The brooding past, the germ of life to be; - And one poor weed, upspringing to the sun, - Breeds all creation’s wonder, new begun. - -“Sunrise on Mansfield Mountain,” written in fine resonant pentameter, -and building up stanza by stanza to the supreme climax of the dawn, -is, as noted above, one of the finest achievements of Miss Brown’s -volume, but one that will least bear the severing of its passages from -their place in the growing whole. It is full of notable phrases, as -that in the apostrophe,— - - O changeless guardians! O ye wizard firs! - - * * * * * - - What breath may move ye, or what breeze invite - To odorous hot lendings of the heart?— - -wherein the very pungency of the pine is infused into the words. But -more adaptable to quotation in its compactness is the lyric entitled -“Candlemas,” captivating in form and spontaneity, though no more -felicitous in fancy or rhythm than many other of her nature poems: - - O hearken, all ye little weeds - That lie beneath the snow, - (So low, dear hearts, in poverty so low!) - The sun hath risen for royal deeds, - A valiant wind the vanguard leads; - Now quicken ye, lest unborn seeds - Before ye rise and blow. - - O furry living things, adream - On winter’s drowsy breast, - (How rest ye there, how softly, safely rest!) - Arise and follow where a gleam - Of wizard gold unbinds the stream, - And all the woodland windings seem - With sweet expectance blest. - - My birds, come back! the hollow sky - Is weary for your note. - (Sweet-throat, come back! O liquid, mellow throat!) - Ere May’s soft minions hereward fly, - Shame on ye, laggards, to deny - The brooding breast, the sun-bright eye, - The tawny, shining coat! - -Mr. Archer, in his _Poets of the Younger Generation_, quotes this poem -as the gem of Miss Brown’s collection; and it certainly is a charming -lyric, but not more so to my thinking than several of an entirely -different nature, which will also in time’s trial by fire remain the -true coin. It needs a somewhat broader and deeper term, however, than -“charming” to qualify such poems as “Hora Christi,” “On Pilgrimage,” -“Seaward Bound,” “The Return,” “The Message,” “The Slanderer,” -“Lethe,” and “In Extremis,” in which life speaks a word charged with -more vital significance. “On Pilgrimage” (A. D. 1250) reveals an art -that is above praise. With only the simplest words Miss Brown has -infused into this poem the very essence of pain, of numb, bewildered -hopelessness. One feels it as a palpable atmosphere: - - My love hath turned her to another mate. - (O grief too strange for tears!) - So must I make the barren earth my home; - So do I still on feeble questing roam, - An outcast from mine own unfriending gate, - Through the wan years. - - My love hath rid her of my patient heart. - (Wake not, O frozen breast!) - Yet still there’s one to pour her oil and wine, - And all life’s banquet counteth most divine. - O Thou, Who also hadst in joy no part, - Give me Thy rest! - - What strength have I to cleanse Thy stolen tomb, - For Christendom’s release? - Naked, at last, of hope and trust am I, - Too weak to sue for human charity. - A beggar to Thy holy shrine I come. - Grant me but peace! - -And now in contrast with these exquisitely pathetic lines, to show -that the tragic side of life is not alone interpreted in Miss Brown’s -verse, and that she sees the temperamental contrasts of passion, -witness the cavalier parting of this “West-Country Lover,” to whom the -light o’ love is too fatuous a gleam to risk one’s way in following. -The dash and spirit of these lines are worthy a seventeenth-century -gallant: - - Then, lady, at last thou art sick of my sighing. - Good-bye! - So long as I sue, thou wilt still be denying? - Good-bye! - Ah, well! shall I vow then to serve thee forever, - And swear no unkindness our kinship can sever? - Nay, nay, dear my lass! here’s an end of endeavor. - Good-bye! - - Yet let no sweet ruth for my misery grieve thee. - Good-bye! - The man who has loved knows as well how to leave thee. - Good-bye! - The gorse is enkindled, there’s bloom on the heather, - And love is my joy, but so too is fair weather; - I still ride abroad, though we ride not together. - Good-bye! - - My horse is my mate; let the wind be my master. - Good-bye! - Though Care may pursue, yet my hound follows faster. - Good-bye! - The red deer’s a-tremble in coverts unbroken. - He hears the hoof-thunder; he scents the death-token. - Shall I mope at home, under vows never spoken? - Good-bye! - - The brown earth’s my book, and I ride forth to read it. - Good-bye! - The stream runneth fast, but my will shall outspeed it. - Good-bye! - I love thee, dear lass, but I hate the hag Sorrow. - As sun follows rain, and to-night has its morrow, - So I’ll taste of joy, though I steal, beg, or borrow! - Good-bye! - -This is as admirable a bit of nonchalance as Wither’s, - - Shall I, wasting in despair, - Die because a woman’s fair? - -or Suckling’s, - - Why so pale and wan, fond lover, - Prithee, why so pale? - -with its salient advice to the languishing adorer. - -Miss Brown’s small volume is by no means lacking in variety, either in -theme or form; it is full of spontaneous music, rarely forcing the -note in any lyric inspiration. In the sonnet she is less at ease: here -one feels the effort, the mechanism; but only four sonnets are -included in the volume, which shows her to be a true critic. There are -certain poems that might, perhaps, with equal advantage have been -eliminated, such as the over-musical numbers to Dian and Endymion; but -in the main, Miss Brown has done her own blue-pencilling, and _The -Road to Castaly_, as stated in the beginning, maintains a fine and -even grade of workmanship. - -In such poems as are touched to tenderness and reverence, half with -the sweetness and half with the pain of life, Miss Brown makes her -truest appeal. The fine ideality, the spiritual fealty of her nature, -as shown in her work, always relates itself to one on the human side. -It is not the fealty that shames a weaker nature by its rigid -steadfastness, but that in which one sees his own wavering strife -reflected. Her lines called “The Artisan,”[2] written since the -publication of her volume, are instinct with such feeling as comment -would profane. One can but feel, with a quick pang of sympathy, that -he, too, makes the appeal: - - O God, my master God, look down and see - If I am making what Thou wouldst of me. - Fain might I lift my hands up in the air - From the defiant passion of my prayer; - Yet here they grope on this cold altar stone, - Graving the words I think I should make known. - Mine eyes are Thine. Yea, let me not forget, - Lest with unstaunchèd tears I leave them wet, - Dimming their faithful power, till they not see - Some small, plain task that might be done for Thee. - My feet, that ache for paths of flowery bloom, - Halt steadfast in the straitness of this room. - Though they may never be on errands sent, - Here shall they stay, and wait Thy full content. - And my poor heart, that doth so crave for peace, - Shall beat until Thou bid its beating cease. - So, Thou dear master God, look down and see - Whether I do Thy bidding heedfully. - -These lines well illustrate the fact that true emotion is not literary -nor self-observant, and does not cast about for some rare image in -which to enshrine itself. Here is the simplest Saxon, and wholly -without ornament, yet who could be unconscious of the heart-beat of -life in the words? In her poem, “In Extremis,” one is moved by the -same intensity of feeling expressed in the litany imploring -deliverance from fear. - -Of the more purely devotional poems, “Hora Christi” is perhaps the -most reverent, and instinct with delicate simplicity. It is a song of -the spirit, interpreting a mood whose springs are deep in the pain of -life, but whose hidden wells have turned to sweetness and healing. It -is not philosophically penetrative, but a tender, beautiful song warm -with sincerity of feeling: - - Sweet is the time for joyous folk - Of gifts and minstrelsy; - Yet I, O lowly-hearted One, - Crave but Thy company. - On lonesome road, beset with dread, - My questing lies afar. - I have no light, save in the east - The gleaming of Thy star. - - In cloistered aisles they keep to-day - Thy feast, O living Lord! - With pomp of banner, pride of song, - And stately sounding word. - Mute stand the kings of power and place, - While priests of holy mind - Dispense Thy blessed heritage - Of peace to all mankind. - - I know a spot where budless twigs - Are bare above the snow, - And where sweet winter-loving birds - Flit softly to and fro; - There with the sun for altar-fire, - The earth for kneeling-place, - The gentle air for chorister, - Will I adore Thy face. - - Loud, underneath the great blue sky, - My heart shall pæan sing, - The gold and myrrh of meekest love - Mine only offering. - Bliss of Thy birth shall quicken me; - And for Thy pain and dole - Tears are but vain, so I will keep - The silence of the soul. - -In glancing over _The Road to Castaly_, one notes many poems that -might perhaps have represented it better than those chosen, such as -“The Return,” “The Unseen Fellowship,” “Mariners,” “Forewarned,” and -“Seaward Bound;” but sufficient have been cited to show the quality of -the volume and the sympathetic touch which Miss Brown possesses. Her -nature poems range from the most exuberant fancy to a Keats-like -richness and ripeness of phrase; and her miscellaneous verse from the -tender, reverential note of the lyric last quoted to the trenchant -scathing lines of “The Slanderer.” It is, in brief, such work as -combines feeling and distinction, and leaves one spiritually farther -on his way than it found him. - - - [2] Copyright, 1903, by Harper and Brothers. - - - - -XIII - -RICHARD BURTON - - -ABOUT a decade ago there came from the press a demure little book clad -soberly in Quaker garb, and hight gravely and mysteriously, _Dumb In -June_. The title alone would have piqued one’s curiosity as to the -contents of the volume, but the name of the author, Richard Burton, -was already known from magazine association with most of the songs in -the newly published collection, and also as literary editor of the -“Hartford Courant,” whence his well-considered criticisms were coming -to be quoted. - -There was, then, a circle of initiates into whose hands _Dumb In June_ -soon made its way, and quite as unerringly, in most cases, to their -hearts, and certain of these will tell you that _Dumb In June_ still -represents him most adequately; that it has a buoyancy and lyric joy -such as less often distinguishes his later work; and this point is -well taken from the consideration of magnetic touch and disillusioned -fancy; but is it quite reasonable to demand that “the earth and every -common sight” shall continue to be “apparelled in celestial light” to -the eyes of the poet when the years have brought the sober coloring to -our own? that Art shall be winged with the glory and the dream when -Life’s wings droop to the dust? Would it be the truest art that should -communicate only this impulse? Mr. Burton has not thought so: he has -set himself to incorporate, in the life that he touches, the glory and -the dream; to lift the weight, if ever so little, from the laden -wings, and he uses his gifts to that end. - -This is not an ideal that can embody itself in lightsome, dawn-fresh -songs, as those that came, unsullied of pain, inviolate in hope, from -out his nature-taught years; but it is an ideal for which one should -barter, if need be, the mere lyric joy of that earlier time. To divine -the dumb emotion, the unexpectant desire, of the man of the streets, -and to become his interpreter, is a nobler achievement than to catch -in delicate fancies the airiest thoughts of Pan. The poet who remains -merely the voice of the wood-god, or the voice of the mystic, or the -voice of the scholar dreaming and aloof, may float a song over the -treetops, but it will not be known at the hearth, which is the final -test. Not to anticipate Mr. Burton’s later ideal, however, let us -return to _Dumb In June_ and go with him upon the way of nature, -unshadowed and elate. - -It is interesting to note, in studying the formative time of many -poets, that nature is the first mistress of their vows, and a less -capricious one than they shall find again; hence their fealty to her -and their ardor of surrender. Life has not yet come by, and paused to -whisper the one word that shall become the logos of the soul; truth is -still in the cosmos, the absolute, and one despairs of reducing it to -the relative as he might of detaching a pencil of light from the rays -of the sun. Nature alone represents the evolved intelligence, the -harmony, the soul of the cosmos, and its ideal made real in law; -where, then, shall one begin his quest for truth more fittingly than -at the gate of nature, where Beauty is the portress and Beauty is the -guide? - -[Illustration: Richard Burton] - -Mr. Burton feels the vitality, the personality, of objects in the -outer world. There is no such thing in his conception as inert matter; -it is all pulsing with life and sensibility. To him May is a - - Sweet comer - With the mood of a love-plighted lass, - -and henceforth we picture her as coming blithely by with flower-filled -hands. This glimpsing of the May is from one of Mr. Burton’s later -songs, “The Quest of Summer,”—a poem full of color and atmosphere. -After deploring the spring’s withholding, it thrills to this note of -exultation: - - But it came, - In a garment of sensitive flame - In the west, and a royal blue sky overhead, - With exuberant breath and the bloom of all things - Having wonders and wings, - Being risen elate from the dead. - Yea, it came with a flush - Of pied flowers, and a turbulent rush - Of spring-loosened waters, and an odorous hush - At nightfall,—and then I was glad - With the gladness of one who for militant months has been sad. - -The very breath of spring is in this; one inhales it as he would a -quickening aroma; it thrills him with the sensuous delight in the -color, the perfume, the warmth, of the expanding air; and what -delicate feeling for the atmospheric value of words is that which -condenses a May twilight into “an odorous hush at nightfall.” The -words “odorous hush,” in this connection, have drawn together by -magnetic attraction; substitute for them their apparent equivalents, -“perfumed silence,” “fragrant quiet,” and the atmosphere has -evaporated as breath from a glass; but an “odorous hush” conveys the -sense of that suspended hour of a spring twilight when day pauses as -if hearkening, and silence falls palpably around,—that spiritual hour -when the flowers offer up their evening sacrifice at the coming of the -dew. - -Apropos of the feeling for words and their niceties of distinction as -infusing what we term atmosphere into description, it may be said in -passing that while Mr. Burton’s sense of these values which is so keen -in his prose does not always stand him in equal stead in his poetry, -it is seldom lacking in his songs of nature. - -One may dip into the out-of-door verse at random and come away with a -picture; witness this “Meadow Fancy”: - - In the meadows yonder the wingéd wind - Makes billows along the grain; - With their sequence swift they bring to mind - The swash of the open main, - - Till I smell the pungent brine, and hear— - Mine eyes grown dim—the cry - Of the sailor lads, and feel vague fear - Of the storm-wrack in the sky. - -While the metaphorical idea in these strophes is not new, they record -with freehand strokes one of those suddenly suggestive moods that -nature assumes, one of the swift similitudes she flashes before us as -with conscious delight. Mr. Burton’s nature-outlook is all open-air -vision; no office desk looms darkly behind it, as is sometimes the -case in his other verse. It is the sort of inspiration that descends -upon one when he is afoot with his vision, roaming afield with beauty. -A leaf torn hastily from a notebook serves to catch the fleeting -spell; magnetism tips the pencil; and ink and type, those dread -non-conductors of impulse, cannot retard or neutralize its current. -This is, in a word, the charm that rests upon the little volume, _Dumb -In June_, in its various subjects. It would be idle to assert that it -is as strong work as Mr. Burton has done; but it is vivid and -magnetic, and touched but lightly with the _weltschmerz_ which life is -sure to cast upon maturer work. There is pain, but it is merely -artist-pain, in the ode that gives its name to the collection. - -Among the few love poems in Mr. Burton’s first volume, “The Awakening” -is one of the truest in feeling; “Values” one of the blithest and -daintiest; “Still Days and Stormy,” reminiscent of Emily Dickinson in -manner, one of the most delicate, catching in charming phrase one of -the unanalyzed moods of love. The earlier volume has also a -captivating poem in the lighter vein, that sings itself into the -memory by its lilting rhythm and graceful rhyme-scheme, as well as by -its subject. It is the story of Shakespeare’s going a-wooing “Across -the Fields to Anne”: - - How often in the summer-tide, - His graver business set aside, - Has stripling Will, the thoughtful-eyed, - As to the pipe of Pan, - Stepped blithesomely with lover’s pride - Across the fields to Anne. - - It must have been a merry mile, - This summer stroll by hedge and stile, - With sweet foreknowledge all the while - How sure the pathway ran - To dear delights of kiss and smile, - Across the fields to Anne. - - The silly sheep that graze to-day, - I wot, they let him go his way, - Nor once looked up, as who should say: - “It is a seemly man.” - For many lads went wooing aye - Across the fields to Anne. - - The oaks, they have a wiser look; - Mayhap they whispered to the brook: - “The world by him shall yet be shook, - It is in nature’s plan; - Though now he fleets like any rook - Across the fields to Anne.” - - And I am sure, that on some hour - Coquetting soft ’twixt sun and shower, - He stooped and broke a daisy-flower - With heart of tiny span, - And bore it as a lover’s dower - Across the fields to Anne. - - While from her cottage garden-bed - She plucked a jasmine’s goodlihede, - To scent his jerkins brown instead; - Now since that love began, - What luckier swain than he who sped - Across the fields to Anne? - -_Dumb In June_ has many foregleams of the wider vision which -distinguishes Mr. Burton’s present work, as shown in his sonnet upon -the Christ-head by Angelo, in “Day Laborers,” and in that noble poem, -“Mortis Dignitas,” imbued with reverence and touched with the -simplicity of the verities. It must be appraised with the best work of -his pen, not only for its theme, but for the direct and unadorned word -and measure so integral with the thought: - - Here lies a common man. His horny hands, - Crossed meekly as a maid’s upon his breast, - Show marks of toil, and by his general dress - You judge him to have been an artisan. - Doubtless, could all his life be written out, - The story would not thrill nor start a tear; - He worked, laughed, loved, and suffered in his time, - And now rests peacefully, with upturned face - Whose look belies all struggle in the past. - A homely tale; yet, trust me, I have seen - The greatest of the earth go stately by, - While shouting multitudes beset the way, - With less of awe. The gap between a king - And me, a nameless gazer in the crowd, - Seemed not so wide as that which stretches now - Betwixt us two, this dead one and myself. - Untitled, dumb, and deedless, yet he is - Transfigured by a touch from out the skies - Until he wears, with all-unconscious grace, - The strange and sudden Dignity of Death. - -This is a fitting transition to _Lyrics of Brotherhood_, which, -together with his latest volume, presents the phase of Mr. Burton’s -work most representative of his feeling toward life. Any poet worthy -of the name will come at last to a vision that only his eyes can see. -Life will rise before him in a different semblance from that she -presents to another; and if Beauty has lured him on, votary to that he -might not wholly see, Life’s yearning face wears no disguise, and, -once having looked upon it with seeing eyes, it is an image not to be -effaced. There are many who look and never see,—the majority, perhaps. -Their eyes are holden by the shapes that cross the inner sight, by -hope and memory and their own ideal. They shall see only by one of -those “flashes struck from midnight” of a personal tragedy—and often -enough we gain our vision thus. - -There is a penetrative insight, that of the social economist, for -example, that may possess no ray of sympathetic divination. It may -probe to the heart of a condition, correlate causes and tendencies and -divine effects, all from a scientific motive as professional as the -practice of law, and as keen and cold. One may even be an avowed -philanthropist and never come in sight of a human soul, as will the -poet who looks upon the individual not as a case to be classified and -tabulated, but as one walking step to step with him, though more -heavily, whom he may reach out and touch now and then with the -quickening hand of sympathy, and whose load he may bear bewhiles on -the journey. - -Such a poet is Mr. Burton, whose nature is shapen to one image with -his fellows. To him literature is not an entity to be weighed only in -the scales of beauty by the balances of Flaubert; it is to-day’s and -to-morrow’s speech. In his prose, especially, this directness is -marked; but in his poems one feels rather the inner relation with -their spirit, for the magnetism of touch is less communicative than in -the more flexible medium of prose. What is communicative, however, is -the feeling that Mr. Burton is living at the heart of things where the -fusion is taking place that makes us one. _Lyrics of Brotherhood_ is a -genuine clasp of hand to hand, nor is he dismayed by the grime of the -hand, for the primal unities are primal sanctities to him. Longing, -strife, defeat, achievement, are all interpreted to him of personal -emotion, solvent in personal sympathy. - -_Lyrics of Brotherhood_ opens with a poem that redeems from odium one -opprobrious symbol as old as time. It is that catch-penny epithet, -“black sheep,” that we bandy about with such flippancy, tossing it as -loose change in a character appraisal and little recking what -truth-valuation may lie behind it. It is good to feel that the impulse -to redeem this symbol came to Mr. Burton and wrought so well within -him, for “Black Sheep” is one of his truest inspirations in feeling -and expression: - - From their folded mates they wander far, - Their ways seem harsh and wild; - They follow the beck of a baleful star, - Their paths are dream-beguiled. - - Yet haply they sought but a wider range, - Some loftier mountain-slope, - And little recked of the country strange - Beyond the gates of hope. - - And haply a bell with a luring call - Summoned their feet to tread - Midst the cruel rocks, where the deep pitfall - And the lurking snare are spread. - - Maybe, in spite of their tameless days - Of outcast liberty, - They’re sick at heart for the homely ways - Where their gathered brothers be. - - And oft at night, when the plains fall dark - And the hills loom large and dim, - For the Shepherd’s voice they mutely hark, - And their souls go out to him. - - Meanwhile, “Black sheep! Black sheep!” we cry, - Safe in the inner fold; - And maybe they hear, and wonder why, - And marvel, out in the cold. - -Throughout Mr. Burton’s work there is a warm feeling for the simple -tendernesses, the unblazoned heroisms of life; the homely joys, the -homely valors, the unknown consecrations, the unconfessed -aspirations,—in a word, for all that songless melody of the common -soul whose note we do not catch in the public clamor. There is a -tendency, however, in his later work that, from an artistic -standpoint, is carried too far,—the tendency to analogize. Everything -in life presents an analogy to him who is alert for it; and the habit -of looking for analogies and symbols and making poems thereon grows -upon one with the fatal facility of punning, upon a punster. A symbol, -or the subtler and more profound analysis that seeks the causal -relation of dissimilar things, which we term analogy, must have the -magic of revelation; it must flash upon the mind some similitude -unthought or unguessed. Emerson is the past-master of this symbolistic -magic; they bring him rubies, and they become to him souls, of - - Friends to friends unknown: - Tides that should warm each neighboring life - Are locked in frozen stone. - -Here is the eye of the revelator, for who, looking upon rubies, would -have seen in them what Emerson saw, and yet what a truth bides at the -heart of this symbol! - -Mr. Burton has several analogies, such as “On the Line,” “North -Light,” and “Black Sheep,” quoted above, that are excellently wrought; -indeed, it is not so much the manner in which the analogy is -elaborated that one would criticise, as the frequently too-obvious -nature of it. - -The danger to a poet in dropping too often into analogy is that he -will become a singer of effects, a watcher of manifestations, and -forget to look for the gleam within himself and make it the light of -his seeing. If poetry become too much a matter of observation, of -report, vitality goes from it; for imagination is stultified and -emotion quenched, and poetry at its best is a union of imagination and -emotion. Mr. Burton’s poems in the main escape this indictment, but -their danger lies along this line. His perception of identities is so -acute, his sympathy so catholic, that not only is nothing human alien -to him, but there is nothing in which he cannot find a theme for -poetry. For illustration, there is an imaginative beauty in the symbol -of the homing bird, but its artistic value is lost from over-use. Mr. -Burton has some pleasing lines upon it, reaching in the final couplet -a stronger tone, but from the nature of the case they cannot possess -any fresh suggestion; on the contrary in such lines as “Nostalgia,” -“In The Shadows,” “The First Song,” “If We Had The Time,” though less -poetic in theme, there is a personal note; one feels back of them the -great weariness, the futile yearning of life. Some of the elemental -emotion is in them, the personal appeal that is so much Mr. Burton’s -note when he does not give himself too much to things without. Even -though one use the visible event but as a sign of the spirit, as the -objective husk of the subjective truth, it is a vision which, if -over-indulged, leads at length away from the living, the creative -passion within. One philosophizes, one contemplates, but the angel -descends less often to trouble the waters within one’s own being, and -it is, after all, for this movement that one should chiefly watch. - -_Message and Melody_, Mr. Burton’s latest collection, opens with -perhaps his strongest and most representative poem, “The Song of the -Unsuccessful.” It is a poem provocative of thought, and upon which -innumerable queries follow. Its opening lines utter a heresy against -modern thinking; our friends, the Christian Scientists and Mental -Scientists and Spiritual Scientists, would at once cross swords with -Mr. Burton and wage valiant conflict over the initial statement that -God has “barred” from any one the “gifts that are good to hold.” -Indeed, the entire poem would come under their indictment for the same -reason. But something would be won from the conflict; the stuff from -which thought is made is in the poem. In the mean time let us have it -before we consider it further. Here are the types marshalled before -us; we recognize them all as they appear: - - We are the toilers from whom God barred - The gifts that are good to hold. - We meant full well, and we tried full hard, - And our failures were manifold. - - And we are the clan of those whose kin - Were a millstone dragging them down. - Yea, we had to sweat for our brother’s sin - And lose the victor’s crown. - - The seeming-able, who all but scored, - From their teeming tribe we come: - What was there wrong with us, O Lord, - That our lives were dark and dumb? - - The men ten-talented, who still - Strangely missed of the goal, - Of them we are: it seems Thy will - To harrow some in soul. - - We are the sinners, too, whose lust - Conquered the higher claims; - We sat us prone in the common dust, - And played at the devil’s games. - - We are the hard-luck folk, who strove - Zealously, but in vain: - We lost and lost, while our comrades throve, - And still we lost again. - - We are the doubles of those whose way - Was festal with fruits and flowers; - Body and brain we were sound as they, - But the prizes were not ours. - - A mighty army our full ranks make; - We shake the graves as we go; - The sudden stroke and the slow heartbreak, - They both have brought us low. - - And while we are laying life’s sword aside, - Spent and dishonored and sad, - Our epitaph this, when once we have died, - “The weak lie here, and the bad.” - - We wonder if this can be really the close, - Life’s fever cooled by death’s trance; - And we cry, though it seem to our dearest of foes, - “God give us another chance!” - -The ease of the poem, the crisp Anglo-Saxon which it uses, the -forthright stating of the case for the weaker side, and the humanity -underlying it, are admirable; and, further, from an artistic -standpoint it is a stronger piece of work than it would have been had -its philosophy chimed better with modern thinking. The unsuccessful -are speaking; their view-point and not necessarily the author’s is -presented. To have tacked on a clause additional, with a hint of the -inner laws that govern success, might have saved the philosophy from -impeachment as to falling back upon Providence; but it would have been -a decidedly false note put into the mouth of the unsuccessful. We may -say at once that - - The men ten-talented who still - Strangely missed of the goal, - -were the Amiels who suffered paralysis of the will to benumb them, -rather than those whom it was the will of the Creator to “harrow in -soul;” but it would scarcely be expected of the Amiels themselves to -analyze their deficiencies thus openly to the multitude. Impotence of -will, however, is not at the root of all failure; who can deny that -there is - - The clan of those whose kin - Were a millstone dragging them down; - -that there are - - The hard-luck folk who strove - Zealously, but in vain; - -and - - The seeming-able, who all but scored, - -who put forth apparently more effort to score than did many of the -victors, but who were waylaid by some invidious circumstance, or who -failed to “grasp the skirts of happy chance” as the flying goddess -passed them? - -Mr. Burton’s poem is too broad to discuss in the limits of a brief -sketch; it would furnish a text for the sociologist. All the -complexities of modern conditions lie back of its plaint, which -becomes an arraignment. One feels that if God be not within the -shadow, he should at least have given Responsibility and Will surer -means of keeping watch above their own. The Omaric figure of the Wheel -“busied with despite” rises before one as a symbol of this whirling -strife where only the strongest may cling, and where the swift -revolving thing, having thrown the weakest off, makes of them a -cushion for its turning; or, in Omar’s phrase, “It speeds to grind -upon the open wound.” - -This is the apparent fact; but within it as axle to the Wheel is the -law upon which it rotates, the law of individual choice. Each was -given his supreme gift; his word was whispered to him; if he failed to -hear it, or heed it, or express it in the predestined way, the flying -Wheel casts him to the void, but the law is not impeached thereby. -Outside this law, however, as spokes to the Wheel, are the innumerable -radiations of human laws and conditions, so that one may scarcely obey -the primary command of his nature if he would, and often loses sight -of it as the principle upon which his destiny is revolving. Mr. -Burton’s poem goes beyond the cold-blooded outlook upon the -unsuccessful as merely those who are cast from the Wheel, and presents -the truer view that they are by no means always the incompetents or -degenerates: - - We are the doubles of those whose way - Was festal with fruits and flowers; - Body and brain we were sound as they, - But the prizes were not ours. - -Why? Let the sociologist or the psychologist determine; in the mean -time we have the quickened sympathy that follows upon the poem. - -_Message and Melody_ has a group of songs turning upon some music -theme; of these “Second Fiddle” is the most notable. “In A Theatre” -discloses a narrative vein and shows that Mr. Burton has a keen sense -of the dramatic in daily life. He has for some time been working upon -a group of narrative poems with a prologue connecting them, which are -soon to be issued, and which, judging from the fugitive examples in -his other volumes, will disclose an interesting phase of his talent. - -To leave the impression of Mr. Burton’s work that is most -characteristic,—the impression of its tenderness, its sympathy, its -emphasis upon the essential things,—one can scarcely do better than -to summarize it in his own well-known lines, “The Human Touch”: - - High thoughts and noble in all lands - Help me; my soul is fed by such. - But ah, the touch of lips and hands,— - The human touch! - Warm, vital, close, life’s symbols dear,— - These need I most, and now, and here. - - - - -XIV - -CLINTON SCOLLARD - - -THAT genial and delicate satirist, Miss Agnes Repplier, laments in one -of her clever essays that our modern poets incline to dwell upon the -sombre side of things, and hence contribute so little to the cheer of -life. One cannot but wonder what poetry Miss Repplier has been -reading, for our own acquaintance with the song of to-day has been so -much the opposite that it is difficult on the spur of the moment to -recall any poet of the present group in America whose work is not in -the main wholesome and heartening and who is not facing toward the -sun. To be sure, there must be the relief of shade, lest the light -glare; but they who journey to Castaly are in general cheerful -wayfarers, taking gladly the gift of the hours and rendering the Giver -a song, and among the blithest of them is Clinton Scollard, to whom -life is always smilingly envisaged, and to whom, whether spring or -autumn betide, it is still the “sweet o’ the year.” - -[Illustration: Clinton Scollard] - -If Mr. Scollard’s way has ever been “through dolor and dread, over -crags and morasses,” he is too much the optimist to let the fact be -known, or, better still, to recognize it as such; for we see what our -own eyes reflect from within, and it is certain that Mr. Scollard’s -outlook upon life is governed by the inherent conviction that her ways -are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace. Possibly this -conviction would have more value to the less assured nature if the -testimony of its winning were set down as a strength-giving force by -the way, as we incline in daily life to undervalue the amiability and -cheer which are matters of birthright rather than of overcoming; but -this is a standard narrow in itself and wide of the issue at stake, -which is so much cheer _per se_, whether the fortunate dower of -nature, or the alchemic result of experience; nor may one draw too -definite a line between the temperamental gift and the spiritual -acquisition, especially when the psychology of literature furnishes -the only data. It is sufficient to note the result in the work, and -its bearing upon the art which shapes it. To Mr. Scollard, then, -“Life’s enchanted cup” not only “sparkles at the brim;” but when he -lifts it to his lips a rainbow arches in its depths, and he has -communicated to his song the flash of sunshine and color sparkling in -the clearness of his own draught of life. - -Mr. Scollard is almost wholly an objective poet, and by method a -painter. His palette is ever ready for the picture furnished him at -every turn, and hence his several volumes relating to the Orient, -_Lutes of Morn_, _Lyrics of the Dawn_, _Songs of Sunrise Lands_, etc., -are perhaps truer standards by which to measure his work than any -other, illustrating as they do the pictorial side of his talent. Every -object in the Orient is a picture with its individual color and -atmosphere, but Mr. Scollard does not merely offer us a sketch in -color; the outwardly picturesque is made to interpret a phase of life, -and the spiritual contrasts in this land—where one religion or -philosophy succeeds another, bringing with it another civilization and -leaving desolate the ancient shrines—are indicated with vivid phrase, -as in these lines: - - A turbaned guard keeps stolid ward by the Zion gate in the sun, - And the Paynim bows his shaven brows at the shrine of Solomon; - At the chosen altars, long, long quenched is the flame of the sacred - fire, - And the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre. - - Great Herod’s pride with its columned aisles is grown with the olive - bough, - And Gath and Dan are but crumbling piles, while Gaza is gateless now; - The sea on the sands of Ascalon sets hands to a mournful lyre, - And the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre. - -The closing stanza draws the contrast, or rather makes the spiritual -application of the poem by which “the starry fame of one holy name” - - Has blazoned Bethlehem for aye the heart of the world’s desire, - While the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre. - -The final line of these stanzas may offer a metrical stumbling-block -until one catches the sweep of the rhythm and falls in note with the -cæsural pause after the word “tomb.” Mr. Scollard is nothing if not -lyrical, and it would be easier for the traditional camel to go -through the eye of a needle than for a captious critic to discover a -metrical falsity in his tuneful song. - -But to return to the Orient, not alone the reverence for the Christian -faith speaks in these poems, but the artistic beauty in the Moslem and -other faiths has entered into them; one is stirred to sympathetic -devotion by these lines,— - - From many a marble minaret - We heard the rapt muezzin’s call; - And to the prayerful cries my guide, - During each trembling interval, - With reverence serene replied,— - -and finds throughout the poems the higher assurance that - - The East and West are one in Allah’s grace: - Which way so’er ye turn, behold—His face! - -It is difficult to choose from the several volumes portraying Oriental -life, such poems as shall best represent it, since in any direction we -shall find a picture full of color and of strange new charm: the white -mosques and minarets; the gardens of citron and pomegranate; the -bazaars, with their rare fabrics and curios; the pilgrims, dozing in -the shade of the temples; the Bedouins, riding in from the desert; the -women carrying from the springs their water-jars. We shall hear the -sunrise cry of the muezzin from the minarets; the zither and lute in -the gardens at evening; the jargon of tongues in booth and -market-place; the philosopher expounding the Koran; the lover singing -the songs of Araby. The dramatic life of that impulsive, passionate -people will be seen in such poems as the “Dancing of Suleima,” “At the -Tomb of Abel,” and “Yousef and Melhem,” and the philosophical side in -many a poem translating the precepts of the Koran into action; but it -is, after all, for the picture in which all this is set that one comes -with chief pleasure to these songs. Not only the human element of that -strangely fascinating life is incorporated in them, but all the -phenomena of nature in its swift-changing moods pass in review before -one’s eyes, particularly of the swift transitions of the desert sun, -stayed by no detaining cloud, and followed by the immediate gloom of -night. The graphic lines— - - When on the desert’s rim, - In sudden, awful splendor, stood the sun— - -are excelled in terse, pictorial force by the record of its setting,— - - Then sudden dipped the sun.— - -Nor easily forgotten are those pictures of lying in the open when the -cooling dark had fallen upon the yearning land, or upon the hills when - - The night hung over Hebron all her stars, - Miraculous processional of flame, - -and below from out the “purple blur” rose the minarets of the mosque -where - - Sepulchred for centuries untold, - The bones of Isaac and of Joseph lay; - And broidered cloths of silver and of gold - Were heaped and draped o’er Abraham’s crumbled clay. - -In _The Lutes of Morn_ there are two sonnets—though lyrics in effect, -so does the song prevail with Mr. Scollard—that serve hastily to -sketch a moving scene and in their touch bring to mind Paul the -chronicler. The first is “Passing Rhodes,” and contains these lines -with a biblical tang, - - At day’s dim marge, hard on the shut of eve, - We rocked abreast the rugged Rhodian isle, - -which tang appears in stronger flavor in the racy opening of the -following: - - Cleaving the seadrift through the starlit night, - We left the barren Patmian isle behind, - And scudding northward with a favoring wind, - Lay anigh Chios at the dawn of light. - The shore, the tree-set slopes, the rugged height, - Clear in the morning’s roseate air outlined,— - This was his birthplace who, albeit blind, - Saw tall Troy’s fall, and sang the tragic sight. - Resting within the roadstead, while the day - Grew into gradual glory, on the ear - Continuous broke the surge-song of the brine; - And as we marked it rise, or die away - To rise again, it seemed that we could hear - The swell and sweep of Homer’s mighty line. - -Mr. Scollard’s musical and finely descriptive poem, “As I Came Down -From Lebanon,” has become a favorite with the readers of his verse; -but while it has great charm, it is not as strong a piece of work as -are many other of the Oriental poems, contained in his later volumes, -_The Lutes of Morn_ and _Lyrics of the Dawn_, nor as that realistic -poem, “Khamsin,” which appeared in the same collection. Here indeed is -the breath of the sirocco: - - Oh, the wind from the desert blew in! - Khamsin, - The wind from the desert blew in! - It blew from the heart of the fiery south, - From the fervid sand and the hills of drouth, - And it kissed the land with its scorching mouth; - The wind from the desert blew in! - - It blasted the buds on the almond bough, - And shrivelled the fruit on the orange-tree; - The wizened dervish breathed no vow, - So weary and parched was he. - The lean muezzin could not cry; - The dogs ran mad, and bayed the sky; - The hot sun shone like a copper disk, - And prone in the shade of an obelisk - The water-carrier sank with a sigh, - For limp and dry was his water-skin; - And the wind from the desert blew in. - - * * * * * - - Into the cool of the mosque it crept, - Where the poor sought rest at the prophet’s shrine; - Its breath was fire to the jasmine vine; - It fevered the brow of the maid who slept, - And men grew haggard with revel of wine. - The tiny fledglings died in the nest; - The sick babe gasped at the mother’s breast. - Then a rumor rose and swelled and spread - From a tremulous whisper, faint and vague, - Till it burst in a terrible cry of dread, - _The plague! the plague! the plague!_— - Oh the wind, Khamsin, - The scourge from the desert blew in! - -Of the lighter notes, upon love and kindred themes, Mr. Scollard has -many in his poems of the Orient; “The Song of the Nargileh” is of -especial charm, but unfortunately too long to quote. Very graceful, -too, is the “Twilight Song” with one of Mr. Scollard’s graphic -beginnings, but one quaint bit from _The Lutes of Morn_ is so -characteristic as showing Oriental felicity of speech that while -merely a jotting in song, and less important in an artistic sense than -many others touching upon the theme of love, I cannot refrain from -citing it instead: it is called “Greetings—Cairo.” - - Upon El Muski did I meet Hassan, - Beneath arched brows his deep eyes twinkling bright, - Good dragoman (and eke good Mussulman) - And cried unto him, “May your day be white!” - - “And yours, howadji!” came his swift reply, - A smile illumining the words thereof, - (All men are poets ’neath that kindling sky), - “As white as are the thoughts of her you love!” - -The Oriental poems cover not only a varied range of subject, but pass -in review nearly every important city and shrine in the length and -breadth of that storied land, making poetical footnotes to one’s -history and filling his memory with pictures. - -The second source of Mr. Scollard’s inspiration, doubtless the first -in point of time, is his delight in nature. Here, too, the objective -side predominates. He is footfaring, with every sense alert to see, to -hear, and to enjoy; he slips the world of men as a leash and becomes -the fetterless comrade of the vagrant things of earth. He stops to do -no philosophizing by the way,—the analogies, the laws, the evolving -purposes of nature, are rarely touched upon in his verse; nor is he -one of the poet-naturalists, intent to observe and record with -infinite fidelity the fact, with its mystic spirit of beauty. He finds -in the obvious side of nature such glamour and magic as suffice for -inspiration and delight; and it is this side which enthralls him -almost wholly. In other words, his nature vision is rather outlook -than insight, though always sympathetic in fancy and delicate in -touch. He seems to see only the gladness in the season’s phases, and -greets white-shrouded winter with all the ardor that he would bestow -upon flower-decked June. - -He has one volume entitled _Footfarings_, written partly in prose and -partly in verse,—a book abrim with morning joy, and bringing with it -the aroma of wood-flowers and the minstrelsy of birds. The prose -predominates, and is worthy the pen of a poet: its imaginative grace, -its enthusiasm, and its quaint and delicate fancy impart to it all the -flavor of poetry while adhering to a crisp and racy style. Each -chapter is prefaced by a keynote of verse, such as that which conducts -one to the haunt of the trillium, where - - These nun-like flowers with spotless urns, - That shine with such a snowy gloss, - Will seem, amid the suppliant ferns, - To bow above the cloistral moss. - - Then Hope, her starry eyes upraised, - Will suddenly surprise you there, - And you will feel that you have gazed - On the white sanctity of prayer! - -Were it within the province of this study, I should like to quote some -of Mr. Scollard’s prose from a “Woodland Walk,” “A Search for the -Lady’s Slipper,” or many another picturesque chapter. One loses -thought of print, and is for the nonce following his errant fancy -through meadow and coppice to the heart of the spicy fir-woods, -picking his way over the forest brooks, from stone to stone; following -the alluring skid-roads, latticed by new growths on either side and -arched above by interlacing green; penetrating into the tamarack -thickets at the lure of the hermit-thrush, that spirit-voice of song; -resting on a springy bed of moss and fern,—becoming, in short, -wayfellow of desire, and thrall but to his will. Mr. Scollard has also -published within the past year a book of nature verse called _The -Lyric Bough_, which contains some of his best work in this way; one of -its livelier fancies is that of “The Wind”: - - O the wind is a faun in the spring-time - When the ways are green for the tread of the May; - List! hark his lay! - Whist! mark his play! - T-r-r-r-l! - Hear how gay! - - O the wind is a dove in the summer - When the ways are bright with the wash of the moon; - List! hark him tune! - Whist! mark him swoon! - C-o-o-o-o! - Hear him croon! - - O the wind is a gnome in the autumn - When the ways are brown with the leaf and burr; - Hist! mark him stir! - List! hark him whir! - S-s-s-s-t! - Hear him chirr! - - O the wind is a wolf in the winter - When the ways are white for the hornèd owl; - Hist! mark him prowl! - List! hark him howl! - G-r-r-r-l! - Hear him growl! - -One of the earlier books, _The Hills of Song_, contained a brief, -merry-toned lyric, with a cavalier note, that sung itself into the -_American Anthology_, and is perhaps as characteristic and charming a -leave-taking of this phase of Mr. Scollard’s work as one may cite: - - Be ye in love with April-tide? - I’ faith, in love am I! - For now ’tis sun, and now ’tis shower, - And now ’tis frost, and now ’tis flower, - And now ’tis Laura laughing-eyed, - And now ’tis Laura shy. - - Ye doubtful days, O slower glide! - Still smile and frown, O sky! - Some beauty unforeseen I trace - In every change of Laura’s face;— - Be ye in love with April-tide? - I’ faith, in love am I! - -Balladry furnishes the third source of Mr. Scollard’s singing impulse. -The Oriental poems have somewhat of this phase of his work, though -more especially inclining to the narrative style; and the epic poem -“Skenandoa,” while written in a story-lyric, shows the ballad-making -qualities, which in their true note had been heard earlier in -“Taillefer the Trouvère,” and have been heard more definitely in -_Ballads of Valor and Victory_, recently written in collaboration with -Mr. Wallace Rice, and reciting the heroisms and adventures of soldier, -sailor, and explorer from Drake to Dewey. - -Ballad-writing is an art calling for distinct gifts. The dramatic -element must predominate. The story first—and if this be colorless, -there is no true ballad; the verse next—and if this be flaccid, or if -it swing to the other extreme and become too strained and tense, there -is no true ballad; for the essence of ballad-writing is in the freedom -of the movement, the swing and verve with which one recounts a -picturesque story. Mr. Scollard’s contributions to the volume are sung -with spontaneity and with a virile note, and in the matter of -characterization, fixing the personality of the hero before the mind, -the work is especially strong; witness “Riding With Kilpatrick;” -“Wayne at Stony Point;” “Montgomery at Quebec;” the picture of Thomas -Macdonough at the Battle of Plattsburg Bay, or in more recent times of -“Private Blair of the Regulars,” the modern Sidney, who, dying, gave -the last draught of his canteen to his wounded fellows. - -“The White November” and “The Eve of Bunker Hill” are among the best -of the ballads. The former brings with it a well-known note, but one -newly bedight with brave phrase; indeed, all the celebrated ballad -measures appear in these song stories, but well individualized in -diction and dramatic mood. They differ of course in the degree of -these qualities; some have too slight an incident to chronicle; some -might with better effect have been omitted, particularly “War in -April,” by Mr. Rice; but for this he atones by “The Minute-Men of -Northboro” and other vigorous contributions to the collection. The -ballads have the merit of structural compactness. While the necessary -portrayal of the incident renders many of the best of them too long to -quote, there are, in Mr. Scollard’s contribution to the book, few -superfluous stanzas; each plays its essential part in the development -of the story. They may not, then, be quoted without their full -complement of strophes, which debars us from citing the “White -November,” “Wayne at Stony Point,” and others mentioned as most -representative; but here is the tale of “Riding With Kilpatrick,” not -more valiant than many of the others, but celebrating a picturesque -figure. There are certain reminiscent notes of “How They Brought the -Good News from Ghent to Aix” in this galloping anapestic measure; and -its graphic opening line calls to mind that instantaneous picture, “At -Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun.” - - Dawn peered through the pines as we dashed at the ford; - Afar the grim guns of the infantry roared; - There were miles yet of dangerous pathway to pass, - And Moseby might menace, and Stuart might mass; - But we mocked every doubt, laughing danger to scorn, - As we quaffed with a shout from the wine of the morn - Those who rode with Kilpatrick to valor were born! - - How we chafed at delay! How we itched to be on! - How we yearned for the fray where the battle-reek shone! - It was _forward_, not _halt_, stirred the fire in our veins, - When our horses’ feet beat to the clink of the reins; - It was _charge_, not _retreat_, we were wonted to hear; - It was _charge_, not _retreat_, that was sweet to the ear; - Those who rode with Kilpatrick had never felt fear! - - At last the word came, and troop tossed it to troop; - Two squadrons deployed with a falcon-like swoop; - While swiftly the others in echelons formed, - For there, just ahead, was the line to be stormed. - The trumpets rang out; there were guidons ablow; - The white summer sun set our sabres aglow; - Those who rode with Kilpatrick charged straight at the foe! - - We swept like the whirlwind; we closed; at the shock - The sky seemed to reel and the earth seemed to rock; - Steel clashed upon steel with a deafening sound, - While a redder than rose-stain encrimsoned the ground; - If we gave back a space from the fierce pit of hell, - We were rallied again by a voice like a bell, - Those who rode with Kilpatrick rode valiantly well! - - Rang sternly his orders from out of the wrack: - _Re-form there, New Yorkers! You, Harris Light, back! - Come on, men of Maine! we will conquer or fall! - Now, forward, boys, forward, and follow me, all!_ - A Bayard in boldness, a Sidney in grace, - A lion to lead, and a stag-hound to chase— - Those who rode with Kilpatrick looked Death in the face! - - Though brave were our foemen, they faltered and fled; - Yet that was no marvel when such as he led! - Long ago, long ago, was that desperate day! - Long ago, long ago, strove the Blue and the Gray! - Praise God that the red sun of battle is set! - That our hand-clasp is loyal and loving—and yet - Those who rode with Kilpatrick can never forget! - -The Lochinvar key is also struck in the description of Kilpatrick. Mr. -Scollard sounds a less sanguinary note in most of the ballads, as that -of “The Troopers” or “King Philip’s Last Stand.” - -“On the Eve of Bunker Hill,” while recording no thrilling story, has a -note of pensive beauty in its quiet description of the preparation for -battle before that memorable day, and of the prayer offered in the -presence of the soldiers, “ranged a-row” in the open night. The -initial stanza gives the setting and key: - - ’Twas June on the face of the earth, June with the rose’s breath, - When life is a gladsome thing, and a distant dream is death; - There was gossip of birds in the air, and the lowing of herds by the - wood, - And a sunset gleam in the sky that the heart of a man holds good; - Then the nun-like twilight came, violet-vestured and still, - And the night’s first star outshone afar on the eve of Bunker Hill. - -Taking the volume throughout, it is a stirringly sung _résumé_ of all -the chief deeds in American history to which attach valor and romance, -and is not only attractive reading, but should be in the hands of -every lad as a stimulus to patriotism, and to focus in his mind, as -textbooks could never do, the exploits of the brave and the strong. - -In the lyrical narrative poem, such as “Guiraut, the Troubadour,” Mr. -Scollard has one of his most characteristic vehicles. The adventures -of the singer who sought a maid in Carcassonne are, no doubt, -romantically enhanced by association of the name with that of the -hapless one who “had not been to Carcassonne;” but it is certain that -one follows the troubadour in his “russet raimentry,” drawn by his -charm as - - Unto the gate of Carcassonne - (Ah, how his blithe lips smiled upon - The warded gate of Carcassonne!) - As light of foot as Love he strode; - The budding flowers along the road - Bloomed sudden, with his song for lure; - And softlier the river flowed - Before Guiraut, the troubadour. - - * * * * * - - Unto a keep in Carcassonne - (No sweeter voice e’er drifted on - That frowning keep in Carcassonne!) - Anon the singer drew anigh,— - -but we may not follow his propitious fortunes, glimpsed but to show -the manner of their telling. The parenthetical lines, recurring in -each stanza, impart a peculiar charm to the recital, but the diction -and phrasing, while pleasant and in harmony, have no especial -distinction in themselves, and this illustrates a frequent -characteristic of Mr. Scollard’s work that the melody often carries -the charm rather than the expression or basic theme. He is primarily a -singer, he has the “lute in tune,” and the song is so spontaneous as -sometimes to outsing the motive. There is always a felicitous, and -often unique, turn of phrase and a most imaginative fancy, but one -feels in a good deal of the work a lack of acid; it is too bland to -bite as deeply as it ought. Just a bit sharper tang is needful. - -The message should also inform more vitally the melody, wedding more -subtly the outer and inner grace. A poet is a teacher, whether he will -or no, and the heart should be the vital textbook of his expounding. -It is because of their deeper rooting in life, though a life foreign -to us, that the Oriental poems of Mr. Scollard have often greater -vitality than the Occidental ones, whose inspiration is found chiefly -in nature. His ballads show that he has a sympathetic insight into -character and a knowledge of human motive that would, if infused more -widely through his work, give to it a warmth of personal appeal and a -subjectivity which in many of its phases it now lacks. The golden -thread of Joy is woven so constantly into the web of his song that -those whose woof is crossed with the hempen thread of Pain are likely -to feel that he has no word for them, no hint as to the subtle -transformation by which the hempen thread may merge into the gold, -when the finished fabric hurtles from the loom. In other words, Mr. -Scollard’s work is too objective to carry with it the spiritual -meaning that it would if ingrained more deeply in the hidden life of -the soul. Along this line lies its finer development: not that it -shall lose a jot of its cheer, but that it shall constantly inform it -with a richer and deeper meaning. - - - - -XV - -MARY MCNEIL FENOLLOSA - - -TO be a poet of the East, one must be a painter, using words as a -colorist uses pigment. His poem must be a picture wherein form and -detail are subjected to the values of tone and atmosphere; like the -dawn-crest of Fujiyama it must glow, it must dazzle with tints and -light. To convert the pen into an artist’s brush, the vocabulary into -a palette, is an end not to be gained by striving; it is a talent _a -priori_, a temperamental color, a temperamental art. - -So vividly is this shown in the work of Mrs. Mary McNeil Fenollosa -that whereas in her Eastern poems she is every whit the artist, in her -Western, her Occidental poems, she is without special distinction. -Certain of her Western poems have a conventional, mechanical tone, -while those of the East are abrim with vitality and impulse. They were -not “reared by wan degrees;” the craftsman did not fashion them; and -although varying in charm, there are few that lack the Eastern spirit. - -Mrs. Fenollosa’s bit of the Orient is Japan, where nature is ever -coquetting,—laughing in the cherry, sighing in the lotos. Nature in -the Orient is invested with a personality foreign to Western -countries, a personality reminiscent of the gods. Then, too, nature is -given a more prominent place in the poetry of the East than is love, -or any of the subjects, so infinite in variety, which engross a -Western singer; and it happens that Mrs. Fenollosa, catching this -spirit during her life in Japan, gives us chiefly nature poems in her -Eastern collection. With artist-strokes where each is sure, she -flashes this picture before us: - - The day unfolds like a lotos-bloom, - Pink at the tip, and gold at the core, - Rising up swiftly through waters of gloom - That lave night’s shore; - -or this vision of— - - The cloud-like curve, - The loosened sheaf, - The ineffable pink of a lotos leaf. - -One great charm of the imagery in Mrs. Fenollosa’s Japanese poems is -its subtlety of suggestion. The imagination has play; something is -left for the fancy of the reader, which can scarcely be said of some -of the highly wrought verse of our own country. The first lyric in the -collection hints of a score of things beyond its eight-line scope: - - O let me die a singing! - O let me drown in light! - Another day is winging - Out from the nest of night. - The morning glory’s velvet eye - Brims with a jewelled bead. - To-day my soul’s a dragon-fly, - The world a swaying reed! - -“To-day my soul’s a dragon-fly,”—a wingéd incarnation of liberty and -joy; “the world a swaying reed,”—a pliant thing made for my delight, -an empery of which I am the sovereign and may have my will. - -[Illustration: Mary McNeil Fenollosa] - -But these Japanese songs have not wholly the lighter melody; there are -those that sing of the devastation of the rice-fields after the -floods, a grim and tragic picture; and there are interpretations of -the dreams of the great bronze Buddha, looking with sad, inscrutable -eyes upon the pilgrims who, with the recurrent seasons, come creeping -to his feet like insects from the mould; and there is a story of “The -Path of Prayer,”—a Japanese superstition so human that one is glad of -a religion where sentiment overtops reason. It pictures one walking at -evening under gnarled old pines until he chances upon a hidden path -leading through a hundred gates that keep a sacred way; and as he -passes he is amazed to see along the route, springing as if from the -earth, fluttering white papers, tied - - As banners pendent from a mimic wand. - -The poem continues: - - I wondered long; when, from the drowsy wood, - A whisper reached me, “’Tis the Path of Prayer, - Where, nightly, Kwannon walks in pitying mood, - To read the sad petitions planted there.” - - Ah, simple faith! The sun was in the west; - And darkness smote with flails his quivering light. - Beside the path I knelt; and, with the rest, - My alien prayer was planted in the night. - -It is to be regretted that Mrs. Fenollosa gives us so little of the -religious or mystical in Japanese thought, since no country is richer -in material of the sort, and especially as the isolated poems and -passages in which she touches upon it are all so interpretative. She -has one poem, a petition of old people at a temple, that strikes deep -root both in pathos and philosophy. Perhaps the Japanese excel all -other peoples in the reverence paid to age, and yet no excess of -consideration can supplant the melancholy of that time. The second -stanza of Mrs. Fenollosa’s poem expresses the aloofness of the old,— - - For thy comfort, Lord, we pray, - Namu Amida Butsu! - In the rice-fields, day by day, - Now the strong ones comb the grain; - Once we laughed there in the rain, - Stooping low in sun and cold - For our helpless young and old; - In the rice-fields day by day, - Namu Amida Butsu! - -And the last stanza is imbued with the Buddhistic resignation, the -desire to pass, to be reabsorbed, reinvested, reborn. It is -philosophical after the Karmic law, and beautiful in spirit even to a -Western mind: - - For thy mercy, Lord, we pray, - Namu Amida Butsu! - Let the old roots waste away, - That the green may pierce the light! - Life and thought, in withered plight, - Choke the morning. Far beneath - Stirs the young blade in its sheath. - Let the old roots pass away! - Namu Amida Butsu! - -This is symbolism which upon a cursory reading one might lose -entirely, thinking its import to be, let the old die and give place to -the young; whereas it is, let the old in oneself, the outworn, the -material, the inefficacious, die, and give place to the new. - - That the green may pierce the light:— - -that out of physical decay a regrowth of the spirit may spring; for -already, - - Far beneath - Stirs the young blade in its sheath:— - -the soul is quickening for the upper air and making ready to burst its -detaining mould. How beautiful is the recognition that - - Life and thought, in withered plight, - Choke the morning, - -the young eternal self, that, having fulfilled the conditions of Karma -in its present embodiment of destiny, is obeying the resistless law -that calls it to new modes of being. It is unnecessary to be of the -Buddhistic faith to feel the spell and the beauty of its philosophy. - -Mrs. Fenollosa’s gift is chiefly lyrical, although her sonnets and -descriptive poems have many passages of beauty; the picturesque in -fancy and phrasing is ever at her command, and there are few poems in -which one is not arrested by some unique expression, or bit of -imagery, as this from “An Eastern Cry”: - - Beneath the maples crickets wake, - _And chip the silence, flake on flake_. - -Or that in which the rain - - Brimmed great magnolias up with scented wine. - -Or the fir-tree stood, - - With clotted plumage sagging to the land. - -Or when Fujiyama seen at dawn is pictured as - - A crown … self poised in mist, - -and again as - - A frail mirage of Paradise - Set in the quickening air. - -So true in color and vision are Mrs. Fenollosa’s lyrics that one -cannot understand how in a sonnet she can be guilty of so mixed a -metaphor as this describing a “Morning On Fujisan”: - - Through powdered mist of dawn-lit pearl and rose - There lifts one lotos-peak of cleaving white, - The swan-like rhapsody of dying night, - Which, softly soaring through the ether, blows - To hang there breathless…. - -The first two lines are unimpeachable, but when the “lotos-peak” is -amplified into a “swan-like rhapsody,” one is swept quite away from -his bearings. It is but an illustration of the effort that often goes -to the building of a sonnet and renders forced and inept what was -designed to be artistic. Mrs. Fenollosa’s sonnets, however, do not -often violate congruity, for while the sonnet is by no means her -representative form, she handles it with as much ease as do most of -the modern singers, and occasionally one comes upon her most -characteristic lines in this compass; but it is true of the sonnet -form in general, except in the hands of a thorough artist, that the -mechanism is too obvious and obscures the theme. - -To know Mrs. Fenollosa at her best one must read “Miyoko San,” “Full -Moon Over Sumidagawa,” “An Eastern Cry,” “Exiled,” and this song “To a -Japanese Nightingale,” full of mystic, wistful beauty, of suggestive -spiritual grace. How delicate is its fashioning, and yet how it -defines a picture, silhouettes it against the Orient night! - - Dark on the face of a low, full moon - Swayeth the tall bamboo. - No flute nor quiver of song is heard, - Though sheer on the tip a small brown bird - Sways to an inward tune. - - O small brown bird, like a dusky star, - Lone on the tall bamboo, - Thou germ of the soul of a summer night, - Thou quickening core of a lost delight, - Of ecstasy born afar, - - Soar out thy bliss to the tingling air, - Sing from the tall bamboo! - Loosen the long, clear, syrup note - That shimmers and throbs in thy delicate throat; - Mellow my soul’s despair! - - - - -XVI - -RIDGELY TORRENCE - - -MR. RIDGELY TORRENCE, whose poetic drama, _El Dorado_, brought him -generous recognition, gave earlier hostages to fame in the shape of a -small volume with the caption, _The House of a Hundred Lights_, and -gravely subtitled, “A Psalm of Experience after Reading a Couplet of -Bidpai.” - -Into this little book were packed some charming whimsicalities, -together with some graver thoughts—though not too grave—and some -fancies full tender. It had, however, sufficient resemblance to Omar -Khayyám to bring it under a Philistine indictment, though its point of -view was in reality very different. It was a clever bit of ruminating -upon the Where and How and Why and Whence, without attempting to -arrive at these mysteries, but rather to laugh at those who did. Mr. -Torrence is so artistic as to know that only the masters may go upon -the road in search of the Secret, and that the average wayfarer may -not hope to overtake it, but rather to suggest it by a hint now and -then. The philosophy of _The House of a Hundred Lights_ is in the main -of the jocular sort; and Bidpai of indefinite memory may well chuckle -to himself in some remote celestial corner that any couplet of his -should have been so potent as to produce it. - -Mr. Torrence has not, that I can see, filched the fire from Omar’s -altar to kindle his hundred lights; this, for illustration, is pure -whimsicality, not fatalistic philosophy, as a similar thought would be -in Omar: - - “Doubt everything,” the Thinker said, - When I was parch’d with Reason’s drought. - Said he, “Trust me, I’ve probed these things; - Have utter faith in me,—and doubt!” - - Though the sky reel and Day dissolve, - And though a myriad suns fade out, - One thing of earth seems permanent - And founded on Belief: ’tis—Doubt. - -But best of all is that quatrain in which he exonerates Providence: - - What! doubt the Master Workman’s hand - Because my fleshly ills increase? - No; for there still remains one chance - That I am not His Masterpiece. - -[Illustration: Ridgely Torrence] - -If a cleverer bit of humor than that has been put into four lines, I -have not seen it, nor a more delightful epitome than this of the -inconsistent moralizing of youth: - - Yet what have I to do with sweets - Like Love, or Wine, or Fame’s dear curse? - For I can do without all things - Except—except the universe. - -Mr. Torrence’s quatrains penetrate into the nebulous dreams of youth, -or rather, interpret them, since _The House of a Hundred Lights_ was -reared in that charméd air, and carry one through the realm of -rainbows to the land of the gray light, to which every pilgrim comes -anon. Love receives its toll, the costliest and most precious as youth -fares on; and Mr. Torrence proves himself a poet in his picture of -this tribute-giving at the road-house of Love. Not only the visioning, -but the lucidity of the words, and their soft consonance, prove him -sensitive to the values of cadence and simplicity: - - Last night I heard a wanton girl - Call softly down unto her lover, - Or call at least unto the shade - Of Cypress where she knew he’d hover. - - Said she, “Come forth, my Perfect One; - The old bugs sleep and take their ease; - We shall have honey overmuch - Without the buzzing of the bees.” - - Ah, Foolish Ones, I heard your vows - And whispers underneath the tree. - Her father is more wakeful than - She ever dreamed, for I—was he. - - I saw them kissing in the shade - And knew the sum of all my lore: - God gave them Youth, God gave them Love, - And even God can give no more. - -But much more delicate is this quatrain which follows the last, and -traces the unfolding of a young girl’s nature in the years that shape -the dream. It is a bit of genuine artistry: - - At first, she loved nought else but flowers, - And then—she only loved the Rose; - And then—herself alone; and then— - She knew not what, but now—she knows. - -This is a deftly fashioned lyric, rather than a stanza conjoined to -others, though, for that matter, the thread of conjunction in the poem -is slight; almost any of the quatrains might be detached without loss -of value save in atmosphere, as they are arranged with a certain -logical view and grow a bit more serious as they progress. We spoke, -for instance, of the path of youth leading to the grayer light, and -incidentally that Youth acquaints himself with pain as a wayfellow: - - Yet even for Youth’s fevered blood - There is a certain balm here in - This maiden’s mouth: O sweet disease! - And happy, happy medicine! - - And maiden, should these bitter tears - You shed be burdensome, know this: - There is a cure worth all the pain, - —To-night—beneath the moon—a kiss. - - Girl, when he gives you kisses twain, - Use one, and let the other stay; - And hoard it, for moons die, red fades, - And you may need a kiss—some day. - -No one will deny an individual grace of touch upon these strings. The -artistic value of the quatrains is unequal; they would bear weeding; -and there is a hint of spent impulse in the latter part of the volume, -though it may be only by virtue of the grouping that the cleverer -stanzas chance to be massed toward the front, as they were probably -not written in the order in which they appear. Here and there in the -latter part of the volume one comes upon some of Mr. Torrence’s most -unique fancies; and, too, if they do not always give one the same -pleasurable surprise, they are more thoughtful and the verities are in -them. Indeed, Mr. Torrence’s “Psalm of Experience” is not altogether -born of a happy _insouciance_; look a bit more closely and you -penetrate the mask, and a face looks out at you, like to your own -face, questioning and uncertain. We should be glad to quote more of -Mr. Torrence’s quatrains, but must look at _El Dorado_, his more -mature work, which won so kindly a reception from the critics and -public. - -It would be idle to assert that _El Dorado_ is a great achievement, -but it is a fine achievement, and notably so as a first incursion into -a field beset with snares for the unwary. Into some of these Mr. -Torrence has fallen, but the majority of them he has avoided and has -proven his right to fare upon the way he has elected. - -As to plot, one may say that _El Dorado_ is a moving tale, full of -incident and action, and sharply defining the characters before the -mind. The action is focused to a definite point in each scene, making -an effective climax, and in the subtler shading of the story, where -Perth, the released prisoner, mistaking the love of Beatrix d’Estrada -for the young officer of the expedition, thinks it a requital of his -own, Mr. Torrence has shown himself sensitive to the effects that are -psychological rather than objective; and, indeed, in this quality, as -evinced throughout the drama in the character of Perth, the essence of -Mr. Torrence’s art consists. - -It is more or less an easy artifice for the dramatist to reduce his -hero to the verge of despair just as his heroine is conveniently near -to save him from leaping over a precipice; but artifice becomes art -when the impalpable emotions of a nature lost almost to its own -consciousness begin to be called from diffusion and given direction -and meaning. While the characterization of Perth is not altogether -free from strained sentiment, one recognizes in it a higher -achievement than went to the making of the more spectacular crises of -the play. The dramatic materials of _El Dorado_ are in the main -skilfully handled, and there is logical congruity in the situations as -they evolve, assuming the premise of the plot. As an acting play, -however, it would require the further introduction of women -characters, Beatrix sustaining alone, in its present cast, the -feminine element of the drama. - -As to the play as literature, as poetry, there is much to commend, and -somewhat to deplore. If it remain as literature, it must contain -elements that transcend those of its action; if a well-developed plot -were literature, then many productions of the stage that are purely -ephemeral would take their place as works of art. Between the dramatic -and the theatrical there is a nice distinction, and only an artist may -wholly avoid the pitfalls of the latter. Mr. Torrence’s drama seems to -me to blend the two qualities. For illustration the following -outpouring of Coronado, when he returns for a last hour with Beatrix, -then disguising to follow his army, and finds her faithless to the -tryst, is purely melodramatic. The Friar Ubeda reminds him that the -trumpets call him, whereupon Coronado exclaims: - - It is no call, but rather do their sounds - Lash me like brazen whips away from her. - They shriek two names to me, Honour and Hell; - They drive me with two words, Duty and Death. - These are the things that I can only find - Outside her arms. - -In the same scene, however, occurs this fine passage, compact of -hopelessness, and having in it the whole heart-history of Perth, who -speaks it. He is urged by the friar to hasten that they may join the -expedition as it passes the walls: - - PERTH. It would be useless. - - UBEDA. In what way? - - PERTH. If to go would be an ill, - I need not hasten; it will come to me. - And if a good, they will have gone too far; - I could not overtake them. - -This passage recalls another memorably fine,—that in which Perth upon -his release would return to his dungeon, being oppressed by the light: - - I seem to have to bear the sky’s whole arch, - Like Atlas, on my shoulders. - -This is divining a sensation with subtle sympathy. But to return to -the consideration of the literature of Mr. Torrence’s drama from the -standpoint of his characters. Beatrix is a natural, elemental type of -girl, untroubled by subtleties. Impulse and will are one in her -understanding, and she counts it no shame to follow where they lead. -The love that exists between herself and Coronado discloses no great -emotional features, no complexities; but it is not strained nor -unnatural, and in the scene where Beatrix discloses her identity to -Coronado, as he in desperation at the failure of the quest for _El -Dorado_ is about to throw himself over the cliff,—while the situation -itself has elements of melodrama, the dialogue is wholly free from it, -and indeed contains some of the truest poetry in the play. Coronado, -with distraught fancy, thinks it the spirit of Beatrix by whom he is -delivered, and fears to approach her lest he dissolve the wraith, -whereupon Beatrix, among other reassurances, speaks these lovely -lines:— - - Have the snow-textured arms of dreams these pulses? - Has the pale spirit of sleep a mouth like this? - -The counter-passion of Mr. Torrence’s drama, in which its tragedy -lies, the passion of Perth for Beatrix, is so manifestly foredoomed on -the side of sentiment that one looks upon it purely from a -psychological standpoint, but from that standpoint it is handled so -skilfully that the dramatic feeling of the play centres chiefly in -this character. The Friar Ubeda is also strongly drawn, and one of the -motive forces of the drama. It is he who reveals to Perth that he has -a son born after his incarceration who is none other than the young -leader of the expedition, Don Francis Coronado, although his identity -is not revealed by the priest, and only the clew given that on his -hand is branded a crucifix, as a foolish penance for some boyhood sin. -Many of the finest passages of the play are spoken between Perth and -Ubeda. - -The temptation to Shakespearize into which nearly all young dramatists -fall, Mr. Torrence has wholly avoided, nor has his verse any of the -grandiloquent strain that often mars dramatic poetry. It is at times -over-sustained, but is flexible and holds in the main to simplicity of -effect. Such a passage as the following shows it in its finest -quality. Here are feeling, consistent beauty, and dignity of word. The -lines are spoken by Perth in reply to Coronado’s parting injunction to -remember that the Font is there, pointing in the direction of their -quest: - - O God, ’tis everywhere! - But where for me? Youth, love, or hope fulfilled, - Whatever dew distils from out its depths, - Sparkles till it has lured my eager lips - And then sinks back. ’Tis in his desolate heart— - And yet I may not drink. ’Tis in her eyes— - And yet my own cannot be cooled by it. - The wilderness of life is full of wells, - But each is barred and walled about and guarded. - - * * * * * - - The Source! Can it be true? Oh, may it not be? - May it not at last await me in that garden - To which we bleed our way through all this waste?— - One cup—some little chalice that will hold - One drop that will not shudder into mist - Till I have drained it. - -Passages of this sort might be duplicated in _El Dorado_, were they -not too long to quote with the context necessary to them. - -The passage cited above holds a deep suggestion in the lines:— - - One drop that will not shudder into mist - Till I have drained it. - -Here is human longing epitomized; and again the words in which -Coronado speaks, as he thinks, to the shade of Beatrix,— - - No, I will no more strive to anything - And so dispel it,— - -are subtly typical of the fear in all joy, the trembling dread to -grasp, lest it elude us. That, too, is a fine passage in which -Coronado replies to Perth, who seeks to cheer him with thought of the -Water of all Dreams: - - Ah, that poor phantom Source! I never sought it. - I have found the thing called Youth too deadly bitter - To grasp at further tasting. - -“The thing called Youth” is often “deadly bitter;” and Mr. Torrence -has well suggested it in the revulsion from hope to despair which -follows upon the knowledge that El Dorado is but a land of Dead-Sea -fruit. The atmosphere with which Mr. Torrence has invested the scene -where all are waiting for the dawn to lift and reveal the valley of -their desire is charged with mystery and portent; one becomes a tense, -breathless member of the group upon the cliff, and not a spectator. - -Mr. Torrence is occasionally led into temptation, artistically -speaking, by the seduction of his imagination, and is carried a bit -beyond the point of discretion, as in this passage taken from the -scene where the expedition awaits the dawn on the morning when its -dream is expected to be realized. Perth and Coronado are looking to -the mist to lift. Perth speaks: - - And now in that far edge, as though a seed - Were sown, there is a hint of budding gray, - A bud not wholly innocent of night, - And yet a color. - - COR. But see, it dies! - - PERTH. Yet now it blooms again, - Whiter, and with a rumor of hidden trumpets. - -Buds in the common day do not usually bloom with a “rumor of hidden -trumpets.” In the same scene Coronado asks: - - Can you not see - The gem which is the mother of all dawn? - - PERTH. There is some gleam. - - COR. It waits one moment yet - Before it thunders upon our blinded sight! - -It is at least a new conception that _gems_ should _thunder_ upon -one’s _blinded sight_! In another scene Mr. Torrence has the -“devouring sun” deepen its “wormlike course” to the world’s edge. -Again, his heroine’s mouth is a little tremulous “from all the -troubled violets in her veins.” We are a bit uncertain, too, as to the -significance of a “throne-galled night;” but these are, after all, -minor matters when weighed with the prevailing grace and beauty of Mr. -Torrence’s lines. - -The last act of _El Dorado_ has to my mind less of strength and beauty -than its predecessors, and dramatically one may question its -conception and construction. In a general study of Mr. Torrence’s plot -it seemed that the situations were all developed to the best -advantage, but an exception must, I think, be made in regard to the -last act. One of the vital requisites of drama is that the suspense of -the action shall hold to the end; there may be minor _dénouements_, -but the plot must not be so constructed that the element of mystery -shall have been eliminated ere the close, and this is exactly what has -been done in _El Dorado_. The two great scenes have already taken -place: _El Dorado_ has been proven a myth, and Beatrix has been united -to her lover; there remains but one thread to unravel, the love of -Perth for Beatrix; and of that the audience has already the full -knowledge and clew, having seen her rejoined to her lover. The only -motive of the last act is that the audience may see the effect upon -Perth when the revelation of his loss is made to him; and it is more -than a question whether a scene depending so entirely upon the -psychology of the situation could hold as a climax to the play. - -There is a revelation, however, logically demanded by the premises of -the plot, in expectation of which the interest is held, and in whose -nonfulfilment I cannot but think that Mr. Torrence has lost the -opportunity for the most humanly true and effective climax of his -play,—the disclosure to Coronado of his parentage. Ubeda, earlier in -the drama, has enjoined Perth not to reveal his identity to his son, -lest it injure his public career; but in the hour when the supreme -loss has come, when Beatrix, as the wife of Coronado, rejoins the -homeward detachment of Perth and his friend, and the mortal stroke has -fallen,—then Ubeda should have declared the relationship and placed to -Perth’s lips ere he died the one draught that would not “shudder into -mist” ere he had drained it,—the draught of love from the heart of his -child. The bird of hope and light should hover just above the darkest -tragedy,—should brood above it with healing in its wings. This is -partially realized in the lines in which Mr. Torrence has chosen to -veil, and yet hint, the relationship which Coronado does not -understand: - - PERTH. At last I see! always I seemed to know - That one day,—though I knew not when,—some hour, - I should behold and know it and possess it,— - The Font! - - COR. No, it is snow and wine. - - BEAT. He wanders! - - PERTH. I had not thought to find it so at last, - Yet here, and here alone, it has arisen - Within these two—my only youth! Yes—now! - Upon this hour and place at last! The Source! - It is a barren place—yet flowers are here, - Those which for certain days I seemed to lose; - A desolate tender fatherhood has here - Found growth, and bears, but all too piteously, - A futile bud. - -The impression left upon one by _El Dorado_ is that of poetic -distinction, and the drama in its character drawing, plot and action -is an augury of finer possibilities in the same branch of art. - - - - -XVII - -GERTRUDE HALL - - -MISS GERTRUDE HALL is a poet of the intimate mood, the personal touch, -one who writes for herself primarily, and not for others. One fancies -that verses such as these were penned in musing, introspective moments -in the form in which they flitted through the mind, and were -indesecrate of further touch. They are as words warm upon the lips, -putting one in magnetic _rapport_ with a speaker; and their defects, -as well as distinctions, are such as spring from this spontaneity. -Frequently a change of word or line, readily suggested to the reader, -would have made technically perfect what now bears a flaw; but these -lapses are neither so marked nor so frequent as to detract from the -prevailing grace of the verse, and but serve to illustrate the point -in question,—their unpremeditated note and freedom from posing. - -One is not so much arrested by the inevitable image and word in these -lyrics of the _Age of Fairygold_, as by the feeling, the mood, that -pervades them. It is not a buoyant mood, nor yet a sombre one, but -rather the expression of a varied impulse, a melody of many stops, -such as one might play for himself at evening, wandering from theme to -theme. The poems convey the impression of coming in touch with a -personality rather than a book, the veil between the author and reader -being impalpable; and this, their most obvious distinction, is a -quality in which many poets of the present day are lacking, either -from a mistaken delicacy in regarding their own inner life as an -isolated mood not of import to others, or in robbing it of personality -and warmth by technical elaboration. - -One may confide to the world by means of art what he would not reveal -to his closest friend, and yet keep inviolate his spiritual selfhood; -but to withhold this disclosure, to become but a poet of externals, is -to abrogate one’s claim to speak at all; for a life, however meagre, -has something unique and essential to convey, and while one delights -in the artist observation, the vivid pictorial touch, it must not be -divorced from the subjective. The poems of Miss Hall are happily -blended of the objective and subjective; here, for illustration, is a -lighter note bringing one in thrall to that seductive, tantalizing -charm, that irresistible allurement, of the Vita Nuova of the year: - - I try to fix my eyes upon my book, - But just outside a budding spray - Flaunts its new leaves as if to say, - “Look!—look!” - - I trim my pen, I make it fine and neat; - There comes a flutter of brown wings. - A little bird alights and sings, - “Sweet!—sweet!” - - O little bird, O go away! be dumb! - For I must ponder certain lines; - And straight a nodding flower makes signs, - “Come!—come!” - - O Spring, let me alone! O bird, bloom, beam, - “I have no time to dream!” I cry; - The echo breathes a soft, long sigh, - “Dream!—dream!” - -The beautiful lyric, - - “Ah, worshipped one, ah, faithful Spring!” - -tempers this blitheness to a pensive strain, though only as one may -introduce a note of minor in a staccato melody. In another bit of -verse celebrating the renewing year, and noting how joy lays his -finger on one’s lips and makes him mute, occur these delicate lines: - - Thrice happy, oh, thrice happy still the Earth - That can express herself in roses, yea, - Can make the lily tell her inmost thought! - -One nature lyric of two stanzas, despite the fact that its cadence -halts in the final couplet, is compact of atmosphere; and to one who -has been companioned by the pines, it brings an aromatic breath, full -of stimulus: - - The sun in the pine is sleeping, sleeping. - The drops of resin gleam…. - There’s a mighty wizard with perfumes keeping - My brain benumbed in a dream! - - The wind in the pine is rushing, rushing, - Fine and unfettered and wild…. - There’s a mighty mother imperiously hushing - Her fretful, uneasy child! - -These lines give over pictures of mornings in the radiant sunlight of -the North, that cloudless, lifted air; and “The drops of resin gleam,” -has the same touch of transmutation that some suggestion of the brine -has for the exiled native of the seaboard. - -Miss Hall’s themes are not sought far afield, but bring, in nearly all -the poems, a hint of personal experience; nature, love, spiritual -emotion, blending with lighter moods and fancies, comprise the record -of the _Age of Fairygold_. We have glanced at the nature verse; that -upon love is subtler in touch, but holds to the intimate note -distinguishing all of her work. The second of these stanzas contains a -graphic image: - - Be good to me! If all the world united - Should bend its powers to gird my youth with pain, - Still might I fly to thee, Dear, and be righted— - But if thou wrong’st me, where shall I complain? - - I am the dove a random shot surprises, - That from her flight she droppeth quivering, - And in the deadly arrow recognizes - A blood-wet feather—once in her own wing! - -In her poem called “The Rival” human nature speaks a direct word, -particularly in the contradiction of the last stanza. The lines have -the quality of speech rather than of print: - - This is the hardest of my fate: - She’s better whom he doth prefer - Than I am that he worshipped late, - As well as so much prettier, - So much more fortunate! - - He’ll not repent; oh, you will see, - She’ll never give him cause to grieve! - I dream that he comes back to me, - Leaving her,—but he’ll never leave! - Hopelessly sweet is she. - - So that if in my place she stood, - She’d spare to curse him, she’d forgive! - I loathe her, but I know she would— - And so will I, God, as I live, - Not she alone is good! - -The ethical inconsistency of the above stanza, “I loathe her,” and -“Not she alone is good,” is so human and racy with suggestion of these -paradoxical moods of ours, that the stanza, together with its -companion lines, becomes a leaf torn from the book of life. - -In its spiritual quality Miss Hall’s work shows, perhaps, its finest -distinction: brave, strong, acquiescent, inducing in one a nobler -mood,—such is the spirit of the volume. Its philosophy is free from -didacticism or moralizing; indeed, it should scarcely be called -philosophy, but rather the personal record of experiences touching the -inner life,—phases of feeling interpreted in their spiritual import. -These lines express the mood: - - Then lead me, Friend. Here is my hand, - Not in dumb resignation lent - Because Thee one cannot withstand— - In love, Lord, with complete consent. - - * * * * * - - Lead. If we come to the cliff’s crest, - And I hear deep below—O deep!— - The torrent’s roar, and “Leap!” Thou say’st, - I will not question—I will leap. - -The last stanza, in its vivid illustrative quality, is an admirable -expression of spiritual assurance. - -Another brief lyric rings with the true note of valor, declaring the -eternal potency of hope, and one’s obligation to pass on his unspent -faith, though falling by the way: - - Could I not be the pilgrim - To reach my saint’s abode, - I would make myself the road - To lead some other pilgrim - Where my soul’s treasure glowed. - - Could not I in the eager van - Be the stalwart pioneer - Who points where the way is clear, - I would be the man who sinks in the swamp, - And cries to the rest, “Not here!” - -From an Eastern Apologue Miss Hall has drawn a charming illustration -of the power of influence and association: - - “Thou smell’st not ill, thou object plain, - Thou art a small, pretentious grain - Of amber, I suppose.” - “Nay, my good friend, I am by birth - A common clod of scentless earth…. - But I lived with the Rose.” - -In the poems of a blither note, Miss Hall excels, having a swift and -sprightly fancy and a clever aptness of phrase, which, in -_Allegretto_, her collection of lighter verse, reveals itself in -charming witticisms and whimsicalities. Her children’s poems are -delicate in touch and fancy, and quaintly humorous. Her lines, “To A -Weed,” in the second collection, tuck away a moral in their sprightly -comment; indeed, a bit of philosophy as to being glad in the sun and -taking one’s due of life, despite limitations, which renders them more -than the merry apostrophe they seem: - - You bold thing! thrusting ’neath the very nose - Of her fastidious majesty, the rose, - Even in the best ordainéd garden bed, - Unauthorized, your smiling little head! - - The gardener, mind! will come in his big boots, - And drag you up by your rebellious roots, - And cast you forth to shrivel in the sun, - Your daring quelled, your little weed’s life done. - - * * * * * - - Meantime—ah, yes! the air is very blue, - And gold the light, and diamond the dew,— - You laugh and courtesy in your worthless way, - And you are gay, ah, so exceeding gay! - - You argue, in your manner of a weed, - You did not make yourself grow from a seed; - You fancy you’ve a claim to standing-room, - You dream yourself a right to breathe and bloom. - - * * * * * - - You know, you weed, I quite agree with you, - I am a weed myself, and I laugh too,— - Both, just as long as we can shun his eye, - Let’s sniff at the old gardener trudging by! - -In the art of compression, in consistent and restrained imagery, in -clearness and simplicity, and in freedom from affectation, Miss Hall’s -work is altogether commendable. In technique she makes no ambitious -flights, employing almost wholly the more direct and simple forms and -metres, but these suit the intimate mood and singing note of her -themes better than more intricate measures. Technically her chief -defect is in the disregard which she frequently shows for the demands -of metre. I say disregard, for it is evident from the grace of the -majority of her work that she allows herself to depart from metrical -canons at her own will, with the occasional result of jagged lines -which may have seemed more expressive to Miss Hall than those of a -smoother cadence, but which are likely to offend the ear of one -sensitive to rhythm. These lapses are not, however, so frequent or -conspicuous as to constitute a general indictment against the work. - -The reflective predominates over the imaginative in the _Age of -Fairygold_, notwithstanding the suggestion of the title. Indeed, there -is a subtly pensive note running through the volume, which remains in -one’s mind as a characteristic impression when the lighter notes are -forgotten. They are not poems of vivid color, imagination, nor -passion, though touched with all. They are not incrusted with verbal -gems, though the diction is fitting and graceful. They have no -daringly inventive metres, though the form is always in harmony with -the thought,—in short, the poems of Miss Hall are such as please and -satisfy without startling. They are leaves from the book of the heart, -and admit us to many a kindred experience. These lines, in which we -must take leave of them, carry the wistful, tender, sympathetic note, -which distinguishes much of her work: - - Though true it be these splendid dreams of mine - Are but as bubbles little children blow, - And that Fate laughs to see them wax and shine, - Then holds out her pale finger—and they go: - One bitter drop falls with a tear-like gleam,— - Still, dreaming is so sweet! Still, let me dream! - - Though true, to love may be definéd thus: - To open wide your safe defenceless hall - To some great guest full-armed and dangerous, - With power to ravage, to deface it all, - A cast at dice, whether or no he will,— - Still, loving is so sweet! Let me love still! - - - - -XVIII - -ARTHUR UPSON - - -WHEN a volume of verse by Mr. Arthur Upson, entitled _Octaves In An -Oxford Garden_, was first brought to my notice by a poet friend with -what seemed before reading it a somewhat extravagant comment as to its -art, it evoked a certain scepticism as to whether the poet in question -would be equally enthusiastic, had he read, marked, learned, and -inwardly digested some eighty or more volumes of verse within a given -period, thus rendering a more rarely flavored compound necessary to -excite anew the poetry-sated appetite; but Mr. Upson’s Octaves proved -to be a brew into which had fallen this magic drop, and moments had -gone the way of oblivion until the charm was drained. - -The volume consists of some thirty Octaves written in Wadham Garden at -Oxford in the reminiscent month of September; and so do they fix the -mood of the place that one marvels at the restfulness, the brooding -stillness, the flavor of time and association which Mr. Upson has -managed to infuse into his musing, sabbatical lines. One regrets that -the term “atmosphere” has become so cheapened, for in the exigent -moment when no other will serve as well, he has the depressing -consciousness that virtue has gone from the word he must employ. -Despite this fact, it is atmosphere, in its most pervasive sense, that -imbues Mr. Upson’s Octaves, as the first will attest: - - The day was like a Sabbath in a swoon. - Under late summer’s blue were fair cloud-things - Poising aslant upon their charméd wings, - Arrested by some backward thought of June. - Softly I trod and with repentant shoon, - Half fearfully in sweet imaginings, - Where lay, as might some golden court of kings, - The old Quadrangle paved with afternoon. - -What else than a touch of genius is in those three words, “paved with -afternoon,” as fixing the tempered light, the drowsy calm, of the -place? - -The Octaves are written in groups, the poems of each having a slight -dependence upon one another, so that to be quoted they require the -connecting thought. In many cases also the first or the second -quatrain of the Octave is more artistic than its companion lines, as -in the one which follows, where the first four lines hold the creative -beauty: - - As here among the well-remembering boughs, - Where every leaf is tongue to ancient breath, - Speech of the yesteryears forgathereth, - And all the winds are long-fulfilléd vows— - So from of old those ringing names arouse - A whispering in the foliate shades of death, - Where History her golden rosary saith, - Glowing, the light of Memory on her brows. - -This Octave illustrates also what may be made as a general statement -regarding its companions in the volume, that while the glamour may not -rest equally upon the poems, they do not lack charm and distinction -even in their less creative touches; and there are few in which there -does not lurk some surprise in the way of picturesque phrasing. - -In the ordering of his cadences Mr. Upson shows a musician’s sense of -rhythm; note, for example, how the transposition in the following -lines enhances their melody and conveys in the initial one the sense -of a river flowing: - - It was the lip of murmuring Thames along - When new lights sought the wood all strangely fair, - Such quiet lights as saints transfigured wear - In minster windows crept the glades among. - And far as from some hazy hill, yet strong, - Methought an upland shepherd piped it there, - Waking a silvern echo from her lair: - “Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song!” - -Mr. Upson not only obeys by artist instinct the laws of counterpoint, -but employs the word with the music in it, and his effects are -achieved by the innate harmony of his diction and the poetry in the -theme he is shaping. Take as an illustration of this his Octave upon -the “Roman Glassware Preserved in the Ashmolean.” Doubtless those -fragments of crystal, sheathed, by centuries in the earth, in a -translucent film through which shine tints of mother-of-pearl, have -met the eyes of many of us, but it needed a poet to deduce from them -this illustration: - - Fair crystal cups are dug from earth’s old crust, - Shattered but lovely, for, at price of all - Their shameful exile from the banquet-hall, - They have been bargaining beauties from the dust. - So, dig my life but deep enough, you must - Find broken friendships round its inner wall— - Which once my careless hand let slip and fall— - Brave with faint memories, rich in rainbow-rust! - -One notes in Mr. Upson’s work a restraint that is the apogee of good -taste. He conveys the mood, whether of love or other emotion, and -makes his feeling another’s, but the veil of the temple is never -wholly rent; one may but divine the ministries and sacrifices of its -altar. He is an idealist, not yet come to the place of disillusion; -though wandering at times near to the border of that chilly realm, he -wraps his seamless robe of dreams more closely about him and turns -back. Mr. Upson is not, however, an unthinking singer to whom all is -cheer because he has not the insight to enter into those phases of -life that have not yet touched him; on the contrary, his note is not a -blithe one, it is meditative, inclining to the philosophical, and -tinctured with a certain pensiveness. - -Now and again the cosmos thrusts forward a suggestion which becomes -the motive of one of the Octaves, as when the garden breeze loosens -from the chink a - - … measure of earth - To match my body’s dust when its rebirth - To sod restores old functions I forsook,— - -which, in turn, induces a reflection upon the microcosm: - - Strange that a sod for just a thrill or two - Should ever be seduced into the round - Of change in which its present state is found - In this my form! forsake its quiet, true - And fruitfullest retirement, to go through - The heat, the strain, the languor and the wound! - Forget soft rain to hear the stormier sound,— - Exchange for burning tears its peaceful dew! - -Again one has the applied illustration both of the pains and requitals -that cling about the sod in its “strange estate of flesh,” in these -lines declaring that - - Some dust of Eden eddies round us yet. - Some clay o’ the Garden, clinging in the breast, - Down near the heart yet bides unmanifest. - Last eve in gardens strange to me I let - The path lead far; and lo, my vision met - Old forfeit hopes. I, as on homeward quest, - By recognizing trees was bidden rest, - And pitying leaves looked down and sighed, “Forget!” - -Mr. Upson has one of his characteristic touches in the words “old -forfeit hopes,” pictured as starting suddenly before one in the new -path that has beguiled him. In looking over the Octaves, which embrace -a variety of themes, one doubts if his selections have adequately -represented the finely textured lines, pure and individual diction, -and the ripe and mellow flavor of it all. - -Mr. Upson’s work has had its meed of recognition abroad: his first -volume, _Westwind Songs_, contained a warmly appreciative introduction -by “Carmen Sylva,” the poet-queen of Roumania, and his drama, _The -City_, just issued in Edinburgh, is introduced by Count Lützow of the -University of Prague, a well-known scholar and authority upon Bohemian -literature. Taking a backward glance at the first volume before -looking at _The City_, one finds few of the ear-marks of a first -collection of poetry, which it must become the subsequent effort of -the writer to live down. - -The lines “When We Said Good-Bye” are among the truest in feeling, -though almost too intimate to quote; and this sympathetic lyric, -entitled “Old Gardens,” has a delicate grace: - - The white rose tree that spent its musk - For lovers’ sweeter praise, - The stately walks we sought at dusk, - Have missed thee many days. - - Again, with once-familiar feet, - I tread the old parterre— - But, ah, its bloom is now less sweet - Than when thy face was there. - - I hear the birds of evening call; - I take the wild perfume; - I pluck a rose—to let it fall - And perish in the gloom. - -_Westwind Songs_, however, waft other thoughts than those of love. -There is a heavier freight in this “Thought of Stevenson”: - - High and alone I stood on Calton Hill - Above the scene that was so dear to him - Whose exile dreams of it made exile dim. - October wooed the folded valleys till - In mist they blurred, even as our eyes upfill - Under a too sweet memory; spires did swim, - And gables rust-red, on the gray sea’s brim— - But on these heights the air was soft and still. - Yet not all still: an alien breeze did turn - Here as from bournes in aromatic seas, - As round old shrines a new-freed soul might yearn - With incense to his earthly memories. - And then this thought: Mist, exile, searching pain, - But the brave soul is free, is home again! - -How fine is the imaginative thought of October wooing the valleys till -they blurred with mist, as one’s “eyes upfill under a too sweet -memory,” and still finer the touch of the “alien breeze” turning - - Here as from bournes in aromatic seas. - -So one might imagine the journeying winds blowing hither from Vaea, -and the intensely human soul of Stevenson yearning to the vital -sympathies of earth. - -Mr. Upson has recently published in Edinburgh and America a poem-drama -entitled _The City_, and containing, as previously mentioned, a -scholarly introduction by Count Lützow of the Bohemian University of -Prague, who points out the historical and traditional sources of the -story. - -The drama is embraced in one act, and covers a period of but one day, -from dawn to dusk; nevertheless, it is not wanting in incident, since -its operative causes reach their culmination in this period. The -“conditions precedent” of the plot, briefly summarized, show that -Abgar, King of Edessa, has married Cleonis, an Athenian, whose -foster-sister, Stilbe, having been an earlier favorite of the king, is -actuated by jealousy of the pair, and although dwelling as an inmate -of the royal household, plots with her lover, Belarion, against the -government of the king, ill at his palace outside the city and -awaiting the arrival of Jesus to heal him of his disease. - -The subjects of Abgar have rebelled not only at his protracted absence -from the city, in dalliance, as they deem it, with the Athenian queen, -but because of measures of reform instituted by him which had done -despite to their ancient idolatries and desecrated certain shrines in -the public improvements of the city. - -Not only had the king progressed beyond his day in the material -advancement of his realm, but his eager, swiftly conceiving mind had -imaged a spiritual ideal even more vital; and at the opening of the -drama he awaits the coming of the Nazarene to heal him, that he may -devote himself to the development of his people. - -The scene opens at the dawn in the portico of the palace, where the -queen’s women, attired in white pepli, have spent the night singing -soft music to the accompaniment of the lyre to charm the fevered sleep -of the king. They are dismissed by Agamede, cousin of the queen, who -detains Stilbe to learn the cause of her discontent. Sufficient is -revealed to indicate that Belarion, the betrothed of Stilbe, whom the -oracle has declared a man of promise, is plotting against the life of -the king, aided in this design by Stilbe, who has been summoned almost -from the marriage altar to attend the queen. - -The second scene takes place four hours later, in the palace garden, -and pictures the return of the messenger and his attendants sent to -conduct Jesus to Edessa. The opening dialogue occurs between Ananias, -the returned messenger, and the old and learned doctor of the court, -who details with elaborate minuteness the ministries of his skill -since the departure of the former to Jerusalem. While this dialogue is -characteristic, well phrased, and indirectly humorous, it is a -dramatic mistake to introduce it at such length, retarding the action, -which should be focused sharply upon the essential motive of the -scene,—the conveying to the queen the message of the Nazarene and the -incidents of his refusal. The literary quality of the dialogue between -the queen and Ananias has much beauty, being memorable for the picture -it conveys of Jesus among his disciples at Bethany, “a hamlet up an -olive-sprinkled hill,” where, guided by Philip, the Galilean, the -messenger found him. The description of the personality and manner of -Christ is a subtle piece of portraiture. To the question of Cleonis,— - - Tell me of his appearance. What said he? - -Ananias replies: - - He had prepared this scroll and gave it me - With courteous words, yet, as I after thought, - Most singularly free from deference - For one who ranks with artisans. His look - Betrayed no satisfaction with our suit; - Yet did he emanate a grave respect - Which seemed habitual, much as Stoics use, - Yet kinder; and his bearing had more grace - Than any Jew’s I ever saw before. - As for his words, I own I scarce recall them, - And have been wondering ever since that I, - Bred at a Court and tutored to brave deeds, - Should be so sudden silenced. For I stood - Obedient to unknown authorities - Which spake in eye and tone and every move, - In that his first mild answer of refusal. - -Ere the departure of the king’s embassy from Jerusalem, the tragic -drama of the crucifixion had been enacted and in part witnessed by -them, which Ananias also describes with graphic force; in it appears -an adaptation of the Veronica story. The lines well convey the picture: - - As the way widened past the high-walled house - Of Berenis, the throng thinned, and I saw - Plainer the moving figure of the man - And the huge beam laid on him. Suddenly - From the great gate I saw a form dart forth - Straight towards him, pause, and seem to have some speech - With the condemned, as, by old privilege, - Sometimes the pious ladies do with those - Who tread the shameful road. Her speech was brief. - She turned, and, as I saw ’twas Berenis, - Towards me she came, and her eyes, wet with tears, - Smiled sadly, and she said these final words: - - “Such shame a mighty purpose led him to, - Yet he shrinks not, but steadfast to this end - Inevitable hath he come his way. - A woman of my house was healed of him - By kissing once the border of his garment. - Take your King this, and say that as he dragged - His cruel but chosen cross to his own doom - Some comfort in its cooling web he found, - And left a blessing in its pungent folds.” - -In the third scene of the drama, occurring in the afternoon, Abgar is -informed of the Healer’s refusal to accede to his request, but in the -presence of the queen and the attendants assembled in the royal -garden, the letter of the Nazarene, promising healing and peace, is -read to him by the returned envoy, and at length the linen, received -from the hand of Berenis, and upon whose folds the healing power of -Christ had been invoked, is given into the keeping of Abgar, through -whose veins, as by the visible touch of the divine hand, the current -of new life throbs and courses. The moment is fraught with intense -reality, which Mr. Upson has kept as much as possible to such effects -as transcend words. Just previous to the vital transformation Abgar -has said: - - I have not yet resolved the Healer’s words - Into clear meaning; but their crystal soon - In the still cup of contemplation may - Give up its precious drug to heal our cares,— - -but the supreme end was not wrought by contemplation, nor could its -processes be resolved by analysis, or other words be found to proclaim -it than the simple but thrilling exclamation: - - I feel it now! All through these withered veins - I feel it bound and glow! O life, life, life! - -From this period the incidents of the drama develop with all the -tensity of action which previous to this scene it has lacked, giving -to the close a certain sense of crowding when compared with the slow -movement of the previous scenes consisting chiefly of recital, well -told, but with little to enact, making the work to this point rather a -graphically related story than a drama. The incidents which come on -apace in the latter part of the play have, to be sure, been -foreshadowed in the earlier part, but one is scarcely prepared for the -swift succession of events, nor for their bloody character after the -sabbatical mood into which the earlier scenes of the work have thrown -him. If the drama covered a longer period, giving time between scenes -for the development of events, even though such development were but -suggested by a statement of dates, the impression of undue haste in -the climax would be obviated; but in the interval of one day, even -though all events leading to the issue have been working silently for -months or years, their culmination seems to come without due -preparation to the reader’s mind, and one is swept off his feet by -consummations with whose causes he had scarcely reckoned. - -Immediately following the healing of Abgar, the queen’s cousin, -Agamede, enters breathless and announces to the king the plot on foot -to overthrow him, which inspires the king with a resolve to set forth -at once to the city. Upon the attempt of the queen to deter him, Abgar -relates a prophetic dream of his city and its destiny through him, -which is one of the finest conceptions, both in spiritual import and -elevation of phrase, contained in the drama. The dream is related as -having appeared to the king in three distinct visions, glimpsing his -city in its past, present, and future. It is too long to follow in -detail, but this glimpse is from the vision of the past, where - - Through that wreck of fortress, mart and fane - And fallen mausoleum crowded o’er - With characters forevermore unread, - Only the wind’s soft hands went up and down - Scattering the obliterative sands. - I, led in trance by shapes invisible, - Approached a temple’s splendid architrave - Half sunk in sod betwixt its columns’ bases, - And there by sudden divination read - The deep-cut legend of that awful gate: - - APPEASE WITH SACRIFICE THE UNKNOWN POWERS. - -The next vision is of the city in its present state, “builded on like -dust,” but teeming with activity and material purpose, through which a -glimmering ideal begins to dawn: - - They toiled, or played, or fought, or sued the gods, - Absorbed each in his own peculiar lust, - As if there were no morrow watching them; - Yet each was happier in the morrow-dream - Than ever in all achievéd yesterdays. - -Then is revealed to the mind of Abgar the high commission intrusted to -him: - - And as I looked, I saw a man who long - In upward meditation on his roof - Sat all alone, communing with his soul, - And he arose, and presently went down, - Down in the long black streets among his kind, - And there with patience taught them steadfastly; - But, for the restless souls he made in them, - They turned and slew him and went on their ways, - And a great fog crept up and covered all. - -Here surely is keen spiritual psychology, that “for the restless souls -he made in them” they slew him. All martyrdoms are traced to their -source in this line, which holds also the suggestive truth as to the -final acceptance of that for which the prophet dies. Once having -planted the seed whose stirring makes the “restless soul,” its growth -is committed to the Law, and can no more be prevented than the shining -of the sun or the flowing of the tides. Abgar was granted a third -vision, of the city in its embodied ideal; its ultimate beauty and -achievement were given definite shape before him, and the recital ends -with the triumphal note: - - Fear not for me: I go unto the city! - -The last scene is enacted an hour later in the garden lighted only by -the moon, and opens with the lyric sung by Agamede to the blossoming -oleander-tree ’neath which her child lies buried. These are lines of a -pathos as delicate and spiritual as the moonlight, the fragrance, the -memory inspiring them: - - Grow, grow, thou little tree, - His body at the roots of thee; - Since last year’s loveliness in death - The living beauty nourisheth. - - Bloom, bloom, thou little tree, - Thy roots around the heart of me; - Thou canst not blow too white and fair - From all the sweetness hidden there. - - Die, die, thou little tree, - And be as all sweet things must be; - Deep where thy petals drift I, too, - Would rest the changing seasons through. - -Then follows a dialogue of warmly emotional feeling between the king -and queen, in the interval of waiting for the chariot and attendants -to be brought to the gate. All the physical side of the healing of -Abgar has now been resolved into its spiritual meaning, and he -reinterprets the words of the Nazarene’s message that of his infirmity -he shall know full cure and those most dear to him have peace; but -while Abgar speaks of his changed ideal, looking now to a “city which -hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God,” a clamor is heard -at the gate, and the body-slave rushes to the king with the tidings -that armed troops approach the palace, and begs him to flee in the -waiting chariot. Spurning thought of escape, the king and queen mount -the dais and stand calmly watching in the moonlight the heroic -spectacle of the approaching army. At this moment the queen’s women -rush into the garden, demanding flight; the conflict begins along the -wall; the gate bursts open, and Ananias retreats to the garden, -wounded, and shortly dies. A brief interval of quiet, but full of -portent, succeeds, when Stilbe, who had plotted with the king’s -enemies, rushes through the gate, pursued by the soldiers and bleeding -from wounds of their sabres. She is shot, apparently by the hand of -her former lover, Belarion, and falls dead at the king’s feet. Here -Mr. Upson leaves an unravelled thread of his plot, or at least one for -whose clew I have sought vainly. No cause has been shown for violence -toward her on the part of the soldiers whom she aids, nor on that of -her supposed lover and betrothed, Belarion. Why, then, she should -become his victim, or why he should look upon her dead body and -exclaim: - - “Thus Fate helps out!” - -is at least a riddle past my solving. If, as the results indicate, -Belarion has been using Stilbe as a tool to aid his ambitions, it -should scarcely have been related in good faith in the beginning of -the drama that their marriage was to be celebrated the week in which -the action of the play falls. If logical reasons exist for this change -of front, Mr. Upson should have indicated them more clearly. - -The climax of the play follows immediately upon the death of Stilbe, -when the king, called to account by the insolent Belarion, in -righteous indignation strikes him down. It may be questioned whether -such a deed could follow so quickly upon the rapt spiritual state to -which the king had been lifted; but one inclines to rejoice that the -natural man, impelled by who shall say what higher force, triumphed, -ere the queen, pointing to the dead body of the trusted messenger, -Ananias, and repeating the Nazarene’s words, “Those most dear to you -have peace,”—demanded of the king his blade. - -As they stand defenceless but assured, the soldiers, awed by the might -of some inner force in the king, shrink back, and the drama closes -with the victorious words,— - - Together, Love, we go unto the city! - -Though the play, looked upon from a dramatic standpoint, lacks in the -earlier scenes a certain magnetism of touch and vividness of action, -and in the last scene is somewhat overcharged with them, it has many -finely conceived situations which strike the golden mean, and the -characterization throughout is strongly defined. Its literary quality -must, however, take precedence of its dramatic in the truer appraisal. -In diction it shows none of the strained effort toward the supposed -speech of an earlier time, which usually distinguishes poetic dramas -laid far in the past, but has throughout a fitting dignity and -harmony, combined with ease and flexibility of phrase and frequent -eloquence of dialogue, especially in the passages spoken by Abgar. - -It is a play rather of character and high motive than of plot, a piece -of sheer idealism, notable alike for its spiritual and its poetic -quality. - - - - -BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX - - -BROWN, Alice. Born Hampton Falls, N. H., Dec. 5, 1857. Graduated -Robinson Seminary, Exeter, N. H., 1876. On staff of Youth’s Companion. -Author: Fools of Nature; Meadow-Grass; By Oak and Thorn (English -travels); Life of Mercy Otis Warren; The Road to Castaly (poems); The -Days of his Youth; Robert Louis Stevenson, A Study (with Louise I. -Guiney); Tiverton Tales; King’s End; Margaret Warrener; The -Mannerings; Judgment. Resides in Boston. - -BURTON, Richard. Born Hartford, Conn., March 14, 1859. Graduated -Trinity College, Hartford. Ph.D. Johns Hopkins, 1887. Married Oct. 7, -1889. Taught Old English Johns Hopkins, 1888. Managing Editor N. Y. -Churchman, 1888-89. Travelled in Europe, 1889-90. Literary Editor -Hartford Courant, 1890-97. Associate Editor Warner Library World’s -Best Literature, 1897-99. Professor English Literature, University of -Minnesota, 1898-1902. Editor Lothrop Publishing Co., 1902-04. Lectures -upon literature and the drama. Author: (verse) Dumb in June, 1895; -Memorial Day, 1897; Lyrics of Brotherhood, 1899; Message and Melody, -1903; (prose) Literary Likings, essays, 1898; Life of Whittier, in -Beacon Biography Series, 1900; Forces in Fiction, essays, 1902. -Resides in Boston. - -CARMAN, Bliss. Born Fredericton, N. B., April 15, 1861. Graduate -University of New Brunswick, 1881. Postgraduate student University of -Edinburgh, 1882-83, and of Harvard, 1886-88. Studied law, practised -civil engineering, taught school. Office Editor N. Y. Independent, -1890-1902. For past four years has contributed a weekly column, called -“Marginal Notes,” to the Evening Post, Chicago, The Transcript, -Boston, and the Commercial Advertiser, N. Y. Unmarried. Author: Low -Tide on Grand Pré, 1893; A Sea-Mark, 1895; Behind the Arras, 1895; -Ballads of Lost Haven, 1897; By the Aurelian Wall, 1897; Songs from -Vagabondia, in collaboration with Richard Hovey, 1894; More Songs from -Vagabondia, 1896; Last Songs from Vagabondia, 1900; St. Kavin, a -Ballad, 1894; At Michaelmas, 1895; The Girl in the Poster, 1897; The -Green Book of the Bards, 1898; Vengeance of Noel Bassard, 1899; Ode on -the Coronation of King Edward, 1902; From the Book of Myths, 1902; -Pipes of Pan No. 1, 1902; Pipes of Pan No. 2, 1903; The Word at St. -Kavins, 1903; Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics, 1903. Resides in New York. - -CAWEIN, Madison Julius. Born Louisville, Ky., March 23, 1865. -Graduated at High School in Louisville, 1886. Since then has confined -himself to the writing of verse. Author: Blooms of the Berry, 1887; -The Triumph of Music, 1888; Accolon of Gaul, 1889; Lyrics and Idyls, -1890; Days and Dreams, 1891; Moods and Memories, 1892; Red Leaves and -Roses, 1893; Poems of Nature and Love, 1893; Intimations of the -Beautiful, 1894; The White Snake (translations from German poets), -1895; Undertones, 1896; The Garden of Dreams, 1896; Shapes and -Shadows, 1898; Idyllic Monologues, 1898; Myth and Romance, 1899; Weeds -by the Wall, 1901; One Day and Another, 1901; Kentucky Poems -(selections published in London with an Introduction by Edmund Gosse), -1902; A Voice on the Wind, 1902. Resides Louisville, Ky. - -FENOLLOSA, Mary McNeil. Born in Alabama. Graduated Irving Academy, -Mobile. Married, 1895, Ernest F. Fenollosa. Resided in Japan about -eight years. Author: Out of the Nest: A Flight of Verses, 1899; and -Child Verses on Japanese Subjects. Wrote Monograph upon Heroshige, the -Artist of Mist, Snow, and Rain; also verses, sketches, and stories in -many magazines. - -GUINEY, Louise Imogen. Born Boston, Jan. 7, 1861. Graduated Elmhurst -Academy, Providence, R. I., 1879. Studied afterwards under private -tutors and abroad. Contributor since 1885 to Harper’s, Atlantic, and -other magazines. Author: The White Sail and Other Poems, 1887; -Monsieur Henri: A Footnote to French History, 1892; A Roadside Harp, -1893; A Little English Gallery, 1894; Patrins, essays, 1897; England -and Yesterday, 1898; A Martyr’s Idyl, and Shorter Poems, 1899; Editor -James Clarence Mangan, His Selected Poems, with Study by the Editor, -1897; of the Matthew Arnold (in small Riverside Literature Series); of -Dr. T. W. Parsons’ Translation of Divina Commedia of Dante, 1893; of -Henry Vaughn’s Mount of Olives, 1902. Resides since 1901 in Oxford, -England. - -HALL, Gertrude. Born Boston, Sept. 8, 1863. Educated private schools -in Florence, Italy. Author: (verse) Far from To-day; Allegretto (light -verse): Foam of the Sea; Age of Fairygold; Translator Paul Verlaine’s -Poems, and of Cyrano de Bergerac; (prose) The Hundred, and Other -Stories; April’s Sowing; The Legend of Sainte Cariberte des Ois. -Resides New York City. - -HOVEY, Richard. Born Normal, Ill., 1864. Educated Dartmouth College. -Author: Poems, privately printed, 1880; Songs from Vagabondia; More -Songs from Vagabondia; and Last Songs from Vagabondia (in -collaboration with Bliss Carman); Seaward: An Elegy (on the death of -Thomas William Parsons); The Quest of Merlin: A Masque; The Marriage -of Guenevere: A Tragedy; The Birth of Galahad; A Romantic Drama; -Taliesin: A Masque; Along the Trail: A Book of Lyrics; Translator the -Plays of Maeterlinck (in two series). Died 1900. - -KNOWLES, Frederic Lawrence. Born Lawrence, Mass., Sept. 8, 1869. -Graduated Wesleyan University, 1894. Harvard, 1896. In editorial -department Houghton, Mifflin and Co., from February to September of -1898. Literary adviser of L. C. Page and Co., 1899-1900. Since that -time adviser for Dana Estes and Company. Unmarried. Author: (prose) -Practical Hints for Young Writers, Readers, and Book Buyers, 1897; A -Kipling Primer, 1900. (Republished in England); (verse) On Life’s -Stairway, 1900; Love Triumphant, 1904. Edited Cap and Gown Second -Series, 1897; Golden Treasury of American Lyrics, 1897; Treasury -Humorous Poetry, 1902; The Famous Children of Literature Series, 1902. -Resides in Boston. - -PEABODY, Josephine Preston. Born in New York. Educated Girls’ Latin -School, Boston, and at Radcliffe College, 1894-96. Instructor in -English Literature at Wellesley College, 1901-03. Author: Old Greek -Folk-Stories (Riverside Lit. Series) 1899; The Wayfarers, a book of -verse, 1898; Fortune and Men’s Eyes; New Poems with a Play, 1900; -Marlowe, A Drama, 1901; The Singing Leaves, 1903. Contributor to -leading magazines. Resides Cambridge, Mass. - -REESE, Lizette Woodworth. Born in Baltimore Co., Md., Jan. 9, 1856. -Teacher of English, West High School, Baltimore. Author: A Branch of -May; A Handful of Lavender, 1891; A Quiet Road, 1896. Resides in -Baltimore. - -ROBERTS, Charles George Douglas. Born Douglas, N. B., Jan. 10, 1860. -Graduated University of New Brunswick, 1879 (A. M. 1880). Married -1880. Head Master Chatham Grammar School, 1879-81; York St. School, -Fredericton, 1881-83. Editor Week, Toronto, 1883-84. Professor English -and French Literature, King’s College, Windsor, N. S., 1885-88. -Professor English and Economics, same, 1888-95. Associate Editor -Illustrated American, 1897-98. Author: (verse) Orion and Other Poems, -1880; In Divers Tones, 1887; Ave: An Ode for the Shelley Centenary, -1892; Songs of the Common Day, and Ave, 1893; The Book of the Native, -1896; New York Nocturnes, 1898; Poems, 1901; The Book of the Rose, -1903; (prose) The Canadians of Old; Earth’s Enigmas; The Raid from -Beauséjour; A History of Canada; The Forge in the Forest; Around the -Camp-fire; Reube Dare’s Shad Boat; A Sister to Evangeline; Appleton’s -Canadian Guide-Book, 1899; By the Marshes of Minas, 1900; The Heart of -the Ancient Wood, 1900; The Kindred of the Wild, 1902; Barbara Ladd, -1902; The Bird Book, 1903; The Watchers of the Trails, 1904. Editor -the Alastor and Adonais of Shelley with Introduction and Notes, 1902. -Resides New York City. - -SANTAYANA, George E. Born in Spain, 1863. Assistant Professor of -Philosophy, Harvard University. Author: (verse) Sonnets and Other -Poems, 1894; Lucifer: A Theological Tragedy, 1899; The Hermit of -Carmel and Other Poems, 1901; (prose) The Sense of Beauty, 1896; -Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, 1900. Resides Cambridge, Mass. - -SCOLLARD, Clinton. Born Clinton, N. Y., Sept. 18, 1860. Graduated from -Hamilton College, 1881. Also studied at Harvard and at Cambridge, -England. Professor of English Literature at Hamilton College, 1888-96. -Author: (verse) Pictures in Song, 1884; With Reed and Lyre, 1888; Old -and New World Lyrics, 1888; Giovio and Giulia, 1891; Songs of Sunrise -Lands, 1892; The Hills of Song, 1895; A Boy’s Book of Rhyme, 1896; -Skenandoa, 1896; The Lutes of Morn, 1901; Lyrics of the Dawn, 1902; -The Lyric Bough, 1904; Ballads of Valor and Victory, 1904 (in -collaboration with Wallace Rice); Footfarings (prose and verse), 1904; -(prose) Under Summer Skies, 1892; On Sunny Shores, 1893; A -Man-at-Arms, 1898; The Son of a Tory, 1900; A Knight of the Highway; -The Cloistering of Ursula, 1902; Lawton, 1900; Editor Ford’s Broken -Hearts, 1904, and of Ballads of American Bravery, 1900. Resides -Clinton, N. Y. - -THOMAS, Edith Matilda. Born Chatham, O., August 12, 1854. Educated -Normal School, Geneva, Ohio. Removed to New York, 1888. Author: -(verse) A New Year’s Masque and Other Poems, 1885; Lyrics and Sonnets, -1887; Babes of the Year, 1888; The Inverted Torch, 1890; Fair Shadow -Land, 1893; A Winter Swallow, 1896; The Dancers, 1903; (prose) The -Round Year. Resides West New Brighton, Staten Island. - -TORRENCE, Frederic Ridgely. Born Xenia, O., Nov. 27, 1875. Educated -under private tutors and at Miami University, O., also Princeton. -Librarian Astor Library, 1897-1901. Librarian Lenox Library, 1901-03. -At present Associate Editor of The Critic, New York. Unmarried. -Author: (verse) The House of a Hundred Lights, 1900; El Dorado, A -Tragedy, 1903. Resides in New York. - -UPSON, Arthur. Born in Camden, N. Y., 1877. Graduated from Camden -Academy, 1894. B. A. University of Minnesota. Author: Poems (with -George Norton Northrop); Westwind Songs (with an Introduction by -“Carmen Sylva”); Octaves in An Oxford Garden; The City, a Poem-Drama -(with Introduction by Count Lützow). Resides Minneapolis, Minn. - -WOODBERRY, George E. Born Beverly, Mass., May 12, 1855. Graduated -Harvard, 1877. Professor of English at University of Nebraska, -1877-78, and 1880-82. On editorial staff of the Nation, 1878-79. -Author: History of Wood Engraving, 1883; Life of Edgar Allan Poe, -1885; Studies in Letters and Life, 1890; The North Shore Watch and -Other Poems, 1890; Heart of Man, 1899; Wild Eden, 1899; Makers of -Literature, 1900; Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1902; Poems (collected -edition), 1903. Editor: Complete Poems of Shelley; Complete Works of -Poe (with Mr. Stedman); National Studies in American Letters; Columbia -Studies in Comparative Literature; Lamb’s Essays of Elia; Aubrey de -Vere’s Selected Poems, and Bacon’s Essays. Editor of the Journal of -Comparative Literature. From 1891 to 1903 Professor of Comparative -Literature at Columbia University. - - - - - * * * * * * - - - - -Transcriber’s note: - -Dialect, obsolete, alternative spellings, and accent marks were left -unchanged. - -Footnotes were numbered sequentially and moved to the end of the -section in which the anchor occurs. - -‘Thelogical’ changed to ‘Theological’: ‘Lucifer: A Theological Tragedy’ - - Punctuation additions: - final stop: ‘Of the missing Nancy’s Pride.’ - final stop: ‘The night is loud; the pavements roar.’ - final stop after elipses: ‘A common clod of scentless earth….’ - semicolon: ‘rose-stain encrimsoned the ground;’ - comma: ‘Ah, fortunate he roams who roameth’ - comma: ‘Footfarings (prose and verse), 1904;’ - colon: ‘1903. 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charset=UTF-8" /> -<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Younger American Poets, by Jessie Belle Rittenhouse</title> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover-image.jpg"/> - <style type="text/css"> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2,h3,h4 { - text-align: center; - clear: both; /* makes header appear AFTER any images floated before */ -} - -.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ -.break {page-break-before: always;} /* for epubs */ - -/* Paragraph formatting */ -p { - margin-top: .75em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .75em; -} - -p.hanging {margin-left: 1em; - text-indent: -1em;} - -.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} -.p4 {margin-top: 4em;} - - p.dropcap:first-letter { - float : left; - padding: .1em .1em 0 0; - font-size : 250%; - line-height : 200%; - width : auto; - font-weight : bold; - } - -.center {text-align: center;} - -.sigright { - margin-right: 2em; - text-align: right; -} - -span.lock {white-space: nowrap;} - -/* to add space to poetry lines continued by next speaker */ -.ss {display: inline-block; 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/* keeps tables from truncating display*/ - margin-right: 5%; - border-collapse: collapse; - margin-top: 1em; - margin-bottom: 2em;} -} - - hr.full { width: 100%; - margin-top: 3em; - margin-bottom: 0em; - margin-left: auto; - margin-right: auto; - height: 4px; - border-width: 4px 0 0 0; /* remove all borders except the top one */ - border-style: solid; - border-color: #000000; - clear: both; } - </style> -</head> -<body> -<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Younger American Poets, by Jessie Belle -Rittenhouse</h1> -<p>This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States -and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no -restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this -eBook or online at <a -href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you are not -located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this ebook.</p> -<p>Title: The Younger American Poets</p> -<p>Author: Jessie Belle Rittenhouse</p> -<p>Release Date: August 28, 2017 [eBook #55447]</p> -<p>Language: English</p> -<p>Character set encoding: UTF-8</p> -<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS***</p> -<p> </p> -<h4>E-text prepared by Emmy, MWS, Carol Brown,<br /> - and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> - (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br /> - from page images generously made available by<br /> - Internet Archive<br /> - (<a href="https://archive.org">https://archive.org</a>)</h4> -<p> </p> -<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10"> - <tr> - <td valign="top"> - Note: - </td> - <td> - Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - <a href="https://archive.org/details/youngeramericanp00rittuoft"> - https://archive.org/details/youngeramericanp00rittuoft</a> - </td> - </tr> -</table> -<p> </p> -<hr class="full" /> - -<!--001.png--> -<h1 class="p4">THE YOUNGER AMERICAN<br /> - -POETS</h1> -<!--002.png--> -<!--003.png--> -<!--004.png--> - -<div class="p4 break figcenter"> - <a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a><img src="images/i004.jpg" - width="500" height="698" - alt="Illustration of Richard Hovey" - title="Richard Hovey" - /> -</div><!--end illustration--> - -<!--005.png--> -<div class="break"><!--title page--> -<p class="p4 center"><span class="larger">THE</span><br /> -<span class="muchlarger">YOUNGER AMERICAN<br /> -POETS</span></p> - -<p class="p2 center smaller">BY</p> - -<h2 class="no-break">JESSIE B. RITTENHOUSE</h2> - -<p class="p2 center smaller">ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS</p> - -<p class="p4 center"><span class="ls">BOSTON</span><br /> -LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY<br /> -1904</p> -</div><!--end title page--> -<!--006.png--> - -<div class="break"><!--start copyright page--> -<p class="p4 center"><span class="decoration">Copyright, 1904</span>,<br /> - -<span class="sc">By Little, Brown, and Company</span>.</p> - -<hr class="short" /> - -<p class="center"><span class="decoration">All rights reserved</span></p> - -<p class="p2 center">Published October, 1904</p> - -<hr class="p4 medium" /> -<p class="center smaller"><span class="ls">THE UNIVERSITY PRESS</span><br /> -CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A.</p> -</div><!--end copyright page--> -<!--007.png--> -<div class="break"><!--start dedication page--> -<p class="p4 center">To</p> - -<p class="center larger">LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON</p> - -<p class="center smaller">WHO HAS ENRICHED AMERICAN LITERATURE WITH HER SONG,<br /> -AND MY LIFE WITH HER FRIENDSHIP,<br /> -THESE STUDIES OF THE YOUNGER POETS<br /> -ARE INSCRIBED<br /> -WITH THE WARM AFFECTION OF<br /> -<span class="larger">JESSIE B. RITTENHOUSE</span></p> -</div><!--end dedication page--> -<!--008.png--> -<!--009.png--> -<div class="break p4"><!--start Foreword--> -<h3><a name="foreword" id="foreword"></a>FOREWORD</h3> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">TO attempt, in one volume, to cover the -entire field of present-day poetry in -America, will be recognized the more -readily as impossible when one reflects that in -Mr. Stedman’s American Anthology over five -hundred poets are represented, of whom the -greater number are still living and singing.</p> - -<p>One may scarcely hope, then, in the space -of one volume, to include more than a representative -group, even when confining his study -to the work of the younger poets, for within -this class would fall the larger contingent -named above. It has therefore been necessary -to follow a general, though not arbitrary, standard -of chronology, of which the most feasible -seemed that adopted by Mr. Archer in his admirable -study of the English “Poets of the -Younger Generation,”—the including only of -such as have been born within the last half-century, -and whose place is still in the making. -The few remaining poets whose art has long -since defined itself, such as Mr. Aldrich, Mr. -<!--010.png--> -Stedman, and Mrs. Moulton, need no further -interpretation; nor does the long-acknowledged -work of Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, nor that -of James Whitcomb Riley, whose final criticism -has been pronounced in every heart and at -every hearth.</p> - -<p>The work of Mr. Edwin Markham, the poet -of democracy, whose fraternal songs embody -many of the latter-day ideals, and that of John -B. Tabb, the lapidary of modern verse, who -cuts with infinite care his delicate cameos of -thought, were also beyond the chronological -scheme of the volume. Nor of those who fell -within its scope could a selection be made that -would not seem to some invidious, since it -must chance among so great a number that -many would be omitted who should, with equal -right, have been included; it returns, therefore, -to the earlier statement, that one must confine -himself to a representative group, with whose -work he chance to be most familiar, and upon -which he has, therefore, the truer claim to -speak.</p> - -<p>It seemed, also, that the volume would have -more value if it gave to a smaller number such -a study as would differentiate and define their -work, rather than to a larger group the passing -comment of a few paragraphs. It was a great -<!--011.png--> -regret, however, that circumstances incident -to the copyrights prevented me from including -the admirable work of William Vaughn Moody, -which reveals by its breadth, penetration, and -purpose, the thinker and not the dreamer. Indeed, -Mr. Moody’s work, in its vitality of touch, -fine imagination, and spiritual idealism, proves -not only the creative poet but one to whom the -nobler offices of Art have been entrusted, and -the critic given to inquiring why the former -times were better than these may well keep his -eye upon the work of Mr. Moody.</p> - -<p>It was also a regret that those inexorable -arbiters, space and time, deprived me of the -privilege of including the strongly individual -work of Helen Gray Cone; the artistic, thoughtful -verse of Anna Hempstead Branch; the -sincere and sympathetic song of Virginia -Woodward Cloud; the spiritual verse of Lilian -Whiting, with its interpretation of the higher -imports; the heartening, characteristic notes of -Theodosia Garrison; and the recently issued -poems of Josephine Dodge Daskam, which -prove beyond peradventure that the Muses, -too, were at her christening,—indeed, the -“Songs of Iseult Deserted,” which form a -group in her volume, are lyrics worthy of any -hand.</p> - -<!--012.png--> -<p>Had it been possible in the space at command, -I should also have had pleasure in considering -the work of Frank Dempster Sherman, -who is not only an accomplished lyrist, but who -has divined the heart of the child and set it to -music; the cheer-giving songs of Frank L. -Stanton, fledged with the Southland sunshine -and melody; and the verse-stories of Holman -F. Day, bringing from the pines of Maine their -pungent aroma of humor and pathos. Mr. Day -covers an individual field, representing such -phases of New England life as have been little -celebrated hitherto, even by writers of fiction. -He is familiar with every corner of Maine from -the mountains to the sea, and writes of humanity -in the concrete, sketching his types equally from -the lumber camp or from the sailors and fishermen -of the shore. In his latest volume they -are drawn from the “Kin o’ Ktaadn,” and hold -their way throughout its pages with a reality -provoking both laughter and tears; indeed, one -must seek far to find a keener humor, or one -more infectious, than that of Mr. Day, or a -more sympathetic penetration into the pathos -of life. The heart is the book of his reading, -and, in turn, the heart is the book of his -writing.</p> - -<p>There is no attempt in these studies of the -<!--013.png--> -younger poets to group them into schools, to -define them in relation to one another, or -to hazard prophecies concerning them. Each -is considered in his present accomplishment, -whether the work be fresh from the pen, or -come bringing with it the endorsement of time, -since the song of yesterday may carry farther -than that already borne on the wings of the -years, and has equal claim to consideration in -a volume devoted to the work of the younger -singers; for only by such consideration shall -we learn what is being done in our own day.</p> - -<p class="sigright">J. B. R.</p> - -</div><!--end Foreword--> -<!--014.png--> -<!--015.png--> - -<div class="break"><!--TOC--> - -<table summary="TOC"> - -<tr><th class="ls" colspan="3" scope="colgroup">CONTENTS</th></tr> - -<tr><td colspan="2"></td> - <td class="right"><span class="sc small">Page</span></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="left" colspan="2"><span class="sc">Foreword</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#foreword"><abbr title="seven">vii</abbr></a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="One">I.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">Richard Hovey</span></td> - <td class="right" style="width: 5em;"><a href="#Hovey">1</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="Two">II.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">Lizette Woodworth Reese</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Reese">27</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="Three">III.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">Bliss Carman</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Carman">46</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="Four">IV.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">Louise Imogen Guiney</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Guiney">75</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="Five">V.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">George E. Santayana</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Santayana">94</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="Six">VI.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">Josephine Preston Peabody</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Peabody">110</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="Seven">VII.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">Charles G. D. Roberts</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Roberts">132</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="Eight">VIII.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">Edith M. Thomas</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Thomas">151</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="Nine">IX.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">Madison Cawein</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Cawein">177</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="Ten">X.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">George E. Woodberry</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Woodberry">196</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="Eleven">XI.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">Frederic Lawrence Knowles</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Knowles">212</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="Twelve">XII.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">Alice Brown</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Brown">235</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="Thirteen">XIII.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">Richard Burton</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Burton">248</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="Fourteen">XIV.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">Clinton Scollard</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Scollard">269</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="Fifteen">XV.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">Mary McNeil Fenollosa</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Fenollosa">290</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="Sixteen">XVI.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">Ridgely Torrence</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Torrence">299</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="Seventeen">XVII.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">Gertrude Hall</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Hall">315</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="right"><abbr title="Eighteen">XVIII.</abbr></td> - <td class="left"><span class="sc">Arthur Upson</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Upson">325</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="left" colspan="2"><span class="sc">Biographical Index</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#Index">347</a></td></tr> -</table> -</div><!--end TOC--> -<!--016.png--> -<!--017.png--> -<div class="break"><!--start list of illustrations--> -<table> -<tr><th colspan="3" scope="colgroup" class="ls">LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</th></tr> - -<tr><td class="left"><span class="sc">Richard Hovey</span></td> - <td class="right" colspan="2"><a href="#frontis"><span class="decoration">Frontispiece</span></a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="left"><span class="sc">Lizette Woodworth Reese</span></td> - <td class="center"><span class="decoration">Facing page</span></td> - <td class="right"><a href="#i055">28</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="left"><span class="sc">Bliss Carman</span></td> - <td class="center"> “  “</td> - <td class="right" style="width: 5em;"><a href="#i069">48</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="left"><span class="sc">Louise Imogen Guiney</span></td> - <td class="center"> “  “</td> - <td class="right"><a href="#i099">76</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="left"><span class="sc">Josephine Preston Peabody</span></td> - <td class="center"> “  “</td> - <td class="right"><a href="#i137">112</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="left"><span class="sc">Charles G. D. Roberts</span></td> - <td class="center"> “  “</td> - <td class="right"><a href="#i161">134</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="left"><span class="sc">Madison Cawein</span></td> - <td class="center"> “  “</td> - <td class="right"><a href="#i207">178</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="left"><span class="sc">George E. Woodberry</span></td> - <td class="center"> “  “</td> - <td class="right"><a href="#i229">198</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="left"><span class="sc">Frederic Lawrence Knowles</span></td> - <td class="center"> “  “</td> - <td class="right"><a href="#i247">214</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="left"><span class="sc">Alice Brown</span></td> - <td class="center"> “  “</td> - <td class="right"><a href="#i271">236</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="left"><span class="sc">Richard Burton</span></td> - <td class="center"> “  “</td> - <td class="right"><a href="#i287">250</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="left"><span class="sc">Clinton Scollard</span></td> - <td class="center"> “  “</td> - <td class="right"><a href="#i309">270</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="left"><span class="sc">Mary McNeil Fenollosa</span></td> - <td class="center"> “  “</td> - <td class="right"><a href="#i333">292</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="left"><span class="sc">Ridgely Torrence</span></td> - <td class="center"> “  “</td> - <td class="right"><a href="#i343">300</a></td></tr> -</table> -</div><!--end list of illustrations--> -<!--018.png--> -<!--019.png--> -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Hovey--> -<p class="center">The</p> -<p class="center xxl">Younger American Poets</p> - -<h3><a name="Hovey" id="Hovey"></a><abbr title="One">I</abbr></h3> - -<h4>RICHARD HOVEY</h4> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">RICHARD HOVEY was a poet of convictions -rather than of fancies, in which -regard he overtopped many of his -contemporaries who were content to be “enamored -architects of airy rhyme.” Hovey was -himself a skilful architect of rhyme, an imaginative -weaver of fancy; but these were not -ends, he does not stand primarily for them. -He stands for comradeship; for taking vows -of one’s own soul; for alliance with the shaping -spirit of things; for a sane, wholesome, -lusty manhood; a hearty, confident surrender -to life.</p> - -<p>He is the poet of positivism, virile, objective, -and personal to a Whitmanesque degree, and -answers to many of the qualifications laid -down by Whitman for the testing of an -American poet. His performance is eminently -<!--020.png--> -of the sort to “face the open fields and the -seaside;” it does “absorb into one;” it “animates -to life,” and it is of the people. It -answers also to the query, “Have you vivified -yourself from the maternity of these States?” -for Hovey was an American of the Americans, -and his patriotic poems are instinct with -national pride, though one may dissent from -certain of his opinions upon war.</p> - -<p>Hovey, to the degree of his development -when his hand was stayed, was a finely balanced -man and artist. The purely romantic motives -which form the entire basis, for example, of -Stephen Phillips’ work, and thus render him -a poet of the cultured classes and not of the -people, were foreign to the spirit of Hovey. -He, too, was recasting in dramatic form some -of beauty’s imperishable traditions; but this -was only one phase of his art, it did not cause -him to approach his own time with less of -sympathy; and while he had not yet come -deeply into the prophet gifts of song, their -potency was upon him, and in the Odes, which -contain some of his strongest writing, his passion -for brotherhood, for development through -comradeship, finds splendid expression. In the -best known of his odes, “Spring,” occurs this -stirring symbol:</p> - -<!--021.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">For surely in the blind deep-buried roots</div> - <div class="verse">Of all men’s souls to-day</div> - <div class="verse">A secret quiver shoots.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - <div class="verse">The darkness in us is aware</div> - <div class="verse">Of something potent burning through the earth,</div> - <div class="verse">Of something vital in the procreant air.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>It is in this ode, with the exception of his -visioning of “Night” in <cite>Last Songs from Vagabondia</cite>, -that the influence of Whitman upon -Hovey comes out most prominently; that is, -the influence of manner. The really vital influence -is one much less easily demonstrated, -but no less apparent to a student of both -poets. It is not of the sort, however, to detract -from the originality of Hovey, but rather an -intensifying of his characteristics, a focalizing -of his powers, and is in accordance with Whitman’s -declaration that</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0a">“He most honors my style</div> - <div class="verse">Who learns under it to destroy the teacher.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Hovey’s own nature was so individual that he -rarely failed to destroy the teacher, or he was -perhaps unconscious of having one; but in -the opening lines of the ode in question the -Whitman note is unmistakable:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I said in my heart, “I am sick of four walls and a ceiling.</div> - <div class="verse">I have need of the sky.</div> -<!--022.png--> - <div class="verse">I have business with the grass.</div> - <div class="verse">I will up and get me away where the hawk is wheeling,</div> - <div class="verse">Lone and high,</div> - <div class="verse">And the slow clouds go by.</div> - - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - - <div class="verse">Spring, like a huntsman’s boy,</div> - <div class="verse">Halloos along the hillsides and unhoods</div> - <div class="verse">The falcon in my will.</div> - <div class="verse">The dogwood calls me, and the sudden thrill</div> - <div class="verse">That breaks in apple blooms down country roads</div> - <div class="verse">Plucks me by the sleeve and nudges me away.</div> - <div class="verse">The sap is in the boles to-day,</div> - <div class="verse">And in my veins a pulse that yearns and goads.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Could volumes of conventional nature poetry -set one a-tingle like this? The crowning excellence -of Hovey’s nature poems is that they -are never reports, they do not describe with -far-sought imagery, but are as personal as a -poem of love or other emotion. Such passionate -surrender, such intimate delight as finds -expression, for example, in “The Faun,” could -scarcely be more communicative and direct. -It becomes at once our own mood, an interchange -which is the test of art:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">… And I plunge in the wood, and the swift soul cleaves</div> - <div class="verse">Through the swirl and the flow of the leaves,</div> - <div class="verse">As a swimmer stands with his white limbs bare to the sun</div> - <div class="verse">For the space that a breath is held, and drops in the sea;</div> - <div class="verse">And the undulant woodland folds round me, intimate, fluctuant, free,</div> -<!--023.png--> - <div class="verse">Like the clasp and the cling of waters, and the reach and the effort is done;—</div> - <div class="verse">There is only the glory of living, exultant to be.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>In such words as these one loses thought of -the merely picturesque, their infection takes -hold upon him, particularly in that line befitting -the forest spirit as a garment, in which</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The undulant woodland folds round me, intimate, fluctuant, free,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>a line wherein the idea, feeling, movement, and -diction are wholly at one. It is impossible for -Richard Hovey to be aloof and analytical in -any phase of his work, and when he writes of -nature it is as the comrade to whom she -is a mystic personality. A stanza of “The -Faun” illustrates this; still in the wood, he -asks:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Oh, what is it breathes in the air?</div> - <div class="verse">Oh, what is it touches my cheek?</div> - <div class="verse">There’s a sense of a presence that lurks in the branches.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">But where?</div> - <div class="verse">Is it far, is it far to seek?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The first two collections of the <cite>Vagabondia</cite> -books contain Hovey’s most spontaneous nature -verse; they have also some of the lyrics by -which he will be known when such a rollicking -stave as “Barney McGee,” at which one laughs -<!--024.png--> -as a boyish exuberance, is forgotten. The -quips of rhyme and fancy that enliven the -pages of the earlier volumes give place, in -the <cite>Last Songs</cite>, to a note of seriousness and -artistic purpose which sets the collection to an -entirely different key; not that the work is -uniformly superior to that of the former songs, -but it is more earnest in tone; dawn is giving -place to noon.</p> - -<p>From the second collection may be cited one -of the lyric inspirations that sometimes came to -Hovey, all warmth and color, as if fashioned -complete in a thought. It is called “A Sea -Gypsy,” and the first of its quatrains, though -perhaps not more than the others, has a haunting -charm:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I am fevered with the sunset,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I am fretful with the bay,</div> - <div class="verse">For the wander-thirst is on me</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And my soul is in Cathay.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">There’s a schooner in the offing,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">With her topsails shot with fire,</div> - <div class="verse">And my heart has gone aboard her</div> - <div class="verse indent2">For the Islands of Desire.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I must forth again to-morrow!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">With the sunset I must be</div> - <div class="verse">Hull down on the trail of rapture</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In the wonder of the sea.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<!--025.png--> -<p>Aside from the dramas, and the noble elegy, -“Seaward,” Hovey’s most representative work -is found in his collection, <cite>Along the Trail</cite>, -which opens with a group of battle-hymns -inspired by the Spanish-American war. With -the exception of “Unmanifest Destiny,” and occasional -trumpet notes from the poem called -“Bugles,” these battle-songs are more or less -perfunctory, nor are they ethically the utterance -of a prophet. There is the old assumption -that because war has ever been, it ever -will be; that because the sword has been the -instrument of progress in past world-crises, it is -the divinely chosen arbiter. There is nothing -of that development of man that shall find a -higher way, no visioning of a world-standard -to which nations shall conform; it is rather -the celebration of brawn, as in the sonnet -“America.” The jubilant note of his call of the -“Bugles,” however, thrills with passionate pride -in his country as the deliverer of the weak, -for the ultimate idea in Hovey’s mind was -his country’s altruism; but, as a whole, the -battle-songs lack the larger vision and are unequal -in workmanship, falling constantly into -the commonplace from some flight of lyric -beauty. The best of them, and a worthy -best, both in conception and in its dignified -<!--026.png--> -simplicity, is “Unmanifest Destiny,” which -follows:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">To what new fates, my country, far</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And unforeseen of foe or friend,</div> - <div class="verse">Beneath what unexpected star,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Compelled to what unchosen end,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Across the sea that knows no beach</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The Admiral of Nations guides</div> - <div class="verse">Thy blind obedient keels to reach</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The harbor where thy future rides!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The guns that spoke at Lexington</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Knew not that God was planning then</div> - <div class="verse">The trumpet word of Jefferson</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To bugle forth the rights of men.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">To them that wept and cursed Bull Run,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">What was it but despair and shame?</div> - <div class="verse">Who saw behind the cloud the sun?</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Who knew that God was in the flame?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Had not defeat upon defeat,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Disaster on disaster come,</div> - <div class="verse">The slave’s emancipated feet</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Had never marched behind the drum.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">There is a Hand that bends our deeds</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To mightier issues than we planned,</div> - <div class="verse">Each son that triumphs, each that bleeds,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">My country, serves Its dark command.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I do not know beneath what sky</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Nor on what seas shall be thy fate;</div> - <div class="verse">I only know it shall be high,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I only know it shall be great.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<!--027.png--> -<p>Hovey’s themes are widely diverse, but they -are always of the essential purports. He seems -not only integral with nature, but integral with -man in his ardor of sympathy for his fellows, -and the swift understanding of all that makes -for achievement or defeat. He had the splendid -nonchalance that met everything with -confident ease, and made his relation to life -like that of an athlete trained to prevail. Not -to be servile, not to be negative, not to be -vague,—these are some of the notes of his -stirring song. Even in love there is a characteristic -dash and <em>verve</em>, a celebration of comradeship -as the keynote of the relation, that -makes it possible for him to write this sonnet, -so refreshing and wholesome, and so far removed -from the mawkish or effeminate:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">When I am standing on a mountain crest,</div> - <div class="verse">Or hold the tiller in the dashing spray,</div> - <div class="verse">My love of you leaps foaming in my breast,</div> - <div class="verse">Shouts with the winds and sweeps to their foray;</div> - <div class="verse">My heart bounds with the horses of the sea,</div> - <div class="verse">And plunges in the wild ride of the night,</div> - <div class="verse">Flaunts in the teeth of tempest the large glee</div> - <div class="verse">That rides out Fate and welcomes gods to fight.</div> - <div class="verse">Ho, love, I laugh aloud for love of you,</div> - <div class="verse">Glad that our love is fellow to rough weather,—</div> - <div class="verse">No fretful orchid hothoused from the dew,</div> - <div class="verse">But hale and hardy as the highland heather,</div> -<!--028.png--> - <div class="verse">Rejoicing in the wind that stings and thrills,</div> - <div class="verse">Comrade of ocean, playmate of the hills.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>And that other sonnet, “Faith and Fate,” with -its Valkyr spirit, and its words like ringing -hoofbeats:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">To horse, my dear, and out into the night!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Stirrup and saddle and away, away!</div> - <div class="verse">Into the darkness, into the affright,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Into the unknown on our trackless way!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>And closing with one of his finest lines—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">East, to the dawn, or west or south or north!</div> - <div class="verse"><em>Loose rein upon the neck of Fate—and forth!</em></div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>What valor in that line—“Loose rein upon -the neck of Fate—and forth!” This is the -typical mood, but I cannot refrain, before considering -the last phase of his work, the dramas, -from quoting another sonnet in another mood, -because of its beauty and its revelation of the -spiritual side of his nature:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">My love for thee doth take me unaware,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">When most with lesser things my brain is wrought,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">As in some nimble interchange of thought</div> - <div class="verse">The silence enters, and the talkers stare.</div> - <div class="verse">Suddenly I am still and thou art there,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">A viewless visitant and unbesought,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And all my thinking trembles into nought,</div> - <div class="verse">And all my being opens like a prayer.</div> -<!--029.png--> - <div class="verse">Thou art the lifted Chalice in my soul,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And I a dim church at the thought of thee;</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Brief be the moment, but the mass is said,</div> - <div class="verse">The benediction like an aureole</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Is on my spirit, and shuddering through me</div> - <div class="verse indent4">A rapture like the rapture of the dead.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>“The Quest of Merlin,” Hovey’s first incursion -into drama, and indeed one of his earliest -works, having been issued in 1891, is most -illustrative of his defects and least of his distinctions. -It is unnecessary to the subsequent -dramas, though serving as an introduction to -them, and has in itself very little constructive -congruity. In the songs of the fairies, the -dryads, the maenads, there is often a delicate -airy beauty; but the metrical lapses throughout -the drama are so frequent as to detract from -one’s pleasure in the verse. This criticism is -much less apposite to the subsequent works -of the cycle.</p> - -<p>Hovey’s Arthurian dramas must be judged -by the manner rather than motif, by the situations -through which he develops the well-known -story, and the dramatic beauty and passion of -the dialogue, since the theme is his only as -he makes it his by the art of his adaptation. -He has given us the Arthur of Malory, and -not of Tennyson, the Arthur of a certain early -<!--030.png--> -intrigue with Morgance, the Queen of Orkney, -outlived in all save its effect, that of bitterness -and envy cherished by her against the young -Queen Guinevere, and made use of as one of -the motives of the drama.</p> - -<p>While Tennyson’s Arthur, until the final -great scene with Guinevere in the convent, -and Bedivere by the lake, has a lay-figure personality, -placidly correct, but unconvincing,—in -these scenes, and in the general ideal of the -Round Table, as developed by Tennyson, there -is such profound spiritual beauty that Arthur -has come to dwell in a nebulous upper air, as -of the gods. It is a shock, then, to see him -brought down to earth, as he is in Hovey’s -dramas. However, the lapses are but referred -to as incidental to the plot, not occurring during -its action, and Arthur becomes to us a human, -magnanimous personality, commanding sympathy, -if he does not dominate the imagination -as does Tennyson’s hero. The handicap under -which any poet labors who makes use of these -legends, even though vitalizing them with a -new touch, and approaching them from a new -standpoint, is that the Tennyson touch, the -Tennyson standpoint, has so impressed itself -upon the memory that comparison is inevitable.</p> - -<!--031.png--> -<p>The fateful passion of Lancelot and Guinevere -is enveloped by Tennyson in a spiritual -atmosphere; but in the dramas of Hovey, while -delicately approached, it lacks that elevation by -which alone it lives as a soul-tragedy, and not -as an intrigue. There is, indeed, a strife for -loyalty on the part of Lancelot, when he returns -from a chivalrous quest and learns that -the King’s bride is his unknown Lady of the -Hills; but it is soon overborne by Galahault’s -assurance that Arthur is to Guinevere—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">A mere indifferent, covenanted thing,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>and that she</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Is as virgin of the thought of love</div> - <div class="verse">As winter is of flowers.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Ere this declaration, Lancelot, in conflict with -himself, had exclaimed:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Oh, Galahault, for love of my good name,</div> - <div class="verse">Pluck out your sword and kill me, for I see</div> - <div class="verse">Whate’er I do it will be violence—</div> - <div class="verse">To soul or body, others or myself!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>But to Galahault’s subtle arguments he -opposes an ever-weakening will, and seeing the -Queen walking in the garden, exquisite in -beauty,</p> - -<!--032.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">As if a rose grew on a lily’s stem,</div> - <div class="verse">So blending passionate life and stately mien,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>he is persuaded to seek her, and, ere the close -of the interview, half confessions have orbed to -full acknowledgment by each. The scene is -artistically handled, especially in the ingenuous -simplicity of Guinevere.</p> - -<p>Hovey occasionally makes the mistake of -robbing some vital utterance of its dramatic -value by interlarding it with ornament. True -emotion is not literary, and Guinevere, meeting -Lancelot alone at the lodge of Galahault, for -the first time after their mutual confession, having -come hither disguised and by a perilous -course, would scarcely have chosen these decorative -words:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Oh, do not jar with speech</div> - <div class="verse">This perfect chord of silence!—Nay, there needs</div> - <div class="verse">Thy throat’s deep music. Let thy lips drop words</div> - <div class="verse">Like pearls between thy kisses;</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>and Lancelot, of the overmastering passion, -would scarcely have babbled this reply:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Thy speech breaks</div> - <div class="verse">Against the interruption of my lips</div> - <div class="verse">Like the low laughter of a summer brook</div> - <div class="verse">Over perpetual pebbles.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<!--033.png--> -<p>But when the crisis of the play is reached, -when the court is rife with rumors of the -Queen’s disloyalty, and Lancelot and Guinevere, -under imminent shadow of exposure, meet by -chance in the throne room,—there is drawn a -vital, moving picture, one whose art lies in -revealing the swift transition from impulse -to impulse through which one passes when -making great decisions. First, the high light is -thrown upon the stronger side of Guinevere, in -such meditative passages as these, tinged with -a melancholy beauty:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">We have had a radiant dream; we have beheld</div> - <div class="verse">The trellises and temples of the South,</div> - <div class="verse">And wandered in the vineyards of the Sun:—</div> - <div class="verse">’Tis morning now; the vision fades away</div> - <div class="verse">And we must face the barren norland hills.</div> - - <div class="verse indent2"><span class="speaker">Lancelot.</span> And must this be?</div> - - <div class="verse indent2"><span class="speaker">Guinevere.</span> <span class="ss" style="width:7em"> </span>Nay, Lancelot, it is.</div> - <div class="verse">How shall we stand alone against the world?</div> - - <div class="verse indent2"><span class="speaker">Lancelot.</span> More lonely in it than against!</div> - <div class="verse">What’s the world to us?</div> - - <div class="verse indent2"><span class="speaker">Guinevere.</span> <span class="ss" style="width:3em"> </span>The place in which we live.</div> - <div class="verse">We cannot slip it from us like a garment,</div> - <div class="verse">For it is like the air—if we should flee</div> - <div class="verse">To the remotest steppes of Tartary,</div> - <div class="verse">Arabia, or the sources of the Nile,—</div> - <div class="verse">It still is there, nor can it be eluded</div> - <div class="verse">Save in the airless emptiness of death.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>And fortressed with resolve, she speaks of war, -<!--034.png--> -of rending the kingdom, of violating friendships, -of desecrating the family bond, to all of -which Lancelot opposes his own desires:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">And I—</div> - <div class="verse">I, too, defend it when it <em>is</em> a family,</div> - <div class="verse">As I would kneel before the sacred Host</div> - <div class="verse">When through the still aisles sounds the sacring bell;</div> - <div class="verse">But if a jester strutted through the forms</div> - <div class="verse">And turned the holy Mass into a mock,</div> - <div class="verse">Would I still kneel, or would I rise in anger</div> - <div class="verse">And make an end of that foul mimicry?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>This but adds strength to Guinevere’s argument,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Believest thou, then, the power of the Church?</div> - <div class="verse">The Church would give our love an ugly name.</div> - - <div class="verse indent2"><span class="speaker">Lancelot.</span> Faith, I believe, and I do not believe.</div> - <div class="verse">The shocks of life oft startle us to thought,</div> - <div class="verse">Rouse us from acquiescence and reveal</div> - <div class="verse">That what we took for credence was but custom.</div> - - <div class="verse indent2"><span class="speaker">Guinevere.</span> You are Arthur’s friend, your love—</div> - <div class="verse">Stands this within the honor of your friendship?</div> - - <div class="verse indent2"><span class="speaker">Lancelot.</span> Mother of God—have you no pity?</div> - - <div class="verse indent2"><span class="speaker">Guinevere.</span> <span class="ss" style="width:13em"> </span>I would</div> - <div class="verse">I could be pitiful, and yet do right.</div> - <div class="verse">Alas, how heavy—your tears move me more</div> - <div class="verse">Than all—(what am I saying? Dare I trust</div> - <div class="verse">So faint a heart? I must make turning back</div> - <div class="verse">Impossible);</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>and with a final resolve she adds:</p> - -<!--035.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">But know the worst! I jested—</div> - <div class="verse">I—God!—I do not love you. Go! ’Twas all</div> - <div class="verse">Mockery—wanton cruelty—what you will—lechery!—</div> - <div class="verse">I—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>(<span class="stagedirection">Lancelot looks at her dumbly, then slowly turns to go. -As he draws aside the curtain of the doorway</span>—)</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2"><span class="speaker">Guinevere.</span> Lancelot!</div> - - <div class="verse indent2"><span class="speaker">Lancelot.</span> <span class="ss" style="width:5em"> </span>What does the Queen desire?</div> - - <div class="verse indent2"><span class="speaker">Guinevere.</span> Oh, no, I am not the Queen—I am</div> - <div class="verse">Your wife!</div> - <div class="verse">Take me away with you! Let me not lie</div> - <div class="verse">To you, of all—my whole life is a lie,</div> - <div class="verse">To one, at least, let it be truth. I—I—</div> - <div class="verse">O Lancelot, do you not understand?</div> - <div class="verse">I love you—Oh, I cannot let you go!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>This swift change of front, this weakening, -this inconsistency, is yet so human, so subtly -true to life, under such a phase of it, that the -entire scene vibrates with emotion which gathers -force in the declaration of Guinevere:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Love, I will fly with thee where’er thou wilt!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>and reaches its climax in the sudden strength -with which Lancelot meets the Queen’s weakness. -During her pleading that he should -leave her, his selfish wish had been uppermost; -but her weakness recalls him to himself and -evokes his latent loyalty to the King:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Speak not of flight; I have played him</div> - <div class="verse">False—the King, my friend.</div> -<!--036.png--> - <div class="verse">I ne’er can wipe that smirch away.</div> - <div class="verse">At least I will not add a second shame</div> - <div class="verse">And blazon out the insult to the world.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>And Guinevere, casting about for her own justification, -replies:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">What I have given thee was ne’er another’s.</div> - <div class="verse">How has another, then, been wronged?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>To which Lancelot:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">What’s done</div> - <div class="verse">Is done, nor right nor wrong, as help me, Heaven,</div> - <div class="verse">Would I undo it if I could. But more</div> - <div class="verse">I will not do. I will not be the Brutus</div> - <div class="verse">To stab with mine own hand my dearest friend.</div> - <div class="verse">It must suffice me that you love me, sweet,</div> - <div class="verse">And sometime, somewhere, somehow must be mine.</div> - <div class="verse">I know not—it may be in some dim land</div> - <div class="verse">Beyond the shadows, where the King himself,</div> - <div class="verse">Still calling me his friend, shall place your hand</div> - <div class="verse">In my hand, saying, “She was always thine.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>No surplusage, no interposition of the merely -literary, cumbers this scene, which immediately -precedes the final one, in which Lancelot and -the Queen are publicly accused before the -King, sitting with Guinevere beside him on -the throne.</p> - -<p>The opportunity for a great dramatic effect -is obvious; but through the magnanimity of -Arthur, in waiving the impeachment, and exonerating -<!--037.png--> -from suspicion the Queen and Lancelot, -the effect is not of the clash and din order, in -fact, it is anti-climax in action, the real climax -being a spiritual one whose subtlety would be -lost on the average audience.</p> - -<p>Lancelot (half aside, partly to Guinevere and -partly to himself):</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Be less kingly, Arthur,</div> - <div class="verse">Or you will split my heart—not with remorse—</div> - <div class="verse">No, not remorse, only eternal pain!</div> - <div class="verse">Why, so the damned are!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Guinevere (half apart):</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">To the souls in hell</div> - <div class="verse">It is at least permitted to cry out.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Whatever one may think of the ethical side of -the play as wrought out by Hovey, there is no -question of its human element. As a whole, -“The Marriage of Guenevere” leaves upon -one a more concrete and vital impression than -do the other dramas of the cycle, though it -has less of action and intricacy of plot than -the succeeding one, “The Birth of Galahad,” -and would probably, for stage purposes, be less -effective.</p> - -<p>The action of the latter play takes place -chiefly with Arthur’s army occupied in the siege -of Rome, and unfolds an ingenious plot, turning -<!--038.png--> -upon the capture of Dagonet, the Queen’s -jester, who has been sent with a letter to Lancelot, -informing him of the birth of his son, and -announcing that Guinevere, having left the -child with her friend, the Princess Ylen, had -set out to join the army. The Romans at once -conceive the plan of holding Dagonet; capturing -the Queen for the palace of Caesar; and -giving to Lancelot the alternative of forsaking -Arthur, placing himself at the head of the -army and becoming tributary king of Britain, -with Guinevere as his queen; or of being publicly -dishonored by the conveyance to Arthur -of the incriminating letter. All of which was -artfully planned, and might have been executed -as artfully, had not Dagonet, the jester, in an -act of jugglery, stolen the Emperor’s cloak and -escaped, and, in the guise of a scrivener, attached -himself to the service of a young poet -of Caesar’s household.</p> - -<p>Guinevere is captured by the Romans, and after -many unsuccessful machinations on Caesar’s part -to subdue her to his will, and on the part of his -advisers to win Lancelot to their ends, the letter, -which may, according to the law of Britain, -bring death to the Queen and banishment to -Lancelot, is given to Dagonet to copy for Caesar, -and is burned by the jester with the taper given -<!--039.png--> -him to heat the waxen tablet. Then comes -on apace the sacking of Rome by Arthur; the -taking of the city; the rescue of Guinevere -by Lancelot; the slaying of Caesar and the -crowning of Arthur as Emperor of Rome -with Guinevere as Empress. The scene closes -with the entrance of a messenger with letters -from Merlin, to Arthur and Guinevere, scanning -which the Queen says apart to Lancelot:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">All’s well with him.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Thus ends the drama, again with no suspicion -on the part of Arthur that his faith has been -betrayed, and with no remorse on the part of -Guinevere at having betrayed it, only increasing -joy in the love of Lancelot. It is Lancelot -himself who has the conflict, and in his character -lies the strength of the drama.</p> - -<p>It is evident that Hovey intended to create -a flesh-and-blood Arthur, to eliminate the sanctimonious -and retain the ideal; but the task -proved too difficult, and after opening the -reader’s eyes to the human weaknesses of the -King, thereby inflicting a shock, he returns to -the other extreme, lifts him again into upper -air, and leaves him abstract and unconvincing. -Lancelot, on the contrary, if too palpably human -<!--040.png--> -at the start, grows into a more spiritual ideal, -and when for the first time he meets Guinevere -transfigured with maternal joy, he greets her -with these exquisite words:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">How great a mystery you seem to me</div> - <div class="verse">I cannot tell. You seem to have become</div> - <div class="verse">One with the tides and night and the unknown.</div> - <div class="verse">My child … your child … whence come? By</div> - <div class="verse">What strange forge</div> - <div class="verse">Wrought of ourselves and dreams and the great deep</div> - <div class="verse">Into a life? I feel as if I stood</div> - <div class="verse">Where God had passed by, leaving all the place</div> - <div class="verse">Aflame with him.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>And again he says,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The strangeness is</div> - <div class="verse">That I, who have not borne him, am aware,</div> - <div class="verse">I, too, of intimacy with his soul.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The dramas abound in quotable passages, nor -are they lacking in those that make the judicious -grieve. The work is unequal; but as a whole -it lives in the imagination, and remains in the -memory, especially “The Marriage of Guenevere,” -in that twilight of the mind where dwell -all mystic shapes of hapless lovers.</p> - -<p>The last of the dramatic cycle, “The Masque -of Taliesin,” is regarded by most of Mr. Hovey’s -critics as the high-water mark of his verse, and -it has certainly some of the purest song of his -<!--041.png--> -pen, and profoundest in thought and conception; -but it has also passages of unresolved -metaphysics, whose place, unless the poet had -the patience to shape them to a finer issue, -should be in a Greek philosophy.</p> - -<p>The Masque turns upon the quest of the -Graal by Percival, and is in three scenes, or -movements, set in the forest of Broceliande, -Helicon, and the Chapel of the Graal. It introduces -the Muses, Merlin, Apollo, Nimue, King -Evelac, guardian of the Graal, and lesser mortals -and deities, but chief in interest, Taliesin, a -bard, through whom are spoken the finest passages -of the play. As the work is cast in the -form of a Masque, to obviate the need of adhering -to a strict dramatic structure, one may dispense -with a summary of its slight plot, and -look, instead, at the verse.</p> - -<p>The passages spoken by Apollo to Taliesin, -in other words, Inspiration defining itself to the -poet, are full of glowing thought:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Greaten thyself to the end, I am he for whose breath thou art greatened;</div> - <div class="verse">Perfect thy speech to a god’s, I am he for whom speech is made perfect;</div> - <div class="verse">And my voice in the hush of thy heart is the voice of the tides of the worlds.</div> - <div class="verse">Thou shalt know it is I when I speak, as the foot knows the rock that it treads on,</div> -<!--042.png--> - <div class="verse">As the sea knows the moon, as the sap knows the place of the sun in the heavens,</div> - <div class="verse">As the cloud knows the cloud it must meet and embrace with caresses of lightning.</div> - <div class="verse">When thou hearest my voice, thou art one with the hurl of the stars through the void,</div> - <div class="verse">One with the shout of the sea and the stampede of droves of the wind,</div> - <div class="verse">One with the coursers of Time and the grip of God’s hand on their harness;</div> - <div class="verse">And the powers of the night and the grave shall avail not to stand in thy path.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Genius and its invincible assurance could -scarcely be defined better than in this passage.</p> - -<p>The Masque contains a litany spoken by -King Evelac, and responded to by the choristers -at the Chapel of Graal, which is one of -its achievements, in point of beauty, though -too long to quote, and lyrics of great delicacy -are scattered throughout the work; but in -the more spiritual passages, spoken chiefly by -Taliesin, one gets the finer quality of the verse, -as in this noble query addressed to Uriel, the -angel who holds the flaming sword before the -Graal:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Thou who beholdest God continually,</div> - <div class="verse">Doth not his light shine even on the blind</div> - <div class="verse">Who feel the flood they lack the sense to see?</div> - <div class="verse">The lark that seeks him in the summer sky</div> - <div class="verse">Finds there the great blue mirror of his soul;</div> -<!--043.png--> - <div class="verse">Winged with the dumb need of he knows not what,</div> - <div class="verse">He finds the mute speech of he knows not whom.</div> - <div class="verse">Is not the wide air, after the cocoon,</div> - <div class="verse">As much God as the moth-soul can receive?</div> - <div class="verse">Doth not God give the child within the womb</div> - <div class="verse">Some guess to set him groping for the world,</div> - <div class="verse">Some blurred reflection answering his desire?</div> - <div class="verse">We, shut in this blue womb of doming sky,</div> - <div class="verse">Guess and grope dimly for the vast of God,</div> - <div class="verse">And, eyeless, through some vague, less perfect sense,</div> - <div class="verse">Strive for a sign of what it is to see.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Had one space to follow Mr. Hovey’s philosophy -in the more metaphysical passages, -though fashioned less artistically, the individuality -of his thought in its subtler and more -speculative phases would be revealed, but to -trace it adequately one must needs have the -volume before him, rather than such extracts as -may be given in a brief study. I must therefore, -in taking leave of his work, content myself -with citing the exultant lines with which the -volume closes, the splendid death-song lifting -one on the wave of its ecstatic feeling:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Unaware as the air of the light that fills full all its girth,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Yet crowds not an atom of air from its place to make way;</div> - <div class="verse">Growing from splendor to splendor, from birth to birth,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">As day to the rose of dawn from the earlier gray;</div> - <div class="verse">As day from the sunrise gold to the luminous mirth</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of morning, and brighter and brighter, till noon shall be;</div> -<!--044.png--> - <div class="verse">Intense as the cling of the sun to the lips of the earth,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And cool as the call of a wind on the still of the sea,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Joy, joy, joy in the height and the deep;</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Joy like the joy of a leaf that unfolds to the sun;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Joy like the joy of a child in the borders of sleep;</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Joy like the joy of a multitude thrilled into one.</div> - - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - - <div class="verse">Stir in the dark of the stars unborn that desire</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Only the thrill of a wild, dumb force set free,</div> - <div class="verse">Yearn of the burning heart of the world on fire</div> - <div class="verse indent2">For life and birth and battle and wind and sea,</div> - <div class="verse">Groping of life after love till the spirit aspire,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Into Divinity ever transmuting the clod,</div> - <div class="verse">Higher and higher and higher and higher and higher</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Out of the Nothingness world without end into God.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Man from the blindness attaining the succor of sight,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">God from his glory descends to the shape we can see;</div> - <div class="verse">Life, like a moon, is a radiant pearl in the night</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Thrilled with his beauty to beacon o’er forest and sea;</div> - <div class="verse">Life, like a sacrifice laid on the altar, delight</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Kindles as flame from the air to be fire at its core!</div> - <div class="verse">Joy, joy, joy in the deep and the height!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Joy in the holiest, joy evermore, evermore!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -</div><!--end Hovey--> -<!--045.png--> -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Reese--> -<h3><a name="Reese" id="Reese"></a><abbr title="Two">II</abbr></h3> - -<h4>LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE</h4> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">MISS LIZETTE WOODWORTH -REESE is an Elizabethan, not by -affectation, but by temperament. -Sidney and Lovelace and Herrick and Marlowe -are her contemporaries, though she moves -among them as a gray-robed figure among gay -cavaliers and knights, so restrained is her -mood, so delicate in its withholding.</p> - -<p>Her first collection is aptly named, <cite>A -Handful of Lavender</cite>, for the fragrance of -the elder time pervades it impalpably, as the -scent of lavender makes sweet the linen of -some treasured chest. How Miss Reese has -been able, in the hurly-burly of American life, -to find some indesecrate corner, some daffodiled -garden-close, holding always the quiet -and the glint of sunshine out of which these -songs have come, is an enigma worth a -poet’s solving. She is a Southern woman, -which may furnish some clew to the repose of -her work. There is time down there to ripen, -to let life have its own way of enrichment with -<!--046.png--> -one. She has been content to publish three -books of verse—although the first is now incorporated -with the second—in the interval -in which our Northern poets would have produced -a half-dozen; nor does she much concern -herself, when once the captive melodies -are freed, as to their flight. She knows there -are magnetic breezes in the common air, -charméd winds that blow unerringly, and in -whose upper currents song’s wings are guided, -as the carrier-doves’, to their appointed goal.</p> - -<p>There is a delicate harmony between Miss -Reese’s poems and their number, a nicety of -adjustment between quality and quantity, that -bespeaks the artist. She has the critic’s gift of -appraising her own work before it leaves her -hand, and thus forestalls much of the criticism -that might otherwise attend it. The faculty -of self-analysis would be a safety-valve to -the high-pressure speed at which most literature -of to-day is produced—but, alas, the few -that employ it! “Open the throttle and let it -drive!” is the popular injunction to the genius -within, and wherever it drives, one is expected -to follow. How refreshing it is, then, to come -upon work with calm upon it!—work that -came out of time, culture, and artist-love, and -trusts its appreciation to the same standards.</p> -<!--047.png--> - -<div class="break figcenter"> - <a name="i055" id="i055"></a><img src="images/i055.jpg" - width="500" height="698" - alt="Illustration of Lizette Woodworth Reese" - title="Lizette Woodworth Reese" - /> -</div><!--end illustration--> - -<!--048.png--> -<!--049.png--> -<p>Miss Reese’s verse shows constant affinity -with Herrick, though it is rarely so blithe. It -has the singing mood, but not the buoyant -one, being tempered by something delicate and -remote. The unheard melodies within it are -the sweetest; it pipes to the spirit “ditties of -no tone.” Even its least rare fancies convey -more than they say, and it must be confessed -that much so-called poetry says more than it -conveys. Whitman’s mystical words: “All -music is what awakes from you when you are -reminded by the instruments,” applies equally -well to poetry, to poetry of suggestion, such as -Miss Reese’s. Yesterday’s parted grace has -been transmuted to poetry within us all, but -it is a voiceless possession, speaking to us -in the soul. Miss Reese’s poems, by a line -or two, perhaps, put one in swift possession -of that vanishing beauty within himself. It -floods back, perchance in tears, but it is ours -again. Take almost a random citation, for -this quality is rarely absent from her poems, -whether they summon Joy or Pain,—her lines -“To A White Lilac”:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I know you, ghost of some lone, delicate hour,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Long-gone but unforgot;</div> - <div class="verse">Wherein I had for guerdon and for dower</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That one thing I have not.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--050.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Unplucked I leave your mystical white feather,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">O phantom up the lane;</div> - <div class="verse">For back may come that spent and lovely weather,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And I be glad again!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>To analyze this, would be to pluck the mystical -white feather that a poet left untouched, -that it might recall the grace of “some lone, -delicate hour, long-gone but unforgot;” but -the soul of such an hour has subtilized for each -of us in that spiritual memory-flower, and it -needs no more than the opening line of this -poem to invest the disillusioned day with a -mood the same—yet not the same. Miss -Reese has put it in two lines in her “Song of -the Lavender Woman”:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Oh, my heart, why should you break at any thoughts like these?</div> - <div class="verse">So sooth are they of the old time that they should bring you ease.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>In another brief poem, the spirit of grief, that -transmutes itself at last to music, to odor, to -sunsets and dawns, becomes vital again in the -scent of the box, the garden shrub. The lines -show Miss Reese’s susceptibility to impression -from the most intangible sources:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Dark, thinned, beside the wall of stone,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The box dripped in the air;</div> - <div class="verse">Its odor through my house was blown</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Into the chamber there.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--051.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Remote and yet distinct the scent,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The sole thing of the kind,</div> - <div class="verse">As though one spoke a word half meant</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That left a sting behind.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I knew not Grief would go from me</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And naught of it be plain,</div> - <div class="verse">Except how keen the box can be</div> - <div class="verse indent2">After a fall of rain.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Miss Reese’s art is its apparent lack of art, -of conscious effort. Her diction is as simple -in the mere store of words which she chooses -to employ, as might be that of some poet to -whom such a store was his sole equipment; -but what is that fine distinction between <em>simplesse</em> -and <em>simplicité</em>? One recognizes in her -vocabulary the subtlest art of choice and elimination, -art that is temperament, however, that -selects by intuitive fitness and not by formulas -or deliberate trying of effects. The words -she employs are thrice distilled and clarified, -until they become the essence of lucidity, and -this essence in turn is crystallized into form in -her poems. Perhaps they have, for some, too -little warmth and color; they are not the rich-dyed -words of passion, they are rather the -white, delicate words of memory, but no others -would serve as well.</p> - -<p>In reading certain poems of Miss Reese’s, -<!--052.png--> -such as “Trust,” or her lines “Writ In A Book -Of Elizabethan Verse,” the clarity of the language -recalls a passage in a letter of Jean -Ingelow’s in which she exclaims: “Oh that -I might wash my words in light!” The impression -which many of these lyrics convey is -that Miss Reese <em>has</em> washed her words in light, -so clear, so pure is their beauty. Take, for illustration, -the much-quoted lines “Love Came -Back At Fall O’ Dew,” and note the art and -feeling achieved almost wholly in monosyllabic -words:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Love came back at fall o’ dew,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Playing his old part;</div> - <div class="verse">But I had a word or two,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That would break his heart.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0a">“He who comes at candlelight,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That should come before,</div> - <div class="verse">Must betake him to the night</div> - <div class="verse indent2">From a barréd door.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">This the word that made us part</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In the fall o’ dew;</div> - <div class="verse">This the word that brake his heart—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Yet it brake mine, too!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>A lyric imbued with charm, and into which a -heart history is compressed, and yet employing -but five or six words of more than one syllable! -Is this not clarifying to a purpose? The lines -<!--053.png--> -called “Trust,” illustrate with equal minuteness -the gift of putting into the simplest words -some truth that seems to speak itself without -calling attention to language or form, and, -though having less of charm, they illustrate -the point in question, that of absolute simplicity -without insipidity. This is not, however, -to be taken as advice to all poets to -cultivate the monosyllabic style. Because Miss -Reese can achieve such an effect through it, -when she chooses, as “Love Came Back At -Fall O’ Dew,” does not argue that another -poet would not corrupt it to nursery babble, -nor would it be desirable to strive for it in -any case. Song is impulse, not effort, and -back of it is temperament. Miss Reese is a -poet-<em>singer</em>; she is at her best in the pure lyric, -the lyric that could be sung, and therefore her -most artistic poems are such as are the least -ornate, but have rare distinction in the purity, -fitness, and individuality of her words.</p> - -<p>Very few modern lyrics possess the singing -quality. The term “lyric verse,” as used -to-day, is a misnomer. It is as intricate in -form and phrase as if not consecrated to the -lyre by poets in the dawn of art. The divorce -between poetry and song grows more absolute -year by year; composers search almost vainly -<!--054.png--> -through modern volumes of verse for lyrics -that combine the melody and feeling, the -spontaneity and grace, indispensable to song. -It is not that the modern poet is unable to -produce such, but that he does not choose. -It has gone out of fashion, to state the case -quite frankly, to write with a singing cadence; -something rare and strange must issue from -the poet’s lips, something inobvious. Art -lurks in surprises, and the poet of to-day must -be a diviner of mysteries, a searcher of secrets, -in nature and humanity and truth, and a revealer -of them in his art, though he reveal -ofttimes but to conceal.</p> - -<p>Poetry grows more and more an intellectual -pleasure for the cultured classes, less and less a -possession of the people. Elizabethan song -was upon the lips of the milkmaids and market-women, -the common ear was trained to grace -and melody; but how many of the country folk -of to-day know the involved numbers of our -poets, or, knowing, could grasp them? Who is -writing the lays of the people? One can only -answer that few are writing them because the -spirit of poetic art has suffered a sea-change -into something rich and strange, and the poet -of to-day would be fearful of his laurels should -he write so artless a song as “Gather ye rosebuds -<!--055.png--> -while ye may,” or “Come live with me and -be my love,” and yet these are beads that -Time tells over on the rosary of Art.</p> - -<p>The question is too broad to discuss here. -We should all agree, doubtless, as to the increasing -separation between poetry and song, -the increasing tendency of verse to appeal to -the cultured classes; but as to the desirability -of returning to the simpler form, adapting -theme and melody to the common ear—how -many modern poets would agree upon that? -There is a middle ground, however; the reaction -against the highly ornate is already felt, -and a finer art may be trusted to bring its own -adjustments until poetry will again become of -universal appeal.</p> - -<p>And how does this pertain to Miss Reese? -It pertains in that her ideal is the very return -to clear, sympathetic song of which we have -spoken. She would recapture the blitheness -of Herrick, the valor of Lovelace, would lighten -song’s wings of their heaviness and shift Care -and Wisdom to more prosaic burden-bearers. -While the reminiscent mood is prevalent in her -work, it is not melancholy, but has rather the -iridescent glint of smiles and tears. Joy never -quite departs, although “with finger at his lip, -bidding adieu.” Miss Reese’s strife is toward -<!--056.png--> -a valiant cheer, whose passing she deplores in -the poem called “Laughter”:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Spirit of the gust and dew,</div> - <div class="verse">Herrick had the last of you!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Empty are the morning hills.</div> - <div class="verse">Herrick, he whose hearty airs</div> - <div class="verse">Still are heard in our dull squares;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Herrick of the daffodils!</div> - - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - - <div class="verse">Now the pulpit and the mart</div> - <div class="verse">Make an unquiet thing of Art,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">For we trade or else we preach;</div> - <div class="verse">Even the crocus,’stead of song,</div> - <div class="verse">Serves for text the April long;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Thus we set it out of reach.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>There is heartier food than ambrosia in this -stanza. It is true that when we use the crocus -for a text we set it out of reach, or, in common -phrase, when poetry becomes didactic, Art flees. -A dew-fresh song would teach the crocus’ lesson, -or many another lesson, without a hint of teaching -it, merely by beauty; by the creed of Keats. -Pope’s didactic, sententious lines are gone; but -Keats, who never pointed a moral in his life, -sings on eternally. Miss Reese too is votary -to beauty for its own sake; she gives one the -flower, and he may extract the nectar for himself. -The nectar is always there for one’s distilling -into the truth which is the essence of -<!--057.png--> -things. She does not herself extract and distil -it, for hers is the art of suggestion.</p> - -<p>Having this creed of song, Miss Reese’s -themes are not widely inclusive. They are, -however, the universal themes,—love, beauty, -reverence, remembrance, joy that has been -tempered to cheer, having met pain by the way; -for, as we have said, no encounter with pain—and -her poems give abundant evidence of -such encounter—has been able to subdue the -valor of her spirit, or to quench the joy at -the springs of her feeling, albeit the buoyant, -brimful joy has given place to acquiescent -cheer.</p> - -<p>There is a certain quality in Miss Reese’s -poems, a quaintness, an elder grace, that is -wholly unique. It is the union of theme, -phraseology, and atmosphere. The two former -have been considered, but the spirit, after all, is -in the last, in that which analysis cannot reach. -One selects a poem from <cite>A Quiet Road</cite> illustrative -of this art of correlating Then and Now, -making quick the dead in memory and hope, -and sets about to analyze it,—when, lo, as if one -had prisoned a white butterfly, it escapes, leaving -only the dust of its wing in one’s hand! -Miss Reese’s poems are not to be analyzed, they -are to be felt; that, too, is the creed of her song. -<!--058.png--> -Is it difficult to feel these delicate lines called -“The Road of Remembrance”?—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The old wind stirs the hawthorn tree;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The tree is blossoming;</div> - <div class="verse">Northward the road runs to the sea,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And past the House of Spring.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The folk go down it unafraid;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The still roofs rise before;</div> - <div class="verse">When you were lad and I was maid,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Wide open stood that door.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Now, other children crowd the stair,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And hunt from room to room;</div> - <div class="verse">Outside, under the hawthorn fair,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">We pluck the thorny bloom.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Out in the quiet road we stand,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Shut in from wharf and mart,</div> - <div class="verse">The old wind blowing up the land,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The old thoughts at our heart.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Miss Reese’s growth, as shown in her two -volumes, is so marked that while <cite>A Handful -of Lavender</cite> has the foreshadowing of her -later work, and also some notably fine poems,—such -as “That Day You Came,” “The Last -Cricket,” “A Spinning Song,” and “The -Old Path,”—it has not the same perfectly -individual note that pervades <cite>A Quiet Road</cite>. -The personal mark, the artist-proof mark, upon -nearly everything in the later collection, is frequently -<!--059.png--> -absent from the first. That part of -<cite>A Handful of Lavender</cite> first issued as <cite>A -Branch of May</cite> is naturally the least finished -of Miss Reese’s work. It is unsure and yet -indicative of that—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Oncoming hour of light and dew,</div> - <div class="verse">Of heartier sun, more certain blue,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>which shines in her later work.</p> - -<p>“The Death Potion,” from the first collection, -is a case in point: it is strong in idea, and -here and there in execution, but its metre is -faulty, and it departs so often from the initial -measure that one who has set himself in tune -with that is thrown from the key, and in adapting -himself to the changed rhythm loses the -pleasure of the poem.</p> - -<p>It must be said, however, that such lack of -metrical sensitiveness is very rare even in the -earlier poems. In general, they are of unimpeachable -rhythm; indeed, the singing note is -so much Miss Reese’s natural expression that -it creeps into this sonnet, “The Old Path,” -and turns it in effect to a lyric:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O Love! O Love! this way has hints of you</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In every bough that stirs, in every bee,</div> - <div class="verse">Yellow and glad, droning the thick grass through,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In blooms red on the bush, white on the tree;</div> -<!--060.png--> - <div class="verse">And when the wind, just now, came soft and fleet,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Scattering the blackberry blossoms, and from some</div> - <div class="verse">Fast darkening space that thrush sang sudden sweet,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">You were so near, so near, yet did not come!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Say, is it thus with you, O friend, this day?</div> - <div class="verse">Have you, for me that love you, thought or word?</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Do I, with bud or bough, pass by your way;</div> - <div class="verse">With any breath of brier or note of bird?</div> - <div class="verse indent2">If this I knew, though you be quick or dead,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">All my sad life would I go comforted.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p><cite>A Handful of Lavender</cite> shows the tendency -of most young poets to affect the sonnet, a tendency -laudable enough if one be a natural sonneteer. -Miss Reese has many finely conceived -and well-executed sonnets, but few that are -unforgettably fine, as are many of her lyrics. -That she recognizes wherein her surest power -lies is obvious from the fact that, whereas <cite>A -Handful of Lavender</cite> contains some thirty-two -sonnets, <cite>A Quiet Road</cite> contains but twelve. -Those of nature predominated in the former, -nature for its own sake; but in the latter there -is far less accent upon nature and more upon -life.</p> - -<p>They show in technique, also, Miss Reese’s -firmer, surer touch and greater clarity. There -are certain sonnets in <cite>A Handful of Lavender</cite>, -such as “A Song of Separation,” and “Renunciation,” -warmer in feeling than the later ones -<!--061.png--> -and equal to them in manner; but in general -the mechanism is much more apparent—one -<em>does</em> occasionally see the wires, which is never -the case in the later work.</p> - -<p>“The Look of the Hedge,” or these lines -called “Recompense,” will illustrate the ease -and lucidity of her sonnets in <cite>A Quiet Road</cite>:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Sometimes, yea, often, I forget, forget;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Pass your closed door with not a thought of you,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of the old days, but only of these new;</div> - <div class="verse">I sow; I reap; my house in order set.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Then of a sudden doth this thing befall,</div> - <div class="verse">By a wood’s edge, or in the market-place,</div> - <div class="verse">That I remember naught but your dead face,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And other folk forgotten, you are all.</div> - <div class="verse">When this is so, oh, sooth the time and sweet!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And I, thereafter, am like unto one</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Who from the lilac bloom and the young year</div> - <div class="verse">Comes to a chamber shuttered from the street,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Yet heeds nor emptiness nor lack of sun,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">For that the recompensing Spring is near!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>There are excellently wrought sonnets in the -first volume, indeed, the majority of them are -not without fine lines or true feeling, but -the gain in command of the form has been -marked. When all is said, however, one comes -back to <cite>A Quiet Road</cite> for the songs it holds, -and for these he treasures it. Miss Reese has -epitomized, in her lines “Writ In A Book Of -<!--062.png--> -Elizabethan Verse,” her own characteristics -under those of the earlier singers, sounded the -delicate notes of her own reed, when she says:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Mine is the crocus and the call</div> - <div class="verse">Of gust to gust in shrubberies tall;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The white tumult, the rainy hush;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And mine the unforgetting thrush</div> - <div class="verse">That pours its heart-break from the wall.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">For I am tears, for I am Spring,</div> - <div class="verse">The old and immemorial thing;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To me come ghosts by twos and threes,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Under the swaying cherry-trees,</div> - <div class="verse">From east and west remembering.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O elder Hour, when I am not,</div> - <div class="verse">Gone out like smoke from road and plot,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">More perfect Hour of light and dew,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Shall lovers turn away from you,</div> - <div class="verse">And long for me, the Unforgot!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Surely they will, for clear, pure song keeps -its vibrancy, and the note to which is set -the quaintness of such words as these in -Miss Reese’s poem “A Pastoral,” will not -easily be forgotten:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Oho, my love, oho, my love, and ho, the bough that shows,</div> - <div class="verse">Against the grayness of mid-Lent, the color of the rose!</div> - <div class="verse">The lights o’ Spring are in the sky and down among the grass;</div> - <div class="verse">Bend low, bend low, ye Kentish reeds, and let two lovers pass!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--063.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The plum-tree is a straitened thing; the cherry is but vain;</div> - <div class="verse">The thorn but black and empty at the turning of the lane;</div> - <div class="verse">Yet mile by mile out in the wind the peach-trees blow and blow,</div> - <div class="verse">And which is stem and which is bloom, not any maid can know.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The ghostly ships sail up to town and past the orchard wall;</div> - <div class="verse">There is a leaping in the reeds; they waver and they fall;</div> - <div class="verse">For lo, the gusts of God are out; the April time is brief;</div> - <div class="verse">The country is a pale red rose, and dropping leaf by leaf.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I do but keep me close beside and hold my lover’s hand;</div> - <div class="verse">Along the narrow track we pass across the level land;</div> - <div class="verse">The petals whirl about us and the sedge is to our knees;</div> - <div class="verse">The ghostly ships sail up, sail up, beyond the stripping trees.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">When we are old, when we are cold, and barréd is the door,</div> - <div class="verse">The memory of this will come and turn us young once more;</div> - <div class="verse">The lights o’ Spring will dim the grass and tremble from the sky;</div> - <div class="verse">And all the Kentish reeds bend low to let us two go by!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Miss Reese’s work in <cite>A Quiet Road</cite> is so uniformly -quotable that one distrusts his judgment -in the matter of choice, and having cited one -poem as representative comes suddenly upon -another that might have served him better; -such an one, perhaps, is that to Robert Louis -Stevenson, in its penetrative feeling, showing -Miss Reese to be a diviner of spirits. One -<!--064.png--> -need hardly be told that she is of the “mystic -fellowcraft” of Stevenson, and although the -very name of the valorous one has become a -sort of fetich among his lovers everywhere, one -would go far to find him set forth more bravely -than in this characterization, of which a part -must suffice to show the quality:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">In his old gusty garden of the North,</div> - <div class="verse">He heard lark-time the uplifting Voices call;</div> - <div class="verse">Smitten through with Voices was the evenfall—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">At last they drove him forth.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Now there were two rang silverly and long;</div> - <div class="verse">And of Romance, that spirit of the sun,</div> - <div class="verse">And of Romance, spirit of youth, was one;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And one was that of Song.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Gold-belted sailors, bristling buccaneers,</div> - <div class="verse">The flashing soldier, and the high, slim dame,</div> - <div class="verse">These were the Shapes that all around him came,—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That we let go with tears.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">His was the unstinted English of the Scot,</div> - <div class="verse">Clear, nimble, with the scriptural tang of Knox</div> - <div class="verse">Thrust through it like the far, strict scent of box,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To keep it unforgot.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">No frugal Realist, but quick to laugh,</div> - <div class="verse">To see appealing things in all he knew,</div> - <div class="verse">He plucked the sun-sweet corn his fathers grew,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And would have naught of chaff.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--065.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">David and Keats and all good singing men,</div> - <div class="verse">Take to your hearts this Covenanter’s son,</div> - <div class="verse">Gone in mid-years, leaving our years undone—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Where you do sing again!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>There! I have repented me and quoted it all, -to preserve the unity.</p> - -<p>To be rare and quaint without being fantastic, -to have swift-conceiving fancy that turns -into poetry the near-by thing that many overlook—this -is Miss Reese’s gift. You shall not -go to her for ethics, philosophy, nor for instruction -of any kind, for that is contrary to her -creed; but you shall go to her for truth, truth -that has become personal through experience; -go to her for beauty, uplift, and refreshment, -and above all for the recovery of the departed -mood.</p> -</div><!--end Reese--> -<!--066.png--> -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Carman--> -<h3><a name="Carman" id="Carman"></a><abbr title="Three">III</abbr></h3> - -<h4>BLISS CARMAN</h4> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">THE presence of Mr. Carman, a Canadian -singer, among a group of poets of the -States, needs no explanation; so identified -is he with the artistic life of the younger -generation on this side the border that we have -come to forget his earlier allegiance, and to -consider his work, most of which has been produced -here, as distinctly our own. But while -it is gratifying to feel that so much of his verse -has drawn its inspiration from nature and life -as we know them, one could little spare Mr. -Carman’s first book of lyrics, <cite>Low Tide on -Grand Pré</cite>, which is purely Canadian—set in -the air of the “blue North summer.”</p> - -<p>It lacks as a collection the confident touch -of his later work, but is imbued with an indefinable -delicacy; it withholds the uttermost word, -and its grace is that of suggestion. Especially -is this true of the initial poem, a lyric with a -poignant undernote calling one back thrice -and again to learn its spell.</p> - -<!--067.png--> -<p>It has been Mr. Carman’s method to issue at -intervals small volumes containing work of a -related sort; but it is open to question whether -this method of publishing, with the harmony -which results from grouping each collection -under a certain key, may not have a counterbalancing -danger in the tendency toward -monotony. As a matter of fact, Mr. Carman -has a wide range of subject; but unless one be -ever taking a bird’s-eye view of his work, it is -likely to seem restricted, owing to the reiterance -of the same note in whatever collection he -chance to have in hand. A case in point is -that furnished by <cite>Ballads of Lost Haven</cite>, one of -his most characteristic and fascinating volumes, -a very wizardy of sea moods, yet it has no fewer -than four poems, succeeding one another at the -close of the collection, prefiguring death under -the titles of “The Shadow Boatswain,” “The -Master of the Isles,” “The Last Watch,” and -“Outbound.”</p> - -<p>Each of these is blended of mystery, lure, and -dread; each conveys the feeling it was meant -to convey; but when the four poems of similar -motive are grouped together, their force is lost. -The symbols which seem in each to rise as spontaneously -from the sea as its own foam, lose their -magic when others of like import, but different -<!--068.png--> -phrasing, crowd closely upon them. For illustration, -the “Shadow Boatswain” contains -these fine lines:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Don’t you know the sailing orders?</div> - <div class="verse">It is time to put to sea,</div> - <div class="verse">And the stranger in the harbor</div> - <div class="verse">Sends a boat ashore for me.</div> - - <div class="verse">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - - <div class="verse">That’s the Doomkeel. You may know her</div> - <div class="verse">By her clean run aft; and then</div> - <div class="verse">Don’t you hear the Shadow Boatswain</div> - <div class="verse">Piping to his shadow men?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>And “The Master of the Isles,” immediately -following, opens in this equally picturesque, -but essentially similar, manner:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">There is rumor in Dark Harbor,</div> - <div class="verse">And the folk are all astir;</div> - <div class="verse">For a stranger in the offing</div> - <div class="verse">Draws them down to gaze at her,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">In the gray of early morning,</div> - <div class="verse">Black against the orange streak,</div> - <div class="verse">Making in below the ledges,</div> - <div class="verse">With no colors at her peak.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> -<!--069.png--> - -<div class="break figcenter"> - <a name="i069" id="i069"></a><img src="images/i069.jpg" - width="500" height="720" - alt="Illustration of Bliss Carman" - title="Bliss Carman" - /> -</div><!--end illustration--> - -<!--070.png--> - -<p>While each of the poems develops differently, -and taken alone has a symbolistic beauty that -would fix itself in the memory, when the two -are put together and are followed by two others -cognate in theme, the lines of relief have melted -into one indistinct image. This effect of blurring -<!--071.png--> -from the grouping of related poems is not -so apparent in any collection as in the sea -ballads, as the subject-matter of the other volumes -is more diversified and the likelihood -of employing somewhat the same imagery is -therefore removed; but while Mr. Carman has -a very witchery of phrase when singing of the -sea, and his words sting one with delight like -a dash of brine, one would, for that very reason, -keep the impression vivid, forceful, complete, -and grudges the merging of it into others and -yet others that shall dissipate it or transform it -to an impalpable thing.</p> - -<p>Judging them individually, it is doubtful if -Mr. Carman has done anything more representative, -more imbued with his own temperament, -than these buoyant, quickening songs that -freshen one as if from a plunge in the sea, -and take one to themselves as intimately. The -opening poem sets the key to the collection:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I was born for deep-sea faring;</div> - <div class="verse">I was bred to put to sea;</div> - <div class="verse">Stories of my father’s daring</div> - <div class="verse">Filled me at my mother’s knee.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I was sired among the surges;</div> - <div class="verse">I was cubbed beside the foam;</div> - <div class="verse">All my heart is in its verges,</div> - <div class="verse">And the sea wind is my home.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--><!--072.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">All my boyhood, from far vernal</div> - <div class="verse">Bourns of being, came to me</div> - <div class="verse">Dream-like, plangent, and eternal</div> - <div class="verse">Memories of the plunging sea.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>And what a gruesome, eerie fascination is in -this picture at whose faithfulness one shudders:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Oh, the shambling sea is a sexton old,</div> - <div class="verse">And well his work is done.</div> - <div class="verse">With an equal grave for lord and knave,</div> - <div class="verse">He buries them every one.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip,</div> - <div class="verse">He makes for the nearest shore;</div> - <div class="verse">And God, who sent him a thousand ship,</div> - <div class="verse">Will send him a thousand more;</div> - <div class="verse">But some he’ll save for a bleaching grave,</div> - <div class="verse">And shoulder them in to shore,—</div> - <div class="verse">Shoulder them in, shoulder them in,</div> - <div class="verse">Shoulder them in to shore.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>How the swing of the lines befits the action, -and how it puts on grace in this stanza,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Oh, the ships of Greece and the ships of Tyre</div> - <div class="verse">Went out, and where are they?</div> - <div class="verse">In the port they made, they are delayed</div> - <div class="verse">With the ships of yesterday.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>The remaining strophes tempt one beyond -what he is able, especially this characterization,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Oh, a loafing, idle lubber to him</div> - <div class="verse">Is the sexton of the town;</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> -<!--073.png--> - -<p>but we must take a glance at the ballads, at -the “Nancy’s Pride,” that went out</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">On the long slow heave of a lazy sea,</div> - <div class="verse">To the flap of an idle sail,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">… faded down</div> - <div class="verse">With her creaking boom a-swing,</div> - <div class="verse">Till a wind from the deep came up with a creep,</div> - <div class="verse">And caught her wing and wing.</div> - - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - - <div class="verse">She lifted her hull like a breasting gull</div> - <div class="verse">Where the rolling valleys be,</div> - <div class="verse">And dipped where the shining porpoises</div> - <div class="verse">Put ploughshares through the sea.</div> - - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - - <div class="verse">They all may home on a sleepy tide</div> - <div class="verse">To the sag of an idle sheet;</div> - <div class="verse">But it’s never again the Nancy’s Pride</div> - <div class="verse">That draws men down the street.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>But the fishermen on the Banks, in the eerie -watches of the moon, behold this apparition:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">When the light wind veers, and the white fog clears,</div> - <div class="verse">They see by the after rail</div> - <div class="verse">An unknown schooner creeping up</div> - <div class="verse">With mildewed spar and sail.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Her crew lean forth by the rotting shrouds,</div> - <div class="verse">With the Judgment in their face;</div> - <div class="verse">And to their mates’ “God save you!”</div> - <div class="verse">Have never a word of grace.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--074.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Then into the gray they sheer away,</div> - <div class="verse">On the awful polar tide;</div> - <div class="verse">And the sailors know they have seen the wraith</div> - <div class="verse">Of the missing Nancy’s Pride<a name="chg2" id="chg2"></a>.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>There have been spectral ships since visions -were, but few conjured so vividly that one may -almost see the</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">crew lean forth by the rotting shrouds</div> - <div class="verse">With the Judgment in their face,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and watch them as</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">into the gray they sheer away</div> - <div class="verse">On the awful polar tide.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>The poem illustrates Mr. Carman’s gift of putting -atmosphere into his work. A line may -give the color, the setting, for an entire poem,—a -very simple line, as this,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">With her creaking boom a-swing,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>or, “To the sag of an idle sheet,” which fixes -at once the impression of a sultry, languorous -air, one of those, half-veiled, “weather-breeder” -days one knows so well.</p> - -<p>From a narrative standpoint the ballads are -spirited, there is always a story worth telling; -but they are occasionally marred by Mr. Carman’s -prolixity, the besetting sin of his art. He -who can crowd so much into a line is often -lacking in the faculty of its appraisal, and frequently -<!--075.png--> -a crisp, telling phrase or stanza is -weakened by the accretion that gathers around -it. Beauty is rarely wanting in this accretion, -but beauty that is not organic, not structurally -necessary to the theme, becomes verbiage. -Walter Pater has said it all in his fine passage: -“For in truth all art does but consist in the -removal of surplusage, from the last finish of the -gem-engraver blowing away the last particle of -invisible dust, back to the earliest divination -of the finished work to be, lying somewhere, -according to Michael Angelo’s fancy, in the -rough-hewn block of stone.” It is not Mr. -Carman’s divination of the finished work to be -that is at fault; one feels that the subject is -clearly visioned in his mind at the outset, but -that it proves in some cases too alluring to his -fancy. His work is not artificial; he is not -fashioning poetic bric-à-brac to adorn his verse; -sincerity is writ large upon it; but his mood is -so compelling that he is carried on by the force -of momentum, and finding, when the impulse is -spent, so much beauty left behind, he has not -the heart to destroy it.</p> - -<p>One pardons this over-elaboration in <cite>Ballads -of Lost Haven</cite> because of the likelihood of -coming upon a pungent phrase, like a whiff of -kelp, that shall transform some arid spot to the -<!--076.png--> -blue leagues of sea; and for such a poem as -“The Ships of St. John,” with no superfluous -lines, with a calm, sabbatic beauty, one is wholly -Mr. Carman’s debtor.</p> - -<p><cite>Behind the Arras</cite> has proven a stumbling-block -and rock of offence to some of Mr. Carman’s -readers, because of its recondite character. -They regard it as something esoteric that -only the initiate may grasp, whereas its mysticism -is half whimsical, and requires no superconsciousness -to divine it. Mr. Carman is -founding no cult; it pleases him for the nonce -to mask his thought in symbols, and there are, -alas, minds of the rectangular sort that have no -use for symbols! It is a book containing many -strong poems, such as “Beyond the Gamut,” -“Exit Anima,” and “Hack and Hew,”—a book -of spiritual enigmas through which one catches -hints of the open secret, ever-alluring, ever-eluding, -and follows new clews to the mystery, -immanent, yet undivined.</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Earth one habitat of spirit merely,</div> - <div class="verse">I must use as richly as I may,—</div> - <div class="verse">Touch environment with every sense-tip,</div> - <div class="verse">Drink the well and pass my wander way,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>says this sane poet who holds his gift as a tribute, -whose philosophy is to affirm and not deny:</p> - -<!--077.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O hand of mine and brain of mine, be yours,</div> - <div class="verse">While time endures,</div> - <div class="verse">To acquiesce and learn!</div> - <div class="verse">For what we best may dare and drudge and yearn,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Let soul discern.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>And who through the grime and in the babel -still sees and hears,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Always the flawless beauty,—always the Chord</div> - <div class="verse">Of the Overword,</div> - <div class="verse">Dominant, pleading, sure,</div> - <div class="verse">No truth too small to save and make endure;</div> - <div class="verse">No good too poor!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>This is the vision that shall lighten our eyes, -quicken our ears, and restore our hope,—the -vision which we expect the poet to see and to -communicate. He must make the detached -and fragmentary beauty a typical revelation; -the relative must foreshadow the absolute, as -the moon’s arc reveals by its mystic rim the -fulness to which it is orbing. It is not by disregarding -the tragic, the sombre, the inexplicable, -that Mr. Carman comes into his vision. -Pain has more than touched him; it has become -incorporate in him. <cite>Low Tide on Grand Pré</cite> -has its poignant note; <cite>Ballads of Lost Haven</cite>, -its undertone; <cite>Behind the Arras</cite>, its overtone, -its sublimation.</p> - -<!--078.png--> -<p>Mr. Carman’s work is more subjective than -that of many of the younger poets without -being less objective, as the Vagabondia books -attest. In one mood he is the mystic, dwelling -in a speculative nebula of thought, in another -the realist concerning himself only with the -demonstrable, and hence his work discloses a -wide range of affinities. He is not a strongly -constructive thinker, but intuitional in his -mental processes, and his verse demands that -gift in his readers. Without it what could one -make of “The Juggler” but a poem of delicious -color and music? If its import were none other -than appears upon the face of it, it would still -be admirable, but as a symbol of the Force -projecting us, it is a subtle bit of art.</p> - -<p>Mr. Carman’s sensitiveness to values of -rhythm keeps his verse free from lapses in -that direction. He never, to my memory, -makes use of the sonnet, which shows critical -judgment, as the lyric is his temperamental -medium. The apogee of his art is in his diction, -which has a predestined fitness, and above -all a personal quality. To quote Pater again, -he has “begotten a vocabulary faithful to the -coloring of his own spirit,” and one cannot -mistake even a fragment of his verse. Now -and again one comes upon an archaic expression, -<!--079.png--> -as “A <em>weird</em> is in their song,” using the -ancient noun-form, or upon such a meaningless -solecism, at least to the uninitiate, as -“illumining this <em>quench</em> of clay,” but in general -Mr. Carman does not find it necessary to go -outside the established limits of the language -for variety and force in diction. He has a -genius for imagery, and conjures the most -unsullied fancies from every aspect of nature. -The Vagabondia books are abrim with them, -and while there are idle lines and padded -stanzas, there are few of the poems that do not -strike true flashes here and there, few that -miss of justification, while their gay and rollicking -note heartens one and bids him up -and join in the revel.</p> - -<p>There are others in a graver key, such as -Hovey’s “At the End of the Day,” and Carman’s -“The Mendicants,” and “The Marching Morrows;” -and certain lyric inspirations, such as -the “Sea Gypsy,” by Hovey, and the “Vagabond -Song,” by Carman, that have not been bettered -by either, that could not well be bettered within -their limits. The former has been quoted in -the study of Hovey; the latter is equally an inspiration. -Within the confines of two stanzas -Mr. Carman has suggested what volumes of -nature-verse could never say. He does not -<!--080.png--> -analyze it to a finish, nor let the magic slip -through his fingers; under his touch it subtilizes -into atmosphere and thus communicates -the incommunicable:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—</div> - <div class="verse">Touch of manner, hint of mood;</div> - <div class="verse">And my heart is like a rhyme,</div> - <div class="verse">With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.</div> - <div class="stanza"> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="verse">The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry</div> - <div class="verse">Of bugles going by.</div> - <div class="verse">And my lonely spirit thrills</div> - <div class="verse">To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.</div> - <div class="stanza"> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="verse">There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;</div> - <div class="verse">We must rise and follow her,</div> - <div class="verse">When from every hill of flame</div> - <div class="verse">She calls and calls each vagabond by name.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Throwing aside all that is ephemeral in the -Vagabondia books, all mere boyish ebullition, -there is a goodly residuum of nature-poetry of -the freshest and most unhackneyed sort. It -is the blithe, objective type; eyes and ears are -its informers, and it enters into one’s mood -with a keen sense of refreshment. Who does -not know the impulse that prompted these -lines?</p> - -<!--081.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Make me over, mother April,</div> - <div class="verse">When the sap begins to stir!</div> - <div class="verse">When thy flowery hand delivers</div> - <div class="verse">All the mountain-prisoned rivers,</div> - <div class="verse">And thy great heart beats and quivers</div> - <div class="verse">To revive the days that were,</div> - <div class="verse">Make me over, mother April,</div> - <div class="verse">When the sap begins to stir!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>The temper of the Vagabondia books is -thoroughly wholesome; courage and cheer -dominate them; in short, they are good to -know; and while it is not vitally necessary to -remember all they contain, one would be distinctly -the loser should he forget such poems -as “Non Omnis Moriar” or “The Deserted -Inn” from <cite>The Last Songs</cite>.</p> - -<p>The collection of Memorabilia, <cite>By the Aurelian -Wall</cite>, takes its title from the burial-place -of Keats, and includes “A Seamark,” the fine -threnody on Stevenson; a thrilling eulogy of -Phillips Brooks; a spiritual, poetic visioning -of Shelley under the symbol of “The White -Gull;” a Bohemian lyric to Paul Verlaine, and -other things equally well-wrought. Some of -them need distilling; the poem to Shelley, in -particular, volatilizes to the vanishing-point—but -what haunting sweetness it carries with it! -To be sure, Shelley is elusive, and Matthew -Arnold’s “beautiful but ineffectual angel, beating -<!--082.png--> -in the void his luminous wings in vain,” -has come to dominate the popular fancy in -regard to him. Mr. Carman’s poem, though -touched with this mood, is not set to it, and he -has several stanzas which have in them the -essence of Shelley’s spirit,—the real Shelley, -the passionate idealist, the spent runner who, -falling, handed on the torch.</p> - -<p>The Stevenson threnody is probably the -best of the elegies, as Mr. Carman is by temperament -one of the Stevenson brotherhood, -and no subject could better command him. -That “intimate and magic name,” a password -to fellowship, conjures many a picture of him—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Whose courage lights the dark’ning port</div> - <div class="verse">Where every sea-worn sail must come.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Mr. Carman has singular power to visualize a -scene; one becomes an eye-witness of it as of -this:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">But I have wander-biddings now.</div> - <div class="verse">Far down the latitudes of sun,</div> - <div class="verse">An island mountain of the sea,</div> - <div class="verse">Piercing the green and rosy zone,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Goes up into the wondrous day.</div> - <div class="verse">And there the brown-limbed island men</div> - <div class="verse">Are bearing up for burial,</div> - <div class="verse">Within the sun’s departing ken,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--083.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The master of the roving kind.</div> - <div class="verse">And there where time will set no mark</div> - <div class="verse">For his irrevocable rest,</div> - <div class="verse">Under the spacious melting dark,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">With all the nomad tented stars</div> - <div class="verse">About him, they have laid him down</div> - <div class="verse">Above the crumbling of the sea,</div> - <div class="verse">Beyond the turmoil of renown.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>This island procession to the mountain, leaving -the master to his “irrevocable rest,”</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Under the spacious melting dark,</div> - <div class="verse">With all the nomad tented stars</div> - <div class="verse">About him,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>is an artist’s picture not easily forgotten.</p> - -<p>Mr. Carman’s three volumes in the projected -“Pipes of Pan” series, including thus far <cite>The -Book of the Myths</cite>, <cite>The Green Book of the -Bards</cite>, and <cite>The Sea Children</cite>, make new disclosures -of his talent, and the title poem -“Pipes of Pan,” is a bit of anointed vision -that would waken the dullest eyes from lethargy -as to the world around them. There is -necromancy in Mr. Carman’s words when the -outer world is his theme; something of the -thrill, the expectancy in the heart of growing -things, the elation of life, comes upon one as he -reads the “Pipes of Pan.” It is a nobler vision -than illumined Vagabondia days, revealing</p> - -<!--084.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Power out of hurt and stain</div> - <div class="verse">To bring beauty back again,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and showing the</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Scope and purpose, hint and plan</div> - <div class="verse">Lurking in the Pipes of Pan,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>as well as the sheer delight that we noted in -Vagabondia.</p> - -<p>It seems that every mood of every creature -has been divined and uttered, uttered with deep -love, with a human relatedness that melts the -barriers between life and life, whether in man -or in</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">All the bright, gay-colored things</div> - <div class="verse">Buoyed in air on balanced wings.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>This relatedness, and all the molding influences -of nature leading us on from beauty to strength, -are developed in Mr. Carman’s poem until they -become to us religion. We realize that at -heart we are all pantheists, and that revelation -antedates the Book; that the law is written on -the leaves of roses as well as on tables of stone,—a -testament both new and old, given for our -learning that we might have hope.</p> - -<p>The remaining poems of <cite>The Book of the -Myths</cite> are not the best things Mr. Carman has -done, though renewals of classic verse-forms -in the Sapphic and other metres, and often -<!--085.png--> -picturesque in story. “The Lost Dryad” is -the most attractive, “The Dead Faun” the -least so, to my ears; but perhaps from lack -of sympathy with the subject-matter I cannot -think the collection, with the exception of the -poem “Pipes of Pan,” is of especial value. It -is not to be named, still excepting the above -poem, with its companion volume, <cite>The Green -Book of the Bards</cite>, which contains some of the -strongest work of Mr. Carman’s pen as to subject -and thought, but which has one pronounced -limitation,—its monotony of form.</p> - -<p>The entire volume, with a sole exception, -and that not marked, is written in the conventional -four-line stanza, in which so much of Mr. -Carman’s work of late has been cast. Within -this compass, the accomplishment is as varied -as to theme and diction, as that of his other -work; but when one sings on and on in the same -numbers, it induces a state of mental indolence -in the reader, and presupposes a similar state -in the writer. The verse goes purling musically -along, until, as running water exercises an -hypnotic spell, one is hypnotized by the mere -melody of the lines, and comes to consciousness -to find that he has no notion what they are -about, and must re-read them to find out. To -be sure, the poems will bear reviewing, and -<!--086.png--> -will make new disclosures whenever one returns -to them; but had they greater variety as to -manner, their appeal would be stronger, as the -mind would be startled to perception by unexpectedness, -instead of lulled by the same note -in liquid reiterance. It is quite possible that -Mr. Carman has a principle at stake in this,—it -may indeed be a reactionary measure against -over-evident mechanism, a wholesome desire -for simplicity. Now simplicity is one of the -first canons of art, but variety in metre -and form is another canon by no means annulling -the first. One may have variety to -the superlative degree, and never depart from -the fitness and clearness that spell simplicity.</p> - -<p>Were <cite>The Green Book of the Bards</cite> relieved -by contrasts of form, it would rank with the -finest work of Mr. Carman’s pen, as the individual -poems have strong basic ideas,—such -as the “Creature Catechism,” full of pregnant -thought, and speaking a vital, spiritual word -as to the mystic union of the creative Soul with -the creatures of feather and fin and fleece. -The marked evolution of Mr. Carman’s philosophy -of life, as influenced by his growing -identity with nature, comes out so strongly in -the “Pipes of Pan” series, and in <cite>The Word at -Saint Kavin’s</cite>, as almost to reveal a new individuality. -<!--087.png--> -He had gone out in the light-foot, -light-heart days of Vagabondia, holidaying with -the woods and winds; glad to be quit of the -gyves, to drink from the wayside spring, eat -of the forest fruit, sleep ’neath the tent of -night, and dream to the rune of the pines. He -had sought nature in a mood of pagan joy; but -the wayside spring had excited a thirst it could -not quench, and the forest fruit a hunger it -could not allay, and the blithe seeker of freedom -and delight became at length the anointed -votary, and lingered to watch the God at work -shaping life from death, and expressing His -yearning in beauty.</p> - -<p>The mere objective delight of the earlier -time has grown steadily into the subjective -identity with every manifestation of the Force -that operates within this world of wonder and -beauty, from the soul of man, shaping his ideals -and creating his environment, to the butterfly -whose sun-painted wings, set afloat in the -buoyant air, are upheld by the breath of God. -Coming into the finer knowledge, through long -intimacy with the earth and its multitudinous -life, fulfilling itself in joy,—Mr. Carman has -come at length to</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">readjust</div> - <div class="verse">The logic of the dust,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> -<!--088.png--> - -<p>and to shape from it a creed and law for his -following, which he has put into the mouth -of Saint Kavin for expounding. The opening -stanzas of the volume give the setting and -note:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Once at St. Kavin’s door</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I rested. No sigh more</div> - <div class="verse">Of discontent escaped me from that day.</div> - <div class="verse">For there I overheard</div> - <div class="verse">A Brother of the Word</div> - <div class="verse">Expound the grace of poverty, and say:</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Thank God for poverty</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That makes and keeps us free,</div> - <div class="verse">And lets us go our unobtrusive way,</div> - <div class="verse">Glad of the sun and rain,</div> - <div class="verse">Upright, serene, humane,</div> - <div class="verse">Contented with the fortune of a day.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>The poem follows simple, but no less picturesque -phrase, as becomes Saint Kavin, and is, -from the technical side, quaint and artistic. On -the philosophical, it develops at first the initial -thought that one shall “keep his soul”</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Joyous and sane and whole</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>by obeying the word</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">That bade the earth take form, the sea subside,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and that</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">When we have laid aside</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Our truculence and pride,</div> - <div class="verse">Craven self-seeking, turbulent self-will,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> -<!--089.png--> - -<p>we shall have found the boon of our ultimate -striving,—room to live and let our spirits -grow, and give of their growth and higher -gain to another. Here is the giving that -turns to one’s own enrichment:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And if I share my crust,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">As common manhood must,</div> - <div class="verse">With one whose need is greater than my own,</div> - <div class="verse">Shall I not also give</div> - <div class="verse">His soul, that it may live,</div> - <div class="verse">Of the abundant pleasures I have known?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And so, if I have wrought,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Amassed or conceived aught</div> - <div class="verse">Of beauty, or intelligence or power,</div> - <div class="verse">It is not mine to hoard;</div> - <div class="verse">It stands there to afford</div> - <div class="verse">Its generous service simply as a flower.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>The poem then broadens into a dissertation -upon the complexities of life, one’s servitude -to custom and “vested wrong,” the lack of -individual courage to</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Live by the truth each one of us believes,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and turns, for illustration of the nobler development -and poise, back to nature, and the -evolutionary round of life through which one -traces his course and kinship. These stanzas -are among the finest spoken by the wise -<!--090.png--> -Brother of the Word. After citing the strength -and serenity of the fir-trees, and what a travesty -upon man’s ascent it were, did one bear himself -less royally than they, he adverts to the -creature kin-fellows whose lot we have borne:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I, too, in polar night</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Have hungered, gaunt and white,</div> - <div class="verse">Alone amid the awful silences;</div> - <div class="verse">And fled on gaudy fin,</div> - <div class="verse">When the blue tides came in,</div> - <div class="verse">Through coral gardens under tropic seas.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And wheresoe’er I strove,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The greater law was love,</div> - <div class="verse">A faith too fine to falter or mistrust;</div> - <div class="verse">There was no wanton greed,</div> - <div class="verse">Depravity of breed,</div> - <div class="verse">Malice nor cant nor enmity unjust.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Nay, not till I was man,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Learned I to scheme and plan</div> - <div class="verse">The blackest depredation on my kind,</div> - <div class="verse">Converting to my gain</div> - <div class="verse">My fellow’s need and pain</div> - <div class="verse">In chartered pillage, ruthless and refined.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Therefore, my friends, I say</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Back to the fair sweet way</div> - <div class="verse">Our Mother Nature taught us long ago,—</div> - <div class="verse">The large primeval mood,</div> - <div class="verse">Leisure and amplitude,</div> - <div class="verse">The dignity of patience strong and slow.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--091.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Let us go in once more</div> - <div class="verse indent2">By some blue mountain door,</div> - <div class="verse">And hold communion with the forest leaves;</div> - <div class="verse">Where long ago we trod</div> - <div class="verse">The Ghost House of the God,</div> - <div class="verse">Through orange dawns and amethystine eves!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Then follows a glad picturing of the allurements -of this place of return, a more thoughtful one -of its requitals, and the infinitude of care bestowed -upon every task to which the Master -Craftsman sets his hand, and orbs into a vision -of the soul enlarged by breathing the freer -air and by regaining therefrom her “primal -ecstasy and poise.” It traces also the soul’s -commission,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">To fill her purport in the ampler plan.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Altogether the Word is admirably expounded -by Saint Kavin, and one is distinctly the gainer -for having rested at his door to learn not only -the grace of joyousness, but the means to that -grace.</p> - -<p>In his latest work, constructing from the -“fragments” of Sappho lyrics that should -bear as close relation to the original as an imagination -imbued with the Sapphic traditions -and a temperament sympathetically Greek -would enable him to do,—Mr. Carman undertook -a daring task, but one whose promise he -<!--092.png--> -has made good, as poetry, however near it may -approach to the imagined loveliness of those lost -songs of the Lesbian, which have served by -their haunting beauty to keep vital her memory -through twenty-five centuries in which unnumbered -names have gone to oblivion.</p> - -<p>Of the “Ode to Aphrodite,” the most complete -Sapphic poem extant, many translations and -paraphrases have been made, those by Edwin -Arnold, John Addington Symonds, Ambrose -Philips, Swinburne, etc., being among the -finest; and were there space it would be interesting -to show by comparison that Mr. Carman’s -rendering of the Ode ranks well with the -standard already set.</p> - -<p>Of the fragments, also, while perhaps no -previous attempt has been made to give an -imaginative recast to so large a number of -them, many have been incorporated by Swinburne -in his “Anactoria,” and fugitive stanzas -in the work of Rossetti, Tennyson, Byron, and -others, attest this source. To refashion them, -however, after the manner, as Mr. Roberts says -in his introduction to the volume, of a sculptor -restoring a statue by Praxiteles from the mere -suggestion of a hand or a finger,—is a work of -artistic imagination demanding the finest sympathy, -taste, and kinship with the theme, as -<!--093.png--> -well as the poet’s touch to shape it; and while -no one may pronounce upon the fidelity of the -work, beyond its Greek spirit and command of -the Sapphic metres, together with the interpretation -of the original fragment, it has great -charm of phrase and atmosphere and a certain -pensive beauty even in the most impassioned -stanzas, setting them to a different note from -that usually met in Sapphic paraphrases; as -in these lines:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O heart of insatiable longing,</div> - <div class="verse">What spell, what enchantment allures thee,</div> - <div class="verse">Over the rim of the world</div> - <div class="verse">With the sails of the sea-going ships?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And when the rose petals are scattered</div> - <div class="verse">At dead of still noon on the grass-plot,</div> - <div class="verse">What means this passionate grief,—</div> - <div class="verse">This infinite ache of regret?<span class="lock"><a name="fnanchor_1" id="fnanchor_1"></a><a href="#footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></span> -</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Among the most familiar of the fragments is -that of the “apple reddening upon the topmost -bough,” which Rossetti has put into -charming phrase, together with its companion -verse upon the wild hyacinth; but while these -lines are of haunting charm, they do not make -a complete stanza, the comparison being unknown; -<!--094.png--> -whereas Mr. Carman, in recasting the -fragment, has supplied a logical complement -to the lines and symmetrized them, together -with their companion illustration, to a lyric. -His rendering, too, while less musical, from -being unrhymed, is picturesque and concise, -each word being made to tell as a stroke in a -sketch:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Art thou the topmost apple</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The gatherers could not reach,</div> - <div class="verse">Reddening on the bough?</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Shall not I take thee?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Art thou a hyacinth blossom</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The shepherds upon the hills</div> - <div class="verse">Have trodden into the ground?</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Shall not I lift thee?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>The first Rossetti stanza ends with a fantastic -play upon words explaining that, although the -gatherers did not get the coveted apple, they</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>which, although a pleasant poetical mix-up, is -hardly in keeping with the dignity of the comparison, -which dignity Mr. Carman has well -preserved.</p> - -<p>Another fragment made familiar by adaptation -is that to Hesperus, expanded by Byron -<!--095.png--> -into one of the great passages of “Don Juan.” -Mr. Carman gives a more compact rendering -and again brings the lines to such a close -as shall render them a complete lyric. They -scarcely vie in beauty with the Byron passage, -which is one of the surest strokes of his hand, -but have their own charm and grace:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Hesperus, bringing together</div> - <div class="verse">All that the morning star scattered,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Sheep to be folded in twilight,</div> - <div class="verse">Children for mothers to fondle,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Me, too, will bring to the dearest,</div> - <div class="verse">Tenderest breast in all Lesbos.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>The fragment, “I loved thee, Athis, in the -long ago,” has been expanded by Mr. Carman -into a poem of reminiscent mood, the long, -slow-moving pentameter enhancing the effect -of pensive meditation which the lines convey. -Many of the fragments are of a blither note, -having the variety which distinguishes the -original.</p> - -<p>Mr. Carman has exercised a fine restraint -in his treatment of the fragments. They are -not over-ripe in diction, nor over-elaborated, -and while there is a certain atmosphere of -insubstantiality about many of them, as could -<!--096.png--> -scarcely fail to result from the attempt to -restore, by imagination alone, what had existence -but in tradition, they justify themselves -as artistic poetry, which is the only consideration -of moment.</p> - -<p class="p2 footnote"><a name="footnote_1" id="footnote_1"></a> -<a href="#fnanchor_1"><span class="muchsmaller">[1]</span></a> -From Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics. Copyright, 1903, -by L. C. Page & <abbr title="Company">Co.</abbr></p> -</div><!--end Carman--> -<!--097.png--> -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Guiney--> -<h3><a name="Guiney" id="Guiney"></a><abbr title="Four">IV</abbr></h3> - -<h4>LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY</h4> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">SOME critic has said of Miss Guiney’s -work, that to come suddenly upon it -among other volumes of modern poetry -is like coming upon a Greek temple in an -American woodland; and the comparison is an -apt one, though the temple should scarcely be -Greek, for while the feeling and structure of -the work are classic in atmosphere, they are -not warm enough, sensuous enough, to be -Greek. It would, indeed, be hard to say with -what race classicism Miss Guiney’s work is -tinctured. Rather say that she is a classic by -temperament and has drawn to herself, as by -chemical affinity, such things as are rare and -choice in the world of books and life, and has -fused them in the alembic of her own nature, -until the resultant blend is something new and -strange, having a racy tang and a flavor all its -own, and yet with a hint of all the elements -that went to its compounding.</p> - -<p>Most minds take on learning by a miscellaneous -accretion that results in information -<!--098.png--> -without individuality, but Miss Guiney hives -in many fields and lands the quaint, the picturesque, -the beautiful, to which her temperament -calls her unerringly, and can no more be -tempted to range outside her limit of attraction -than a bee to waste his precious hours dipping -into bloom that holds no nectar for him. To -be sure, Miss Guiney’s range of attraction is -wide, but it enlarges its own confines, and does -not reach out to alien territory. It follows -as a corollary to this fact that unless one be -in the range of attraction with Miss Guiney, -the subjects which claim her thought may be -more or less alien to him, and the restrained, -wholly individual manner of her work may be -equally alien to his nature. He may require -more warmth, more abandon, more of the element -of to-day and to-morrow in the theme and -mood; for Miss Guiney has little to do with -the times and conditions in which she finds -herself; contemporary life is only incidentally -in her verse, and one would have difficulty from -it in declaring her day and generation. Her -poetry demands that synchronism of temperament -by which one responds to her mood -independent of the time or place to which it -transports him.</p> -<!--099.png--> - -<div class="break figcenter"> - <a name="i099" id="i099"></a><img src="images/i099.jpg" - width="500" height="774" - alt="Illustration of Louise Imogen Guiney" - title="Louise Imogen Guiney" - /> -</div><!--end illustration--> - -<!--100.png--> -<p>Take, for illustration, “A Friend’s Song for -<!--101.png--> -Simoisius,” with its charm of music, its beauty -of expression, and its crystal clarity. Few would -be unconscious of the poetic side of it; but to -how many would the subject appeal? What’s -Simoisius to them or they to Simoisius that -they should weep for him? Let, however, this -feeling for the atmosphere of myth and legend -be added, and what charm do the lines take on:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The breath of dew, and twilight’s grace,</div> - <div class="verse">Be on the lonely battle-place;</div> - <div class="verse">And to so young, so kind a face,</div> - <div class="verse">The long, protecting grasses cling!</div> - <div class="verse">(Alas, alas,</div> - <div class="verse">The one inexorable thing!)</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">In rocky hollows cool and deep,</div> - <div class="verse">The bees our boyhood hunted sleep;</div> - <div class="verse">The early moon from Ida’s steep</div> - <div class="verse">Comes to the empty wrestling-ring,</div> - <div class="verse">(Alas, alas,</div> - <div class="verse">The one inexorable thing!)</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Upon the widowed wind recede</div> - <div class="verse">No echoes of the shepherd’s reed,</div> - <div class="verse">And children without laughter lead</div> - <div class="verse">The war-horse to the watering.</div> - <div class="verse">(Alas, alas,</div> - <div class="verse">The one inexorable thing!)</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Thou stranger, Ajax Telamon!</div> - <div class="verse">What to the loveliest hast thou done,</div> - <div class="verse">That ne’er with him a maid may run</div> -<!--102.png--> - <div class="verse">Across the marigolds in spring?</div> - <div class="verse">(Alas, alas,</div> - <div class="verse">The one inexorable thing!)</div> - - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - - <div class="verse">The world to me has nothing dear</div> - <div class="verse">Beyond the namesake river here:</div> - <div class="verse">O Simois is wild and clear!</div> - <div class="verse">And to his brink my heart I bring;</div> - <div class="verse">(Alas, alas,</div> - <div class="verse">The one inexorable thing!)</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>The rhyme scheme in this poem has a distinct -fascination to the ear; there is music in -the lucid words and in the rhythmic lines, -climaxing in each stanza, and, moreover, every -stanza is a picture, with a concrete relation to -the whole. The poem illustrates several of -Miss Guiney’s characteristics: first, the compactness -of her verse. It is never pirouetting -merely to show its grace; in other words, she -does not let the unity of the idea escape in a -profusion of imagery. She uses figure and -symbol with an individual freshness of conception, -but always that which is structural with -the thought, so that one can rarely detach a -stanza or even fugitive lines of her poems without -a loss of value. She develops the theme -without over-developing it, which is the restraint -of the artist. The above poem illustrates, also, -the white light which she throws upon her -<!--103.png--> -words when clarity and simplicity are demanded -by the form; whereas, in sonnets, in her dramatic -poem, “A Martyr’s Idyl,” and in other forms -of verse, her work is sometimes lacking in -that clear, swiftly communicative quality which -poetry should possess; but in her lyric inspirations, -where the form and melody condition the -diction, one may note the perfect clarity and -flexibility which she attains, without loss of the -rare and picturesque word-feeling that belongs -so inseparably to her.</p> - -<p>The stanzas to “Athassal Abbey,” the “Footnote -To A Famous Lyric,” the delicate “Lilac -Song,” and many others blend the finer qualities -of word and metre. With the exception of the -last poem, however, they have not the emotional -warmth that imbues several other of her -lyrics, as the two “Irish Peasant Songs,” which -are inspirations of sheer beauty, especially the -first, in its subtlety of race-temperament and -personal mood, left unanalyzed,—for a further -hint would destroy it,—but holding spring -and tears and youth in its wistful word and -measure:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I knead and I spin, but my life is low the while,</div> - <div class="verse">Oh, I long to be alone, and walk abroad a mile,</div> - <div class="verse">Yet if I walk alone, and think of naught at all,</div> - <div class="verse">Why, from me that’s young, should the wild tears fall?</div> -<!--104.png--> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The shower-stricken earth, the earth-colored streams,</div> - <div class="verse">They breathe on me awake, and moan to me in dreams,</div> - <div class="verse">And yonder ivy fondling the broke castle-wall,</div> - <div class="verse">It pulls upon my heart till the wild tears fall.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The cabin door looks down a furze-lighted hill,</div> - <div class="verse">And far as Leighlin Cross the fields are green and still;</div> - <div class="verse">But once I hear the blackbird in Leighlin’s hedges call,</div> - <div class="verse">The foolishness is on me, and the wild tears fall!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>It is not surprising that William Black should -have quoted this poem in one of his volumes, -for it is certainly one of the most exquisite and -temperamental of folk-songs. The second is -wholly different in note, brimming over with -the exuberance of the Celtic imagination, and -fresh as the breath of spring which inspires it:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">’Tis the time o’ the year, if the quicken-bough be staunch,</div> - <div class="verse">The green, like a breaker, rolls steady up the branch,</div> - <div class="verse">And surges in the spaces, and floods the trunk, and heaves</div> - <div class="verse">In little angry spray that is the under-white of leaves;</div> - <div class="verse">And from the thorn in companies the foamy petals fall,</div> - <div class="verse">And waves of jolly ivy wink along a windy wall.</div> - - <div class="verse">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - - <div class="verse">’Tis the time o’ the year in early light and glad,</div> - <div class="verse">The lark has a music to drive a lover mad;</div> - <div class="verse">The downs are dripping nightly, the breathéd damps arise,</div> - <div class="verse">Deliciously the freshets cool the grayling’s golden eyes,</div> - <div class="verse">And lying in a row against the chilly North, the sheep</div> - <div class="verse">Inclose a place without a wind for tender lambs to sleep.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<!--105.png--> -<p>The out-of-door atmosphere which Miss -Guiney has managed to infuse into these lines is -fairly palpable. What sense of moisture in the -dew-heavy air is in the second stanza, and what -elation and buoyancy of returning life vitalizes -the first! While on this phase of her work -there is another poem as magnetically charged, -and full of ozone, but its objective side incidental -to a subjective query which nature and -science force to the lips:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The spur is red upon the briar,</div> - <div class="verse">The sea-kelp whips the wave ashore;</div> - <div class="verse">The wind shakes out the colored fire</div> - <div class="verse">From lamps a-row on the sycamore;</div> - <div class="verse">The tanager with flitting note</div> - <div class="verse">Shows to wild heaven his wedding-coat;</div> - <div class="verse">The mink is busy; herds again</div> - <div class="verse">Go hillward in the honeyed rain;</div> - <div class="verse">The midges meet. I cry to Thee</div> - <div class="verse">Whose heart</div> - <div class="verse">Remembers each of these: Thou art</div> - <div class="verse">My God who hast forgotten me.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Bright from the mast, a scarf unwound,</div> - <div class="verse">The lined gulls in the offing ride;</div> - <div class="verse">Along an edge of marshy ground,</div> - <div class="verse">The shad-bush enters like a bride.</div> - <div class="verse">Yon little clouds are washed of care</div> - <div class="verse">That climb the blue New England air,</div> - <div class="verse">And almost merrily withal</div> - <div class="verse">The tree-frog plays at evenfall</div> -<!--106.png--> - <div class="verse">His oboe in a mossy tree.</div> - <div class="verse">So, too,</div> - <div class="verse">Am I not Thine? Arise, undo</div> - <div class="verse">This fear Thou hast forgotten me.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>From the nature side these lines are pictures, -taken each by each they are free-hand strokes -with pigment. Note the picturesque quality, -for illustration, in the words,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Bright from the mast, a scarf unwound,</div> - <div class="verse">The lined gulls in the offing ride,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and their imaginative vision with no hint of -the fantastic; for one need only have it glimpsed -before him to know that he has seen the same -effect a score of times. Miss Guiney comes to -the world without, as if no eyes but hers had -looked upon it; she brings no other image -upon the lens of her vision, and hence the -imprint is as newly mirrored, and as fresh -with each changing view as a moving reflection -upon the surface of the water.</p> - -<p>The subjective touch in the above poem:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">I cry to Thee,</div> - <div class="verse">Whose heart</div> - <div class="verse">Remembers each of these: Thou art</div> - <div class="verse">My God who hast forgotten me!—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>articulates the cry which life wrings at sometime -from each of us, noting the infinite solicitude -<!--107.png--> -that writes self-executing laws in the hearts of -the creatures, while man goes blundering after -intimations and dreams. One comes at times -face to face with the necessity to justify the -ways of God to man, when he notes throughout -nature the unerring certainty of instinct, -and the stumbling fallibility of reason. He -questions why the bee excels him in wisdom and -force and persistence, in shaping conditions for -its maintenance, and in intuitions of destiny; -or why the infinite exactness that established -the goings of the ant in the devious ways of -her endeavor should have left man to follow -so fatuous a gleam as human intuition in finding -his own foot-path among the tortuous ways of -life. And these queries Miss Guiney’s poem -raises, though not with arraignment, rather -with the logical demand:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">As to a weed, to me but give</div> - <div class="verse">Thy sap! lest aye inoperative</div> - <div class="verse">Here in the Pit my strength shall be:</div> - <div class="verse">And still,</div> - <div class="verse">Help me endure the Pit until</div> - <div class="verse">Thou wilt not have forgotten me.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>There is sinew and brawn in Miss Guiney’s -work; she is not dallying in the scented gardens -of poesy, but entering the tourney in valorous -emprise. Not a man of them who can meet -<!--108.png--> -fate in a braver joust than she, and he must -needs look well to his armor if he come off as -unscathed. She never stops to bewail the -prick of the spear, though it draw blood, but -enters the field again for the</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">“Hope not compassed, and yet not void.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>There is tonic in her work for the craven -heart, a note to shame one back to the ranks. -Each is a “Recruit” and should take to himself -this marching order:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">So much to me is imminent:</div> - <div class="verse">To leave Revolt that is my tent,</div> - <div class="verse">And Failure, chosen for my bride,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And into life’s highway be gone</div> - <div class="verse">Ere yet Creation marches on,</div> - <div class="verse">Obedient, jocund, glorified:</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And, last of things afoot, to know</div> - <div class="verse">How to be free is still to go</div> - <div class="verse">With glad concession, grave accord,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Nor longer, bond and imbecile,</div> - <div class="verse">Stand out against the Gradual Will,</div> - <div class="verse">The guessed ‘Fall in’! of God the Lord.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>And the plea of Saint George, awaiting the -hour to essay his quest,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O give my youth, my faith, my sword,</div> - <div class="verse">Choice of the heart’s desire:</div> - <div class="verse">A short life in the saddle, Lord!</div> - <div class="verse">Not long life by the fire,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> -<!--109.png--> - -<p>sets one’s sluggish blood in responsive motion,—as -do the succeeding lines:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I fear no breathing bowman,</div> - <div class="verse">But only, east and west,</div> - <div class="verse">The awful other foeman</div> - <div class="verse">Impowered in my breast.</div> - <div class="verse">The outer fray in the sun shall be,</div> - <div class="verse">The inner beneath the moon;</div> - <div class="verse">And may Our Lady lend to me</div> - <div class="verse">Sight of the dragon soon.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>At the outset of her work Miss Guiney sang -an electrifying song of which men begrudged -her the glory, being theft of Jove’s thunder. -It was hight valiantly “The Wild Ride,” and -has the spirit of all the knights and troopers -in Christendom packed within its tense and -vibrant lines:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse"><span class="decoration">I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,</span></div> - <div class="verse"><span class="decoration">All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses;</span></div> - <div class="verse"><span class="decoration">All night from their stalls, the importunate tramping and neighing.</span></div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Let cowards and laggards fall back! but alert to the saddle,</div> - <div class="verse">Straight, grim, and abreast, go the weather-worn galloping legion,</div> - <div class="verse">With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--110.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The trail is through dolor and dread, over crags and morasses;</div> - <div class="verse">There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us:</div> - <div class="verse">What odds? we are knights, and our souls are but bent on the riding.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse"><span class="decoration">I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,</span></div> - <div class="verse"><span class="decoration">All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses;</span></div> - <div class="verse"><span class="decoration">All night from their stalls, the importunate tramping and neighing.</span></div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">We spur to a land of no name, outracing the storm-wind;</div> - <div class="verse">We leap to the infinite dark, like the sparks from the anvil,</div> - <div class="verse">Thou leadest, O God! all’s well with Thy troopers that follow!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>“The Kings” and “The Perfect Hour” are -other trumpet notes of Miss Guiney’s, illustrating -the individuality of her point of view and -the personality of her expression.</p> - -<p>A poet’s words may be wind-blown feathers, -or they may be flint-tipped arrows singing to a -mark. The defect with much of present-day -poetry is that it is not aimed, it is content to -be a pretty flight of feathers, blown by the -breath of fancy, and reaching no vital spot.</p> - -<p>To test Miss Guiney’s marksmanship with -words, one may separate her at once from the -class who are flying airy illusions nowhither, -for she concentrates, instead of diffusing, and -<!--111.png--> -has, at the outset, a definite point in view. She -works upon the arrow principle, but now and -again glances from the mark. In such a poem -as “The Recruit,” in “The Wild Ride,” or the -“Saint George” quoted from, in her stirring -poem “Sanctuary,” beginning,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">High above Hate I dwell,</div> - <div class="verse">O storms! farewell,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and in many others, she cleaves straight to her -aim with no deflection. The same may be -said of many of her lighter poems, the charming -“Lilac Song,” or this delicately wrought -love-song, speeding to the heart:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">When on the marge of evening the last blue light is broken,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And winds of dreamy odor are loosened from afar;</div> - <div class="verse">Or when my lattice opens, before the lark has spoken,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">On dim laburnum-blossoms, and morning’s dying star,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I think of thee (O mine the more if other eyes be sleeping!)</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Whose great and noonday splendor the many share and see,</div> - <div class="verse">While, sacred and forever, some perfect law is keeping</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The late and early twilight alone and sweet for me.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>In poems of this kind and in deeper ones -from the spiritual side of her nature, as well as -in those of valor and daring, she uses such -words as are tipped with a penetrative point; -but in some of her sonnets, such as “The -<!--112.png--> -Chantry,” in a narrative poem, such as “The -Vigil in Tyrone,” though not without picturesque -quality, in “The Squall,” despite its frequently -fine imagery, and often in the dramatic -poem, “A Martyr’s Idyl,” the words are too -much weighted to carry to the mark; they -suggest undue care in selection which interposes -between the motive of the poem and the -sympathy of the reader. One pauses to consider -the words; and the initial impulse, like a -spent shell, falls at his feet. Miss Guiney’s -diction is, in the main, peculiarly crisp and apposite; -but she does not always hold to the -directness of appeal that distinguishes her -truest work, but withdraws herself into subtleties, -often beautiful, but too remote. “A Martyr’s Idyl” -is a dramatically conceived incident, -well wrought as to scene and character, and -having many passages of great beauty; but the -effort to keep the expression to the manner of -the time results in a lack of flexibility in the -style that is now and then cumbrous. On the -whole, it is not in a dramatic poem of this sort -that Miss Guiney best reveals herself, but in -such inspirations as she has taken—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Neither from sires nor sons,</div> - <div class="verse">Nor the delivered ones,</div> - <div class="verse">Holy, invoked with awe.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<!--113.png--> -<p>Her best work answers, by practical demonstration, -her own query:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0a">“Where shall I find my light?”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0a">“Turn from another’s track,</div> - <div class="verse">Whether for gain or lack,</div> - <div class="verse">Love but thy natal right.</div> - <div class="verse">Cease to follow withal,</div> - <div class="verse">Though on thine upled feet</div> - <div class="verse">Flakes of the phosphor fall.</div> - <div class="verse">Oracles overheard</div> - <div class="verse">Are never again for thee,</div> - <div class="verse">Nor at a magian’s knee</div> - <div class="verse">Under the hemlock tree,</div> - <div class="verse">Burns the illumining word.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>The term “original” is one to be used -charily and with forethought, but it is one -that belongs without danger of challenge to -Miss Guiney’s work. There is a distinct quality, -both of treatment and conception, that is -hers alone, a rare, unfamiliar note, without -reminiscent echoes. While it has a certain -classic quaintness, it has also vitality and concrete -forcefulness.</p> - -<p>Her metrical command is varied, and she -employs many forms with assurance of touch. -She has a group of Alexandrian songs in <cite>A -Roadside Harp</cite>, most of them with beauty of -measure and atmosphere. Here, in three lines, -is a rhythmic achievement:</p> - -<!--114.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Me, deep-tresséd meadows, take to your loyal keeping,</div> - <div class="verse">Hard by the swish of sickles ever in Aulon sleeping,</div> - <div class="verse">Philophron, old and tired, and glad to be done with reaping!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>How the “swish of sickles” conveys their very -sound! This ability to put into certain words -both the music and the picture distinguishes -Miss Guiney. In her sonnet upon the “Pre-Reformation -Churches about Oxford,” even -the names that would seem to suggest an inartistic -enumeration are made to convey the -sense of sabbatical sweetness and calm and to -visualize the scene.</p> - -<p><cite>The Sonnets Written at Oxford</cite> mark, as a -whole, her finest work in this form, although -the twelve London sonnets are full of strong -lines and images, and several of them, such as -“Doves” and “In The Docks,” take swift hold -upon one’s sympathy. The former flashes a -picture at the close, by way of rebuke to the -over-solicitous mood, which is not only charming -from the artistic side, but opens the eyes -in sudden content and gladness.</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Ah, if man’s boast, and man’s advance be vain,</div> - <div class="verse">And yonder bells of Bow, loud-echoing home,</div> - <div class="verse">And the lone Tree foreknow it, and the Dome,</div> - <div class="verse">The monstrous island of the middle main;</div> -<!--115.png--> - <div class="verse">If each inheritor must sink again</div> - <div class="verse">Under his sires, as falleth where it clomb</div> - <div class="verse">Back on the gone wave the disheartened foam—</div> - <div class="verse">I crossed Cheapside, and this was in my brain.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">What folly lies in forecasts and in fears!</div> - <div class="verse">Like a wide laughter sweet and opportune,</div> - <div class="verse">Wet from the fount, three hundred doves of Paul’s</div> - <div class="verse">Shook their warm wings, drizzling the golden noon,</div> - <div class="verse">And in their rain-cloud vanished up the walls.</div> - <div class="verse">“God keeps,” I said, “our little flock of years.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>This note of spiritual assurance appears -throughout Miss Guiney’s work, speaking in -her sonnet, “The Acknowledgment,” and again -and again in other poems. She has the mystic’s -passion for the One Good, the One Beauty—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O hidden, O perfect, O desired, the first and the final fair!—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>and gives it impassioned expression in the lines, -“Deo Optimo Maximo,”</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">All else for use, one only for desire;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Thanksgiving for the good, but thirst for Thee:</div> - <div class="verse">Up from the best, whereof no man need tire,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Impel Thou me.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Delight is menace, if Thou brood not by,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Power a quicksand, Fame a gathering jeer.</div> - <div class="verse">Oft as the morn, (though none of earth deny</div> - <div class="verse indent2">These three are dear,)</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--116.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Wash me of them, that I may be renewed,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Nor wall in clay mine agonies and joys;</div> - <div class="verse">O close my hand upon Beatitude!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Not on her toys.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>And here at the last is the tenderest Nativity -song for which dedicated words were ever -found; so quaint, so gentle, so reverent, so -blended of sweet and sad. The second stanza -is an artist’s grouping from life:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The Ox he openeth wide the doore</div> - <div class="verse">And from the snowe he calls her inne,</div> - <div class="verse">And he hath seen her Smile therefore,</div> - <div class="verse">Our Lady without sinne.</div> - <div class="verse">Now soone from sleepe</div> - <div class="verse">A starre shall leap,</div> - <div class="verse">And soon arrive both King and Hinde;</div> - <div class="verse"><em>Amen</em>, <em>Amen</em>:</div> - <div class="verse">But O, the place co’d I but find!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The Ox hath husht his voyce and bent</div> - <div class="verse">Trewe eyes of Pitty ore the Mow,</div> - <div class="verse">And on his lovelie Neck, forspent,</div> - <div class="verse">The Blessed lays her Browe.</div> - <div class="verse">Around her feet</div> - <div class="verse">Full Warme and Sweete</div> - <div class="verse">His Bowerie Breath doth meeklie dwell;</div> - <div class="verse"><em>Amen</em>, <em>Amen</em>:</div> - <div class="verse">But sore am I with Vaine Travél!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The Ox is Host in Juda’s stall,</div> - <div class="verse">And Host of more than onelie one,</div> - <div class="verse">For close she gathereth withal</div> -<!--117.png--> - <div class="verse">Our Lorde, her littel Sonne:</div> - <div class="verse">Glad Hinde and King</div> - <div class="verse">Their Gyfte may bring,</div> - <div class="verse">But wo’d to-night my Teares were there;</div> - <div class="verse"><em>Amen</em>, <em>Amen</em>:</div> - <div class="verse">Between her Bosom and His hayre!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>To sum up Miss Guiney’s work, as well as -one may, in a sentence,—it has no flaccid -thought. There is fibre in all she writes; fibre -and nerve. Were the fervor and passion which -she throws into her songs of valor to be diffused -throughout her verse, making its appeal more -intimate and personal, she would speak more -widely, but scarcely to more appreciative readers -than now delight in her individuality.</p> -</div><!--end Guiney--> -<!--118.png--> -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Santayana--> -<h3><a name="Santayana" id="Santayana"></a><abbr title="Five">V</abbr></h3> - -<h4>GEORGE E. SANTAYANA</h4> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">EMOTION recollected in tranquillity,” -perfectly defines the work of Mr. -George Santayana. He is a musing -philosopher environed by himself. He</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0b">‘Shuts himself in with his soul</div> - <div class="verse"> And the shapes come eddying forth,’</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>shapes that have no being in the world of sense, -but are rather phantasms materialized in the -ether of dreams. There is no evidence in -Mr. Santayana’s work that he is living in -America in the twentieth century—and upon -his own testimony he is not; he has withdrawn -from the importunity of things:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Within my nature’s shell I slumber curled,</div> - <div class="verse">Unmindful of the changing outer skies,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>and in this inviolate seclusion he enamels the -pearl with the nacre of his own spirit.</p> - -<p>Mr. Santayana’s poet-kinsmen are not to be -found in contemporary literature; he is alone -in the midst of the singers as regards temperament -<!--119.png--> -and attitude toward life. His school is -that of beauty; his time that of the gods; his -faith the sanctity of loveliness; and his creed -the restoration of the fair. He would shut out -all the obtrusive shows of nature and life, and -dwell in the Nirvana of his own contemplation:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">A wall, a wall around my garden rear,</div> - <div class="verse">And hedge me in from the disconsolate hills;</div> - <div class="verse">Give me but one of all the mountain rills,</div> - <div class="verse">Enough of ocean in its voice I hear.</div> - <div class="verse">Come no profane insatiate mortal near</div> - <div class="verse">With the contagion of his passionate ills;</div> - <div class="verse">The smoke of battle all the valleys fills,</div> - <div class="verse">Let the eternal sunlight greet me here.—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and once enshrined in this Nirvanic close, -where the strife of living had merged into the -poise of being, he would repeople the desolated -earth and air with the forms of his imagination:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">A thousand beauties that have never been</div> - <div class="verse">Haunt me with hope and tempt me to pursue;</div> - <div class="verse">The gods, methink, dwell just behind the blue;</div> - <div class="verse">The satyrs at my coming fled the green.</div> - <div class="verse">The flitting shadows of the grove between</div> - <div class="verse">The dryads’ eyes were winking, and I knew</div> - <div class="verse">The wings of sacred Eros as he flew,</div> - <div class="verse">And left me to the love of things not seen.</div> - <div class="verse">’Tis a sad love, like an eternal prayer,</div> - <div class="verse">And knows no keen delight, no faint surcease,</div> - <div class="verse">Yet from the seasons hath the earth increase,</div> -<!--120.png--> - <div class="verse">And heaven shines as if the gods were there.</div> - <div class="verse">Had Dian passed, there could no deeper peace</div> - <div class="verse">Embalm the purple stretches of the air.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>It is no exaggeration to say that were Mr. -Santayana in a cloister, or upon a mid-sea -island with his books and dreams, he could -scarcely be less in touch with the passing world -than he is in the midst of the clamor and -insistence of modern life, where he keeps the -tranquillity of the inner silence as if there were -no voices dinning in his ears. He is subjective -to the degree of transfusing himself with another’s -consciousness, and looking upon his -own nature from an impersonal standpoint:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">There we live o’er, amid angelic powers,</div> - <div class="verse">Our lives without remorse, as if not ours,</div> - <div class="verse">And others’ lives with love, as if our own,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>says one of the sonnets, imaging the passion-stilled -world of reflection.</p> - -<p>There is a subtlety in Mr. Santayana’s -processes of thought that demands intuitive -divination on the part of the reader; there is -so little objectivity to the idea that its essence -may almost escape him. His illustrative symbolism -is almost never drawn from nature or -the world of men and events, but from the -treasure of beauty at the depth of his spirit, -<!--121.png--> -where, by some mystic chemistry, he has separated -all the elements not in harmony with -him. There must at some time have been -reaction and repulsion, ferment and explosion, -in the laboratory of Mr. Santayana’s mind; -but he awaited the subsidence of the action; -awaited the period when emotion, thought, and -learning had distilled and crystallized before -he shaped them forth before the world.</p> - -<p>This gives to his work a certain fixity both -of mood and form; his thoughts are as gems -that flash without heat, not the ruby-hearted, -passion-dyed gems, but the pale topaz or the -amber, holding the imprisoned glow of reflection. -If this may seem to limit Mr. Santayana’s -achievement, it is not so intended, but rather -to reveal his distinction. He is not only a -true poet, but one of rare accomplishment; his -work, however, is for those who are deeply -subjective, who trance themselves with the -beautiful as an anodyne for pain; those who -subordinate to-day to the storied charm of -yesterday, and look backward to the twilight -of the gods, rather than forward to the renewing -sunrise. It is not for those whose creed of -poetry is that it should be all things to all -men; that life, in travail to deliver truth, should -utter its cries through the poet. It is for those -<!--122.png--> -who know that poetry can no more be adapted -to all than could the spoken words of a great -teacher reach equally the diverse minds of a -multitude whom he might address; and that -while it may be the office of one poet to interpret -the struggles, the activities, the aims of -life, it may be equally the part of another to -penetrate to that calm at the depth of the -soul where throes have brought forth peace. -Not only are there various natures to whom -poetry speaks, but natures within natures, so -that all poets speak to different phases of our -consciousness: some to the mind,—and here -the range is infinite,—some to the heart, -and some to the soul, and of the last is Mr. -Santayana. He is for the meditative hours -when we are sounding the depths of ourselves -and come back to the surface of things, -bringing with us the unsatisfied pain of being. -Hours when we turn instinctively to a sonnet -like this to find our mood expressed:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I would I might forget that I am I,</div> - <div class="verse">And break the heavy chain that binds me fast,</div> - <div class="verse">Whose links about myself my deeds have cast.</div> - <div class="verse">What in the body’s tomb doth buried lie</div> - <div class="verse">Is boundless; ’tis the spirit of the sky,</div> - <div class="verse">Lord of the future, guardian of the past,</div> - <div class="verse">And soon must forth to know his own at last.</div> - <div class="verse">In his large life to live, I fain would die.</div> -<!--123.png--> - <div class="verse">Happy the dumb beast, hungering for food,</div> - <div class="verse">But calling not his suffering his own;</div> - <div class="verse">Blesséd the angel, gazing on all good,</div> - <div class="verse">But knowing not he sits upon a throne;</div> - <div class="verse">Wretched the mortal, pondering his mood,</div> - <div class="verse">And doomed to know his aching heart alone.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The much-mooted, but vaguely understood, -sub-conscious mind, speaks in this sonnet in -terms of the conscious. It is a subtle bit of -philosophy, but not more so than several others -in the same sequence which show the evolution -of Mr. Santayana’s attitude toward life. -One may not in a brief space follow out the -clews to this development, whose beginning -was in religious emotion:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - <div class="verse">My sad youth worshipped at the piteous height</div> - <div class="verse">Where God vouchsafed the death of man to share;</div> - <div class="verse">His love made mortal sorrow light to bear,</div> - <div class="verse">But his deep wounds put joy to shaméd flight,</div> - <div class="verse">And though his arms outstretched upon the tree,</div> - <div class="verse">Were beautiful, and pleaded my embrace,</div> - <div class="verse">My sins were loth to look upon his face.</div> - <div class="verse">So came I down from Golgotha to thee,</div> - <div class="verse">Eternal Mother; let the sun and sea</div> - <div class="verse">Heal me, and keep me in thy dwelling-place.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The succeeding sonnet traces the winding of -the new way, the reluctance, the</p> - -<!--124.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">… many farewell pious looks behind,</div> - <div class="verse">And dumb misgivings where the path might wind,</div> - <div class="verse">And questionings of nature, as I went,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>which every life duplicates as it leaves its well-guarded -walls of belief and ventures out upon -undiscovered ways. The pain of letting go the -old, the loneliness of the new, the alien look of -all the heights that encompass one, and the -psychology of that impulse by which one is -both impelled to retrace his way and withheld -from it,—are suggested by the sonnet. In -the next occurs one of Mr. Santayana’s finest -lines, the counsel</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">To trust the soul’s invincible surmise.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>It would be difficult to define intuition more -succinctly than this. It is not, as less subtle -poets would have put it, the soul’s assurance -that one is to trust; this would be to assume, -for what assurance have we but that which Mr. -Santayana has so subtly termed the “invincible -surmise”?</p> - -<p>Lines which lead one out into speculative -thought are frequent in Mr. Santayana’s sonnets. -His philosophy is constructive only in -so far as it unifies a succession of moods and -experiences; but it is pregnant with suggestion -<!--125.png--> -to a psychological mind. One of the sonnets -which questions:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Of my two lives, which should I call the dream?</div> - <div class="verse">Which action vanity? which vision sight?—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>after declaring that</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Some greater waking must pronounce aright</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>and blend the two visions to one seeing, -continues:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Even such a dream I dream, and know full well</div> - <div class="verse">My waking passeth like a midnight spell,</div> - <div class="verse">But know not if my dreaming breaketh through</div> - <div class="verse">Into the deeps of heaven and of hell.</div> - <div class="verse">I know but this of all I would I knew:</div> - <div class="verse">Truth is a dream, unless my dream is true.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The thought in this passage is elusive, but it -is more than a play upon words. It is another -way of putting the question, which shall be -trusted, which shall become the reality, the -objective or the subjective world? One knows -that his “waking,” his sense perception, is transitory, -that it apprehends but the present, which -“passeth like a midnight spell,” but how far -does the other and finer sight penetrate</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Into the deeps of heaven and of hell?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>No answer from the void to this query, but by -the mystical conclusion that</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Truth is a dream, unless my dream is true.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<!--126.png--> -<p>In simpler phrase, unless the vision and conviction -are to be trusted, unless, to revert to Mr. -Santayana’s former words, the soul’s “invincible -surmise” be taken as truth, that which we know -as truth is but a phantasm.</p> - -<p>The sonnet sequence is the intimate record -of an individual soul in its evolving spiritual -life, and has the significance belonging only to -art which interprets a personality, an experience, -in whose development one finds some -clew to his own labyrinth. It reveals the many -phases of speculation, reflection, questioning, -through which one passes in the transition -from beliefs indoctrinated in the mind at its -earliest consciousness, to convictions which -follow thought liberated by life, by intimacy -with nature, and by recognition of its own -spiritual authority. It is the winning of this -conviction, with its attendant seeking and unrest, -allayed by draughts from the wayside -springs of beauty, memory, and imagination,—which -comprises the record of the first -sonnet sequence, whose conclusions, as “strewn -thoughts” springing along the way, are gathered -into a final chaplet for the brows of the -“Eternal Mother,” Nature, whose peace he -sought when he came down from Golgotha, -and whose larger meaning, synonymous with -<!--127.png--> -the primal freedom of the soul, is conveyed -in the sonnet:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">These strewn thoughts, by the mountain pathway sprung,</div> - <div class="verse">I conned for comfort, till I ceased to grieve,</div> - <div class="verse">And with these flowering thorns I dare to weave</div> - <div class="verse">The crown, great Mother, on thine altar hung.</div> - <div class="verse">Teach thou a larger speech to my loosed tongue,</div> - <div class="verse">And to mine opened eyes thy secrets give,</div> - <div class="verse">That in thy perfect love I learn to live,</div> - <div class="verse">And in thine immortality be young.</div> - <div class="verse">The soul is not on earth an alien thing</div> - <div class="verse">That hath her life’s rich sources otherwhere;</div> - <div class="verse">She is a parcel of the sacred air.</div> - <div class="verse">She takes her being from the breath of Spring,</div> - <div class="verse">The glance of Phœbus is her fount of light,</div> - <div class="verse">And her long sleep a draught of primal night.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Aside from Mr. Santayana’s philosophical -sonnets he has a second sequence, upon love, -which, too, is philosophically tinged. In the -matter of beauty this is perhaps the more finished -and artistic work; but I have chosen rather -to dwell upon the subtlety of his speculations -in those phases of thought less universally -treated of by poets than is love. It has not -been possible, however, to follow the sequence -in its order, or to present more than certain -individual notes of its philosophy.</p> - -<p>Thus far it has been the matter, rather than -the manner, of Mr. Santayana’s verse that has -been considered; but before glancing at the -<!--128.png--> -later sonnet sequence, what of his touch upon -the strings of his instrument? One can scarcely -have followed the extracts quoted without noting -the mellow suavity, the ease, the poise of -his work. There is everywhere assurance of -expression, nothing tentative, nothing halting. -His lines are disposed by the laws of counter-point -into well-ordered cadences where nothing -jars; his words are rich and mellifluous, in short, -he has, as a sonneteer, a finish, a classical command -of the vehicle reminiscent of Petrarch and -Camoens. The sonnet is, by the nature of the -case, a somewhat inadaptable instrument, and -yet it is susceptible of great individuality, as -one may note by recalling an intricate sonnet -by Rossetti and a sweeping, sonorous one by -Milton. The criticism which is, perhaps, most -apposite to Mr. Santayana’s sonnets is that -they are “faultily faultless;” they are so finished -that one would welcome a false note now and -then, that suggested a choke in the voice, or a -heart-beat out of time.</p> - -<p>There is an atmosphere about all of Mr. -Santayana’s work that conveys a sense of -wandering in the moonlight; it is tempered, -softened, stilled; it is like an Isis-veil cast over -the eyes; but at times one becomes oppressed -with the consciousness of himself, and of the -<!--129.png--> -impalpable visions glimpsed in the wan light, -and longs to snatch the veil away and flee to the -garish world again. One may seek Mr. Santayana’s -poetry when his mood demands it, and -it will be as a cooling hand in fever; but when -the pulse of being is low, and one needs the -touch to vitalize, he must turn to others, for -Mr. Santayana’s work is not charged with the -electricity that thrills.</p> - -<p>Because he is not inventive in metre nor -sufficiently light in touch, Mr. Santayana is not -a lyrist. He has scarcely any purely lyrical -verse in his collections, and what is contained -in them is too lacking in spontaneity to be -classed with his best work. It is not wanting -in lines of beauty and in English undefiled; but -the sense of tone and rhythm, except of the -smoothly conventional sort, is absent. There -are no innovations in form and the impulse is -too subdued for a true lyric. That called “Midnight” -has more warmth than the others. -Several of his odes in the Sapphic metre -have great charm, especially the first. His elegiac -verse has often rare elevation of thought; -but it, also, has too set a measure, too much -of the “formed style” to be vital. It brings -well-conceived, well-imaged thought, as in this -stanza:</p> - -<!--130.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">How should the vision stay to guide the hand,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">How should the holy thought and ardour stay,</div> - <div class="verse">When the false deeps of all the soul are sand,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And the loose rivets of the spirit, clay?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>but it rarely shocks one into thinking for himself.</p> - -<p>In relation to diction, there are few American -writers who use English of such purity -and finish as does Mr. Santayana; but it -is the scholar’s English, the English drawn -from familiarity with the great masters and -models, and hence lacks the creative flexibility, -the quick, warm, ductile adaptability, that a -much less accomplished poet may give to -his words. It keeps to the accepted canons, -the highest, the purest, and uses the consecrated -words of literature with an artist’s -touch; but the racy idiom, the word which -some daring poet coined yesterday in an exigent -moment—with these it has naught to do.</p> - -<p>Mr. Santayana has several dramatic poems, -“The Hermit of Carmel,” “The Knight’s Return,” -and a dialogue between Hermes and -Lucifer, in which the latter relates the details -of his banishment from heaven for his daring -arraignment and interrogation of God. The -dialogue has little dramatic coloring; one hearing -it read aloud would have difficulty in determining -<!--131.png--> -from the outward change of expression -and personality where Lucifer leaves off -speaking and Hermes begins, but it puts into -the mouth of Lucifer some words full of the -challenge of thought, and speaks through both -some beautiful fantasies, such as this reply of -Lucifer to Hermes’ question as to the state of -bliss in which the angels dwell:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">A doubtful thing</div> - <div class="verse">Is blessedness like that….</div> - <div class="verse">Their raptured souls, like lilies in a stream</div> - <div class="verse">That from their fluid pillow never rise,</div> - <div class="verse">Float on the lazy current of a dream.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Mr. Santayana has not written “The Hermit -of Carmel” or “The Knight’s Return” with a -theatrical manager in view. They are stories -told in verse, tales of gentle melancholy, pleasant -to the ear; but when all is said, one returns to -his sonnets as the true expression of his nature -and the consummation of his gifts. He is a sonneteer, -by every phase of his temperament and -every canon of his art. His work in all other -forms is cultivated, philosophical, finely finished, -but pervaded by an atmosphere of cultured conventionality; -whereas in the sonnet he finds a -medium whose classic distinction and subtlety -are so harmonized to his nature and his characteristic -mode of thought, that it becomes to him -<!--132.png--> -the predestined expression. A glance, then, in -closing, at the flexile phrases, the psychological -analyses of the later sonnet sequence, turning -chiefly upon love.</p> - -<p>But, first, let me cite from one of the earlier -sonnets, an image drawn from this theme, a -jewel-like flash of beauty, not to be overlooked. -The first line of the metaphor is commonplace; -but note the succeeding ones:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Love but the formless and eternal Whole</div> - <div class="verse">From whose effulgence one unheeded ray</div> - <div class="verse">Breaks on this prism of dissolving clay</div> - <div class="verse">Into the flickering colors of thy soul.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>This is defining the individual spirit in exquisite -terms.</p> - -<p>The second sequence teems with beautiful -passages, now and again with a note of the -<i lang="it" xml:lang="it">trovatore</i>, as in the sestett of this sonnet:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Yet why, of one who loved thee not, command</div> - <div class="verse">Thy counterfeit, for other men to see,</div> - <div class="verse">When God himself did on my heart for me</div> - <div class="verse">Thy face, like Christ’s upon the napkin, brand?</div> - <div class="verse">O how much subtler than a painter’s hand</div> - <div class="verse">Is love to render back the truth of thee!</div> - <div class="verse">My soul should be thy glass in time to be,</div> - <div class="verse">And in my thought thine effigy should stand.</div> - <div class="verse">Yet, lest the churlish critics of that age</div> - <div class="verse">Should flout my praise, and deem a lover’s rage</div> -<!--133.png--> - <div class="verse">Could gild a virtue and a grace exceed,</div> - <div class="verse">I bid thine image here confront my page,</div> - <div class="verse">That men may look upon thee as they read,</div> - <div class="verse">And cry: “Such eyes a better poet need!”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>This has art and charm, but in contrast note -the impassioned nobility of utterance which imbues -the one that follows. Here are lines of -pure emotion and beauty:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">We needs must be divided in the tomb,</div> - <div class="verse">For I would die among the hills of Spain,</div> - <div class="verse">And o’er the treeless, melancholy plain</div> - <div class="verse">Await the coming of the final gloom.</div> - <div class="verse">But thou—O pitiful!—wilt find scant room</div> - <div class="verse">Among thy kindred by the northern main,</div> - <div class="verse">And fade into the drifting mist again,</div> - <div class="verse">The hemlocks’ shadow, or the pines’ perfume.</div> - <div class="verse">Let gallants lie beside their ladies’ dust</div> - <div class="verse">In one cold grave, with mortal love inurned;</div> - <div class="verse">Let the sea part our ashes, if it must,</div> - <div class="verse">The souls fled thence which love immortal burned,</div> - <div class="verse">For they were wedded without bond of lust,</div> - <div class="verse">And nothing of our heart to earth returned.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Such sonnets as this mark Mr. Santayana -as a master of this form, and while his other -work has value, it is as a sonneteer that he -has made his really individual contribution to -literature.</p> -</div><!--end Santayana--> -<!--134.png--> -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Peabody--> -<h3><a name="Peabody" id="Peabody"></a><abbr title="Six">VI</abbr></h3> - -<h4>JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY</h4> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">A BEAUTIFUL and delicate art is that -of Miss Josephine Preston Peabody, -but somewhat elusive of analysis, so -much is its finer part dependent upon the intuition -which one brings to it; for Miss Peabody -is a poet-mystic, sensitive to impressions from -which the grosser part has slipped away,—impressions -which come to her clothed upon with -a more ethereal vesture than the work-a-day -garment of thought,—and while she would fain -reveal their hidden import, they often elude -her and grow remote in the telling, as if fearful -of betraying too openly their secret.</p> - -<p>Her first volume, <cite>The Wayfarers</cite>, revealed -at the outset a poet’s imagination, and a technique -so finished that it had already the touch -of the artist, but its vision was that of the novice -who looks at the morning from beneath her -white veil and wonders at the world of sin and -strife and passion whose pain has never reached -her. It was the work of one who had not yet -<!--135.png--> -met her revealing crisis, not yet been identified -to herself, of one reaching out after truth with -the filament of fancy until the ductile thread -had often been spun too far before it found -anchorage. The volume was, in short, an exquisite -conjecture as to life, whose baffling, -alluring mystery only now and again flashed -upon her an unveiled glance of its eyes. This -is not, however, to say that the conjecture was -vain; indeed, the initial poem, “The Wayfarers,” -in which, perhaps, it was most definitely embodied, -is a thoughtful, suggestive song holding -many truths worth pondering, and in phrasing -and technique wrought with so much grace -that it might stand beside any work of the later -volumes. Indeed, this statement is apposite to -nearly all the work in the first collection, which -in that regard presents an unusual distinction, -having from the first on its technical side a -maturity that seemed not to belong to the tentative -work of a young poet; it was, however, -over-ornate, lacking directness and simplicity, -and inclining to excess of elaboration in theme, -so that one often became entangled in the weft -of poetic artifice and lost the clew of thought. -Take as a random illustration the following -stanzas from the poem entitled “The Weavers,” -under which Miss Peabody symbolizes the elusive -<!--136.png--> -hopes and fancies that come by night, -weaving their weft of dreams:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Lo, a gray pallor on the loom</div> - <div class="verse">Waxeth apace,—a glamourie</div> - <div class="verse">Like dawn outlooking, pale to see</div> - <div class="verse">Before the sun hath burst to bloom;</div> - <div class="verse">Wan beauty, growing out of gloom,</div> - <div class="verse">With promise of fair things to be.</div> - - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - - <div class="verse">The shuttle singeth. And fair things</div> - <div class="verse">Upon the web do come and go;</div> - <div class="verse">Dim traceries like clouds ablow</div> - <div class="verse">Fade into cobweb glimmerings,</div> - <div class="verse">A silver, fretted with small wings,—</div> - <div class="verse">The while a voice is singing low.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Of the eight remaining stanzas several are -equally lacking in anything that may be -grasped, and while there is a certain art in -imaging the elusive fancies which the weavers -bring, there should be some more definite -fancy or ideal to embody, rather than the -mere intent to make beautiful lines. This -is, perhaps, an extreme instance of the over-elaboration -of the first volume, though it distinguishes -the long poem which gives its name -to the collection, and appears in many of the -lyrics.</p> - -<div class="break figcenter"> - <a name="i137" id="i137"></a><img src="images/i137.jpg" - width="500" height="706" - alt="Illustration of Josephine Preston Peabody" - title="Josephine Preston Peabody" - /> -</div><!--end illustration--> - -<p>Miss Peabody is an inventive metrist, and -her sense of rhythm is highly developed, or -<!--137.png--> -<!--138.png--> -<!--139.png--> -rather it is innately correct, being manifest -with equal grace in the first collection; witness -the music of these stanzas from “Spinning -in April”:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Moon in heaven’s garden, among the clouds that wander,</div> - <div class="verse">Crescent moon so young to see, above the April ways,</div> - <div class="verse">Whiten, bloom not yet, not, yet, within the twilight yonder;</div> - <div class="verse">All my spinning is not done, for all the loitering days.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Oh, my heart has two wild wings that ever would be flying!</div> - <div class="verse">Oh, my heart’s a meadow-lark that ever would be free!</div> - <div class="verse">Well it is that I must spin until the light be dying;</div> - <div class="verse">Well it is the little wheel must turn all day for me!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">All the hill-tops beckon, and beyond the western meadows</div> - <div class="verse">Something calls me ever, calls me ever, low and clear:</div> - <div class="verse">A little tree as young as I, the coming summer shadows,—</div> - <div class="verse">The voice of running waters that I ever thirst to hear.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Oftentime the plea of it has set my wings a-beating;</div> - <div class="verse">Oftentime it coaxes, as I sit in weary wise,</div> - <div class="verse">Till the wild life hastens out to wild things all entreating,</div> - <div class="verse">And leaves me at the spinning-wheel, with dark, unseeing eyes.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The poem has several other stanzas equally -charming, but which detract from the artistic -structure of the song by over-spinning the -thought.</p> - -<p>Among the simple, sincere lyrics which prevail -more by their feeling than mechanism, -are “One That Followed,” “Horizon,” “Dew-Fall,” -<!--140.png--> -“Befriended,” “The Song of A Shepherd-Boy -at Bethlehem,” and the two stanzas -called, “After Music,” whose intimate beauty -renders them personally interpretative.</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I saw not they were strange, the ways I roam,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Until the music called, and called me thence,</div> - <div class="verse">And tears stirred in my heart as tears may come</div> - <div class="verse">To lonely children straying far from home,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Who know not how they wandered so, nor whence.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">If I might follow far and far away</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Unto the country where these songs abide,</div> - <div class="verse">I think my soul would wake and find it day,</div> - <div class="verse">Would tell me who I am, and why I stray,—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Would tell me who I was before I died.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>There is a mystical touch here in note with -the opening reference to the subtlety of Miss -Peabody’s sources of inspiration.</p> - -<p>In the first volume is also a sonnet from the -heart and to the heart, for who has not known -the weariness that comes of long striving to -image, or interpret the beautiful, and yet is -loth to commit his unfulfilled dream to the -oblivion of sleep. The sonnet is called, “To -the Unsung.”</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Stay by me, Loveliness; for I must sleep.</div> - <div class="verse">Not even desire can lift such wearied eyes;</div> - <div class="verse">The day was heavy and the sun will rise</div> - <div class="verse">On day as heavy, weariness as deep.</div> -<!--141.png--> - <div class="verse">Be near, though you be silent. Let me steep</div> - <div class="verse">A sad heart in that peace, as a child tries</div> - <div class="verse">To hold his comfort fast, in fingers wise</div> - <div class="verse">With imprint of a joy that’s yet to reap.</div> - <div class="verse">Leave me that little light; for sleep I must,</div> - <div class="verse">—And put off blessing to a doubtful day—</div> - <div class="verse">Too dull to listen or to understand.</div> - <div class="verse">But only let me close the eyes of trust</div> - <div class="verse">On you unchanged. Ah, do not go away,</div> - <div class="verse">Nor let a dream come near, to loose my hand.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Altogether, Miss Peabody’s first book of -verse revealed strength, feeling, and imagination, -though tentative in its philosophy, as -the initial work of a young poet must necessarily -be, and having but a slight rooting -in life.</p> - -<p>The second volume, <cite>Fortune and Men’s -Eyes</cite>, opens with a cleverly written one-act -play, turning upon an adventure of two maids -of honor at Elizabeth’s court, with Master W. -S., a player, whose identity is not far to seek, -and William Herbert, son of the Earl of Pembroke, -the scene being laid at the tavern of the -Bear and the Angel, whither Mistress Anne -Hughes and Mary Fyton have resorted on a -merry escapade under cover of seeing the -people celebrate the fête of the Bear.</p> - -<p>The atmosphere of the time is well reproduced, -the dialogue of the tapsters cleverly -<!--142.png--> -done, and the final scene between the Player -and Mary is full of dramatic intensity.</p> - -<p>In her second volume, Miss Peabody has -also a dramatic monologue called, “The -Wingless Joy,” which, though now and -again Browningesque in tone, has many felicitous -images and shows a true insight into -human motive.</p> - -<p>The lyrics in the second volume form a less -important part of the collection, though there -are several, such as “The Source,” “The Survivor,” -“Psyche in the Niche,” and “In the -Silence,” which rank with Miss Peabody’s -best work, particularly the last, illustrating -the truth that the Spirit manifests at the -need, even the dumb and undivining need, -and not alone at the call:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Where did’st Thou tarry, Lord, Lord,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Who heeded not my prayer?</div> - <div class="verse">All the long day, all the long night,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I stretched my hands to air.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0a">“There was a bitterer want than thine</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Came from the frozen North;</div> - <div class="verse">Laid hands upon my garment’s hem</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And led me forth.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0a">“It was a lonely Northern man,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Where there was never tree</div> - <div class="verse">To shed its comfort on his heart,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">There he had need of me.</div> -<!--143.png--> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0a">“He kindled us a little flame</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To hope against the storm;</div> - <div class="verse">And unto him, and unto me,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The light was warm.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And yet I called Thee, Lord, Lord—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Who answered not, nor came:</div> - <div class="verse">All the long day, and yesterday,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I called Thee by Thy name.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0a">“There was a dumb, unhearing grief</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Spake louder than Thy word,</div> - <div class="verse">There was a heart called not on me,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">But yet I heard.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0a">“The sorrow of a savage man</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Shaping him gods, alone,</div> - <div class="verse">Who found no love in the shapen clay</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To answer to his own.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0a">“His heart knew what his eyes saw not</div> - <div class="verse indent2">He bade me stay and eat;</div> - <div class="verse">And unto him, and unto me,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The cup was sweet.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0a">“Too long we wait for thee and thine,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In sodden ways and dim,</div> - <div class="verse">And where the man’s need cries on me</div> - <div class="verse indent2">There have I need of him.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0a">“Along the borders of despair</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Where sparrows seek no nest,</div> - <div class="verse">Nor ravens food, I sit at meat,—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The Unnamed Guest.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<!--144.png--> -<p>Before leaving the second volume there is -one other poem of which I cannot refrain from -quoting a part, to show the subtlety with which -a phase of the psychology of sentiment has -been grasped and analyzed in these lines called -“The Knot”:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">Oh, I hated me,</div> - <div class="verse">That when I loved you not, yet I could feel</div> - <div class="verse">Some charm in me the deeper for your love:</div> - <div class="verse">Some singing-robe invisible—and spun</div> - <div class="verse">Of your own worship—fold me silverly</div> - <div class="verse">In very moonlight, so that I walked fair</div> - <div class="verse">When you were by, who had no wish to be</div> - <div class="verse">The fairer for your eyes! But at some cost</div> - <div class="verse">Of other life the hyacinth grows blue,</div> - <div class="verse">And sweetens ever…. So it is with us,</div> - <div class="verse">The sadder race. I would have fled from you,</div> - <div class="verse">And yet I felt some fibre in myself</div> - <div class="verse">Binding me here, to search one moment yet—</div> - <div class="verse">The only well that gave me back a star,—</div> - <div class="verse">Your eyes reflecting. And I grew aware</div> - <div class="verse">How worship that must ever spend and burn</div> - <div class="verse">Will have its deity from gold or stone;</div> - <div class="verse">Till that fain womanhood that would be fair</div> - <div class="verse">And lovable,—the hunger of the plant—</div> - <div class="verse">Against my soul’s commandment reached and took</div> - <div class="verse">The proffered fruit, more potent day by day.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>And the lines which follow close with the -wholly feminine query,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Will you not go?—and yet, why will you go?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<!--145.png--> -<p>It is a human bit of dramatic analysis, and -reduces inconsistent femininity to a common -denominator.</p> - -<p>In her third volume, <cite>Marlowe</cite>, a drama, -founded upon the life of the lovable but erratic -poet and playwright, Miss Peabody essayed an -ambitious undertaking, but one which, as literature, -carries its full justification. As drama, -one must qualify. In characterization, aside -from Marlowe himself, who comes before one -vividly, there is a lack of sharp definition. -Nashe, Lodge, Peele, and Green, Marlowe’s fellow -playwrights and friends, might, from the -evidence of the dialogue, be the same character -under different names, so alike are they in -speech and temperament. Next to Marlowe -himself, Bame, who through jealousy becomes -his enemy, and brings on the final tragedy, is -the most individually drawn. Of the women -characters, the drama presents practically but -one,—Alison, the little country maid who loves -Marlowe secretly, and becomes in a way his -good angel,—as “Her Ladyship” of the Court, -object of his adoration, is introduced but twice -in the play, and that veiled, so that only for a -moment at the last may one see the beauty -that—under guise of Helen—inspired Marlowe’s -lines:</p> - -<!--146.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Was this the face that launched a thousand ships</div> - <div class="verse">And burned the topless towers of Ilium!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>While the two brief comings of “Her Ladyship” -impart an artistic touch of mystery, it is to -be doubted if in a play so intangible a heroine -could become a vital factor, and if she were not, -the woman element of the drama must be sustained -wholly by Alison, the little “Quietude,” -who, until the one beautiful scene with Marlowe -after her marriage, remains an artless undeveloped -child, with too little color, too weak a -human pulse-beat, to compel interest and -sympathy. She is delicately drawn, in her unsophisticated -sweetness and purity, and the -inner strength of her nature is finely shown at -the last, but up to this period of revelation one -does not feel her; she lacks the touch of life -essential to a character in drama.</p> - -<p>In plot the work presents somewhat the same -limitation. It is, until the two final scenes, -after Marlowe’s downfall, literature without -action: nothing happens in the earlier part of -the play to create an element of suspense forelooking -to the developments at the close. -Marlowe’s triumphs are detailed to one another -by his friends, but they are not <em>shown</em> in some -great scene where he might receive the acclamations -of the people and so contrast sharply -<!--147.png--> -with his downfall at the end: story suffices for -action. The sentiment of the play presents -also no intricacies: Alison, although loving -Marlowe, is not for a moment a factor of love -in his life, since he neither suspects her attachment -nor reciprocates it, and hence the jealousy -of her suitors has no effect either upon him or -upon the supposed audience. “Her Ladyship” -is not pitted against Alison, since the -latter knows that Marlowe’s heart is given to his -veiled divinity; hence there are no complexities -arising from the love-element. For the purpose -of acting, therefore, the play seems to me -to lack movement, suspense, variety of characterization, -and, except in the drawing of Marlowe, -definiteness of type. It has, however, a -strong and vivid scene at the close, leading -up to and including Marlowe’s tragic death, -and a scene of rare beauty and of intense -dramatic reality, of which I shall speak later, -in the visit of Marlowe to Alison after his -downfall.</p> - -<p>On the side of literature, the drama contains -work of admirable strength and quality, work -that in its beauty of phrase and subtlety of -penetration is not unworthy to be put into the -mouth of Marlowe of the “mighty line.” Miss -Peabody never falls into the Shakespearizing -<!--148.png--> -strain which many writing of that epoch assume; -her dialogue is vivid, direct, and full of -original imagery, as when Marlowe speaks of -Alison as having for him—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent6">Snowflake pity,</div> - <div class="verse">Destined to melt and lose itself in fire</div> - <div class="verse">Or ever it can cool my tongue,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>and thus describes her:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent6">Why, she was a maid</div> - <div class="verse">Of crystalline! If you looked near enough,</div> - <div class="verse">You’d see the wonder changing in her eyes</div> - <div class="verse">Like parti-colored marvels in a brook,</div> - <div class="verse">Bright through the clearness!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Note now in contrast the impassioned words in -which he pictures his divinity:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Hers is the Beauty that hath moved the world</div> - <div class="verse">Since the first woman. Beauty cannot die.</div> - <div class="verse">No worm may spoil it. Unto earth it goes,</div> - <div class="verse">There to be cherished by the cautious spring,</div> - <div class="verse">Close folded in a rose, until the time</div> - <div class="verse">Some new imperial spirit comes to earth</div> - <div class="verse">Demanding a fair raiment; and the earth</div> - <div class="verse">Yields up her robes of vermeil and of snow,</div> - <div class="verse">Violet-veinéd—beautiful as wings,</div> - <div class="verse">And so the Woman comes!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>And this beautiful passage addressed to her -after the triumph of “Faustus”:</p> - -<!--149.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">Drink my song.</div> - <div class="verse">Grow fair, you sovran flower, with earth and air;</div> - <div class="verse">Sip from the last year’s leaves their memories</div> - <div class="verse">Of April, May, and June, their summer joy,</div> - <div class="verse">Their lure for every nightingale, their longing.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>And finally these words spoken to her in -splendid scorn, after his downfall and her -rejection:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I took you for a Woman, thing of dust,—</div> - <div class="verse">I—I who showed you first what you might be!</div> - <div class="verse">But see now, you were hollow all the time,</div> - <div class="verse">A piece of magic. Now the air blows in,</div> - <div class="verse">And you are gone in ashes.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>At once the most beautiful and artistically -drawn scene is that previously referred to, in -which Marlowe, his star in eclipse, visits Alison -after her marriage. Here is a dramatic situation, -human and vital, and Miss Peabody has -developed it with rare feeling and skill. The -picture of Marlowe in his disgrace and despondency, -coming to the woman who had -believed in him, and whose love had shone -upon his unseeing eyes, is drawn with fine -delicacy and pathos. In the flash of revelation -that comes to him from her white spirit, -he speaks these words:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">Thou hast heard</div> - <div class="verse">Of Light that shined in darkness, hast thou not?</div> - <div class="verse">And darkness comprehended not the Light?</div> -<!--150.png--> - <div class="verse">So. But I tell thee why. It was because</div> - <div class="verse">The Dark, a sleeping brute, was blinded first,</div> - <div class="verse">Bewildered at a thing it did not know.</div> - - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - - <div class="verse">Have pity on the Dark, I tell you, Bride.</div> - <div class="verse">For after all is said, there is no thing</div> - <div class="verse">So hails the Light as that same blackness there,</div> - <div class="verse">O’er which it shines the whiter. Do you think</div> - <div class="verse">It will not know at last?—it will not know?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Those, too, are noble passages, though too -long to quote, in which Marlowe unburdens -his overcharged heart to Alison, and intrusts -to her faith the keeping of that higher self she -had divined in him; and when Marlowe, early -in the scene, referring to his misfortunes, says:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">You do not know</div> - <div class="verse">The sense of waking down among the dead,</div> - <div class="verse">Hard by some lazar-house,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>note the hidden meaning in Alison’s reply:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">Nay; but I know</div> - <div class="verse">The sense of death. And then to rise again</div> - <div class="verse">And feel thyself bewildered, like a spirit</div> - <div class="verse">Out of the grave-clothes and the fragment strewings.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Passages of subtle significance, wistful, tender, -and pathetic, distinguish this scene.</p> - -<p>Miss Peabody has visualized Marlowe clearly -wherever he appears, and created him as the -lovable, impulsive, generous-spirited, but ill-starred -<!--151.png--> -genius that he was. It is a life-study, -in its conflicts, its overthrown ideals, its appealing -humanity, and should take its place as -one of the permanent interpretations of his -character.</p> - -<p>Many of her critics have found in Miss Peabody’s -latest volume, <cite>The Singing Leaves</cite>, an -inspiration and charm exceeding that of her -former work, and in delicacy, lyrical ease, simplicity, -and ideality it must be accounted one -of her truest achievements; but there is about -the volume an impalpability, an airy insubstantiality, -which renders it elusive and unconvincing. -The mystical subtlety hitherto noted in -Miss Peabody’s work has, in the latest volume, -grown, until many of the poems have so little -objectivity that they float as iris-tinted flecks of -foam upon the deep of thought. They have -beauty of spirit, beauty of word; but their motive -is so subtle, their thought so intangible, -that while they charm one in the reading, they -have, with a few exceptions, melted into vapor, -gone the way of the foam, when once the eye -has left them. One feels throughout the volume -an ingenuous simplicity, a <em>naïveté</em>, that is, -in many of her poems, exceedingly charming, -but which, becoming the pervasive note of the -collection, communicates to it a certain artificial -<!--152.png--> -artlessness, as if June, disregarding the largess -of the rose, yearned back to April and the -violet; in short, the poems seem to me, with a -few exceptions, to lack moving, vital impulse, -and to bring few warmly imbued words from -life. They are as the pale moon-flower, growing -in the stillness of dreams, rather than the -rose dyed with the blood of the heart.</p> - -<p>But what is, to me, the limitation of the -volume,—its over-subtilized mood and lack of -definite, moving purpose,—must, to many of -its readers, be granted to be its distinction; -and for their very impalpability these delicate -Leaves, that vibrate with impulse as ethereal as -that which moves the aspen when the wind is -still, have for many the greater charm.</p> - -<p>To glance, then, at some of the finer achievements -of the volume, one finds among the -lyrics several turning upon love that catch in -artistic words an undefined mood, such as -“Forethought” and “Unsaid,” or in captivating -picture-phrase, a blither fancy, such as -“The Enchanted Sheepfold,” or, stronger -and finer than these, that vision of love called -“The Cloud,” which enfolds truth and wraps -the heart in its whiteness. One can scarcely -fancy a more exquisite bit of imagery in which -to clothe the thought of these lines:</p> - -<!--153.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The islands called me far away,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The valleys called me home.</div> - <div class="verse">The rivers with a silver voice</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Drew on my heart to come.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The paths reached tendrils to my hair</div> - <div class="verse indent2">From every vine and tree.</div> - <div class="verse">There was no refuge anywhere</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Until I came to thee.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">There is a northern cloud I know,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Along a mountain crest.</div> - <div class="verse">And as she folds her wings of mist,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">So I could make my rest.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">There is no chain to bind her so</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Unto that purple height;</div> - <div class="verse">And she will shine and wander, slow,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Slow, with a cloud’s delight.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Would she begone? She melts away,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">A heavenly joyous thing.</div> - <div class="verse">Yet day will find the mountain white,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">White-folded with her wing.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - <div class="verse">And though love cannot bind me, Love,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">—Ah no!—yet I could stay</div> - <div class="verse">Maybe, with wings forever spread,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">—Forever, and a day.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Here is delicacy enshrining one of the deeper -truths of life.</p> - -<p>Many of the lyrics have a seventeenth-century -lilt, but not of imitation. There are no -echoes in Miss Peabody’s song, its note, measure, -<!--154.png--> -and spirit are entirely her own, and a random -stanza would carry its identification, so individual -is her touch. Of the seventeenth-century -mood, however, are “The Song Outside,” -“Forethought,” “The Top of the Morning,” -“The Blind One,” and other poems.</p> - -<p>Nearly all the lyrics in <cite>The Singing Leaves</cite> -are very brief, showing, in their compactness -and restrained use of imagery, just the opposite -method from that prevailing in Miss Peabody’s -first book, <cite>The Wayfarers</cite>. So marked is the -contrast that, but for the personality imbuing -them, they might have been written by another -hand. Whereas the diction also in the earlier -work inclined to beauty for its own sake, the -reaction to its present simplicity is the more -marked. It is doubtless for this reason that -many of the poems carry with them a note -of conscious ingenuousness, as if their simplest -effects had been deliberately achieved. Not -so, however, such poems as “The Inn,” “The -Drudge,” “Sins,” “The Anointed,” “The -Walk,” whose words are quick with native -impulse, as the trenchant lines of the third:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">A lie, it may be black or white;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I care not for the lie:</div> - <div class="verse">My grief is for the tortured breath</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of Truth that cannot die.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--155.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And cruelty, what that may be,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">What creature understands?</div> - <div class="verse">But O, the glazing eyes of Love,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Stabbed through the open hands!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Two poems contained in <cite>The Singing Leaves</cite> -are of a note far more serious and vital than -that of their fellows: the first, “The Ravens;” -the second, and to my thinking, the more important, -“The Fool,” which from the standpoint -of strength, feeling, forceful expression, -idealism, and the portrayal of human nature, -seems to me the achievement of the book. -It holds a truth bitten in with the acid of -experience:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O what a Fool am I!—Again, again,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To give for asking: yet again to trust</div> - <div class="verse">The needy love in women and in men,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Until again my faith is turned to dust</div> - <div class="verse indent4">By one more thrust.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">How you must smile apart who make my hands</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Ever to bleed where they were reached to bless;</div> - <div class="verse">—Wonder how any wit that understands</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Should ever try too near, with gentle stress,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Your sullenness!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Laugh, stare, deny. Because I shall be true,—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The only triumph slain by no surprise:</div> - <div class="verse">True, true, to that forlornest truth in you,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The wan, beleaguered thing behind your eyes,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Starving on lies.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--156.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Build by my faith; I am a steadfast tool:</div> - <div class="verse indent2">When I am dark, begone into the sun.</div> - <div class="verse">I cry, ‘Ah, Lord, how good to be a Fool:—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">A lonely game indeed, but now all done;</div> - <div class="verse indent4">—And I have won!’</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Here speaks a word from life worth a score -of “Charms: To Be Said In The Sun,” or -other fanciful unreality; and because of such -poems as this, fibred in human motive, one -feels by contrast in many of the others that -Miss Peabody has been playing with her genius, -casting “Charms” and “Spells,” which are -mere poetic sorcery.</p> - -<p>Miss Peabody has a rare sympathy with child-life, -and her group of poems of this nature -could not well be bettered. With the exception -of a line now and then which may be a -bit beyond the expression of a child, they are -fidelity itself to the moods that swayed <cite>The -Little Past</cite>. “Journey,” “The Busy Child,” -and “The Mystic” are among the best, though -none could be spared, unless, perhaps, “Cakes -and Ale.” Still another with the true child-feeling -is that called “Late,”—a tender little -song which, because of its brevity, must suffice -to represent the group:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">My father brought somebody up,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To show us all asleep.</div> -<!--157.png--> - <div class="verse">They came as softly up the stairs</div> - <div class="verse indent2">As you could creep.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">They whispered in the doorway there</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And looked at us awhile,</div> - <div class="verse">I had my eyes shut up, but I</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Could feel him smile.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I shut my eyes up close, and lay</div> - <div class="verse indent2">As still as I could keep;</div> - <div class="verse">Because I knew he wanted us</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To be asleep.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Miss Peabody’s work, considered in its entirety, -is distinguished by an art of rare grace -and delicacy, by imagination and vision, susceptibility -to the finer impressions, and by an ever-present -ideality; and while it lacks somewhat -the element of personal emotion and passion, -it has a sympathy subtle and spiritual, if less -intimate in its revealing.</p> -</div><!--end Peabody--> -<!--158.png--> -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Roberts--> -<h3><a name="Roberts" id="Roberts"></a><abbr title="Seven">VII</abbr></h3> - -<h4>CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS</h4> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">MR. CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS -presents so marked an example of -evolution in the style of his work -and the sources of his inspiration, that he -has from volume to volume, like the nautilus, -“changed his last year’s dwelling for the new,” -and having entered the “more stately mansion” -has “known the old no more.”</p> - -<p>The first chamber which he fashioned for -himself in the House of Art could not long -contain him, as its walls were built of myths -and traditions, incapable of further expansion. -This was the period of <cite>Orion and Other Poems</cite>, -such as “Ariadne,” “Memnon,” and “Launcelot -And The Four Queens,” work done prior -to 1880 and creditable to the initial effort of -a young collegian.</p> - -<p>The second lodging was scarcely more -permanent; though structured less in myth, -and showing a gain in workmanship, it was -still too narrow a dwelling for an expanding -spirit, and did little more than give foretokens -<!--159.png--> -of that which should succeed it. The volume -contained, however, one admirable composition, -one that remains as vital and apposite as when -it was written,—the stirring stanzas to Canada. -Indeed, the fine courage, the higher loyalty -that distinguishes this appeal, lifts it from the -mere grandiloquent utterance of a young man -with over-hasty convictions, to a noble arraignment, -and leads one to wonder why other -poets of her domain do not turn their pens -to revealing her to herself as does this fine -utterance.</p> - -<p>Mr. Roberts’ third volume, <cite>Songs of the -Common Day</cite>, bore almost no relation to its -predecessors, and might have been the work of -a different hand, as regards both subject and -style. Legend and myth had wholly disappeared, -and experience had begun to furnish the -raw material, the flax, for the poet’s spindle and -distaff which earlier effort had been making -ready. Not yet, however, had the work the -virility and tang that smack in the very first -line of its successor, <cite>The Book of the Native</cite>. -It was graceful, artistic singing, but lacking, -except in a few instances, the large free note -that sounds in the later work. Among its -lyrics is one of exquisite tenderness, as sad and -sweet as Tennyson’s “Break, break, break,” and -<!--160.png--> -in the sifting of the volume, this remains, perhaps, -the sand of gold:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Grey rocks and greyer sea,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And surf along the shore—</div> - <div class="verse">And in my heart a name</div> - <div class="verse indent2">My lips shall speak no more.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The high and lonely hills</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Endure the darkening year—</div> - <div class="verse">And in my heart endure</div> - <div class="verse indent2">A memory and a tear.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Across the tide a sail</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That tosses and is gone—</div> - <div class="verse">And in my heart the kiss</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That longing dreams upon.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Grey rocks and greyer sea,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And surf along the shore—</div> - <div class="verse">And in my heart the face</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That I shall see no more.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>The simplicity and pathos of this lyric render -it unforgettable.</p> - -<div class="break figcenter"> - <a name="i161" id="i161"></a><img src="images/i161.jpg" - width="500" height="704" - alt="Illustration of Charles G. D. Roberts" - title="Charles G. D. Roberts" - /> -</div><!--end illustration--> - -<p>“The Tide on Tantramar,” from the third -volume, a ballad of the sea and the salt marshes, -transfers to the page the keen pungence of the -brine, as do the descriptive stanzas of Tantramar -used illustratively in the “Ave” to Shelley. -There is noble work in this elegy, and while -it wanders over a good deal of Canadian territory, -making inspired observations of nature -<!--161.png--> -<!--162.png--> -<!--163.png--> -before it discloses their relation to the subject—when -the comparison is reached it is apposite, -and the poem shows an insight into the -character of Shelley that is gratifying, in view of -the vagueness usually associated with his name.</p> - -<p>Other <cite>Songs of the Common Day</cite>, forelooking -to the later poet, are “The Silver Thaw,” -“Canadian Streams,” and “The Wood Frolic,” -having the first-hand, magnetic touch distinguishing -every line of Mr. Roberts’ out-of-door -verse in that volume which first truly reveals -him,—<cite>The Book of the Native</cite>. So conscious -is one of a new force in this book that it would -seem to represent another personality. Its -opening poem, “Kinship,” turns for inspiration,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Back to the bewildering vision</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And the border-land of birth;</div> - <div class="verse">Back into the looming wonder,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The Companionship of Earth,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and puts the query to nature:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Tell me how some sightless impulse,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Working out a hidden plan,</div> - <div class="verse">God for kin and clay for fellow,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Wakes to find itself a man.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Tell me how the life of mortal,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Wavering from breath to breath,</div> - <div class="verse">Like a web of scarlet pattern</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Hurtles from the loom of death.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--164.png--> - <div class="stanza"><div class="verse">How the caged bright bird, Desire,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Which the hands of God deliver,</div> - <div class="verse">Beats aloft to drop unheeded</div> - <div class="verse indent2">At the confines of forever.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"><div class="verse">Faints unheeded for a season,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Then outwings the farthest star,</div> - <div class="verse">To the wisdom and the stillness</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Where thy consummations are.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>This sounds the keynote to <cite>The Book of -the Native</cite>, which is equally concerned with -the enigmas of the soul and the mysteries of -nature. The questing spirit is abroad in it; -the unquenched faith, the vitality, the hidden -import of life is in it; and while its metaphysics -do not go to the point of developing a -definite philosophy, they set one to thinking for -himself, which is a better service. “Origins,” -a speculation as to our coming from “the enigmatic -Will,” and the “Unsleeping,” a vision of -the Force brooding over life,—are among the -strongest poems of this motive. To cite the -second:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I soothe to unimagined sleep</div> - <div class="verse">The sunless bases of the deep,</div> - <div class="verse">And then I stir the aching tide</div> - <div class="verse">That gropes in its reluctant side.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I heave aloft the smoking hill:</div> - <div class="verse">To silent peace its throes I still.</div> - <div class="verse">But ever at its heart of fire</div> - <div class="verse">I lurk, an unassuaged desire.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--165.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I wrap me in the sightless germ</div> - <div class="verse">An instant or an endless term;</div> - <div class="verse">And still its atoms are my care,</div> - <div class="verse">Dispersed in ashes or in air.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I hush the comets one by one</div> - <div class="verse">To sleep for ages in the sun;</div> - <div class="verse">The sun resumes before my face</div> - <div class="verse">His circuit of the shores of space.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The mount, the star, the germ, the deep,</div> - <div class="verse">They all shall wake, they all shall sleep.</div> - <div class="verse">Time, like a flurry of wild rain,</div> - <div class="verse">Shall drift across the darkened pane.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Space, in the dim predestined hour,</div> - <div class="verse">Shall crumble like a ruined tower.</div> - <div class="verse">I only, with unfaltering eye,</div> - <div class="verse">Shall watch the dreams of God go by.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>What a fine touch in the lines declaring that</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Time, like a flurry of wild rain,</div> - <div class="verse">Shall drift across the darkened pane!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Mr. Roberts has the rare pictorial gift of -flashing a scene before one without employing -an excess of imagery, and never that which is -confused or cumbrous. His style is nervous, -magnetic, direct, and has, in his later work, -very little superfluous tissue. This statement, -has, of course, its exceptions, but is sufficiently -accurate to be made a generalization, -and in no case is it better shown than in the -<!--166.png--> -descriptive poems of the Canadian country in -<cite>The Book of the Native</cite>. What is there about -Canada that sets the blood of her poets a-tingle -and lends magic to their fingers when writing -of her? What is there in Grand Pré’s “barren -reaches by the tide,” or in the marshes of -Tantramar, that such a spell should wait upon -them, calling the roamer</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0a">“Back into the looming wonder,</div> - <div class="verse">The Companionship of Earth”?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>With the American poets of the present day, -despite their feeling for nature, it is rather -her beauty in the abstract than any particular -locality with which they chance to be associated, -that inspires them,—though Mr. -Cawein, in his allegiance to Kentucky, furnishes -a marked exception to this statement,—but -the Canadian poets, with a passion like -that of a lover, sing of the haunts that knew -their first devotion: now with a buoyant infectious -note, now with a reminiscent sadness; -in short, the Canadian poets seem to have a -sympathetic identity with their country, an interchange -of personality by which they reciprocally -express each other.</p> - -<p>Particularly is this true of Bliss Carman, -Duncan Campbell Scott, and Charles G. D. -<!--167.png--> -Roberts; and it was equally true of Archibald -Lampman, whose untimely passing lost to -Canada one of her anointed singers, to whose -high promise justice has hardly yet been done. -To illustrate Mr. Roberts’ nature-sympathy, -and susceptibility to the mood of the year, let -me put in contrast parts of two poems from <cite>The -Book of the Native</cite>. The first belongs to the -racy note pervading a good deal of the nature-verse -of to-day, of which the Vagabondia books -set the fashion: it is called “Afoot,” but might -with equal aptness be named the “Processional,” -since the second is the “Recessional”:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Comes the lure of green things growing,</div> - <div class="verse">Comes the call of waters flowing,—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And the wayfarer desire</div> - <div class="verse">Moves and wakes and would be going.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Hark the migrant hosts of June</div> - <div class="verse">Marching nearer noon by noon!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Hark the gossip of the grasses</div> - <div class="verse">Bivouacked beneath the moon!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Hark the leaves their mirth averring;</div> - <div class="verse">Hark the buds to blossom stirring;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Hark the hushed, exultant haste</div> - <div class="verse">Of the wind and world conferring!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Hark the sharp, insistent cry</div> - <div class="verse">Where the hawk patrols the sky!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Hark the flapping, as of banners,</div> - <div class="verse">Where the heron triumphs by!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<!--168.png--> -<p>Note the picturesque phrase and the compulsive, -quickstep note in the lines above, as of -the advancing cohorts of spring, and in contrast -the slow movement, the sadness of the -retreating year, in these beautiful “Recessional” -stanzas:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Now along the solemn heights</div> - <div class="verse">Fade the Autumn’s altar-lights;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Down the great earth’s glimmering chancel</div> - <div class="verse">Glide the days and nights.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Little kindred of the grass,</div> - <div class="verse">Like a shadow on a glass</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Falls the dark and falls the stillness;</div> - <div class="verse">We must rise and pass.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">We must rise and follow, wending</div> - <div class="verse">Where the nights and days have ending,—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Pass in order pale and slow,</div> - <div class="verse">Unto sleep extending.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Little brothers of the clod,</div> - <div class="verse">Soul of fire and seed of sod,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">We must fare into the silence</div> - <div class="verse">At the knees of God.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Little comrades of the sky,</div> - <div class="verse">Wing to wing we wander by,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Going, going, going, going,</div> - <div class="verse">Softly as a sigh.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>And to make the season-cycle complete, and -also to show the delicacy of imagination with -<!--169.png--> -which Mr. Roberts invests every changing -aspect of his well-loved outer world, here are -two stanzas on “The Frosted Pane”:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">One night came Winter noiselessly, and leaned</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Against my window-pane.</div> - <div class="verse">In the deep stillness of his heart convened</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The ghosts of all his slain.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Leaves, and ephemera, and stars of earth,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And fugitives of grass,—</div> - <div class="verse">White spirits loosed from bonds of mortal birth,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">He drew them on the glass.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Fancies as exquisite as this bespeak the true -poet. “The Trout Brook” and “The Solitary -Woodsman” are other inspirations as individual.</p> - -<p>Mr. Roberts’ fifth volume, <cite>New York Nocturnes</cite>, -as its name implies, was a decided departure -from his former work, showing his -versatility, but what is more to the purpose, -his recognition of the dramatic element, the -human, vital poetry in the babel of the streets. -One could wish that the <cite>Nocturnes</cite> penetrated -more profoundly into the varied phases of life -in the great seething city, that, in short, they -sounded other deeps than those of love; but -Mr. Roberts has succeeded in conveying that -sense of isolation in a throng, that heavy loneliness -and reaction, throwing one back upon -<!--170.png--> -his own spiritual personality, which belongs to -the bewildering city night, and from which the -finer companionships of love arise as a refuge -and need.</p> - -<p>The <cite>Nocturnes</cite> have the city’s over-soul -incarnate in them; for in the last analysis, the -commerce, the art, the ambition, the strife, the -defeat, that one may term the city’s life, are -but as hands and feet to minister to the spirit -of love. The first of the <cite>Nocturnes</cite> suggests -this:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I walk the city square with thee,</div> - <div class="verse">The night is loud; the pavements roar<a name="chg3" id="chg3"></a>.</div> - <div class="verse">Their eddying mirth and misery</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Encircle thee and me.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The street is full of lights and cries:</div> - <div class="verse">The crowd but brings thee close to me,</div> - <div class="verse">I only hear thy low replies;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I only see thine eyes.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>The “Nocturne of Consecration” is impassioned -and full of spirituality; it is, however, too -long to quote, which is unfortunately the case -with the “Nocturne of the Honeysuckle,” another -of the finer poems. “At the Station” is -instinct with movement, reproducing the picture -of the swiftly changing throngs, and conveying -the eager expectancy of the hour of meeting. -The <cite>Nocturnes</cite> have also a group of miscellaneous -<!--171.png--> -poems, and the volume as a whole, -while less virile than <cite>The Book of the Native</cite>, -owing to the difference in theme, is distinguished -by refinement of feeling and artistry.</p> - -<p>In <cite>The Book of the Rose</cite> Mr. Roberts has -done some excellent work, and some, alas, that -strikes a decided note of artificiality. The -least real and convincing of the poems is that -called “On the Upper Deck,” which opens the -volume. The first stanza is subtly phrased, -and also the lyric which occurs midway of the -poem; but the dialogue between the lovers -is honeyed poetizing rather than genuine emotion. -I find few heart-throbs in it, but rather a -melodramatic sentimentality from whose flights -one is now and again let down to the common -day with summary despatch, as in the parenthetical -clause of the stanza which follows:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Let us not talk of roses. Don’t you think</div> - <div class="verse">The engine’s pulse throbs louder now the light</div> - <div class="verse">Has gone? The hiss of waters past our hull</div> - <div class="verse">Is more mysterious, with a menace in it?</div> - <div class="verse">And that pale streak above the unseen land,</div> - <div class="verse">How ominous! a sword has just such pallor!</div> - <div class="verse">(Yes, you may put the scarf around my shoulders.)</div> - <div class="verse">Never has life shown me the face of beauty</div> - <div class="verse">But near it I have seen the face of fear.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>It may be that an obtuse man upon the deck -of a steamer would interrupt his sweetheart’s -<!--172.png--> -flight of poesy to envelop her in a shawl, but -the details of the matter may well be left to the -imagination. It is doubtless one of those passages -which seem to a writer to give reality to -a picture, but afterward smile at him sardonically -from the printed page. Mr. Roberts inclines -elsewhere in the same poem to be too -explicit; after a most exalted declaration, he -says:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">No, do not move! Alone although we be</div> - <div class="verse">I dare not touch your hand; your gown’s dear hem</div> - <div class="verse">I will not touch lest I should break my dream</div> - <div class="verse">And just an empty deck-chair mock my longing.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Here again it was scarcely necessary to qualify -the chair, and indeed the whole passage savors -of melodrama. These are, however, only such -lines as show that to the one relating a matter -the least incident may appear to lend reality to -the setting, whereas to the reader the detail -may violate taste.</p> - -<p>The opening stanza, mentioned as one of the -truly subtle bits of the poem in question, has -these fine lines:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">As the will of last year’s wind,</div> - <div class="verse">As the drift of the morrow’s rain,</div> - <div class="verse">As the goal of the falling star,</div> - <div class="verse">As the treason sinned in vain,</div> -<!--173.png--> - <div class="verse">As the bow that shines and is gone,</div> - <div class="verse">As the night cry heard no more,—</div> - <div class="verse">Is the way of the woman’s meaning</div> - <div class="verse">Beyond man’s eldest lore.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>This stanza and the lyric below, which is sung -as an interlude to the dialogue, go far toward -redeeming the over-ripe sentiment of the poem:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O Rose, blossom of mystery, holding within your deeps</div> - <div class="verse">The hurt of a thousand vigils, the heal of a thousand sleeps,</div> - <div class="verse">There breathes upon your petals a power from the ends of the earth,</div> - <div class="verse">Your beauty is heavy with knowledge of life and death and birth.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O Rose, blossom of longing—the faint suspense, and the fire,</div> - <div class="verse">The wistfulness of time, and the unassuaged desire,</div> - <div class="verse">The pity of tears on the pillow, the pang of tears unshed,—</div> - <div class="verse">With these your spirit is weary, with these your beauty is fed.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The remaining poems of the volume are -much more artistic than the first, with the -exception of the passages last quoted. “The -Rose of Life” is artistically wrought as to -form and metre, and subtle in analysis; but, -because of its length and that it voices somewhat -the same thought as the lyric above, the -former must serve to show with what delicacy -<!--174.png--> -of interpretation he approaches a theme so well -worn, but ever new, as that of the rose. It is -chiefly on the symbolistic side that Mr. Roberts -considers the subject; and while one may -feel that the sentiment cloys at times when a -group of poems using the rose as an image are -bracketed together, this is the chief criticism -of the volume, as the lyrics following the opening -poem, “On the Upper Deck,” have both -charm and art, and one hesitates between such -an one as, “O Little Rose, O Dark Rose,” and -the one immediately following it, “The Rose of -My Desire.” This, perhaps, has a more compelling -mood, though no greater charm of touch -than the other:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O wild, dark flower of woman,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Deep rose of my desire,</div> - <div class="verse">An Eastern wizard made you</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of earth and stars and fire.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">When the orange moon swung low</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Over the camphor-trees,</div> - <div class="verse">By the silver shaft of the fountain</div> - <div class="verse indent2">He wrought his mysteries.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The hot, sweet mould of the garden</div> - <div class="verse indent2">He took from a secret place</div> - <div class="verse">To become your glimmering body</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And the lure of your strange face.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--175.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">From the swoon of the tropic heaven</div> - <div class="verse indent2">He drew down star on star,</div> - <div class="verse">And breathed them into your soul</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That your soul might wander far—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">On earth forever homeless,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">But intimate of the spheres,</div> - <div class="verse">A pang in your mystic laughter,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">A portent in your tears.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">From the night’s heat, hushed, electric,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">He summoned a shifting flame,</div> - <div class="verse">And cherished it, and blew on it</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Till it burned into your name.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And he set the name in my heart</div> - <div class="verse indent2">For an unextinguished fire,</div> - <div class="verse">O wild, dark flower of woman,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Deep rose of my desire!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Metrically the poem jars in the line,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And breathed them into your soul,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>departing as it does from the general scheme -of the third lines, and rendering it necessary to -make “soul” bisyllabic in order to carry the -metre smoothly, and in accord with its companion -verses. “Spirit” would have fitted the -metrical exigency better, leaving the final unaccented -syllable as in the majority of the lines, -but would not have lent itself to repetition -in the succeeding line as does “soul,”—so -<!--176.png--> -“who shall arbitrate”? Mr. Roberts rarely -offends the ear in his metres, but instead his -cadences are notably true.</p> - -<p>Aside from the poems upon love, filling the -first division of <cite>The Book of the Rose</cite> it has -a miscellaneous group, of which the two that -best represent it, to my fancy, are so widely -diverse that their mere mention in juxtaposition -is amusing; nevertheless they are the lines “To -An Omar Punch Bowl,” and the reverent Nativity -Song, “When Mary, the Mother, Kissed the -Child.” The haunting couplets of the former -are by no means of the convivial sort, but the -essence of memory and desire, the pathos of -this dust that is but “wind that hurries by,”—is -in them. However, to be quoted, they need -their full context, as does the Nativity Song -mentioned.</p> - -<p>Mr. Roberts has a rare sympathy with childhood, -and a gift of reaching the hearts of the -little ones; the “Sleepy Man” and “Wake-up -Song” could scarcely be improved; note the -picturing in the former and the drowsihood in -its falling cadences:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">When the Sleepy Man comes with the dust on his eyes</div> - <div class="verse indent2">(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)</div> - <div class="verse">He shuts up the earth, and he opens the skies.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">(So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!)</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--177.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">He smiles through his fingers, and shuts up the sun;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)</div> - <div class="verse">The stars that he loves he lets out one by one.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">(So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!)</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">He comes from the castles of Drowsy-boy Town;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)</div> - <div class="verse">At the touch of his hand the tired eyelids fall down.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">(So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!)</div> - - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - - <div class="verse">Then the top is a burden, the bugle a bane,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)</div> - <div class="verse">When one would be faring down Dream-a-way Lane.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">(So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!)</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">When one would be wending in Lullaby Wherry</div> - <div class="verse indent2">(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)</div> - <div class="verse">To Sleepy Man’s Castle by Comforting Ferry.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">(So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!)</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Mr. Roberts has collected his several volumes, -exclusive of <cite>The Book of the Rose</cite>, into one, -eliminating such of the earlier work as falls short -of his standard of criticism, and adding new -matter showing growth and constantly broadening -affinity with life. He manifests more and -more the potentialities of his nature, and while -all of his later work does not ring equally true, -the majority of it is instinct with sincerity and -high idealism, and one may go to it for unforced, -unconventional song, having art without trammels, -for a breath of the ozone of nature, and -<!--178.png--> -for suggestive thoughts upon life and the -things of the spirit. Its creed is epitomized in -the following lines, pregnant with suggestion -to the votary of Art, the creed of the idealist, -and yet the truer realist:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Said Life to Art: I love thee best</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Not when I find in thee</div> - <div class="verse">My very face and form, expressed</div> - <div class="verse indent2">With dull fidelity.</div> - <div class="stanza"> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="verse">But when in thee my longing eyes</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Behold continually</div> - <div class="verse">The mystery of my memories</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And all I crave to be.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -</div><!--end Roberts--> -<!--179.png--> - -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Thomas--> -<h3><a name="Thomas" id="Thomas"></a><abbr title="Eight">VIII</abbr></h3> - -<h4>EDITH M. THOMAS</h4> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">AN earnest idealist is Miss Edith Thomas, -who commits to her song a vital word -and sends it as a courier to arouse that -drowsy lodge-keeper, the soul, and bid him -give ear to the importunate message of life. -Not by outwardly strenuous numbers, however, -is this end achieved; on the contrary, Miss -Thomas is a quiet singer whose thoughtful -restraint is one of her chief distinctions. The -spiritual tidings which she intrusts to her song -are destined to be delivered in the silence of -the soul; none the less are they sent to -awaken it, and none the less do they bide and -knock at the door of one’s spirit until one rise -and open to them.</p> - -<p>The ideality of her work has been from the -outset its most informing quality; the thoughts -beyond the thrall of words that pass, in Maeterlinck’s -phrase, “like great white birds, across -the heart,” had brushed with their unsullied -wings the thoughts of every-day and left a -light upon them, giving assurance, when the -<!--180.png--> -art was still unshapen, that the vision had -been revealed. One seldom reads a poem -by Miss Thomas without bringing away from -it a suggestive thought or a spiritual stimulus, -sometimes introduced so subtly that it breaks -upon one in the after-light of memory rather -than at the moment of reading; for Miss -Thomas is not a homiletic singer, obtruding -the moral. She is too much the artist for that. -She delivers no crass counsel, does no obvious -and commonplace moralizing; but she has the -nature that resolves every phase of life into its -spiritual elements, and, seen imaginatively, -these elements are material for Art. When -once they are wrought into song by Miss -Thomas, they have lost none of the force of -the original idea, none of the thought-giving -value; but into them has been infused the -spiritual value in a subtly philosophical way, -by which the experience is resolved into its -personal import to the soul.</p> - -<p>Miss Thomas has written many beautiful -lyrics, but her characteristic expression is too -thoughtful to be set to the lighter and more -purely musical rhythms. She has a finely cultivated -style, inventive in form, and often employing -richly cadenced measures, but one feels -rather that the cadence is well tested, the -<!--181.png--> -form well fitted to the theme, than that the -impulse created its own form and sang itself -into being. One cannot, however, generalize -upon such varied work as that of Miss Thomas. -Because one feels back of the work the thinker, -the analyst, weighing even the emotion in the -balance of reflection, is not to say that the -work is cold or unemotional; on the contrary, -it is deeply human and sympathetic, and in -such inspirations as are drawn directly from -life it is often highly impassioned; but in many -of the poems the motive is drawn from some -classic source, such as, “At Seville,” “Ulysses -at the Court of Alcinous,” “The Roses of -Pieria,” “Timon to the Athenians,” “The Voice -of the Laws,” being Socrates’ reply to Crito,—and -while each of these poems, and particularly -the last, has both beauty and strength, they naturally -lack the warmth and impulse that accompany -more personal themes.</p> - -<p>As compared with the large body of Miss -Thomas’ work, that for which the inspiration -has been sought far afield is slight; but it is -sufficient to set the mark of deliberate intent -upon many of the poems and detract from -the spontaneity of the work as a whole. Miss -Thomas is so accomplished and ready a technician -that the temptation to utilize such allusions -<!--182.png--> -and themes from literature as have -artistic possibilities, is a strong one; nor is it -one to be deprecated, except in the ultimate -tendency that one shall let the inspiration from -without take precedence of that within, thus -quenching one’s own creative faculty. With -Miss Thomas such a result is far distant, if not -impossible, for life is to her the vital reality, -and the majority of her themes are drawn from -its passing drama; but there is also the other -phase of her art, and a sufficiently prominent -one to be noted. Her work falls under two -distinct heads,—poetry of the intellect and -poetry of the heart,—and while her most emotional -verse has a fine subtlety of thought, and -her most intellectual a subtlety of emotion, -making them not crassly one or the other, -none the less is the distinction apparent, and -it is easy to put one’s hand upon the work into -which her own temperament has entered and -which her creative moods have shaped. Upon -Art itself she has written some of her most -luminous poems, holding genius to be one with -that force by which</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The blossom and the sod</div> - <div class="verse">Feel the unquiet God,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and exclaiming to a doubting votary,</p> - -<!--183.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Despair thine art!</div> - <div class="verse">Thou canst not hush those cries,</div> - <div class="verse">Thou canst not blind those eyes,</div> - <div class="verse">Thou canst not chain those feet,</div> - <div class="verse">But they a path shall beat</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Forth from thine heart.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Forth from thine heart!</div> - <div class="verse">There wouldst thou dungeon him,</div> - <div class="verse">In cell both close and dim—</div> - <div class="verse">The key he turns on thee,</div> - <div class="verse">And out he goeth free!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Despair thine art!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>In her poem, “The Compass,” she carries the -reasoning farther, and declares that if one is to -wait upon the Force within and give it freedom, -he shall also be trusted to follow where it leads, -knowing that if temporarily deflected it will -adjust itself to the truth as surely as the compass, -thrown momentarily out of poise, searches -and finds its compelling attraction. Aside -from the analogy in the lines, the dignity of -their movement, the harmonious fall of the -cæsura, and the fine blending of word and tone, -render them highly artistic:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Touch but with gentlest finger the crystal that circles the Mariner’s Guide—</div> - <div class="verse">To the East and the West how it drifts, and trembles, and searches on every side!</div> -<!--184.png--> - <div class="verse">But it comes to its rest, and its light lance poises only one self-same way</div> - <div class="verse">Since ever a ship spread her marvellous sea-wings, or plunged her swan-breast through the spray—</div> - <div class="verse indent6">For North points the needle!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Ye look not alone for the sign of the lode-star; the lode-stone too lendeth cheer;</div> - <div class="verse">Yet one in the heavens is established forever, and one is compelled through the sphere.</div> - <div class="verse">What! and ye chide not the fluttering magnet that seemeth to fly its troth,</div> - <div class="verse">Yet even now is again recording its fealty’s silent oath—</div> - <div class="verse indent6">As North points the needle!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Praise ye bestow that, though mobile and frail as a tremulous spheret of dew,</div> - <div class="verse">It obeys an imperial law that ye know not (yet know that it guideth most true);</div> - <div class="verse">So, are ye content with its fugitive guidance—ye, but the winds’ and waves’ sport!—</div> - <div class="verse">So, are ye content to sail by your compass, and come in fair hour to your port;</div> - <div class="verse indent6">For North points the needle!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And now, will ye censure, because, of compulsion, the spirit that rules in this breast,</div> - <div class="verse">To show what a poet must show, was attempered, and touched with a cureless unrest,</div> - <div class="verse">Swift to be moved with all human mutation, to traverse passion’s whole range?</div> - <div class="verse">Mood succeeds mood, and humor fleets humor, yet never heart’s drift can they change,</div> - <div class="verse indent6">For North points the needle!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--185.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Inconstant I were to that Sovereign Bidding (why or whence given unknown),</div> - <div class="verse">Failed I to tent the entire round of motive ere sinking back to my own:</div> - <div class="verse">The error be yours, if ye think my faith erring or deem my allegiance I fly;</div> - <div class="verse">I follow my law and fulfil it all duly—and look! when your doubt runneth high—</div> - <div class="verse indent6">North points the needle!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>These lines illustrate Miss Thomas’ command -of accurately descriptive phrase: the compass is -“mobile and frail as a tremulous spheret of -dew,” and touched never so lightly, “how it -drifts, and trembles, and searches on every side.” -One feels that just these words, and no others, -convey at once the sense of its delicacy, and -the almost sentient instinct by which it seeks -its attraction. Miss Thomas’ diction in general -shows rather fineness of discrimination in the -expressive value of words than a strenuous -attempt to seek out those which are “literary” -and inobvious. There is rarely a word that -calls undue attention to itself; but when a -passage or poem is analyzed, one cannot but note -the fine sense of values in its phraseology. Her -diction has elegance without conventionality, -but one would scarcely say that it is highly -temperamental. It is flexible, colorful, picturesque, -but has not so strong a note of personality -<!--186.png--> -that one meeting a poem of Miss Thomas’ by -chance would be able to identify it by its evidence -of word and phrase, as one may often do -in the work of a poet. Miss Thomas’ marked -individuality is rather in the essence of her -work, its motive, mood, and thought, than in -its distinctive style, which is too varied to be -recognized by its touch.</p> - -<p>Now and again in her earlier work the influence -of Emerson comes out unmistakably. “A -Reed Shaken With the Wind,” “Child and -Poet,” and “The Naturalist,” are distinctly -Emersonian in manner and atmosphere—the -first especially so in its consecutive, unstanzaed -lines, and in the note pervading it. Whatever -mannerisms of style Miss Thomas acquired -from Emerson were, however, quickly cast off; -but with his thought she could scarcely fail to -have a continued kinship, if not a debt, so -much does her own work incline to the spiritually -philosophical. One may not trace influences -at all definitely in her work, though felt -in its general enrichment and breadth. In -“Palingenesis,” from her last collection, she has -done what poets before her have done,—embody -in song the theory of evolution; but it has -rarely been done better than in these stanzas, -which seize the spiritual side of the scientific -<!--187.png--> -fact and fuse it with the imagination. It has -been shudderingly foreboded that in this baldly -practical age the poet would come singing of -science; but if he invest it with the life and -charm that pervade Miss Thomas’ incursion -into the realm, there is no immediate cause for -alarm. Indeed, a scientific truth, seen through -the lens of a poet’s imagination, often takes on -a beauty that no conception of fancy could -duplicate, witness Whitman’s line:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>from a poem upon the same theme which -inspires Miss Thomas’ stanzas:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I dwelt with the God, ere He fashioned the worlds with their heart of fire,</div> - <div class="verse">Ere the vales sank down at His voice or He spake to the mountains, “Aspire!”</div> - <div class="verse">Or ever the sea to dark heaven made moan in its hunger for light,</div> - <div class="verse">Or the four winds were born of the morning and missioned on various flight.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">In a fold of His garment I slept, without motion, or knowledge, or skill</div> - <div class="verse">While age upon age the thought of creation took shape at His will;</div> - - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - -<!--188.png--> - <div class="verse">Part had I not in the scheme till He sent me to work on the reef.</div> - <div class="verse">Nude, in the seafoam, to clothe it with coralline blossom and leaf.</div> - <div class="verse">Patient I wrought—as a weaver that blindly plyeth the loom,</div> - <div class="verse">Nor knew that the God dwelt with me, there as I wrought in the gloom.</div> - - <div class="verse">Strength had I not till chiefdom supreme of the waters He gave;</div> - <div class="verse">Joyous I went—tumultuous; the billows before me I drave—</div> - <div class="verse">Myself as a surge of the sea when impelled by the driving storm;</div> - <div class="verse">Nor knew that the God dwelt with me, there in leviathan’s form.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Lightness I had not till, decked with light plumes, He endued me with speed—</div> - <div class="verse">Buoyant the hollow quill as the hollow stem of the reed!</div> - <div class="verse">And I gathered my food from the ooze, and builded my home at His word;</div> - <div class="verse">Nor knew that the God dwelt with me clothed in the garb of a bird.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I trod not the earth till on plains unmeasured He sent me to rove,</div> - <div class="verse">To taste of the sweetness of grass and the leaves of the summer grove.</div> - <div class="verse">For shelter He hollowed the cave; fresh springs in the rock He unsealed;</div> - <div class="verse">But I knew not the God dwelt with me that ranged as a beast of the field.</div> - <div class="verse">Foresight I had not, nor memory, nor vision that sweeps in the skies,</div> -<!--189.png--> - <div class="verse">Till He made me man, and bade me uplift my marvelling eyes!</div> - <div class="verse">My hands I uplifted—my cries grew a prayer—on the green turf I knelt,</div> - <div class="verse">And knew that the God had dwelt with me wherever of old I had dwelt!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Wild is the life of the wave, and free is the life of the air,</div> - <div class="verse">And sweet is the life of the measureless pastures, unburdened of care;</div> - <div class="verse">They all have been mine, I upgather them all in the being of man,</div> - <div class="verse">Who knoweth, at last, that the God hath dwelt with him since all life began!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">My heritage draw I from these—I love tho’ I leave them behind;</div> - <div class="verse">But shall I not speak for the dumb, and lift up my sight for the blind?</div> - <div class="verse">I am kin to the least that inhabits the air, the waters, the clod;</div> - <div class="verse">They wist not what bond is between us, they know not the Indwelling God!</div> - <div class="verse">For under my hands alone the charactered Past hath He laid,</div> - <div class="verse">One moment to scan ere it fall like a scroll into ashes and fade!</div> - <div class="verse">Enough have I read to know and declare—my ways He willkeep,</div> - <div class="verse">If onward I go, or again in a fold of His garment I sleep!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>There is no internal evidence in these -strongly phrased and stirring lines that a -woman’s hand penned them; their vigor, grasp, -<!--190.png--> -and resonant freedom of measure would do -credit to Browning; and here one may pause -to observe the adaptability of Miss Thomas’ -style to her thought. In certain poems demanding -the delicate airy touch, such as, “Dew-Bells,” -Titania herself could scarcely speak in -lighter phrase, nor could a tenderer, sweeter -note be infused into a poem than has been put -into the lines: “The soul of the violet haunts -me so,” or into the poem incident to the -query, “Is it Spring again in Ohio?”—but -when the thought demands virility of word and -measure Miss Thomas has a vivid energy of -style, masculine in its force. One may argue -that there is no sex in poetry, that, coming close -home for illustration, a woman’s hand might -have fashioned the work of Longfellow and -Whittier; but what of Lowell, Whitman, and -Emerson? These names alone prove sex-evidence -in art; nor is any disparagement -meant to Longfellow and Whittier that their -characteristic notes were of the gentler, sweeter -sort. We know they could be sufficiently robust -upon occasion, particularly the latter; but, -in general, art obeys a temperamental polarity -giving evidence of the masculine or feminine -mind that produced it. Miss Thomas’ work -in the main proves the woman, and the typical -<!--191.png--> -woman, who has lived, suffered, joyed; drank, -indeed, the brimming beaker from the foam to -the lees; but on her more philosophical and -intellectual side, in such poems as “The Voice -of the Laws,” or “The Flutes of the Gods” and -in many others, she has all a man’s virility. It -is partly for this reason that her style is too -varied to be identified by a random poem, the -temperamental differences in the work are so -marked, and the style changes so entirely -with them, as to elude classification under -one head.</p> - -<p>For one of her heartening notes and quick-step -measures take “Rank-And-File” from her -last volume, <cite>The Dancers</cite>:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">You might have painted that picture,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I might have written that song:</div> - <div class="verse">Not ours, but another’s, the triumph,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">’Tis done and well done—so ’long!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">You might have fought in the vanguard,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I might have struck at foul Wrong:</div> - <div class="verse">What matters whose hand was the foremost?</div> - <div class="verse indent2">’Tis done and well done—so ’long!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">So ’long, and into the darkness,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">With the immemorial throng—</div> - <div class="verse">Foil to the few and the splendid:</div> - <div class="verse indent2">All’s done and well done—so ’long!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--192.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Yet, as we pass, we will pledge them—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The bold, and the bright, and the strong,</div> - <div class="verse">(Ours was never black envy):</div> - <div class="verse indent2">All’s done and well done—so ’long!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Miss Thomas is very keen to see what may be -termed the subjectively dramatic side of life,—all -the subtlety of motive and impulse working -out of sight to shape the destiny, she sees with -acute divination; but constructively she lacks -the dramatic touch. In “A Winter Swallow,” -her one definite incursion into this field, it cannot -be said that she has done such work as -would represent her at her real value either in -the literary beauty of the lines, or in the insight -displayed in the characterization.</p> - -<p>So short a dramatic effort, however, could -scarcely do more than indicate the likelihood or -unlikelihood of Miss Thomas’ success in a more -sustained plot; and while a theme having in itself -warmer elements of sympathy would doubtless -create for itself a more moving and vital art, there -is very little to indicate that the effort would be -wisely spent. One is inclined more fully to -this opinion by the lack of dramatic impulse -in Miss Thomas’ narrative poem turning upon -the story of Genevra of the Amieri, she who -woke by night from the death-trance to find -herself entombed in the powerful vault of -<!--193.png--> -her ancestors, and, being spurned from her -father’s and her husband’s doors, as a haunting -spirit, took refuge at that of her former lover, -to whom, being adjudged by the law as dead, -she was reunited.</p> - -<p>The mere skeleton of this story is palpitant -with life; but in Miss Thomas’ cultivated and -beautiful recital, wherein the well-rounded, -suave pentameter falls never otherwise than -richly on the ear, all the vibrant, thrilling, terrifying -elements of the story have been refined -away. When Genevra wakens in the tomb, and -touches in the darkness the human skeletons -about her, and struggles to free herself from -the entangling cerements, and beats with -superhuman strength at the gratings until they -yield to her hand, and to the outer stone -until it unseals at her terrified touch,—there -are dramatic materials which even history has -infused with red blood; but either Miss Thomas -does not conceive the situation as having thrills -and terrors, or has not been able to impart -them to her record, for she sums the matter up -in these two stanzas, illustrating, apparently, -the Gentle Art of Being Buried Alive:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And now she dreams she lies in marble rest</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Within the Amieri’s chapel-tomb,</div> - <div class="verse">With hands laid idly on an idle breast.</div> -<!--194.png--> - <div class="verse indent2">How sweetly can the carven lilies bloom,</div> - <div class="verse">As they would soften her untimely doom….</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Nay, living flowers are these that brush her cheek!</div> - <div class="verse">She starts awake amid the nether gloom,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">From out dead swoon returning faint and weak;</div> - <div class="verse">No voice hath she, but none might hear her, could she speak.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Vaguely she reaches from her stony bed;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The blessed moonbeam, gliding underground,</div> - <div class="verse">Like angel ministrant from heaven sped,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To rescue one in frosty irons long bound,</div> - <div class="verse">Cheers her new-beating heart, till she has found</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Recourse of memory and use of will.</div> - <div class="verse">Then soon her feet are on the ladder-round,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The stone above gives way to patient skill;</div> - <div class="verse">And now the wide night greets her, bright, and lone, and still.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The story of Genevra, as told by Miss Thomas, -has often great beauty of phrase, picturesque -descriptive passages of Florentine life, delicacy -in the scene between the reunited lovers when -Genevra seeks Antonio’s gate, and fine pathos -in the lines spoken by her father to her supposed -spirit returning to haunt him; in short, -the poem has all but the dramatic touch. The -narrative force is lost in the poetic elaboration.</p> - -<p>But although Miss Thomas has not the outward -art of the dramatist, she has, as earlier -stated, a keenly intuitive sense of the spiritually -dramatic in passing life. Upon love she has -written with so keen a psychology that certain -<!--195.png--> -of the poems probe to the quick of that source -of pain; for it is not the lighter phase, already -so well celebrated, that she sings, but oftener the -fateful, the inexplicable. For illustration, the -poem, “They Said,” presents the caprice of love -by which (they say), it goes to those who hold -it most lightly, spend it most prodigally, flee it -to entice it, and yet weave snares to detain it. -The thrust of these stanzas is as delicately -keen as a rapier point:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Because thy prayer hath never fed</div> - <div class="verse">Dark Atë with the food she craves;</div> - <div class="verse">Because thou dost not hate (they said),</div> - <div class="verse">Nor joy to step on foemen’s graves;</div> - <div class="verse">Because thou canst not hate, as we,</div> - <div class="verse">How poor a creature thou must be,</div> - <div class="verse">Thy veins as pale as ours are red!</div> - <div class="verse">Go to! Love loves thee not (they said).</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Because by thee no snare was spread</div> - <div class="verse">To baffle Love—if Love should stray,</div> - <div class="verse">Because thou dost not watch (they said),</div> - <div class="verse">To strictly compass Love each way:</div> - <div class="verse">Because thou dost not watch, as we,</div> - <div class="verse">Nor jealous Care hath lodged with thee,</div> - <div class="verse">To strew with thorns a restless bed—</div> - <div class="verse">Go to! Love loves thee not (they said).</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Because thy feet were not misled</div> - <div class="verse">To jocund ground, yet all infirm,</div> - <div class="verse">Because thou art not fond (they said),</div> - <div class="verse">Nor dost exact thine heyday term:</div> -<!--196.png--> - <div class="verse">Because thou art not fond, as we,</div> - <div class="verse">How dull a creature thou must be,</div> - <div class="verse">Thy pulse how slow—yet shrewd thy head!</div> - <div class="verse">Go to! Love loves thee not (they said).</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Because thou hast not roved to wed</div> - <div class="verse">With those to Love averse or strange,</div> - <div class="verse">Because thou hast not roved (they said),</div> - <div class="verse">Nor ever studied artful change:</div> - <div class="verse">Because thou hast not roved, as we,</div> - <div class="verse">Love paid no ransom rich for thee,</div> - <div class="verse">Nor, seeking thee, unwearied sped.</div> - <div class="verse">Go to! Love loves thee not (they said).</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Ay, so! because thou thought’st to tread</div> - <div class="verse">Love’s ways, and all his bidding do,</div> - <div class="verse">Because thou hast not tired (they said),</div> - <div class="verse">Nor ever wert to Love untrue:</div> - <div class="verse">Because thou hast not tired, as we,</div> - <div class="verse">How tedious must thy service be;</div> - <div class="verse">Love with thy zeal is surfeited!</div> - <div class="verse">Go to! Love loves thee not (they said).</div> - - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Every contradiction of passion is in this poem, -and the very refinement of satire, as well. -In “The Domino,” Miss Thomas images, with -a pleasant humor, the various disguises under -which one meets Love, and symbolizes in “The -Barrier” the infallible intuition, the psychic -sense, by which one feels a change not yet -apparent.</p> - -<p>“A Home-Thrust,” wherein the inconstant -<!--197.png--> -one betrays himself by his doubt of another’s -constancy, and “So It Was Decreed,” are also -among the psychological bits of delineation; -but for the less penetrative but sweeter and -more memorable note, there are two short -poems, “Vos Non Vobis,” and “The Deep-Sea -Pearl,” tender, human, sufficiently universal -to appeal to all and artistically wrought. The -first records that,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">There was a garden planned in Spring’s young days,</div> - <div class="verse">Then, Summer held it in her bounteous hand;</div> - <div class="verse">And many wandered thro’ its blooming ways;</div> - <div class="verse">But ne’er the one for whom the work was planned.</div> - <div class="verse indent6">And it was vainly done—</div> - <div class="verse">For what are many, if we lack the one?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">There was a song that lived within the heart</div> - <div class="verse">Long time—and then on Music’s wing it strayed!</div> - <div class="verse">All sing it now, all praise its artless art;</div> - <div class="verse">But ne’er the one for whom the song was made.</div> - <div class="verse indent6">And it was vainly done—</div> - <div class="verse">For what are many, if we lack the one?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The whole argument of Art versus Life is -summed up in this poem. The second lyric, -of eight lines, is as delicate as the symbol -it employs, and globes within it, as the drop -within the pearl, many a life-history:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The love of my life came not</div> - <div class="verse indent2">As love unto others is cast;</div> - <div class="verse">For mine was a secret wound—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">But the wound grew a pearl, at last.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--198.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The divers may come and go,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The tides, they arise and fall;</div> - <div class="verse">The pearl in its shell lies sealed,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And the Deep Sea covers all.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>It is in such poems as bring from the heart -of life a certain poignant strain that Miss -Thomas is at her best. She is not a melancholy -singer, but her work is too deeply rooted -in the pain and unrest of life to be joyous. A -certain longing, an almost impalpable sadness, -pervades much of her verse. Nevertheless, it -is not so emphasized as to be depressing, and, -indeed, adds just the touch of personality by -which one treasures that which he feels has -been fused in experience. This pertains to -the more intimate phases of Miss Thomas’ -work. Upon death she has written with -deep feeling and insight,—feeling all too -vital to be analyzed, such as renders Spring -the season</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">When that blithe, forerunning air</div> - <div class="verse">Breathes more hope than thou canst bear.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Nature is often, in her verse, as it must be to -any sympathetic mind, a keener source of pain -than of pleasure, instinct as it is with memories, -and flaunting before one’s thwarted dreams the -infallible fulfilment of its hopes; yet she has -<!--199.png--> -for it an intense passion, and enters into its -most delicate and undefined moods with swift -comprehension.</p> - -<p>“The Soul of the Violet,” previously referred -to, is an illustration in point, being a purely -subjective treatment of a nature-suggestion. -When spring is yet too young for promise of -bloom, and only in the first respite from the -snow,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The brown earth raises a wistful face—</div> - <div class="verse">Whenever about the fields I go,</div> - <div class="verse">The soul of the violet haunts me so!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I look—there is never a leaf to be seen;</div> - <div class="verse">In the pleachéd grass is no thread of green;</div> - <div class="verse">But I walk as one who would chide his feet</div> - <div class="verse">Lest they trample the hope of something sweet!</div> - <div class="verse">Here can no flower be blooming, I know—</div> - <div class="verse">Yet the soul of the violet haunts me so!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Again and again that thrilling breath,</div> - <div class="verse">Fresh as the life that is snatched out of death,</div> - <div class="verse">Keen as the blow that Love might deal</div> - <div class="verse">Lest a spirit in trance should outward steal—</div> - <div class="verse">So thrilling that breath, so vital that blow—</div> - <div class="verse">The soul of the violet haunts me so!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Is it the blossom that slumbers as yet</div> - <div class="verse">Under the leaf-mould dank and wet,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - <div class="verse">Or is it the flower shed long ago?</div> - <div class="verse">The soul of the violet haunts me so!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<!--200.png--> -<p>The subjective touch in the final couplet gives -the key-note to the poem.</p> - -<p>Miss Thomas is indeed so subjective in her -conception of some of the profounder and more -vital losses of life, the sense of the irrevocable -and irreparable is so keenly emphasized to her -mind as to communicate almost a hint of fatalism -to certain of her poems, such as “Expiation” -and “A Far Cry To Heaven.” The latter is -such an utterance, in its impassioned tone, as -might proceed from the lips of the Angel with -the Flaming Sword sent to bar one’s return to -his desecrated Eden. The ultimate effect of -such a poem, however, is salutary, as the warning -outruns the scath, and one reading it will -pay closer heed to the import of the “white -hour” of his life. On its technical side, the -poem has all the ease of an improvisation, and -so at one are the metre and thought that line -succeeds line with a surge and a rhythm, as -wave follows wave to the shore:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">What! dost thou pray that the outgone tide be rolled back on the strand,</div> - <div class="verse">The flame be rekindled that mounted away from the smouldering brand,</div> - <div class="verse">The past-summer harvest flow golden through stubble-lands naked and sere,</div> - <div class="verse">The winter-gray woods upgather and quicken the leaves of last year?—</div> -<!--201.png--> - <div class="verse">Thy prayers are as clouds in a drouth; regardless, unfruitful, they roll;</div> - <div class="verse">For this, that thou prayest vain things, ’tis a far cry to Heaven, my soul,—</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Oh, a far cry to Heaven!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Thou dreamest the word shall return, shot arrow-like into the air,</div> - <div class="verse">The wound in the breast where it lodged be balmed and closed for thy prayer,</div> - <div class="verse">The ear of the dead be unsealed, till thou whisper a boon once denied,</div> - <div class="verse">The white hour of life be restored, that passed thee unprized, undescried!—</div> - <div class="verse">Thy prayers are as runners that faint, that fail, within sight of the goal,</div> - <div class="verse">For this, that thou prayest fond things, ’tis a far cry to Heaven, my soul,—</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Oh, a far cry to Heaven!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And cravest thou fondly the quivering sands shall be firm to thy feet,</div> - <div class="verse">The brackish pool of the waste to thy lips be made wholesome and sweet?</div> - <div class="verse">And cravest thou subtly the bane thou desirest, be wrought to thy good,</div> - <div class="verse">As forth from a poisonous flower a bee conveyeth safe food?</div> - <div class="verse">For this, that thou prayest ill things, thy prayers are an anger-rent scroll;</div> - <div class="verse">The chamber of audit is closed,—’tis a far cry to Heaven, my soul,—</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Oh, a far cry to Heaven!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>For the strong, but aloe-tinctured draught of -this poem, “Sursum Corda” is the antidote. -<!--202.png--> -Here we have the same experience that went to -the making of the former poem, and touched it -with bitterness, turned to sweetness and a fervor -of exaltation, when viewed from the hour -of illumination at the last. It is throughout a -valiant, noble song, of which the following -lines show the spirit:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Up and rejoice, and know thou hast matter for revel, my heart!</div> - <div class="verse">Up and rejoice, not heeding if drawn or undrawn be the dart</div> - <div class="verse">Last winged by the Archer whose quiver is full for sweeter than thou,</div> - <div class="verse">That yet will sing out of the dust when the ultimate arrow shall bow.</div> - - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - - <div class="verse">Now thou couldst bless and God-speed, without bitterness bred in thine heart,</div> - <div class="verse">Loves, that, outworn and time-wasted, were fain from thy lodge to depart:</div> - <div class="verse">Though dulled by their passing, thy faith, like a flower upfolded by night,</div> - <div class="verse">New kindness should quicken again, as a flower feels the touch of new light.</div> - <div class="verse">Ay, now thou couldst love, undefeated, with ardor instinct from pure Love,—</div> - <div class="verse">Warmed from a sun in the heavens that knows not beneath nor above,</div> - <div class="verse">Nor distance its patience to weary, nor substance unpierce by its ray.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> -<!--203.png--> - <div class="verse">Now couldst thou pity and smile, where once but the scourge thou wouldst lay;</div> - <div class="verse">Now to thyself couldst show mercy, and up from all penance arise,</div> - <div class="verse">Knowing there runneth abroad a chastening flame from the skies.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Doubt not thou hast matter for revel, for once thou wouldst cage thee in steel,</div> - <div class="verse">And, wounded, wouldst seek out the balm and the cordial cunning to heal;</div> - <div class="verse">But now thou hast knowledge more sovran, more kind, than leech-craft can wield:</div> - <div class="verse">Never Design sent thee forth to be safe from the scath of the field,</div> - <div class="verse">But bade thee stand bare in the midst, and offer free way to all scath</div> - <div class="verse">Piercing thee inly—so only might Song have an outgoing path.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - <div class="verse">But now ’tis not thine to bestow, to abide, or be known in thy place;</div> - <div class="verse">Withdraweth the voice into silence, dissolveth the form and the face.</div> - <div class="verse">Death—Life thou discernest! Enlarged as thou art, thy ground thou must shift!</div> - <div class="verse">Love over-liveth. Throb thou forth quickly. Heart, be uplift!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The hard-won philosophy of nearly all lives -is summed up in these stanzas, pregnant therefore -with suggestion to those who have the untrodden -way before them, and full of uplift to -those who have the course behind them, and -<!--204.png--> -view it in retrospect as but “a stuff to try the -soul’s strength on.”</p> - -<p>Not only in this poem, but throughout her -work, the evolution of Miss Thomas’ philosophy -of life is marked, had one time to trace -its growing significance. She has sounded -many stops, touched many keys of feeling and -thought, so that one may do no more in a brief -comment than suggest the various phases of -her widely inclusive song.</p> -</div><!--end Thomas--> -<!--205.png--> -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Cawein--> -<h3><a name="Cawein" id="Cawein"></a><abbr title="Nine">IX</abbr></h3> - -<h4>MADISON CAWEIN</h4> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">IN nothing, more than in his attitude toward -nature, does the modern betray himself. -Ours is the questioning age, the truth-seeking, -the scientific age; when, for illustration, -Maeterlinck laid his philosophy by to -observe with infinite pains the habits of the -bee and to record, without the intrusion of too -many deductions, the amazing facts as nature -passed them in review before his eyes,—he -became the naturalist-philosopher, selling days, -not for speculations, but for laws. To the -poet also has come the desire which came to -the philosopher to demonstrate the truth within -the beauty; to penetrate to the finer law at -the heart of things; in short, there has arisen -what one may term the poet-naturalist, and in -the recent work of Mr. Madison Cawein we -have perhaps the most characteristic illustration -among our own poets of the younger -school, of this phase of nature-interpretation.</p> - -<p>Before considering it, however, one must -trace briefly Mr. Cawein’s evolutionary steps -<!--206.png--> -through the haunted ways of nature in its -imaginative and romantic phases, which enthralled -him first, by no means wholly, but -predominantly, and of which he has left many -records in his volume, <cite>Myth and Romance</cite>. -Of the more artistic poems, worthy to be put -in comparison with his later work, there are -several from the opening group of the collection, -as these picturesque lines containing the -query:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">What wood-god, on this water’s mossy curb,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Lost in reflection of earth’s loveliness,</div> - <div class="verse">Did I, just now, unconsciously disturb?</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I, who haphazard, wandering at a guess,</div> - <div class="verse">Came on this spot, wherein, with gold and flame</div> - <div class="verse">Of buds and blooms, the season writes its name.—</div> - <div class="verse">Ah me! could I have seen him ere alarm</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of my approach aroused him from his calm!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">As he, part Hamadryad and, mayhap,</div> - <div class="verse">Part Faun, lay here; who left the shadow warm</div> - <div class="verse indent2">As wild-wood rose, and filled the air with balm</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of his sweet breath as with ethereal sap.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Or from the same group these charming -glimpses of “an unseen presence that -eludes”:—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Perhaps a Dryad, in whose tresses cling</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The loamy odors of old solitudes,</div> - <div class="verse">Who, from her beechen doorway, calls;</div> - - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - -<!--209.png--> - - <div class="verse">Or, haply ’tis a Naiad now who slips,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Like some white lily, from her fountain’s glass,</div> - <div class="verse">While from her dripping hair and breasts and hips,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The moisture rains cool music on the grass.</div> - - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - <div class="verse">Or now it is an Oread—whose eyes</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Are constellated dusk—who stands confessed,</div> - <div class="verse">As naked as a flow’r; her heart’s surprise,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Like morning’s rose, mantling her brow and breast:</div> - <div class="verse indent2">She, shrinking from my presence, all distressed</div> - <div class="verse">Stands for a startled moment ere she flies,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Her deep hair blowing, up the mountain crest,</div> - <div class="verse">Wild as a mist that trails along the dawn.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And is’t her footfalls lure me? or the sound</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of airs that stir the crisp leaf on the ground?</div> - <div class="verse">And is’t her body glimmers on yon rise?</div> - <div class="verse">Or dog-wood blossoms snowing on the lawn?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> -<!--207.png--> - -<div class="break figcenter"> - <a name="i207" id="i207"></a><img src="images/i207.jpg" - width="500" height="725" - alt="Illustration of Madison Cawein" - title="Madison Cawein" - /> -</div><!--end illustration--> - -<!--208.png--> - -<p>Who shall deny both charm and accomplishment -to these lines, particularly to the glimpse -of the dryad in her “beechen doorway,” but -on the next page of the same volume occurs -this more realistic apostrophe addressed to the -“Rain-Crow,” giving a foretokening hint of his -later manner of observation, and who shall say -that it has not a truer charm and accomplishment?</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Can freckled August,—drowsing warm and blonde</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Beside a wheat-shock in the white-topped mead,</div> - <div class="verse">In her hot hair the oxeyed daisies wound,—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">O bird of rain, lend aught but sleepy heed</div> -<!--210.png--> - <div class="verse indent2">To thee? when no plumed weed, no feather’d seed</div> - <div class="verse">Blows by her; and no ripple breaks the pond,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That gleams like flint between its rim of grasses,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Through which the dragonfly forever passes</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Like splintered diamond.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Drouth weights the trees, and from the farmhouse eaves</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The locust, pulse-beat of the summer day,</div> - <div class="verse">Throbs; and the lane, that shambles under leaves</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Limp with the heat—a league of rutty way—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hay</div> - <div class="verse">Breathe from the panting meadows heaped with sheaves—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Now, now, O bird, what hint is there of rain,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In thirsty heaven or on burning plain,</div> - <div class="verse indent6">That thy keen eye perceives?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">But thou art right. Thou prophesiest true.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">For hardly hast thou ceased thy forecasting,</div> - <div class="verse">When, up the western fierceness of scorched blue,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Great water-carrier winds their buckets bring</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Brimming with freshness. How their dippers ring</div> - <div class="verse">And flash and rumble! lavishing dark dew</div> - <div class="verse indent2">On corn and forestland, that, streaming wet,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Their hilly backs against the downpour set,</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Like giants vague in view.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The butterfly, safe under leaf and flower,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Has found a roof, knowing how true thou art;</div> - <div class="verse">The bumble-bee, within the last half-hour,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">While in the barnyard, under shed and cart,</div> - <div class="verse">Brood-hens have housed.—But I, who scorned thy power,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Barometer of the birds,—like August there,—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair,</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Like some drenched truant, cower.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<!--211.png--> -<p>This, however, is airy imagination as compared -with the naturalist fidelity of much of Mr. -Cawein’s work in <cite>Weeds by the Wall</cite>, <cite>A Voice -on the Wind</cite>, and in <cite>Kentucky Poems</cite>,—to -which Mr. Edmund Gosse contributes a -sympathetic introduction,—books chiefly -upon nature, occasionally reverting to the -mythological or more imaginative phase of -the subject, but in the main set to reveal the -fact, with its aura of beauty; for it is never the -purely elemental side of a nature-manifestation -that presents itself to Mr. Cawein, but always -the fact haloed by its poetic penumbra. Indeed, -the limitation of his earlier work lay in the -excess of fancy over reflection and art; but -his growth has been away from the romantic -toward the realistic and individual, and upon this -side its best assurance for the future is given. -Mr. Cawein has yet far too facile a pen not to -be betrayed by it into excesses both of production -and fancy. He writes too much to keep to -the standard set in his best work of the past two -or three years, and lacks still to a great degree -the self-scrutiny which would reject much that -he includes; but granting all this, it must be -apparent to any reader of his work that he is -not a singer making verse for diversion, but -one to whom poetry is the very breath of his -<!--212.png--> -spirit, one who lives by this air, and can by no -other; and while it is one thing to be driven -through vision-haunted days by beauty’s urgence -and unrest, and another to body forth -the vision in the calm; one thing to have had -the mystery whispered by a thousand wordless -voices, and another to communicate it in terms of -revealing truth—it is notable in Mr. Cawein’s -verse that he is teaching his hand to obey him -more surely each year, and is producing work -that quickens one’s perception of the world -without, and adds to his sum of beauty. It is -serious work, work with purpose, and while its -fancy still runs at times to the fantastic, it -shows so marked a growth in technique and -spirit from year to year that one may well let -to-morrow take care of to-morrow with a poet -who brings to his art the ideal which inspires -Mr. Cawein.</p> - -<p>To return, then, to his distinctive field, Kentucky, -and his characteristic note of nature, one -observes that a hand-book of the flora of his -state could doubtless be compiled from his -poems, so do they leave the beaten path in their -range of observation; but it would be a botany -plus imagination and sympathy, analysts keener -than microscopes, and in it would be recorded -the habits of the bluet, the jewel-weed, the -<!--213.png--> -celandine, the black-cohosh, the bell-flower, the -lobelia, the elecampane, the oxalis, the touch-me-not, -the Indian-pipe, and many another -unused to hear its name rehearsed in song.</p> - -<p>One follows the feet of September to the -forest</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Windowed wide with azure, doored with green,</div> - <div class="verse">Through which rich glimmers of her robe were seen—</div> - <div class="verse">Now, like some deep marsh-mallow, rosy gold;</div> - <div class="verse">Now like the great Joe-Pye-weed, fold on fold</div> - <div class="verse">Of heavy mauve; and now, like the intense</div> - <div class="verse">Massed iron-weed, a purple opulence;</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>or wanders under the Hunter’s Moon to watch -the frost spirits</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">… with fine fingers, phantom-cold,</div> - <div class="verse">Splitting the wahoo’s pods of rose, and thin</div> - <div class="verse">The bittersweet’s balls o’ gold</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To show the coal-red berries packed within.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Autumn is apparently, however, little to his -liking, and in his attitude toward it he reveals -the Southerner; for it is not only Kentucky -flora and fauna, but Kentucky climate which -Mr. Cawein celebrates, treating Autumn not -with the buoyancy that to a Northerner renders -it a season of lusty infection, but almost wholly -in its aspect of sadness. In his volume called -<cite>Undertones</cite> he has a group of poems upon -<!--214.png--> -the withdrawing year, sounding only this note, -which is the prevalent one when touching -upon the same theme in his other volumes. -He glimpses</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">… the Fall</div> - <div class="verse">Like some lone woman in a ruined hall</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Dreaming of desolation and the shroud;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Or through decaying woodlands goes, down-bowed,</div> - <div class="verse">Hugging the tatters of her gipsy shawl;</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>and speaks elsewhere of</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">… the days gray-huddled in the haze;</div> - <div class="verse">Whose foggy footsteps drip.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Winter is encountered with far scantier cheer, -and rarely receives the grace of salutation, as -its face appears dire and malevolent to this -lover of the sun. To follow Mr. Cawein’s work -with such a purpose in view would be to present -an interesting study in climatic psychology, for -though no mention were made of the section -in which he writes, the internal evidence is -sufficient to localize the poems. Not alone -the gracious side of the Southern summer is -presented, but the fearful time of drouth when</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The hot sunflowers by the glaring pike</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Lift shields of sultry brass; the teasel tops,</div> - <div class="verse">Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spike</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Against the furious sunlight. Field and copse</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Are sick with summer: now, with breathless stops,</div> -<!--215.png--> - <div class="verse">The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beat</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Their castanets: and rolled in dust, a team,—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Like some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream,—</div> - <div class="verse">An empty wagon rattles through the heat.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>This is vivid picturing and a fine touch of -realism fused with imagination which compares -the team rolled in dust to</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">“Some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Immediately following the poem upon “Drouth,” -of which there are several stanzas sketched with -minuteness, occurs one entitled “Before the -Rain,” opening with these pictorial lines:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Before the rain, low in the obscure east,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Weak and morose the moon hung, sickly gray;</div> - <div class="verse">Around its disc the storm mists, cracked and creased,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Wove an enormous web, wherein it lay</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Like some white spider hungry for its prey.</div> - <div class="verse">Vindictive looked the scowling firmament,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In which each star, that flashed a dagger ray,</div> - <div class="verse">Seemed filled with malice of some dark intent.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The moon caught in its creased web of storm -mists is another well-visioned image. Mr. -Cawein carries the record on to a third poem, -picturing the “Broken Drouth;” all are notable -for the infusion of atmosphere,—climatic -atmosphere, in this case; and indeed of this -palpable sort there is plenty, infused into words -that fairly parch the page in such poems as -<!--216.png--> -“Heat,” or “To the Locust,” which give -abundant evidence that Mr. Cawein knows -whereof he speaks and is not supposing a -case. The stanzas to “The Grasshopper” -will deepen this conviction when one looks -them up in the volume called <cite>Weeds by the -Wall</cite>.</p> - -<p>Mr. Cawein has poems in celebration of -many other of the creatures whom he links -in fellowship with man in his keenly observant -verse. “The Twilight Moth,” “The -Leaf Cricket,” “The Tree Toad,” “The Chipmunk,” -and even the despised “Screech-Owl,” -are observed and celebrated with impartial sympathy -and love. He shelters in the wood during -a summer rain to learn where each tiny -fellow of the earth and air bestows himself, -and notes that the “lichen-colored moths” -are pressed “like knots against the trunks of -trees;” that the bees are wedged like “clots -of pollen” in hollow blooms, and that the -“mantis, long-clawed, furtive, lean,” and the -dragonfly are housed together beneath the wild-grape’s -leaves and gourds. Each creature’s -haunt, ’neath rock or root, or frail roof-bloom, -is determined as a naturalist might lie in wait -during the summer storm to record for Science’s -sake each detail of this forest tenantry. -<!--217.png--> -Imagination has, however, touched it to beauty, -while losing none of the fidelity.</p> - -<p>To the “Twilight Moth,” “gnome wrought -of moonbeam fluff and gossamer,” he addresses -in another poem these delicate lines:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on her state</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of gold and purple in the marbled west,</div> - <div class="verse">Thou comest forth like some embodied trait,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Or dim conceit, a lily-bud confessed;</div> - <div class="verse">Or, of a rose, the visible wish; that, white,</div> - <div class="verse">Goes softly messengering through the night,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Whom each expectant flower makes its guest.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">All day the primroses have thought of thee,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat;</div> - <div class="verse">All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Veiled snowy faces,—that no bee might greet</div> - <div class="verse">Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed;—</div> - <div class="verse">Keeping Sultana charms for thee, at last,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day’s</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks</div> - <div class="verse">The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Nocturnes of fragrance, thy winged shadow links</div> - <div class="verse">In bonds of secret brotherhood and faith;</div> - <div class="verse">O bearer of their order’s shibboleth,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Like some pale symbol fluttering o’er these pinks.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The final line of this stanza has a certain thinness, -and in that above, the ending which turns -“sweet” to a noun is too evidently a matter -<!--218.png--> -of expediency; but with these exceptions the -stanzas are charming, as are the unquoted -ones following them. Before turning to other -phases of Mr. Cawein’s work, here is a glimpse -of the “Tree Toad,” pictured with quaint delicacy -and fancy:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Secluded, solitary on some underbough,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Or cradled in a leaf, ’mid glimmering light,</div> - <div class="verse">Like Puck thou crouchest: haply watching how</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The slow toad stool comes bulging, moony white,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Through loosening loam; or how, against the night,</div> - <div class="verse">The glow-worm gathers silver to endow</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The darkness with; or how the dew conspires</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To hang at dusk with lamps of chilly fires</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Each blade that shrivels now.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - <div class="verse">Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noon</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover</div> - <div class="verse">And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover</div> - <div class="verse">Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of twilight’s hush, and little intimate</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of eve’s first fluttering star and delicate</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Round rim of rainy moon!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy horn</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Inform the gnomes and goblins of the hour</div> - <div class="verse">When they may gambol under haw and thorn,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower?</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall tower</div> -<!--219.png--> - <div class="verse">The liriodendron is? from whence is borne</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The elfin music of thy bell’s deep bass</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To summon fairies to their starlit maze,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">To summon them or warn.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>What a happy bit of realism is that of the toadstool -“bulging, moony white, through loosening -loam”! The second of the stanzas may -be too Keats-like in atmosphere to have been -achieved with unconsciousness of the fact, be -that as it may, it is a bit of sheer beauty, as the -last is of dainty fancy.</p> - -<p>But nature, either realistically or romantically, -is not all that Mr. Cawein writes of, -though it must be said that his verse upon -other themes is so largely tinctured with his -nature passion that one rarely comes upon a -poem whose illustrations are not drawn more -or less from this source, making it difficult to -find lyrics wholly upon other themes. Because -of his opulent metrical variety, Mr. Cawein is -less lyrical than as if he sang in simpler measures. -His lyrics, indeed, are in the main his -least distinguished work, having frequently, if -highly musical, too slight a motive; or if more -consequent in motive, not being sufficiently -musical; or the melody may be unimpeachable -and the theme too romantic to have convincing -value, as “Mignon,” “Helen,” “The -<!--220.png--> -Quest,” “Floridian,” etc. Indeed, Mr. Cawein -sounds the troubadour note all too frequently in -his lyrical love poems, which are not without -a lightsome grace of phrase and fancy, as becomes -this style of verse; but it is likely to -be a superficial note, heard but to be forgotten. -He can, however, strike a deeper chord, -as in the poem called “The End of All,” or in -that from an earlier volume, bringing a poignant -undertone in its strong, calm utterance, -beginning</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Go your own ways. Who shall persuade me now</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To seek with high face for a star of hope?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>and ending,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Though sands be black and bitter black the sea,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Night lie before me and behind me night,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And God within far Heaven refuse to light</div> - <div class="verse">The consolation of the dawn for me,—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Between the shadowy bourns of Heaven and Hell,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">It is enough love leaves my soul to dwell</div> - <div class="verse indent6">With memory.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>In such notes as these controlled by the Vox -Humana stop, Mr. Cawein best reveals himself; -another, coming from the heart rather than the -fancy, is “Nightshade,” from the volume called -<cite>Intimations of the Beautiful</cite>, a record of life’s -bringing to judgment the late-proffered love, -unyielded when desired.</p> -<!--221.png--> - -<p>“A Wild Iris” is in the later and finer manner, -but although love is the spirit of the song, -it is embodied chiefly in terms of nature, and -would not reveal a different phase of his work -from that already shown. This, too, is the case -with the two lighter lyrics, “Love In A Day” -and “In The Lane,” each with a most taking -measure; the second a rural song lilting into -this note:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">When the hornet hangs in the hollyhock,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And the brown bee drones i’ the rose,</div> - <div class="verse">And the west is a red-streaked four-o’-clock,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And summer is near its close—</div> - <div class="verse">It’s—Oh, for the gate and the locust lane</div> - <div class="verse">And dusk and dew and home again!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Mr. Cawein has frequent poems in celebration -of the farm, not only its picturesque cheer, -but its dignity and finer idealism. “A Song -For Labor” is one of the best; also “Old -Homes,” an idyllic picture of the Southern -plantation, with its gentle haze of reminiscence:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Old homes among the hills! I love their gardens,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Their old rock-fences, that our day inherits;</div> - <div class="verse">Their doors, ’round which the great trees stand like wardens;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Their paths, down which the shadows march like spirits;</div> - <div class="verse">Broad doors and paths that reach bird-haunted gardens.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--222.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I see them gray among their ancient acres,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Severe of front, their gables lichen-sprinkled,—</div> - <div class="verse">Like gentle-hearted, solitary Quakers,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Grave and religious, with kind faces wrinkled,—</div> - <div class="verse">Serene among their memory-hallowed acres.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Their gardens, banked with roses and with lilies—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Those sweet aristocrats of all the flowers—</div> - <div class="verse">Where Springtime mints her gold in daffodillies,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And Autumn coins her marigolds in showers,</div> - <div class="verse">And all the hours are toilless as the lilies.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - <div class="verse">Old homes! old hearts! Upon my soul forever</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Their peace and gladness lie like tears and laughter;</div> - <div class="verse">Like love they touch me, through the years that sever,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">With simple faith; like friendship, draw me after</div> - <div class="verse">The dreamy patience that is theirs forever.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Mr. Cawein blends the mood and the picture -in the simple tenderness of these lines, -with their unstriving felicity. Kentucky’s more -strenuous side also finds a chronicler in his -verse: the tragedies of its mountains are told -in one of the earlier volumes in such poems as -“The Moonshiner,” “The Raid,” and “Dead -Man’s Run;” and in <cite>Weeds by the Wall</cite>, in -that graphic poem “Feud,” sketching with the -pencil of a realist the road to the spot</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">… where all the land</div> - <div class="verse">Seems burdened with some curse,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<!--223.png--> -<p>and where, sunk in obliterative growth of -briers, burrs, and ragweed, stands the</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">… huddled house</div> - <div class="verse">Where men have murdered men,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and where a terrified silence still broods, for</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The place seems thinking of that time of fear</div> - <div class="verse">And dares not breathe a sound.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Mr. Howells, in an appreciation of Mr. Cawein’s -work, after the appearance of <cite>Weeds by the -Wall</cite>, spoke of this poem declaring that “What -makes one think he will go far and long, and -outlive both praise and blame, is the blending -of a sense of the Kentucky civilization in such -a poem as ‘Feud.’ Civilization may not be -quite the word for the condition of things suggested -here, but there can be no doubt of the -dramatic and the graphic power that suggests -it, and that imparts a personal sense of the -tragic squalor, the sultry drouth, the forlorn -wickedness of it all.” His poem “Ku Klux,” -in a volume published some time ago, is no -less dramatic in touch and theme. Mr. Cawein -knows how to set his picture; the ominous -portent of the night in which the dark deed -is done would be understood from these three -lines alone:</p> - -<!--224.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The clouds blow heavy towards the moon.</div> - <div class="verse">The edge of the storm will reach it soon.</div> - <div class="verse">The kildee cries and the lonesome loon.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>It may be said of Mr. Cawein’s work in -general that it shows him to be alert to impression, -and gives abundant evidence that life -presents itself to him abrim with suggestion. -Occasionally, as mentioned above, he wanders -too far into the romantic, or yields to the -rhyming impulse in a fallow time of thought; -but when he throws this facile poetizing by, -and betakes himself to nature and life in the -capacity of observer and analyst, he produces -work notable for its strength, fidelity, and -beauty. Metrically, in his earlier work he was -influenced by various poets he had read too -well. “Intimations of the Beautiful,” occupying -a part of the volume bearing that name, -would be one of his best efforts, in thought -and imaginative charm, were it not written -in a form developed from “In Memoriam,” -so that one is haunted by the metrical echo. -The poem is devoted to interpretations of -life and the spirit, through nature; and has -not a division without some revelation from -that book of the earth which Mr. Cawein -has made his gospel. Its observations, while -couched in imagery that now and again tends -<!--225.png--> -to the over-fanciful, are in the main consistent -and artistic.</p> - -<p>In his recent books, however, he adventures -upon his way, seeing wholly by the light of -his own eyes, and portraying by the skill of his -own hand, so that his work has taken on personality -and individuality with each succeeding -volume.</p> - -<p>Its breath from the bourns of meadow and -woodland brings with it a stimulating fragrance, -and one closes a book by Mr. Cawein, -feeling that he has been in some charmed spot -under Southern skies where</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Of honey and heat and weed and wheat</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The day had made perfume.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -</div><!--end Cawein--> -<!--226.png--> -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Woodberry--> - -<h3><a name="Woodberry" id="Woodberry"></a><abbr title="Ten">X</abbr></h3> - -<h4>GEORGE E. WOODBERRY</h4> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0a">“For he who standeth in the whole world’s hope</div> - <div class="verse">Is as a magnet; he shall draw all hearts</div> - <div class="verse">To be his shield, all arms to strike his blow.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p class="dropcap">THESE words by Mr. George E. Woodberry -sound the keynote to his art, -for he has set himself to disclose the -immanence of beauty, of strength; to mould -the real to the ideal; and whether he fashions -a god, as in “Agathon,” or a patriot, as in -“My Country,” he is concerned only with the -development of the spiritual potentialities.</p> - -<p>He comes to life, to poetry, enriched by a -scholar’s culture, but limited by his enrichment -on the creative side of his art. He is too -well possessed of the immortal melodies to -trust the spontaneous notes of his own voice, -and hence his verse on its technical side lacks -variety and freedom of movement. It has all -the cultivated, classical freedom, it flows ever -in pure and true numbers; but the masters -sing in its overtones, and one catches himself -hearkening to them as to Mr. Woodberry himself. -<!--227.png--> -In other words, those innovations of -form which strongly creative thoughts usually -bring with them, are not to be found in Mr. -Woodberry’s work. He has a highly developed -sense of rhythm and tone, and very rarely -is any metrical canon violated; but the strange -new music, the wild free note, that showers -down as if from upper air, and sets one’s heart -a-tingling, is seldom voiced through him. The -bird is caged; and while its song is true and -beautiful, one comes soon to know its notes -and the range of its melody.</p> - -<p>Mr. Woodberry has, however, something to -say; and if he says it rather with grace and -cultivation as to form, than with any startling -surprises of artistic effect, his work in its essence, -in its spirit, is none the less creative, -and upon this side its strength lies. It is -ethical and intellectual, rather than emotional, -poetry. Though rising often to an impassioned -height, it is a passion of the brain, -pure and cold as a flood of moonlight. Even -the songs of “Wild Eden,” and others dealing -with love, remain an abstraction; one does -not get the sense of personality, except in one -or two of them, such as the lyric, “O, Inexpressible -As Sweet,” and in these few lines -called “Divine Awe”:</p> - -<!--228.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">To tremble when I touch her hands,</div> - <div class="verse">With awe that no man understands;</div> - <div class="verse">To feel soft reverence arise</div> - <div class="verse">When, lover-sweet, I meet her eyes;</div> - <div class="verse">To see her beauty grow and shine</div> - <div class="verse">When most I feel this awe divine,—</div> - <div class="verse">Whate’er befall me, this is mine;</div> - <div class="verse">And where about the room she moves,</div> - <div class="verse">My spirit follows her, and loves.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>But although one misses the sense of reality -in the songs of love, the ideality is for that -reason the more apparent. Love that has -sublimated, taken on the rarer part, that -has made a mystic interchange with nature -and with God, is celebrated in the fervid poem, -“He Ate The Laurel And Is Mad,” which -marks one of the strongest achievements in -Mr. Woodberry’s work, and especially in a -lyric it contains, vibrating with a fine, compulsive -melody. The lines preceding the lyric -relate the coming of Love into the heart of -nature:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And instant back his longing runs</div> - <div class="verse">Through bud and billow, through drift and blaze,</div> - <div class="verse">Through thought, through prayer, the thousand ways</div> - <div class="verse">The spirit journeys from despair;</div> - <div class="verse">He sees all things that they are fair,</div> - <div class="verse">But feels them as the daisied sod,—</div> - <div class="verse">This slumbrous beauty, this light, this room,</div> - <div class="verse">The chrysalis and broken tomb</div> - <div class="verse">He cleaveth on his way to God.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> -<!--229.png--> - -<div class="break figcenter"> - <a name="i229" id="i229"></a><img src="images/i229.jpg" - width="500" height="698" - alt="Illustration of George Woodberry" - title="George Woodberry" - /> -</div><!--end illustration--> - -<!--230.png--> -<!--231.png--> -<p>Then the poem breaks into this pæan, whose -music outsings its thought when pushed to -analysis; this is one of Mr. Woodberry’s metrical -exceptions that prove the rule. Here is -sheer music making fine but not extraordinary -thought seem great, whereas in the majority of -his work it is the thought to which one listens -rather than the melody; but to the lyric,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I shall go singing over-seas;</div> - <div class="verse">“The million years of the planets increase;</div> - <div class="verse">All pangs of death, all cries of birth,</div> - <div class="verse">Are clasped at one by the heart of the earth.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I shall go singing by tower and town:</div> - <div class="verse">“The thousand cities of men that crown</div> - <div class="verse">Empire slow-rising from horde and clan,</div> - <div class="verse">Are clasped at one by the heart of man.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I shall go singing by flower and brier:</div> - <div class="verse">“The multitudinous stars of fire,</div> - <div class="verse">And man made infinite under the sod,</div> - <div class="verse">Are clasped at one by the heart of God.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I shall go singing by ice and snow:</div> - <div class="verse">“Blow soon, dread angel, greatly blow,</div> - <div class="verse">Break up, ye gulfs, beneath, above,</div> - <div class="verse">Peal, time’s last music,—‘love, love, love!’”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Of his recent volume in which he gathers his -most representative work, “The North Shore -Watch,” a threnody published some years ago, -<!--232.png--> -remains one of the truest poems in sincerity and -sympathy of expression,—not only an idyl of -remembered comradeship, but of the sea in its -many moods; and here one may note that of -Mr. Woodberry’s references to nature, those of -the sea are incomparably the finest, and exhale -an invigorating savor of the brine. They are -scattered through “The North Shore Watch,” -but because of the stately sadness of the verse -are less representative of his characteristic note -than are these buoyant lines which open the -poem “Seaward”:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I will go down in my youth to the hoar sea’s infinite foam;</div> - <div class="verse">I will bathe in the winds of heaven; I will nest where the white birds home;</div> - <div class="verse">Where the sheeted emerald glitters and drifts with bursts of snow,</div> - <div class="verse">In the spume of stormy mornings, I will make me ready and go;</div> - <div class="verse">Where under the clear west weather the violet surge is rolled,</div> - <div class="verse">I will strike with the sun in heaven the day-long league of gold;</div> - <div class="verse">Will mix with the waves, and mingle with the bloom of the sunset bar,</div> - <div class="verse">And toss with the tangle of moonbeams, and call to the morning star;</div> - <div class="verse">And wave and wing shall know me a seachild even as they,</div> - <div class="verse">Of the race of the great seafarers, a thousand years if a day.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<!--233.png--> -<p>These lines have the bracing ozone of the -east wind; it is good to fill one’s lungs with -their freshening breath. In another sea-song, -“Homeward Bound,” an exultant, grateful -hymn, Mr. Woodberry speaks of steering</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">“Through the weird, red-billowing sunset”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and of falling asleep in the “rocking dark,” -and with the dawn,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Whether the purple furrow heaps the bows with dazzling spray,</div> - <div class="verse">Or buried in green-based masses they dip the storm-swept day,</div> - <div class="verse">Or the white fog ribbons o’er them, the strong ship holds her way</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>These are pictures in strong color, freehand -records with pigment, of which Mr. Woodberry’s -sea-verse contains many duplicates. He -paints the sea as an impressionist, catching her -evanescent moods. Aside from the pictorial -art of the poem from which the lines above -are taken, it thrills with the gladness that -abides with one coming</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Home from the lonely cities, time’s wreck, and the naked woe,</div> - <div class="verse">Home through the clean great waters where freemen’s pennants blow,</div> - <div class="verse">Home to the land men dream of, where all the nations go.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<!--234.png--> -<p>Mr. Woodberry is an American, and ever an -American, whatever tribute he may pay at -longer dedicated shrines. His ode to “My -Country” is an impassioned utterance, full of -ideality, and pride in things as they are, not -lacking, however, in the prophetic vision of -what they shall be. He trusts his country -without reservation, recognizes her greater -commission in what has terrified many poets,—the -absorption of the Eastern isles,—and bids -her be swift to yield her benefits:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O, whisper to thy clustered isles</div> - <div class="verse">If any rosy promise round them smiles;</div> - <div class="verse">O, call to every seaward promontory</div> - <div class="verse">If one of them, perchance, is made the cape of glory.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>In technique the ode has a fine sweep and -movement; it thrills with flights of feeling, as -in these lines near the close,—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And never greater love salutes thy brow</div> - <div class="verse">Than his, who seeks thee now.</div> - <div class="verse">Alien the sea and salt the foam</div> - <div class="verse">Where’er it bears him from his home;</div> - <div class="verse">And when he leaps to land,</div> - <div class="verse">A lover treads the strand.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The ode is somewhat marred by prolixity, -and now and again by the declamatory impulse -getting the better of the creative; but granting -<!--235.png--> -this it remains a fine rhapsody, redeeming the -time to those who think the days are evil, and -more than ever proving Mr. Woodberry the -idealist, if not, indeed, the prophet. In the -Emerson Ode, read at the centenary in Boston, -there is poem-for-occasion utterance until one -reaches the fourth division, where the rhetoric -gives way to the pensive note,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I lay the singing laurels down</div> - <div class="verse">Upon the silent grave,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and grows from this into a glimpsing of Emerson’s -most characteristic thought, to which -Mr. Woodberry sings his own indebtedness. -This philosophical résumé has value as critical -interpretation and as tribute to whom tribute -is due, but it lacks the vital spark as poetry. -Odes of this sort are no gauge of a poet’s merit, -and although Mr. Woodberry does not reveal -his weakness in writing of this sort, neither -does he to any marked degree reveal his -strength. It is work of conventional creditability, -reaching occasionally some flight of pure -poetry, but pervaded in general by the perfunctory -note that results from coercing the -muse; and here one may interpolate the wish -that all poems-for-occasion might be “put -upon the list,” for it is certain, not only that -<!--236.png--> -the majority of them “never would be missed,” -but that poetry would rebound from a most -inert weight if lightened of them; nor is this -in any sense personal to Mr. Woodberry, whose -“Emerson Ode” is a far stronger piece of work -than are most compositions of a similar nature. -In the “Player’s Elegy,” in the ode written for -the dedication of Alumni Hall at Phillips Exeter -Academy, and in the several poems addressed -to his fellow-professors at Columbia, there are -also passages of spontaneous force and beauty, -and the high motive of all must not be lost -sight of, but, taken as a whole, this group of -poems could scarcely figure in an appraisal of -the individuality of his work.</p> - -<p>It is on the spiritually philosophical side of -his nature that Mr. Woodberry makes his -strongest appeal. He is not primarily a poet of -love, nor of nature, nor a melodist making -music for its own sake; he is an eager, questing -follower of the ideal; proclaimer of the truth -that</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The glamour of God hath a thousand shapes</div> - <div class="verse">And every one divine.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>When he interprets the mystery of love, or -turns to the world without, it is the immanence -of the divine that haunts him:</p> - -<!--237.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Over the grey leagues of ocean</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The infinite yearneth alone;</div> - <div class="verse">The forests with wandering emotion</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The thing they know not intone.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>He is, indeed, the spirit’s votary, and the ultimate -purport of his message is the recognition -of one’s own spirit force. His poem, “Nay, -Soul,” rebukes the weakness that looks on -every side for that which is within; the nature -that, seeking props, falls by the way; or, craving -understanding, loses the strength that comes -of being misunderstood. It subtly divides the -legitimate gifts of sympathy from those which -weakness demands, and reveals the impossibility -of coercing life, or love, or any good to -which one’s nature is not so magnetized that it -comes to him unentreated. These are potent -lines:—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Nay, Soul, thy shame forbear!</div> - <div class="verse">Between the earth and sky</div> - <div class="verse">Was never man could buy</div> - <div class="verse">The bread of life with prayer,</div> - <div class="verse">Not though his brother there</div> - <div class="verse">Saw him with hunger die.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">His life a man may give,</div> - <div class="verse">But, not for deepest ruth,</div> - <div class="verse">Beauty, nor love, nor truth</div> - <div class="verse">Whereby himself doth live.</div> - <div class="verse">Come home, poor fugitive!</div> - <div class="verse">Art thou so poor, forsooth?</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> -<!--238.png--> - <div class="verse">Thy heart—look thou aright!</div> - <div class="verse">Fear not the wild untrod,</div> - <div class="verse">Nor birth, nor burial sod!</div> - <div class="verse">Look, and in native light,</div> - <div class="verse">Bare as to Christ’s own sight,</div> - <div class="verse">Living shalt thou see God.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>The dramatic poem, “Agathon,” which is -builded upon the philosophy of Plato, is perhaps -the most thoughtful and thought-inciting -work in the newly collected volume. It is in -no sense of the word dramatic, but doubtless -cast in this form from its wider adaptability to -the contrasts of thought. The poem is too -lengthy to follow an analysis of its philosophy, -which is wrought out with subtle elaboration, -smacking too much at times of a logical demonstration, -but in the main leavened with imaginative -phrase. Its poetic climax is in the -apostrophe which follows the statement that</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The sweetest roamer is a boy’s young heart.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The lines form a blank-verse lyric with a rich -cadence and movement:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O youngest Roamer, Hesper shuts the day,</div> - <div class="verse">White Hesper folded in the rose of eve;</div> - <div class="verse">The still cloud floats, and kissed by twilight sleeps;</div> - <div class="verse">The mists drop down, and near the mountain moor;</div> - <div class="verse">And mute the bird’s throat swells with slumber now;</div> - <div class="verse">And now the wild winds to their eyries cling.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> -<!--239.png--> - <div class="verse">O youngest Roamer, wonderful is joy,</div> - <div class="verse">The rose in bloom that out of darkness springs;</div> - <div class="verse">The lily folded to the wave of life,</div> - <div class="verse">The lotus on the stream’s dark passion borne.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - <div class="verse">Ah<a name="chg6" id="chg6"></a>, fortunate he roams who roameth here,</div> - <div class="verse">Who finds the happy covert and lies down,</div> - <div class="verse">And hears the laughter gurgling in the fount,</div> - <div class="verse">And feels the dreamy light imbathe his limbs.</div> - <div class="verse">No more he roams, he roams no more, no more.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>These lines are reminiscent of Tennyson’s -“Princess” in their metrical note, particularly -in the final couplet of the first stanza, with the -“dying fall” of the cadence, bringing to mind:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,</div> - <div class="verse">And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Mr. Woodberry’s poetic affiliation with -Tennyson comes out unmistakably in various -other poems, leaving no doubt as to one of the -masters who sing in his over-tones. Here, for -illustration, is a transfusion with Tennyson’s -“Tears, Idle Tears.” One stanza of the flawless -lyric reads:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns</div> - <div class="verse">The earliest pipe of half-awaken’d birds</div> - <div class="verse">To dying ears, when unto dying eyes</div> - <div class="verse">The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;</div> - <div class="verse">So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>And Mr. Woodberry says:</p> - -<!--240.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O hidden-strange as on dew-heavy lawns</div> - <div class="verse">The warm dark scent of summer-fragrant dawns;</div> - <div class="verse">O tender as the faint sea-changes are,</div> - <div class="verse">When grows the flush and pales the snow-white star;</div> - <div class="verse">So strange, so tender, to a maid is love.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The mere fact of employing the Tennyson -metre, especially when rhymed, would not give -the sense of over-assimilation of the other’s -work were it not for the marked correspondence -in the diction and atmosphere, the first -line of Tennyson’s lyric being expanded into -the opening couplet of Mr. Woodberry’s stanza, -and the final lines of each having so similar -a terminology. Shelley is a much more operative -force in Mr. Woodberry’s poetry than -Tennyson, but rather in temperamental kinship -than in a technical way. Mr. Woodberry -could scarcely fail to have a keen sympathy -with the passionate art of Shelley, who lived -in the ideal, subtilized and sublimated beyond -all reach but that of longing, but who yet set -his hand and brain to the strife about him. In -his earlier work Mr. Woodberry occasionally -shows the Shelley influence in technique and -theme, but not in his later verse. One can -scarcely understand his leaving in a definitive -collection of his work the poem “Love at the -Door,” whose obligations to Taylor’s “Bedouin -<!--241.png--> -Love Song” and Shelley’s “I arise from dreams -of thee,” are about equally distributed. Most -poets have their early experiments in the reshaping -of forms and themes, but they should -be edited out of representative collections. The -poem is scarcely a creditable assimilation of -the models in question, and does scant justice -to Mr. Woodberry’s later poetry, making the -query more inevitable why he should have left -it in the volume, which is in the main so -finished and ripe a work. Occasionally one -comes upon poems, or passages, which a keener -self-criticism would have eliminated, as the line -from “Taormina,” declaring that</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Front more majestic of sea-mountains nowhere is there uplifted the whole earth through,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>whose legitimate place is in a rhetorical textbook, -as an exercise in redundance. Mr. Woodberry -is occasionally allured by his theme until -the song outruns the motive, but he rarely pads -a line like this; even poetic hyperbole has a -limit.</p> - -<p>In picturesque imagery his work is finely -individualized; witness the figurative beauty -of the following lines:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The ocean, storming on the rocks,</div> - <div class="verse">Shepherds not there his wild, wet flocks.</div> -<!--242.png--> - <div class="verse">The soaring ether nowhere finds</div> - <div class="verse">An eyrie for the wingéd winds;</div> - <div class="verse">Nor has yon glittering sky a charm</div> - <div class="verse">To hive in heaven the starry swarm;</div> - <div class="verse">And so thy wandering thoughts, my heart,</div> - <div class="verse">No home shall find; let them depart.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The two sonnets “At Gibraltar” represent, -perhaps, as fine an achievement as distinguishes -Mr. Woodberry’s work. It would, indeed, be -difficult to surpass them in American literature -of to-day in strength, passion, or ideality:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <p class="center"><abbr title="One">I</abbr></p> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">England, I stand on thy imperial ground,</div> - <div class="verse">Not all a stranger; as thy bugles blow,</div> - <div class="verse">I feel within my blood old battles flow—</div> - <div class="verse">The blood whose ancient founts in thee are found.</div> - <div class="verse">Still surging dark against the Christian bound</div> - <div class="verse">Wide Islam presses; well its peoples know</div> - <div class="verse">Thy heights that watch them wandering below;</div> - <div class="verse">I think how Lucknow heard their gathering sound.</div> - <div class="verse">I turn, and meet the cruel, turbaned face.</div> - <div class="verse">England, ’tis sweet to be so much thy son!</div> - <div class="verse">I feel the conqueror in my blood and race;</div> - <div class="verse">Last night Trafalgar awed me, and to-day</div> - <div class="verse">Gibraltar wakened; hark, thy evening gun</div> - <div class="verse">Startles the desert over Africa!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <p class="center"><abbr title="Two">II</abbr></p> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Thou art the rock of empire, set mid-seas</div> - <div class="verse">Between the East and West, that God has built;</div> - <div class="verse">Advance thy Roman borders where thou wilt,</div> - <div class="verse">While run thy armies true with His decrees.</div> -<!--243.png--> - <div class="verse">Law, justice, liberty—great gifts are these;</div> - <div class="verse">Watch that they spread where English blood is spilt,</div> - <div class="verse">Lest, mixed and sullied with his country’s guilt,</div> - <div class="verse">The soldier’s life-stream flow, and Heaven displease!</div> - <div class="verse">Two swords there are: one naked, apt to smite,</div> - <div class="verse">Thy blade of war; and, battle-storied, one</div> - <div class="verse">Rejoices in the sheath, and hides from light.</div> - <div class="verse">American I am; would wars were done!</div> - <div class="verse">Now westward, look, my country bids good-night—</div> - <div class="verse">Peace to the world from ports without a gun!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Whether in his travels or in the quiet of his -own contemplation, the emphasis of Mr. Woodberry’s -thought is upon the noble, the essential, -the beautiful. Although not a strongly -creative poet in form, he is a highly cultivated -poet, and hands on the nobler traditions of art; -and if now and then he wraps another’s “singing -robe” about him, it is but an external -vesture, leaving the soul of his thought unchanged.</p> - -</div><!--end Woodberry--> -<!--244.png--> - -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Knowles--> -<h3><a name="Knowles" id="Knowles"></a><abbr title="Eleven">XI</abbr></h3> - -<h4>FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES</h4> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">MR. FREDERIC LAWRENCE -KNOWLES is one of the younger -poets about whose work there is no -veneer. This is not to imply that it lacks finish, -but rather that the foundation is genuine; it reflects -its native grain, and not an overlaid polish. -One feels back of the work the probity and -directness that underlie all soundly conditioned -literature; for while Mr. Knowles has the -poet’s passion for the beauties of the art he -essays, the primary value is always in that to -be conveyed rather than in the medium of -transmission.</p> - -<p>This sincerity is at once Mr. Knowles’ distinction -and his danger. He is so manifestly -in earnest that one feels at times in his work -a certain lack of the imaginative leaven which -should lighten the most serious thought; to -put it in a word, there is often an over-strenuous -note in his poetry; but were it put -to a choice between this mood and the honeyed -<!--245.png--> -artificialities to which one is often treated, there -would be no hesitancy in choosing the former, -for</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The poet is not fed on sweets;</div> - <div class="verse">Daily his own heart he eats,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>not morbidly, but finding within his own spirit -daily manna, and living by this aliment and not -by the mere nectar of things. Everything in life -bestows this manna and daily renews it; and -the poet is he who assimilates and transmutes -it to personal needs until his thought is fed -from his own heart as in Emerson’s couplet.</p> - -<p>This is Mr. Knowles’ ideal of growth, evidenced -by the eager interest and open sympathy -with which he seeks from life its elements -of truth, and from experience its developing -properties. It is, of course, an ideal beyond -his present attainment, probably beyond his -ultimate attainment, gauged by absolute standards, -for the “elements of truth” are hardly -to be separated from life by one magnet. -They are variously polarized, and though one -may possess the divining wand that shall disclose -the nature and place of certain of them, -there is no wand polarized for all; but it is the -poet’s part to pass that magnet of truth which -is his by nature over the field of life, that it may -<!--246.png--> -attract therefrom its range of affinities, and this -Mr. Knowles is doing.</p> - -<p>Before taking up his later work, however, -we may glance at his matin songs, <cite>On Life’s -Stairway</cite>, which have many indicative notes -worthy of consideration. This volume, that -called forth from John Burroughs, Richard -Henry Stoddard, Joaquin Miller, and others, -such hearty commendation, has an individuality -that makes itself felt. First, perhaps, one notes -its spontaneity and the evident love of song -that is its primal impulse. The fancy is fresh -and sprightly, not having yet thought’s heavier -freight; the optimism is robust, the loyalty to -one’s own time impassioned and absolute, and -the democracy and Americanism distinguishing -it are of the commendable, if somewhat -grandiloquent, type belonging to youthful -patriotism. Another feature of Mr. Knowles’ -work, manifest in both volumes, is that its inspiration -is from life rather than nature, which -is refreshing in view of the fact that the reverse -obtains with most of the younger poets. When, -however, he comes to this theme, it is with a -lightness of touch and a pleasant charm of -mood that give to the few poems of this subject -an airy delicacy and an unpremeditated -note, as in these lines:</p> -<!--247.png--> - -<div class="break figcenter"> - <a name="i247" id="i247"></a><img src="images/i247.jpg" - width="500" height="755" - alt="Illustration of Frederick Lawrence Knowles" - title="Frederick Lawrence Knowles" - /> -</div><!--end illustration--> - -<!--248.png--> -<!--249.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Nature, in thy largess, grant</div> - <div class="verse">I may be thy confidant!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - <div class="verse">Show me how dry branches throw</div> - <div class="verse">Such blue shadows on the snow;</div> - <div class="verse">Tell me how the wind can fare</div> - <div class="verse">On his unseen feet of air;</div> - <div class="verse">Show me how the spider’s loom</div> - <div class="verse">Weaves the fabric from her womb;</div> - <div class="verse">Lead me to those brooks of morn</div> - <div class="verse">Where a woman’s laugh is born;</div> - <div class="verse">Let me taste the sap that flows</div> - <div class="verse">Through the blushes of a rose,—</div> - <div class="verse">Yea, and drain the blood which runs</div> - <div class="verse">From the heart of dying suns;</div> - <div class="verse">Teach me how the butterfly</div> - <div class="verse">Guessed at immortality;</div> - <div class="verse">Let me follow up the track</div> - <div class="verse">Of Love’s deathless zodiac</div> - <div class="verse">Where Joy climbs among the spheres</div> - <div class="verse">Circled by her moon of tears.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>In his poems upon love, Mr. Knowles touches -some of his truest and surest notes; those in the -second volume have a broader and more sympathetic -appeal, and yet have not lost the confessional -note which alone gives value to the -subject. They are not invariably of a more -inspired touch than are several in the first collection, -such as “Lost Knowledge,” “A Song -for Simplicity,” and “Love’s Prayer;” now and -again they combine some newly minted phrase -<!--250.png--> -flashing with unsullied lustre, with such as -have passed from hand to hand in the dulling -commerce of language; but it is perhaps -too much to demand that all fancies shall be -newly stamped with the die of imagination. -One of Mr. Knowles’ strongest poems from -the group in question is entitled “Love’s -World;” but for greater brevity I shall quote -instead these charming lines which introduce -the collection called <cite>Love Triumphant</cite>:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Helen’s lips are drifting dust,</div> - <div class="verse">Ilion is consumed with rust;</div> - <div class="verse">All the galleons of Greece</div> - <div class="verse">Drink the ocean’s dreamless peace;</div> - <div class="verse">Lost was Solomon’s purple show</div> - <div class="verse">Restless centuries ago;</div> - <div class="verse">Stately empires wax and wane—</div> - <div class="verse">Babylon, Barbary and Spain—</div> - <div class="verse">Only one thing, undefaced,</div> - <div class="verse">Lasts, though all the worlds lie waste</div> - <div class="verse">And the heavens are overturned.</div> - <div class="verse">—Dear, how long ago we learned!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">There’s a sight that blinds the sun,</div> - <div class="verse">Sound that lives when sounds are done,</div> - <div class="verse">Music that rebukes the birds,</div> - <div class="verse">Language lovelier than words,</div> - <div class="verse">Hue and scent that shame the rose,</div> - <div class="verse">Wine no earthly vineyard knows,</div> - <div class="verse">Silence stiller than the shore</div> - <div class="verse">Swept by Charon’s stealthy oar,</div> -<!--251.png--> - <div class="verse">Ocean more divinely free</div> - <div class="verse">Than Pacific’s boundless sea,—</div> - <div class="verse">Ye who love have learned it true.</div> - <div class="verse">—Dear, how long ago we knew!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Of this group, however, it is in the sonnet, “If -Love Were Jester at the Court of Death,” that -Mr. Knowles’ most genuine inspiration has -visited him.</p> - -<p>The conception of the sonnet is unique, -and its opening line of epigrammatic force -and suggestiveness:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">If Love were jester at the court of Death,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And Death the king of all, still would I pray,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">“For me the motley and the bauble, yea,</div> - <div class="verse">Though all be vanity, as the Preacher saith,</div> - <div class="verse">The mirth of love be mine for one brief breath!”</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Then would I kneel the monarch to obey,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And kiss that pale hand, should it spare or slay;</div> - <div class="verse">Since I have tasted love, what mattereth!</div> - <div class="verse">But if, dear God! this heart be dry as sand,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And cold as Charon’s palm holding Hell’s toll,</div> - <div class="verse">How worse! how worse! Scorch it with sorrow’s brand!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Haply, though dead to joy, ’t would feel <em>that</em> coal;</div> - <div class="verse">Better a cross and nails through either hand,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Than Pilate’s palace and a frozen soul!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Here are originality, strength, and white heat -of feeling, though the sestett is less artistic -than the octave, which holds the creative -beauty of the sonnet.</p> - -<!--252.png--> -<p>Of the lyrical poems in the second volume -there are many clear of tone, having not only -a pure, enunciative quality musically, but also -color and picturesqueness, as that beginning:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">With all his purple spoils upon him</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Creeps back the plunderer Sea,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>with its succession of pictures such as these:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O bandit, with the white-plumed horsemen,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Raiding a thousand shores,</div> - <div class="verse">Thy coffers crammed with spars and anchors</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And wave-defeated oars!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Admirable phrasing is that of “wave-defeated -oars”! But before taking up the more strenuous -side of his work, there is another lyric -rich in melody and emotion,—a lyric in which -one feels the under-current of passion. It is -named, “A Song of Desire”:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Thou dreamer with the million moods,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of restless heart like me,</div> - <div class="verse">Lay thy white hands against my breast</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And cool its pain, O Sea!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O wanderer of the unseen paths,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Restless of heart as I,</div> - <div class="verse">Blow hither from thy caves of blue,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Wind of the healing sky!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O treader of the fiery way,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">With passionate heart like mine,</div> - <div class="verse">Hold to my lips thy healthful cup</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Brimmed with its blood-red wine!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--253.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O countless watchers of the night,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of sleepless heart like me,</div> - <div class="verse">Pour your white beauty in my soul,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Till I grow calm as ye!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O sea, O sun, O wind and stars,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">(O hungry heart that longs!)</div> - <div class="verse">Feed my starved lips with life, with love,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And touch my tongue with songs!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Mr. Knowles is a modern of the moderns, -and his Whitmanesque conviction that “we -tally all antecedents;” that “we are the scald, -the oracle, the monk, and the knight;” that -“we easily include them and more,”—finds -expression in each of his volumes, in poems -ranging from boyish fustian, at which he would -now smile, to the noble lines of “Veritas” and -other poems in the later work. There are certain -subjects that hold within them percussion -powder ready to explode at the touch of a -thought,—subjects which, to one’s own peculiar -temperament, seem to be provocative of -a fulminant outburst whenever one collides -with them, and this is such an one to Mr. -Knowles. However, it is well to be shaken up -occasionally by such detonating lines as these:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">We have sonnets enough, and songs enough,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And ballads enough, God knows!</div> - <div class="verse">But what we need is that cosmic stuff</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Whence primitive feeling glows,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--254.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Grown, organized to the needs of rhyme</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Through the old instinctive laws,</div> - <div class="verse">With a meaning broad as the boughs of time</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And deep as the roots of cause.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">It is passion and power that we need to-day,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">We have grace and taste full store;</div> - <div class="verse">We need a man who will say his say</div> - <div class="verse indent2">With a strength unguessed before:—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - <div class="verse">Whose lines shall glow like molten steel</div> - <div class="verse indent2">From being forged in his soul,</div> - <div class="verse">Till the very anvil shall burn to feel</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The breath of the quenchless coal!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Your dainty wordsters may cry “Uncouth!”</div> - <div class="verse indent2">As they shrink from his bellows’ glow;</div> - <div class="verse">But the fire he fans is immortal youth,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And how should the bloodless know!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>One will hardly deny that this is sound -doctrine, as are the stanzas necessarily omitted, -which trace the qualifications of the bard of -to-day. Assuredly one touches the question -of questions when he seeks the cause for the -apparent waning of poetic inspiration in our -own time. There is certainly no wane in the -diffusion of the poetic impulse; but the poet -who is answering the great questions of the -age, speaking the indicative words of the future,—to -quote Mr. Knowles,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">A voice whose sagas shall live with God</div> - <div class="verse indent2">When the lyres of earth are rust,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> -<!--255.png--> - -<p>is hardly being heard at the present hour. -There are voices and voices which proclaim -truths, but the voice that enunciates Truth in -its larger utterance—as it is spoken, for example, -in the words of Browning—seems not to -find expression in our day. From this the impression -has come to prevail that Art is choking -virility of utterance, and that a wholly new -order of song must grow from newer needs,—song -that shall express our national masculinity, -our robust democracy, our enlarged patriotism, -and our sometimes bumptious Americanism; -that labor must have its definite poet, and -the “hymn to the workman’s God” contain -some different note from that hitherto chanted. -To put it in Mr. Knowles’ stirring words -from another poem:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">In the ink of our sweat we will find it yet,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The song that is fit for men!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And the woodsman he shall sing it,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And his axe shall mark the time;</div> - <div class="verse">And the bearded lips of the boatman</div> - <div class="verse indent2">While his oarblades fall in rhyme;</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And the man with his fist on the throttle,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And the man with his foot on the brake,</div> - <div class="verse">And the man who will scoff at danger</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And die for a comrade’s sake;</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--256.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And the Hand that wrought the Vision</div> - <div class="verse indent2">With prairie and peak and stream</div> - <div class="verse">Shall guide the hand of the workman</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And help him to trace his dream!—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Till the rugged lines grow perfect,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And round to a faultless whole;</div> - <div class="verse">For the West will have found her singer</div> - <div class="verse indent2">When her singer has found his soul.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>These are fine, swinging strophes, proclaiming -the modern ideal from Whitman to Kipling -that “the song that is fit for men” must -have in it some robust timbre, some resonant -fibre, unheard before; that a sturdier race of -bards must arise, “sprung from the toilers at -the bench and plough,”—that, in fine, the new -America must have a more orotund voice to -sing her needs.</p> - -<p>This has a convincing plausibility on the -face of it; but do the facts bear it out,—are -virility and democracy and modernity the essential -elements of the “song that is fit for -men”? If so, then Whitman, who is the apogee -of the elemental and democratic, or Kipling, -whose tunes blare in one’s ears like the -horns of a band, and whose themes are aggressively -of the day and hour, would be the ideal -types of the new-day poet, and we should find -the sturdy laborer and the common folk in -<!--257.png--> -general coming to these sources for refreshment, -inspiration, and aid in tracing their -dreams; but, on the contrary, Whitman, by a -frequent paradox of letters, is a poet for the -most cultivated and deeply reflective minds. -Only such can understand and embrace his -universality, and, on the poetic side, enjoy his -splendid diction and the wave-like sweep of -his rhythms. His formlessness, which was -reactive that he might come the nearer to the -common heart, is one of the chief barriers that -prevent this contact. The unlettered nature, -more than all others, demands the ordered -symmetry of rhythm as a focus and aid to -thought; it demands elemental beauties as -well as truths, and hence not only is Whitman -ruled out by his own measure, but Kipling -also, for again it needs the broadly cultivated -mind to take at his true and at his relative -value a poet like Kipling. The common mind -might be familiar with some poem of occasion, -the English laborer might be found singing -“Tommy Atkins;” but Kipling’s finer shadings -would escape in the beat of his galloping tunes -and in the touch-and-go of his subjects.</p> - -<p>If, then, Kipling, who outmoderns the moderns -in singing what is presumably a song fit for -men, and if Whitman, who is as robustly, democratically -<!--258.png--> -American as a poet can well be, and -trumpeting ever that note,—if these poets do -not reach the typical man, if they are not the -ones to whom the stalwart laborer comes, or the -busy man of affairs, there must be a need anterior -to that of which they sing; song must -spell something else besides virility, democracy, -achievement. It evidently is not the men who -<em>do</em>, not the men who <em>act</em>, that write “the song of -fact” for the laborer and the great class of our -strong, sincere, common folk. They do not -want the song of fact more than do we; they -have no other dream to trace than have we. -They want the primal things,—love, hope, -beauty, the transforming ideal; they want the -carbon of their daily experience turned to the -crystal; and for this they go to a poet like -Burns, who spoke the universal tongue, who -took the common ideals and touched them -simply, tenderly, not strenuously, to a new form -at the will of his fancy. You shall find the -boatman or the woodsman knowing his Burns, -often his Shakespeare, for he is quick to grasp -the human element, or his Scott, for he loves -romance, when the strident cry of a Kipling, -or of a modern idealist singing of democracy, -or of the newer needs of the laborer himself, -will be wholly lost on him; and hence this note -<!--259.png--> -that one is meeting so often in the recent poets -seems to me to be a false and superfluous one.</p> - -<p>The “song that is fit for men” is <em>any</em> song -that has the essence of truth and beauty in it, -and no other <em>is</em> fit for men, no matter where -sung. We have not evolved a new <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">genus homo</i> -by our conquest of arms; our democracy is not -changing human nature; we need virility in -song, as Mr. Knowles has said in the earlier -poem quoted; we need that “cosmic stuff -whence primitive feeling glows,” but we need -beauty and spirituality to shape it. Poetry -must minister first of all to the inner life. -Tennyson and Browning were not concerned -with matters of empire, or the passing issues of -the day; they were occupied with the essential -things,—things of humanity and of the soul, -that shall outlast empire, democracy, or time. -Heaven forefend that our bards shall spring -from a race</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Unkempt, athletic, rude,</div> - <div class="verse">Rough as the prairies, tameless as the sea,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>rather let them spring from the very ripest, -richest-natured class of men and women, not -servile to custom, but having the breadth of -vision, the poise, the fine and harmonious -development that flowers from the highest -<!--260.png--> -cultivation, whether in the schools or in life. -It did not emasculate the work of Browning -or Milton or Goethe, nor of our own Lowell, -or many another, that he had the most profound -enrichment that education and traditional -culture could give him. Originality is -not crushed by cultivation, nor will native -impulse go far without it. The need is of a -poet who shall divine the underlying harmonies -of life, who shall stimulate and develop the -higher nature, and disclose the alchemizing -truth that shall transmute the gross ore of -experience into the fine metal of character and -spiritual beauty,—such a poet as Mr. Knowles -himself may become when his idealism shall -have taken on that inner sight of the mystic -which now he shows so definitely in certain -phases of his work.</p> - -<p>He is readier in general to see life’s benign -face than its malign one, even though shapen -by pain and guilt; and this brings us to the -group of poems from his new volume, <cite>Love -Triumphant</cite>, turning upon Sin and Remorse, -and presenting an element of human passion -at once the most provocative of degradation -and the most susceptible of spiritual elevation.</p> - -<p>Whitman approached this theme from the -cosmic standpoint as he would approach any of -<!--261.png--> -the universalities of life, not specifically from -the spiritual side, in its destiny-shaping effects. -It is from this side that Mr. Knowles essays -its consideration, presenting chiefly the reactive, -retributive phase of guilt,—the sudden spiritual -isolation of the soul that has sinned, as if -the golden doors that opened on the world had -transformed to iron bars imprisoning the soul -within its cell of memory. This sense of detachment, -of having unwittingly plucked oneself -from the flowering beauty of life, of being -irrevocably cut off from sap and stem, which is -the first and most palpable phase of guilt, -predominates in several of the poems. To -consider it first, then, the stanzas called “Lost” -may be cited as illustrative:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Night scattered gold-dust in the eyes of Earth,</div> - <div class="verse">My heart was blinded by the excess of stars</div> - <div class="verse">As, filled with youth and joy, I kept the Way.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The solitary and unweaponed Sun</div> - <div class="verse">Slew all the hosts of darkness with a smile,</div> - <div class="verse">And it was Dawn. And still I kept the Way.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The winds, those hounds that only God can leash,</div> - <div class="verse">Bayed on my track, and made the morning wild</div> - <div class="verse">With loud confusion, but I kept the Way.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The hours climbed high. Peace, where the zenith broods,</div> - <div class="verse">Fell, a blue feather from the wings of Heav’n.</div> - <div class="verse">Lo! it was Noon. And still I kept the Way.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--262.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">At length one met me as my footsteps flagged,—</div> - <div class="verse">Within her eyes oblivion, on her lips</div> - <div class="verse">Delirious dreams—and I forgot the Way.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And still we wander—who knows whitherward,</div> - <div class="verse">Our sandals torn, in either face despair,</div> - <div class="verse">Passion burnt out—God! I have lost the Way!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Here is strong and vivid imagery, especially in -the third stanza,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The winds, those hounds that only God can leash,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>which is a bold and fine stroke not merely in its -metaphorical phrasing, but as a symbol of human -passions. The entire poem is a vivid piece -of symbolism; it is, however, but one phase -of the subject, and in “One Woman” and -“Sin’s Foliage” one comes again face to face -with the same phase, with that terrible memory-haunted -eidolon, the visage of one’s own defaced -soul. It is in the poem “Betrayed” that -a truer perspective begins to be manifest, of -which one stanza—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Yet were his hands and conscience clean;</div> - <div class="verse">Some monstrous Folly rose unseen</div> - <div class="verse">To teach him crimes he could not mean—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>introduces a truth that strikes deeper than the -mere spell of impulse,—a truth that suggests -the mystery of election in crime: whether one -<!--263.png--> -is wholly responsible for the choice which in -a moment becomes the pivotal event of his -destiny, or whether what Maeterlinck has -called the “conniving voices that we cherish at -the depths of us” summoned the event, and -impelled him inevitably toward its hazard; and, -further, whether these voices are not often the -commissioned voices, calling one thus to arouse -from the somnolence of his soul. On the -morrow of the hour in which he has</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">… fallen from Heav’n to Hell</div> - <div class="verse">In one mad moment’s fateful spell,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and finds himself in the isolation of his own -spirit,—consciousness will awaken, life will be -perceived, sympathy will be born, and Pain, -with the daily transfiguring face, will companion -him, until in the years he again meet -Love and the other fair shapes of his destiny. -Since no one remains in the hell to which -he has fallen, but by his own choosing, Life -rebukes the Art that leaves this sense of -finality; for the hour of tragedy is rather the -beginning than the end, and often so manifestly -the birth of the soul into spiritual consciousness -that it may well seem that apparent -sin is the mere agency of the higher forces of -the nature, the shock that displaces ignorance -<!--264.png--> -and smug self-complacency and both humanizes -and deifies the soul.</p> - -<p>In other poems of the group, however, the -developing power of sin, and the remedial forces -which it evokes for the renewal of the nature, -are dwelt upon, so that the poems are redeemed -at the last from the impression of hopeless -finality which obtained in the earlier ones.</p> - -<p>Few of the younger poets have a more vital -and personal conviction of spiritual things than -Mr. Knowles, and its evolution is interesting to -note. There is abundant evidence in his earlier -verse that he was bred after the strictest letter -of the law; but while his faith was “fixed to -form,” it was seeking “centre everywhere,” and -the later volume widens to an encompassing -view worthy the vision of a poet,—the view -that finds nothing impervious to the irradiation -of spirit. It is variously sung, but most nobly, -perhaps, in the following poem:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">In buds upon some Aaron’s rod</div> - <div class="verse">The childlike ancient saw his God;</div> - <div class="verse">Less credulous, more believing, we</div> - <div class="verse">Read in the grass—Divinity.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">From Horeb’s bush the Presence spoke</div> - <div class="verse">To earlier faiths and simpler folk;</div> - <div class="verse">But now each bush that sweeps our fence</div> - <div class="verse">Flames with the awful Immanence!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--265.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">To old Zacchæus in his tree</div> - <div class="verse">What mattered leaves and botany?</div> - <div class="verse">His sycamore was but a seat</div> - <div class="verse">Whence he could watch that hallowed street.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">But now to us each elm and pine</div> - <div class="verse">Is vibrant with the Voice divine,</div> - <div class="verse">Not only from but in the bough</div> - <div class="verse">Our larger creed beholds Him now.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">To the true faith, bark, sap and stem</div> - <div class="verse">Are wonderful as Bethlehem;</div> - <div class="verse">No hill nor brook nor field nor herd</div> - <div class="verse">But mangers the incarnate Word!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - <div class="verse">Again we touch the healing hem</div> - <div class="verse">In Nazareth or Jerusalem;</div> - <div class="verse">We trace again those faultless years;</div> - <div class="verse">The cross commands our wondering tears.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Yet if to us the Spirit writes</div> - <div class="verse">On Morning’s manuscript and Night’s,</div> - <div class="verse">In gospels of the growing grain,</div> - <div class="verse">Epistles of the pond and plain,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">In stars, in atoms, as they roll</div> - <div class="verse">Each tireless round its occult pole,</div> - <div class="verse">In wing and worm and fin and fleece,</div> - <div class="verse">In the wise soil’s surpassing peace,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Thrice ingrate he whose only look</div> - <div class="verse">Is backward focused on the Book,</div> - <div class="verse">Neglectful what the Presence saith,</div> - <div class="verse">Though He be near as blood and breath!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--266.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The only atheist is one</div> - <div class="verse">Who hears no voice in wind or sun,</div> - <div class="verse">Believer in some primal curse,</div> - <div class="verse">Deaf in God’s loving universe!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Mr. Knowles has not embraced the diffusive -faith that has no faith to stay it, but is endeavoring -to read the newer meaning into the -older truths, which is the present-day office of -singer and seer. In the matter of personal valor, -of optimistic, intrepid mood, Mr. Knowles’ -work is altogether commendable. He awaits -with buoyant cheer what lies beyond the turn -o’ the road. His poem “Fear,” from the -first collection, was widely quoted at the time -because of its heartening tone, and in his new -volume, “A Challenge,” “A Twofold Prayer,” -and many another sounds the same invincible -note. “Laus Mortis” is a hymn to death holding -within it the truer acceptation of that -natural and therefore kindly change:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">Nay, why should I fear Death,</div> - <div class="verse">Who gives us life, and in exchange takes breath?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">He is like cordial Spring</div> - <div class="verse">That lifts above the soil each buried thing;</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">Like autumn, kind and brief—</div> - <div class="verse">The frost that chills the branches frees the leaf;</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">Like winter’s stormy hours</div> - <div class="verse">That spread their fleece of snow to save the flowers.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--267.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">The lordliest of all things,</div> - <div class="verse">Life lends us only feet, Death gives us wings.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">Fearing no covert thrust,</div> - <div class="verse">Let me walk onward, armed in valiant trust;</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">Dreading no unseen knife,</div> - <div class="verse">Across Death’s threshold step from life to life!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">O all ye frightened folk,</div> - <div class="verse">Whether ye wear a crown or bear a yoke,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">Laid in one equal bed,</div> - <div class="verse">When once your coverlet of grass is spread,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">What daybreak need you fear?—</div> - <div class="verse">The Love will rule you there that guides you here!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">Where Life, the sower, stands,</div> - <div class="verse">Scattering the ages from his swinging hands,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">Thou waitest, Reaper lone,</div> - <div class="verse">Until the multitudinous grain hath grown.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">Scythe-bearer, when Thy blade</div> - <div class="verse">Harvests my flesh, let me be unafraid.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">God’s husbandman thou art,</div> - <div class="verse">In His unwithering sheaves, O bind my heart!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Mr. Knowles’ work is virile, earnest, individual, -free from affectation or imitation; modern -in spirit, recognizing the significance of to-day, -and its part in the finer realization of to-morrow; -sympathetic in feeling, and spiritual -<!--268.png--> -in vision. Its limitations are such as may be -trusted to time, being chiefly incident to the -earnestness noted above, which now and again -borders on didacticism. Excess of conviction -is, however, a safer equipment for art than a -philosophy already parting with its enthusiasms -by the tempering of life, being more likely to -undergo the shaping of experience without -losing the vital part.</p> - -</div><!--end Knowles--> -<!--269.png--> - -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Brown--> -<h3><a name="Brown" id="Brown"></a><abbr title="Twelve">XII</abbr></h3> - -<h4>ALICE BROWN</h4> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">MISS ALICE BROWN has published -but one volume of verse; but we live -in feelings, not in titles on a cover, -and it is possible to prove oneself a poet in one -volume of verse, or in one poem thereof. When -Miss Brown some years ago paid this tribute at -the toll-gate of song by a small volume entitled -<cite>The Road to Castaly</cite>, it created no inconsiderable -comment among lovers of poetry, -and there were not wanting those who saw -in it as definite gifts as Miss Brown possesses -in fiction; but despite the generous recognition -which the collection won, she has not seen fit -to follow it with others, and with the exception -of occasional poems in the magazines, it remains -the sole representation of this phase of her -work. Yet within a range of seventy pages she -has gathered a stronger group of poems than -might be winnowed from several collections of -some of those who cultivate verse more assiduously. -Nor is this to declare that from cover -to cover of her volume the inspired touch is -<!--270.png--> -everywhere manifest; doubtless the seventy -pages would have gained in strength by compression -to fifty. It is, however, to declare -that within this compass there is a true accomplishment, -at which we shall look briefly.</p> - -<p>First, then, the work has personality and -magnetism, bringing one at once into sympathetic -interchange with the writer. The feeling -is not insulated by the art, but is imbued -with all the warmth of speech; there are no -“wires” but the live wires of vibrant words, -conducting their current of impulse directly to -the reader. One feels that Miss Brown has -written verse not as a pleasant diversion, nor -yet with painful self-scrutiny, but only when -her nature demanded this form of expression, -and hence the motive shapes the mechanism, -rather than the reverse.</p> -<!--271.png--> - -<div class="break figcenter"> - <a name="i271" id="i271"></a><img src="images/i271.jpg" - width="500" height="753" - alt="Illustration of Alice Brown" - title="Alice Brown" - /> -</div><!--end illustration--> - -<!--272.png--> -<p>Miss Brown’s poems are not primarily philosophical, -not ethical to the degree of being -moralistic; but they have a subtly pervasive -spirituality, and in certain lyrics, such as -“Hora Christi,” a rare depth of religious emotion. -They are records of moods: of the soul, -of passing life, of the psychic side of death, of -the mutability of love, of ecstatic surrender to -nature, of loyalty to service,—in short, they -are poems of the intuitions and sympathies, -<!--273.png--> -and warm with personality. Perhaps the most -buoyant note in the book is that in celebration -of the joys of escape from town to -country; from the thrall of paving-stones and -chimney-pots to the indesecrate seclusion of the -pines, where the springy pile of the woodland -carpet gives forth a pungent odor to the tread; -and where, in Miss Brown’s delicate phrase,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">the ferns waver, wakened by no wind</div> - <div class="verse">Save the green flickering of their blossomy mind.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>To read Miss Brown’s “Morning in Camp” -is to take a vacation without stirring from one’s -armchair,—a vacation by a mountain lake engirt -with pine forests, with one’s tent pitched -below the “spice-budded” firs and “shimmering -birches,” guarded by</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">… the mountain wall</div> - <div class="verse">Where the first potencies of dawning fall,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and within sight of the shore where</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">… the water laps the land,</div> - <div class="verse">Encircling her with charm of silvery sand;</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and where one may lie at dawn in his “tent’s -white solitude,” conscious of</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">… the rapt ecstatic birth</div> - <div class="verse">Renewed without: the mirrored sky and earth,</div> - <div class="verse">Married in beauty, consonant in speech,</div> - <div class="verse">And uttering bliss responsive each to each.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<!--274.png--> -<p>Miss Brown’s rapt poems in celebration of -nature range from the impassioned dignity of -her stanzas picturing a “Sunrise on Mansfield -Mountain” to fancies so delicate that -they seem to be caught in gossamer meshes -of song. The poems are somewhat inadaptable -to quotation, as several of the best, such -as “Wood-Longing,” “Pan,” and “Escape,” -are written in stanzas whose exuberant impulse -carries them so far that they may not be excised -midway without destroying a climax. Upon a -first reading of some of these periods they give -one an impression of being over-sustained; but -the imagery is clear, and upon a second reading -one is likely to catch the infection of the lines -and be borne on with them to the reversal of -his first judgment. “Wood-Longing” thrills -with the passion of</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">… the earth</div> - <div class="verse">When all the ecstasy of myriad birth</div> - <div class="verse">Afflicts her with a rapturous shuddering,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and celebrating escape from the thraldom of -books, it demands of the soul:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Spirit, what wilt thou dare,</div> - <div class="verse">Just to be one with earth and air?</div> - <div class="verse">To read the writing on the river bed,</div> - <div class="verse">And trace God’s mystical mosaic overhead?</div> - - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - -<!--275.png--> - <div class="verse">O incommunicable speech!</div> - <div class="verse">For he who reads a book may preach</div> - <div class="verse">A hundred sermons from its foolish rote</div> - <div class="verse">And rhyme reiterant on one dull note.</div> - <div class="verse">But he who spends an hour within the wood</div> - <div class="verse">Hath fed on fairy food;</div> - <div class="verse">And who hath eaten of the forest fruit</div> - <div class="verse">Is ever mute.</div> - <div class="verse">Nothing may he reveal.</div> - <div class="verse">Nature hath set her seal</div> - <div class="verse">Of honor on anointed lips;</div> - <div class="verse">And one who daring dips</div> - <div class="verse">His cup within her potent brew</div> - <div class="verse">Hath drunk of silence too.</div> - <div class="verse">What doth the robin say,</div> - <div class="verse">And what the martial jay?</div> - <div class="verse">Who’ll swear the bluebird’s lilt is all of love,</div> - <div class="verse">Or who translate the desolation of the dove?</div> - <div class="verse">For even in the common speech</div> - <div class="verse">Of feathered fellows, each to each,</div> - <div class="verse">Abideth still the primal mystery,</div> - <div class="verse">The brooding past, the germ of life to be;</div> - <div class="verse">And one poor weed, upspringing to the sun,</div> - <div class="verse">Breeds all creation’s wonder, new begun.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>“Sunrise on Mansfield Mountain,” written -in fine resonant pentameter, and building up -stanza by stanza to the supreme climax of the -dawn, is, as noted above, one of the finest -achievements of Miss Brown’s volume, but one -that will least bear the severing of its passages -from their place in the growing whole. It is -<!--276.png--> -full of notable phrases, as that in the apostrophe,—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O changeless guardians! O ye wizard firs!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - <div class="verse">What breath may move ye, or what breeze invite</div> - <div class="verse">To odorous hot lendings of the heart?—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>wherein the very pungency of the pine is -infused into the words. But more adaptable -to quotation in its compactness is the lyric entitled -“Candlemas,” captivating in form and -spontaneity, though no more felicitous in -fancy or rhythm than many other of her nature -poems:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">O hearken, all ye little weeds</div> - <div class="verse indent4">That lie beneath the snow,</div> - <div class="verse">(So low, dear hearts, in poverty so low!)</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The sun hath risen for royal deeds,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">A valiant wind the vanguard leads;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Now quicken ye, lest unborn seeds</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Before ye rise and blow.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">O furry living things, adream</div> - <div class="verse indent4">On winter’s drowsy breast,</div> - <div class="verse">(How rest ye there, how softly, safely rest!)</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Arise and follow where a gleam</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of wizard gold unbinds the stream,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And all the woodland windings seem</div> - <div class="verse indent4">With sweet expectance blest.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--277.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">My birds, come back! the hollow sky</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Is weary for your note.</div> - <div class="verse">(Sweet-throat, come back! O liquid, mellow throat!)</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Ere May’s soft minions hereward fly,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Shame on ye, laggards, to deny</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The brooding breast, the sun-bright eye,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">The tawny, shining coat!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Mr. Archer, in his <cite>Poets of the Younger Generation</cite>, -quotes this poem as the gem of Miss -Brown’s collection; and it certainly is a charming -lyric, but not more so to my thinking than -several of an entirely different nature, which -will also in time’s trial by fire remain the true -coin. It needs a somewhat broader and deeper -term, however, than “charming” to qualify -such poems as “Hora Christi,” “On Pilgrimage,” -“Seaward Bound,” “The Return,” “The -Message,” “The Slanderer,” “Lethe,” and “In -Extremis,” in which life speaks a word charged -with more vital significance. “On Pilgrimage” -(<span class="sc">A. D.</span> 1250) reveals an art that is above -praise. With only the simplest words Miss -Brown has infused into this poem the very -essence of pain, of numb, bewildered hopelessness. -One feels it as a palpable atmosphere:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">My love hath turned her to another mate.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">(O grief too strange for tears!)</div> - <div class="verse">So must I make the barren earth my home;</div> - <div class="verse">So do I still on feeble questing roam,</div> -<!--278.png--> - <div class="verse">An outcast from mine own unfriending gate,</div> - <div class="verse">Through the wan years.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">My love hath rid her of my patient heart.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">(Wake not, O frozen breast!)</div> - <div class="verse">Yet still there’s one to pour her oil and wine,</div> - <div class="verse">And all life’s banquet counteth most divine.</div> - <div class="verse">O Thou, Who also hadst in joy no part,</div> - <div class="verse">Give me Thy rest!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">What strength have I to cleanse Thy stolen tomb,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">For Christendom’s release?</div> - <div class="verse">Naked, at last, of hope and trust am I,</div> - <div class="verse">Too weak to sue for human charity.</div> - <div class="verse">A beggar to Thy holy shrine I come.</div> - <div class="verse">Grant me but peace!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>And now in contrast with these exquisitely pathetic -lines, to show that the tragic side of life -is not alone interpreted in Miss Brown’s verse, -and that she sees the temperamental contrasts -of passion, witness the cavalier parting of this -“West-Country Lover,” to whom the light o’ -love is too fatuous a gleam to risk one’s way in -following. The dash and spirit of these lines -are worthy a seventeenth-century gallant:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Then, lady, at last thou art sick of my sighing.</div> - <div class="verse">Good-bye!</div> - <div class="verse">So long as I sue, thou wilt still be denying?</div> - <div class="verse">Good-bye!</div> - <div class="verse">Ah, well! shall I vow then to serve thee forever,</div> - <div class="verse">And swear no unkindness our kinship can sever?</div> - <div class="verse">Nay, nay, dear my lass! here’s an end of endeavor.</div> - <div class="verse">Good-bye!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--279.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Yet let no sweet ruth for my misery grieve thee.</div> - <div class="verse">Good-bye!</div> - <div class="verse">The man who has loved knows as well how to leave thee.</div> - <div class="verse">Good-bye!</div> - <div class="verse">The gorse is enkindled, there’s bloom on the heather,</div> - <div class="verse">And love is my joy, but so too is fair weather;</div> - <div class="verse">I still ride abroad, though we ride not together.</div> - <div class="verse">Good-bye!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">My horse is my mate; let the wind be my master.</div> - <div class="verse">Good-bye!</div> - <div class="verse">Though Care may pursue, yet my hound follows faster.</div> - <div class="verse">Good-bye!</div> - <div class="verse">The red deer’s a-tremble in coverts unbroken.</div> - <div class="verse">He hears the hoof-thunder; he scents the death-token.</div> - <div class="verse">Shall I mope at home, under vows never spoken?</div> - <div class="verse">Good-bye!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The brown earth’s my book, and I ride forth to read it.</div> - <div class="verse">Good-bye!</div> - <div class="verse">The stream runneth fast, but my will shall outspeed it.</div> - <div class="verse">Good-bye!</div> - <div class="verse">I love thee, dear lass, but I hate the hag Sorrow.</div> - <div class="verse">As sun follows rain, and to-night has its morrow,</div> - <div class="verse">So I’ll taste of joy, though I steal, beg, or borrow!</div> - <div class="verse">Good-bye!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>This is as admirable a bit of nonchalance as -Wither’s,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Shall I, wasting in despair,</div> - <div class="verse">Die because a woman’s fair?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>or Suckling’s,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Why so pale and wan, fond lover,</div> - <div class="verse">Prithee, why so pale?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> -<!--280.png--> - -<p>with its salient advice to the languishing -adorer.</p> - -<p>Miss Brown’s small volume is by no means -lacking in variety, either in theme or form; it -is full of spontaneous music, rarely forcing the -note in any lyric inspiration. In the sonnet -she is less at ease: here one feels the effort, -the mechanism; but only four sonnets are included -in the volume, which shows her to be -a true critic. There are certain poems that -might, perhaps, with equal advantage have -been eliminated, such as the over-musical numbers -to Dian and Endymion; but in the main, -Miss Brown has done her own blue-pencilling, -and <cite>The Road to Castaly</cite>, as stated in the -beginning, maintains a fine and even grade of -workmanship.</p> - -<p>In such poems as are touched to tenderness -and reverence, half with the sweetness and half -with the pain of life, Miss Brown makes her -truest appeal. The fine ideality, the spiritual -fealty of her nature, as shown in her work, -always relates itself to one on the human side. -It is not the fealty that shames a weaker -nature by its rigid steadfastness, but that in -which one sees his own wavering strife reflected. -Her lines called “The Artisan,”<span class="lock"><a name="fnanchor_2" id="fnanchor_2"></a><a href="#footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></span> -<!--281.png--> -written since the publication of her volume, are -instinct with such feeling as comment would -profane. One can but feel, with a quick pang -of sympathy, that he, too, makes the appeal:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O God, my master God, look down and see</div> - <div class="verse">If I am making what Thou wouldst of me.</div> - <div class="verse">Fain might I lift my hands up in the air</div> - <div class="verse">From the defiant passion of my prayer;</div> - <div class="verse">Yet here they grope on this cold altar stone,</div> - <div class="verse">Graving the words I think I should make known.</div> - <div class="verse">Mine eyes are Thine. Yea, let me not forget,</div> - <div class="verse">Lest with unstaunchèd tears I leave them wet,</div> - <div class="verse">Dimming their faithful power, till they not see</div> - <div class="verse">Some small, plain task that might be done for Thee.</div> - <div class="verse">My feet, that ache for paths of flowery bloom,</div> - <div class="verse">Halt steadfast in the straitness of this room.</div> - <div class="verse">Though they may never be on errands sent,</div> - <div class="verse">Here shall they stay, and wait Thy full content.</div> - <div class="verse">And my poor heart, that doth so crave for peace,</div> - <div class="verse">Shall beat until Thou bid its beating cease.</div> - <div class="verse">So, Thou dear master God, look down and see</div> - <div class="verse">Whether I do Thy bidding heedfully.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>These lines well illustrate the fact that true -emotion is not literary nor self-observant, and -does not cast about for some rare image in -which to enshrine itself. Here is the simplest -Saxon, and wholly without ornament, yet who -could be unconscious of the heart-beat of life -in the words? In her poem, “In Extremis,” -one is moved by the same intensity of feeling -<!--282.png--> -expressed in the litany imploring deliverance -from fear.</p> - -<p>Of the more purely devotional poems, “Hora -Christi” is perhaps the most reverent, and instinct -with delicate simplicity. It is a song of -the spirit, interpreting a mood whose springs -are deep in the pain of life, but whose hidden -wells have turned to sweetness and healing. It -is not philosophically penetrative, but a tender, -beautiful song warm with sincerity of feeling:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Sweet is the time for joyous folk</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of gifts and minstrelsy;</div> - <div class="verse">Yet I, O lowly-hearted One,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Crave but Thy company.</div> - <div class="verse">On lonesome road, beset with dread,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">My questing lies afar.</div> - <div class="verse">I have no light, save in the east</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The gleaming of Thy star.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">In cloistered aisles they keep to-day</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Thy feast, O living Lord!</div> - <div class="verse">With pomp of banner, pride of song,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And stately sounding word.</div> - <div class="verse">Mute stand the kings of power and place,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">While priests of holy mind</div> - <div class="verse">Dispense Thy blessed heritage</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of peace to all mankind.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I know a spot where budless twigs</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Are bare above the snow,</div> - <div class="verse">And where sweet winter-loving birds</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Flit softly to and fro;</div> -<!--283.png--> - <div class="verse">There with the sun for altar-fire,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The earth for kneeling-place,</div> - <div class="verse">The gentle air for chorister,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Will I adore Thy face.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Loud, underneath the great blue sky,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">My heart shall pæan sing,</div> - <div class="verse">The gold and myrrh of meekest love</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Mine only offering.</div> - <div class="verse">Bliss of Thy birth shall quicken me;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And for Thy pain and dole</div> - <div class="verse">Tears are but vain, so I will keep</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The silence of the soul.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>In glancing over <cite>The Road to Castaly</cite>, one -notes many poems that might perhaps have -represented it better than those chosen, such -as “The Return,” “The Unseen Fellowship,” -“Mariners,” “Forewarned,” and “Seaward -Bound;” but sufficient have been cited to -show the quality of the volume and the sympathetic -touch which Miss Brown possesses. -Her nature poems range from the most exuberant -fancy to a Keats-like richness and ripeness -of phrase; and her miscellaneous verse -from the tender, reverential note of the lyric -last quoted to the trenchant scathing lines of -“The Slanderer.” It is, in brief, such work -as combines feeling and distinction, and leaves -one spiritually farther on his way than it found -him.</p> - -<p class="p2 footnote"><a name="footnote_2" id="footnote_2"></a> -<a href="#fnanchor_2"><span class="muchsmaller">[2]</span></a> - Copyright, 1903, by Harper and Brothers.</p> - -</div><!--end Brown--> -<!--284.png--> -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Burton--> -<h3><a name="Burton" id="Burton"></a><abbr title="Thirteen">XIII</abbr></h3> - -<h4>RICHARD BURTON</h4> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">ABOUT a decade ago there came from the -press a demure little book clad soberly -in Quaker garb, and hight gravely and -mysteriously, <cite>Dumb In June</cite>. The title alone -would have piqued one’s curiosity as to the -contents of the volume, but the name of the -author, Richard Burton, was already known -from magazine association with most of the -songs in the newly published collection, and also -as literary editor of the “Hartford Courant,” -whence his well-considered criticisms were -coming to be quoted.</p> - -<p>There was, then, a circle of initiates into -whose hands <cite>Dumb In June</cite> soon made its -way, and quite as unerringly, in most cases, to -their hearts, and certain of these will tell you -that <cite>Dumb In June</cite> still represents him most -adequately; that it has a buoyancy and lyric -joy such as less often distinguishes his later -work; and this point is well taken from the -consideration of magnetic touch and disillusioned -<!--285.png--> -fancy; but is it quite reasonable to -demand that “the earth and every common -sight” shall continue to be “apparelled in celestial -light” to the eyes of the poet when the years -have brought the sober coloring to our own? -that Art shall be winged with the glory and -the dream when Life’s wings droop to the dust? -Would it be the truest art that should communicate -only this impulse? Mr. Burton has not -thought so: he has set himself to incorporate, -in the life that he touches, the glory and the -dream; to lift the weight, if ever so little, from -the laden wings, and he uses his gifts to that end.</p> - -<p>This is not an ideal that can embody itself -in lightsome, dawn-fresh songs, as those that -came, unsullied of pain, inviolate in hope, from -out his nature-taught years; but it is an ideal -for which one should barter, if need be, the -mere lyric joy of that earlier time. To divine -the dumb emotion, the unexpectant desire, of -the man of the streets, and to become his -interpreter, is a nobler achievement than to -catch in delicate fancies the airiest thoughts of -Pan. The poet who remains merely the voice -of the wood-god, or the voice of the mystic, or -the voice of the scholar dreaming and aloof, -may float a song over the treetops, but it will -not be known at the hearth, which is the final -<!--286.png--> -test. Not to anticipate Mr. Burton’s later -ideal, however, let us return to <cite>Dumb In June</cite> -and go with him upon the way of nature, -unshadowed and elate.</p> - -<p>It is interesting to note, in studying the -formative time of many poets, that nature is -the first mistress of their vows, and a less capricious -one than they shall find again; hence -their fealty to her and their ardor of surrender. -Life has not yet come by, and paused to whisper -the one word that shall become the logos -of the soul; truth is still in the cosmos, the -absolute, and one despairs of reducing it to the -relative as he might of detaching a pencil of -light from the rays of the sun. Nature alone -represents the evolved intelligence, the harmony, -the soul of the cosmos, and its ideal -made real in law; where, then, shall one begin -his quest for truth more fittingly than at the -gate of nature, where Beauty is the portress -and Beauty is the guide?</p> -<!--287.png--> - -<div class="break figcenter"> - <a name="i287" id="i287"></a><img src="images/i287.jpg" - width="500" height="732" - alt="Illustration of Richard Burton" - title="Richard Burton" - /> -</div><!--end illustration--> - -<!--288.png--> -<p>Mr. Burton feels the vitality, the personality, -of objects in the outer world. There is no such -thing in his conception as inert matter; it is all -pulsing with life and sensibility. To him May -is a</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent8">Sweet comer</div> - <div class="verse">With the mood of a love-plighted lass,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> -<!--289.png--> - -<p>and henceforth we picture her as coming -blithely by with flower-filled hands. This -glimpsing of the May is from one of Mr. Burton’s -later songs, “The Quest of Summer,”—a -poem full of color and atmosphere. After -deploring the spring’s withholding, it thrills -to this note of exultation:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent6">But it came,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">In a garment of sensitive flame</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In the west, and a royal blue sky overhead,</div> - <div class="verse">With exuberant breath and the bloom of all things</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Having wonders and wings,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Being risen elate from the dead.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Yea, it came with a flush</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of pied flowers, and a turbulent rush</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of spring-loosened waters, and an odorous hush</div> - <div class="verse indent2">At nightfall,—and then I was glad</div> - <div class="verse">With the gladness of one who for militant months has been sad.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The very breath of spring is in this; one inhales -it as he would a quickening aroma; it thrills -him with the sensuous delight in the color, the -perfume, the warmth, of the expanding air; and -what delicate feeling for the atmospheric value -of words is that which condenses a May twilight -into “an odorous hush at nightfall.” The -words “odorous hush,” in this connection, -have drawn together by magnetic attraction; -substitute for them their apparent equivalents, -<!--290.png--> -“perfumed silence,” “fragrant quiet,” and the -atmosphere has evaporated as breath from a -glass; but an “odorous hush” conveys the sense -of that suspended hour of a spring twilight -when day pauses as if hearkening, and silence -falls palpably around,—that spiritual hour when -the flowers offer up their evening sacrifice at -the coming of the dew.</p> - -<p>Apropos of the feeling for words and their -niceties of distinction as infusing what we term -atmosphere into description, it may be said in -passing that while Mr. Burton’s sense of these -values which is so keen in his prose does not -always stand him in equal stead in his poetry, -it is seldom lacking in his songs of nature.</p> - -<p>One may dip into the out-of-door verse at -random and come away with a picture; witness -this “Meadow Fancy”:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">In the meadows yonder the wingéd wind</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Makes billows along the grain;</div> - <div class="verse">With their sequence swift they bring to mind</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The swash of the open main,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Till I smell the pungent brine, and hear—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Mine eyes grown dim—the cry</div> - <div class="verse">Of the sailor lads, and feel vague fear</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of the storm-wrack in the sky.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>While the metaphorical idea in these strophes -is not new, they record with freehand strokes -<!--291.png--> -one of those suddenly suggestive moods that -nature assumes, one of the swift similitudes -she flashes before us as with conscious delight. -Mr. Burton’s nature-outlook is all open-air -vision; no office desk looms darkly behind -it, as is sometimes the case in his other verse. -It is the sort of inspiration that descends upon -one when he is afoot with his vision, roaming -afield with beauty. A leaf torn hastily -from a notebook serves to catch the fleeting -spell; magnetism tips the pencil; and ink and -type, those dread non-conductors of impulse, -cannot retard or neutralize its current. This -is, in a word, the charm that rests upon the -little volume, <cite>Dumb In June</cite>, in its various -subjects. It would be idle to assert that it -is as strong work as Mr. Burton has done; -but it is vivid and magnetic, and touched -but lightly with the <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">weltschmerz</i> which life is -sure to cast upon maturer work. There is -pain, but it is merely artist-pain, in the ode -that gives its name to the collection.</p> - -<p>Among the few love poems in Mr. Burton’s -first volume, “The Awakening” is one of the -truest in feeling; “Values” one of the blithest -and daintiest; “Still Days and Stormy,” reminiscent -of Emily Dickinson in manner, one of -the most delicate, catching in charming phrase -<!--292.png--> -one of the unanalyzed moods of love. The -earlier volume has also a captivating poem -in the lighter vein, that sings itself into the -memory by its lilting rhythm and graceful -rhyme-scheme, as well as by its subject. It -is the story of Shakespeare’s going a-wooing -“Across the Fields to Anne”:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">How often in the summer-tide,</div> - <div class="verse">His graver business set aside,</div> - <div class="verse">Has stripling Will, the thoughtful-eyed,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">As to the pipe of Pan,</div> - <div class="verse">Stepped blithesomely with lover’s pride</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Across the fields to Anne.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">It must have been a merry mile,</div> - <div class="verse">This summer stroll by hedge and stile,</div> - <div class="verse">With sweet foreknowledge all the while</div> - <div class="verse indent2">How sure the pathway ran</div> - <div class="verse">To dear delights of kiss and smile,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Across the fields to Anne.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The silly sheep that graze to-day,</div> - <div class="verse">I wot, they let him go his way,</div> - <div class="verse">Nor once looked up, as who should say:</div> - <div class="verse indent2">“It is a seemly man.”</div> - <div class="verse">For many lads went wooing aye</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Across the fields to Anne.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The oaks, they have a wiser look;</div> - <div class="verse">Mayhap they whispered to the brook:</div> - <div class="verse">“The world by him shall yet be shook,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">It is in nature’s plan;</div> - <div class="verse">Though now he fleets like any rook</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Across the fields to Anne.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--293.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And I am sure, that on some hour</div> - <div class="verse">Coquetting soft ’twixt sun and shower,</div> - <div class="verse">He stooped and broke a daisy-flower</div> - <div class="verse indent2">With heart of tiny span,</div> - <div class="verse">And bore it as a lover’s dower</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Across the fields to Anne.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">While from her cottage garden-bed</div> - <div class="verse">She plucked a jasmine’s goodlihede,</div> - <div class="verse">To scent his jerkins brown instead;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Now since that love began,</div> - <div class="verse">What luckier swain than he who sped</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Across the fields to Anne?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p><cite>Dumb In June</cite> has many foregleams of the -wider vision which distinguishes Mr. Burton’s -present work, as shown in his sonnet upon the -Christ-head by Angelo, in “Day Laborers,” -and in that noble poem, “Mortis Dignitas,” -imbued with reverence and touched with the -simplicity of the verities. It must be appraised -with the best work of his pen, not only for its -theme, but for the direct and unadorned word -and measure so integral with the thought:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Here lies a common man. His horny hands,</div> - <div class="verse">Crossed meekly as a maid’s upon his breast,</div> - <div class="verse">Show marks of toil, and by his general dress</div> - <div class="verse">You judge him to have been an artisan.</div> - <div class="verse">Doubtless, could all his life be written out,</div> - <div class="verse">The story would not thrill nor start a tear;</div> - <div class="verse">He worked, laughed, loved, and suffered in his time,</div> -<!--294.png--> - <div class="verse">And now rests peacefully, with upturned face</div> - <div class="verse">Whose look belies all struggle in the past.</div> - <div class="verse">A homely tale; yet, trust me, I have seen</div> - <div class="verse">The greatest of the earth go stately by,</div> - <div class="verse">While shouting multitudes beset the way,</div> - <div class="verse">With less of awe. The gap between a king</div> - <div class="verse">And me, a nameless gazer in the crowd,</div> - <div class="verse">Seemed not so wide as that which stretches now</div> - <div class="verse">Betwixt us two, this dead one and myself.</div> - <div class="verse">Untitled, dumb, and deedless, yet he is</div> - <div class="verse">Transfigured by a touch from out the skies</div> - <div class="verse">Until he wears, with all-unconscious grace,</div> - <div class="verse">The strange and sudden Dignity of Death.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>This is a fitting transition to <cite>Lyrics of -Brotherhood</cite>, which, together with his latest -volume, presents the phase of Mr. Burton’s -work most representative of his feeling toward -life. Any poet worthy of the name will come -at last to a vision that only his eyes can see. -Life will rise before him in a different semblance -from that she presents to another; and -if Beauty has lured him on, votary to that he -might not wholly see, Life’s yearning face wears -no disguise, and, once having looked upon it -with seeing eyes, it is an image not to be -effaced. There are many who look and never -see,—the majority, perhaps. Their eyes are -holden by the shapes that cross the inner -sight, by hope and memory and their own -ideal. They shall see only by one of those -<!--295.png--> -“flashes struck from midnight” of a personal -tragedy—and often enough we gain our vision -thus.</p> - -<p>There is a penetrative insight, that of the -social economist, for example, that may possess -no ray of sympathetic divination. It may probe -to the heart of a condition, correlate causes and -tendencies and divine effects, all from a scientific -motive as professional as the practice of -law, and as keen and cold. One may even be an -avowed philanthropist and never come in sight -of a human soul, as will the poet who looks upon -the individual not as a case to be classified and -tabulated, but as one walking step to step with -him, though more heavily, whom he may reach -out and touch now and then with the quickening -hand of sympathy, and whose load he may -bear bewhiles on the journey.</p> - -<p>Such a poet is Mr. Burton, whose nature is -shapen to one image with his fellows. To him -literature is not an entity to be weighed only -in the scales of beauty by the balances of Flaubert; -it is to-day’s and to-morrow’s speech. In -his prose, especially, this directness is marked; -but in his poems one feels rather the inner relation -with their spirit, for the magnetism of -touch is less communicative than in the more -flexible medium of prose. What is communicative, -<!--296.png--> -however, is the feeling that Mr. Burton -is living at the heart of things where the fusion -is taking place that makes us one. <cite>Lyrics of -Brotherhood</cite> is a genuine clasp of hand to hand, -nor is he dismayed by the grime of the hand, -for the primal unities are primal sanctities to -him. Longing, strife, defeat, achievement, are -all interpreted to him of personal emotion, solvent -in personal sympathy.</p> - -<p><cite>Lyrics of Brotherhood</cite> opens with a poem -that redeems from odium one opprobrious -symbol as old as time. It is that catch-penny -epithet, “black sheep,” that we bandy about -with such flippancy, tossing it as loose change -in a character appraisal and little recking what -truth-valuation may lie behind it. It is good -to feel that the impulse to redeem this symbol -came to Mr. Burton and wrought so well within -him, for “Black Sheep” is one of his truest inspirations -in feeling and expression:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">From their folded mates they wander far,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Their ways seem harsh and wild;</div> - <div class="verse">They follow the beck of a baleful star,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Their paths are dream-beguiled.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Yet haply they sought but a wider range,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Some loftier mountain-slope,</div> - <div class="verse">And little recked of the country strange</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Beyond the gates of hope.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--297.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And haply a bell with a luring call</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Summoned their feet to tread</div> - <div class="verse">Midst the cruel rocks, where the deep pitfall</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And the lurking snare are spread.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Maybe, in spite of their tameless days</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of outcast liberty,</div> - <div class="verse">They’re sick at heart for the homely ways</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Where their gathered brothers be.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And oft at night, when the plains fall dark</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And the hills loom large and dim,</div> - <div class="verse">For the Shepherd’s voice they mutely hark,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And their souls go out to him.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Meanwhile, “Black sheep! Black sheep!” we cry,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Safe in the inner fold;</div> - <div class="verse">And maybe they hear, and wonder why,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And marvel, out in the cold.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Throughout Mr. Burton’s work there is a -warm feeling for the simple tendernesses, the -unblazoned heroisms of life; the homely joys, -the homely valors, the unknown consecrations, -the unconfessed aspirations,—in a word, for -all that songless melody of the common soul -whose note we do not catch in the public clamor. -There is a tendency, however, in his later work -that, from an artistic standpoint, is carried too -far,—the tendency to analogize. Everything in -life presents an analogy to him who is alert for -it; and the habit of looking for analogies and -<!--298.png--> -symbols and making poems thereon grows upon -one with the fatal facility of punning, upon a -punster. A symbol, or the subtler and more -profound analysis that seeks the causal relation -of dissimilar things, which we term analogy, -must have the magic of revelation; it must flash -upon the mind some similitude unthought or -unguessed. Emerson is the past-master of this -symbolistic magic; they bring him rubies, and -they become to him souls, of</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent6">Friends to friends unknown:</div> - <div class="verse">Tides that should warm each neighboring life</div> - <div class="verse">Are locked in frozen stone.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Here is the eye of the revelator, for who, looking -upon rubies, would have seen in them what -Emerson saw, and yet what a truth bides at -the heart of this symbol!</p> - -<p>Mr. Burton has several analogies, such as “On -the Line,” “North Light,” and “Black Sheep,” -quoted above, that are excellently wrought; -indeed, it is not so much the manner in which -the analogy is elaborated that one would criticise, -as the frequently too-obvious nature -of it.</p> - -<p>The danger to a poet in dropping too often -into analogy is that he will become a singer -of effects, a watcher of manifestations, and forget -<!--299.png--> -to look for the gleam within himself and -make it the light of his seeing. If poetry -become too much a matter of observation, of -report, vitality goes from it; for imagination -is stultified and emotion quenched, and poetry -at its best is a union of imagination and emotion. -Mr. Burton’s poems in the main escape this -indictment, but their danger lies along this line. -His perception of identities is so acute, his -sympathy so catholic, that not only is nothing -human alien to him, but there is nothing in -which he cannot find a theme for poetry. -For illustration, there is an imaginative beauty -in the symbol of the homing bird, but its artistic -value is lost from over-use. Mr. Burton has -some pleasing lines upon it, reaching in the final -couplet a stronger tone, but from the nature of -the case they cannot possess any fresh suggestion; -on the contrary in such lines as “Nostalgia,” -“In The Shadows,” “The First Song,” -“If We Had The Time,” though less poetic -in theme, there is a personal note; one feels -back of them the great weariness, the futile -yearning of life. Some of the elemental emotion -is in them, the personal appeal that is -so much Mr. Burton’s note when he does not -give himself too much to things without. Even -though one use the visible event but as a sign -<!--300.png--> -of the spirit, as the objective husk of the subjective -truth, it is a vision which, if over-indulged, -leads at length away from the living, the creative -passion within. One philosophizes, one -contemplates, but the angel descends less often -to trouble the waters within one’s own being, -and it is, after all, for this movement that one -should chiefly watch.</p> - -<p><cite>Message and Melody</cite>, Mr. Burton’s latest collection, -opens with perhaps his strongest and -most representative poem, “The Song of the -Unsuccessful.” It is a poem provocative of -thought, and upon which innumerable queries -follow. Its opening lines utter a heresy -against modern thinking; our friends, the -Christian Scientists and Mental Scientists and -Spiritual Scientists, would at once cross swords -with Mr. Burton and wage valiant conflict over -the initial statement that God has “barred” from -any one the “gifts that are good to hold.” Indeed, -the entire poem would come under their -indictment for the same reason. But something -would be won from the conflict; the stuff -from which thought is made is in the poem. -In the mean time let us have it before we -consider it further. Here are the types marshalled -before us; we recognize them all as -they appear:</p> - -<!--301.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">We are the toilers from whom God barred</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The gifts that are good to hold.</div> - <div class="verse">We meant full well, and we tried full hard,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And our failures were manifold.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And we are the clan of those whose kin</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Were a millstone dragging them down.</div> - <div class="verse">Yea, we had to sweat for our brother’s sin</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And lose the victor’s crown.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The seeming-able, who all but scored,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">From their teeming tribe we come:</div> - <div class="verse">What was there wrong with us, O Lord,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That our lives were dark and dumb?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The men ten-talented, who still</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Strangely missed of the goal,</div> - <div class="verse">Of them we are: it seems Thy will</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To harrow some in soul.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">We are the sinners, too, whose lust</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Conquered the higher claims;</div> - <div class="verse">We sat us prone in the common dust,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And played at the devil’s games.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">We are the hard-luck folk, who strove</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Zealously, but in vain:</div> - <div class="verse">We lost and lost, while our comrades throve,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And still we lost again.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">We are the doubles of those whose way</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Was festal with fruits and flowers;</div> - <div class="verse">Body and brain we were sound as they,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">But the prizes were not ours.</div> -<!--302.png--> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">A mighty army our full ranks make;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">We shake the graves as we go;</div> - <div class="verse">The sudden stroke and the slow heartbreak,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">They both have brought us low.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And while we are laying life’s sword aside,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Spent and dishonored and sad,</div> - <div class="verse">Our epitaph this, when once we have died,</div> - <div class="verse indent2a">“The weak lie here, and the bad.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">We wonder if this can be really the close,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Life’s fever cooled by death’s trance;</div> - <div class="verse">And we cry, though it seem to our dearest of foes,</div> - <div class="verse indent2a">“God give us another chance!”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The ease of the poem, the crisp Anglo-Saxon -which it uses, the forthright stating of -the case for the weaker side, and the humanity -underlying it, are admirable; and, further, from -an artistic standpoint it is a stronger piece of -work than it would have been had its philosophy -chimed better with modern thinking. The unsuccessful -are speaking; their view-point and not -necessarily the author’s is presented. To have -tacked on a clause additional, with a hint of the -inner laws that govern success, might have -saved the philosophy from impeachment as to -falling back upon Providence; but it would -have been a decidedly false note put into the -mouth of the unsuccessful. We may say at -once that</p> - -<!--303.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The men ten-talented who still</div> - <div class="verse">Strangely missed of the goal,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>were the Amiels who suffered paralysis of the -will to benumb them, rather than those whom -it was the will of the Creator to “harrow in -soul;” but it would scarcely be expected of -the Amiels themselves to analyze their deficiencies -thus openly to the multitude. Impotence -of will, however, is not at the root of all -failure; who can deny that there is</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The clan of those whose kin</div> - <div class="verse">Were a millstone dragging them down;</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>that there are</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">The hard-luck folk who strove</div> - <div class="verse">Zealously, but in vain;</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The seeming-able, who all but scored,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>who put forth apparently more effort to score -than did many of the victors, but who were -waylaid by some invidious circumstance, or -who failed to “grasp the skirts of happy -chance” as the flying goddess passed them?</p> - -<p>Mr. Burton’s poem is too broad to discuss -in the limits of a brief sketch; it would -furnish a text for the sociologist. All the -complexities of modern conditions lie back of -its plaint, which becomes an arraignment. One -<!--304.png--> -feels that if God be not within the shadow, he -should at least have given Responsibility and -Will surer means of keeping watch above their -own. The Omaric figure of the Wheel “busied -with despite” rises before one as a symbol of -this whirling strife where only the strongest -may cling, and where the swift revolving -thing, having thrown the weakest off, makes of -them a cushion for its turning; or, in Omar’s -phrase, “It speeds to grind upon the open -wound.”</p> - -<p>This is the apparent fact; but within it as -axle to the Wheel is the law upon which it -rotates, the law of individual choice. Each -was given his supreme gift; his word was -whispered to him; if he failed to hear it, or -heed it, or express it in the predestined way, -the flying Wheel casts him to the void, but the -law is not impeached thereby. Outside this -law, however, as spokes to the Wheel, are the -innumerable radiations of human laws and conditions, -so that one may scarcely obey the primary -command of his nature if he would, and -often loses sight of it as the principle upon -which his destiny is revolving. Mr. Burton’s -poem goes beyond the cold-blooded outlook -upon the unsuccessful as merely those who -are cast from the Wheel, and presents the -<!--305.png--> -truer view that they are by no means always -the incompetents or degenerates:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">We are the doubles of those whose way</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Was festal with fruits and flowers;</div> - <div class="verse">Body and brain we were sound as they,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">But the prizes were not ours.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Why? Let the sociologist or the psychologist -determine; in the mean time we have the -quickened sympathy that follows upon the -poem.</p> - -<p><cite>Message and Melody</cite> has a group of songs -turning upon some music theme; of these -“Second Fiddle” is the most notable. “In A -Theatre” discloses a narrative vein and shows -that Mr. Burton has a keen sense of the dramatic -in daily life. He has for some time been -working upon a group of narrative poems with -a prologue connecting them, which are soon to -be issued, and which, judging from the fugitive -examples in his other volumes, will disclose an -interesting phase of his talent.</p> - -<p>To leave the impression of Mr. Burton’s -work that is most characteristic,—the impression -of its tenderness, its sympathy, its emphasis -upon the essential things,—one can scarcely -do better than to summarize it in his own well-known -lines, “The Human Touch”:</p> - -<!--306.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">High thoughts and noble in all lands</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Help me; my soul is fed by such.</div> - <div class="verse">But ah, the touch of lips and hands,—</div> - <div class="verse indent4">The human touch!</div> - <div class="verse">Warm, vital, close, life’s symbols dear,—</div> - <div class="verse">These need I most, and now, and here.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -</div><!--end Burton--> -<!--307.png--> - -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Scollard--> -<h3><a name="Scollard" id="Scollard"></a><abbr title="Fourteen">XIV</abbr></h3> - -<h4>CLINTON SCOLLARD</h4> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">THAT genial and delicate satirist, Miss -Agnes Repplier, laments in one of her -clever essays that our modern poets -incline to dwell upon the sombre side of things, -and hence contribute so little to the cheer of -life. One cannot but wonder what poetry Miss -Repplier has been reading, for our own acquaintance -with the song of to-day has been so much -the opposite that it is difficult on the spur of -the moment to recall any poet of the present -group in America whose work is not in the -main wholesome and heartening and who is -not facing toward the sun. To be sure, there -must be the relief of shade, lest the light glare; -but they who journey to Castaly are in general -cheerful wayfarers, taking gladly the gift of -the hours and rendering the Giver a song, and -among the blithest of them is Clinton Scollard, -to whom life is always smilingly envisaged, and -to whom, whether spring or autumn betide, it -is still the “sweet o’ the year.”</p> -<!--308.png--> -<!--310.png--> -<p>If Mr. Scollard’s way has ever been “through -dolor and dread, over crags and morasses,” he -is too much the optimist to let the fact be -known, or, better still, to recognize it as such; -for we see what our own eyes reflect from -within, and it is certain that Mr. Scollard’s outlook -upon life is governed by the inherent conviction -that her ways are ways of pleasantness -and all her paths are peace. Possibly this -conviction would have more value to the less -assured nature if the testimony of its winning -were set down as a strength-giving force by the -way, as we incline in daily life to undervalue -the amiability and cheer which are matters of -birthright rather than of overcoming; but this is -a standard narrow in itself and wide of the issue -at stake, which is so much cheer <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">per se</i>, whether -the fortunate dower of nature, or the alchemic -result of experience; nor may one draw too -definite a line between the temperamental gift -and the spiritual acquisition, especially when -the psychology of literature furnishes the only -data. It is sufficient to note the result in the -work, and its bearing upon the art which shapes -it. To Mr. Scollard, then, “Life’s enchanted -cup” not only “sparkles at the brim;” but -when he lifts it to his lips a rainbow arches in -its depths, and he has communicated to his -<!--311.png--> -song the flash of sunshine and color sparkling -in the clearness of his own draught of life.</p> -<!--309.png--> - -<div class="break figcenter"> - <a name="i309" id="i309"></a><img src="images/i309.jpg" - width="500" height="683" - alt="Illustration of Clinton Scollard" - title="Clinton Scollard" - /> -</div><!--end illustration--> - -<p>Mr. Scollard is almost wholly an objective -poet, and by method a painter. His palette is -ever ready for the picture furnished him at -every turn, and hence his several volumes -relating to the Orient, <cite>Lutes of Morn</cite>, <cite>Lyrics -of the Dawn</cite>, <cite>Songs of Sunrise Lands</cite>, etc., -are perhaps truer standards by which to measure -his work than any other, illustrating as they -do the pictorial side of his talent. Every object -in the Orient is a picture with its individual -color and atmosphere, but Mr. Scollard does -not merely offer us a sketch in color; the outwardly -picturesque is made to interpret a -phase of life, and the spiritual contrasts in this -land—where one religion or philosophy succeeds -another, bringing with it another civilization -and leaving desolate the ancient shrines—are -indicated with vivid phrase, as in these -lines:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">A turbaned guard keeps stolid ward by the Zion gate in the sun,</div> - <div class="verse">And the Paynim bows his shaven brows at the shrine of Solomon;</div> - <div class="verse">At the chosen altars, long, long quenched is the flame of the sacred fire,</div> - <div class="verse">And the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--312.png--> - <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">Great Herod’s pride with its columned aisles is grown with the olive bough,</div> - <div class="verse">And Gath and Dan are but crumbling piles, while Gaza is gateless now;</div> - <div class="verse">The sea on the sands of Ascalon sets hands to a mournful lyre,</div> - <div class="verse">And the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The closing stanza draws the contrast, or -rather makes the spiritual application of the -poem by which “the starry fame of one holy -name”</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Has blazoned Bethlehem for aye the heart of the world’s desire,</div> - <div class="verse">While the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The final line of these stanzas may offer a -metrical stumbling-block until one catches the -sweep of the rhythm and falls in note with the -cæsural pause after the word “tomb.” Mr. -Scollard is nothing if not lyrical, and it would -be easier for the traditional camel to go -through the eye of a needle than for a captious -critic to discover a metrical falsity in his tuneful -song.</p> - -<p>But to return to the Orient, not alone the -reverence for the Christian faith speaks in -these poems, but the artistic beauty in the -Moslem and other faiths has entered into -<!--313.png--> -them; one is stirred to sympathetic devotion -by these lines,—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">From many a marble minaret</div> - <div class="verse">We heard the rapt muezzin’s call;</div> - <div class="verse">And to the prayerful cries my guide,</div> - <div class="verse">During each trembling interval,</div> - <div class="verse">With reverence serene replied,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and finds throughout the poems the higher -assurance that</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The East and West are one in Allah’s grace:</div> - <div class="verse">Which way so’er ye turn, behold—His face!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>It is difficult to choose from the several volumes -portraying Oriental life, such poems as -shall best represent it, since in any direction -we shall find a picture full of color and of -strange new charm: the white mosques and -minarets; the gardens of citron and pomegranate; -the bazaars, with their rare fabrics and -curios; the pilgrims, dozing in the shade of -the temples; the Bedouins, riding in from the -desert; the women carrying from the springs -their water-jars. We shall hear the sunrise -cry of the muezzin from the minarets; the -zither and lute in the gardens at evening; the -jargon of tongues in booth and market-place; -the philosopher expounding the Koran; the -lover singing the songs of Araby. The dramatic -<!--314.png--> -life of that impulsive, passionate people -will be seen in such poems as the “Dancing -of Suleima,” “At the Tomb of Abel,” and -“Yousef and Melhem,” and the philosophical -side in many a poem translating the precepts -of the Koran into action; but it is, after all, -for the picture in which all this is set that one -comes with chief pleasure to these songs. Not -only the human element of that strangely fascinating -life is incorporated in them, but all -the phenomena of nature in its swift-changing -moods pass in review before one’s eyes, particularly -of the swift transitions of the desert -sun, stayed by no detaining cloud, and followed -by the immediate gloom of night. The graphic -lines—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">When on the desert’s rim,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In sudden, awful splendor, stood the sun—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>are excelled in terse, pictorial force by the -record of its setting,—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Then sudden dipped the sun.—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Nor easily forgotten are those pictures of -lying in the open when the cooling dark had -fallen upon the yearning land, or upon the hills -when</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The night hung over Hebron all her stars,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Miraculous processional of flame,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<!--315.png--> -<p>and below from out the “purple blur” rose the -minarets of the mosque where</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Sepulchred for centuries untold,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The bones of Isaac and of Joseph lay;</div> - <div class="verse">And broidered cloths of silver and of gold</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Were heaped and draped o’er Abraham’s crumbled clay.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>In <cite>The Lutes of Morn</cite> there are two sonnets—though -lyrics in effect, so does the song -prevail with Mr. Scollard—that serve hastily -to sketch a moving scene and in their touch -bring to mind Paul the chronicler. The first -is “Passing Rhodes,” and contains these lines -with a biblical tang,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">At day’s dim marge, hard on the shut of eve,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">We rocked abreast the rugged Rhodian isle,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>which tang appears in stronger flavor in the -racy opening of the following:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Cleaving the seadrift through the starlit night,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">We left the barren Patmian isle behind,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And scudding northward with a favoring wind,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Lay anigh Chios at the dawn of light.</div> - <div class="verse">The shore, the tree-set slopes, the rugged height,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Clear in the morning’s roseate air outlined,—</div> - <div class="verse indent4">This was his birthplace who, albeit blind,</div> - <div class="verse">Saw tall Troy’s fall, and sang the tragic sight.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Resting within the roadstead, while the day</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Grew into gradual glory, on the ear</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Continuous broke the surge-song of the brine;</div> -<!--316.png--> - <div class="verse">And as we marked it rise, or die away</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To rise again, it seemed that we could hear</div> - <div class="verse indent4">The swell and sweep of Homer’s mighty line.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Mr. Scollard’s musical and finely descriptive -poem, “As I Came Down From Lebanon,” -has become a favorite with the readers of his -verse; but while it has great charm, it is not as -strong a piece of work as are many other of -the Oriental poems, contained in his later -volumes, <cite>The Lutes of Morn</cite> and <cite>Lyrics of the -Dawn</cite>, nor as that realistic poem, “Khamsin,” -which appeared in the same collection. Here -indeed is the breath of the sirocco:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Oh, the wind from the desert blew in!</div> - <div class="verse indent8">Khamsin,</div> - <div class="verse">The wind from the desert blew in!</div> - <div class="verse">It blew from the heart of the fiery south,</div> - <div class="verse">From the fervid sand and the hills of drouth,</div> - <div class="verse">And it kissed the land with its scorching mouth;</div> - <div class="verse">The wind from the desert blew in!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">It blasted the buds on the almond bough,</div> - <div class="verse">And shrivelled the fruit on the orange-tree;</div> - <div class="verse">The wizened dervish breathed no vow,</div> - <div class="verse">So weary and parched was he.</div> - <div class="verse">The lean muezzin could not cry;</div> - <div class="verse">The dogs ran mad, and bayed the sky;</div> - <div class="verse">The hot sun shone like a copper disk,</div> - <div class="verse">And prone in the shade of an obelisk</div> -<!--317.png--> - <div class="verse">The water-carrier sank with a sigh,</div> - <div class="verse">For limp and dry was his water-skin;</div> - <div class="verse">And the wind from the desert blew in.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - <div class="verse">Into the cool of the mosque it crept,</div> - <div class="verse">Where the poor sought rest at the prophet’s shrine;</div> - <div class="verse">Its breath was fire to the jasmine vine;</div> - <div class="verse">It fevered the brow of the maid who slept,</div> - <div class="verse">And men grew haggard with revel of wine.</div> - <div class="verse">The tiny fledglings died in the nest;</div> - <div class="verse">The sick babe gasped at the mother’s breast.</div> - <div class="verse">Then a rumor rose and swelled and spread</div> - <div class="verse">From a tremulous whisper, faint and vague,</div> - <div class="verse">Till it burst in a terrible cry of dread,</div> - <div class="verse"><em>The plague! the plague! the plague!</em>—</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Oh the wind, Khamsin,</div> - <div class="verse">The scourge from the desert blew in!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Of the lighter notes, upon love and kindred -themes, Mr. Scollard has many in his poems -of the Orient; “The Song of the Nargileh” is -of especial charm, but unfortunately too long to -quote. Very graceful, too, is the “Twilight -Song” with one of Mr. Scollard’s graphic beginnings, -but one quaint bit from <cite>The Lutes -of Morn</cite> is so characteristic as showing Oriental -felicity of speech that while merely a -jotting in song, and less important in an artistic -sense than many others touching upon the -theme of love, I cannot refrain from citing it -instead: it is called “Greetings—Cairo.”</p> - -<!--318.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Upon El Muski did I meet Hassan,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Beneath arched brows his deep eyes twinkling bright,</div> - <div class="verse">Good dragoman (and eke good Mussulman)</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And cried unto him, “May your day be white!”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">“And yours, howadji!” came his swift reply,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">A smile illumining the words thereof,</div> - <div class="verse">(All men are poets ’neath that kindling sky),</div> - <div class="verse indent2">“As white as are the thoughts of her you love!”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The Oriental poems cover not only a varied -range of subject, but pass in review nearly -every important city and shrine in the length -and breadth of that storied land, making poetical -footnotes to one’s history and filling his -memory with pictures.</p> - -<p>The second source of Mr. Scollard’s inspiration, -doubtless the first in point of time, is his -delight in nature. Here, too, the objective side -predominates. He is footfaring, with every -sense alert to see, to hear, and to enjoy; he slips -the world of men as a leash and becomes the fetterless -comrade of the vagrant things of earth. -He stops to do no philosophizing by the way,—the -analogies, the laws, the evolving purposes -of nature, are rarely touched upon in his verse; -nor is he one of the poet-naturalists, intent to -observe and record with infinite fidelity the -fact, with its mystic spirit of beauty. He finds -in the obvious side of nature such glamour and -<!--319.png--> -magic as suffice for inspiration and delight; -and it is this side which enthralls him almost -wholly. In other words, his nature vision is -rather outlook than insight, though always -sympathetic in fancy and delicate in touch. -He seems to see only the gladness in the -season’s phases, and greets white-shrouded -winter with all the ardor that he would bestow -upon flower-decked June.</p> - -<p>He has one volume entitled <cite>Footfarings</cite>, -written partly in prose and partly in verse,—a -book abrim with morning joy, and bringing with -it the aroma of wood-flowers and the minstrelsy -of birds. The prose predominates, and is worthy -the pen of a poet: its imaginative grace, its -enthusiasm, and its quaint and delicate fancy -impart to it all the flavor of poetry while adhering -to a crisp and racy style. Each chapter -is prefaced by a keynote of verse, such as that -which conducts one to the haunt of the trillium, -where</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">These nun-like flowers with spotless urns,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That shine with such a snowy gloss,</div> - <div class="verse">Will seem, amid the suppliant ferns,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To bow above the cloistral moss.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Then Hope, her starry eyes upraised,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Will suddenly surprise you there,</div> - <div class="verse">And you will feel that you have gazed</div> - <div class="verse indent2">On the white sanctity of prayer!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<!--320.png--> -<p>Were it within the province of this study, I -should like to quote some of Mr. Scollard’s -prose from a “Woodland Walk,” “A Search -for the Lady’s Slipper,” or many another picturesque -chapter. One loses thought of print, -and is for the nonce following his errant fancy -through meadow and coppice to the heart of -the spicy fir-woods, picking his way over the -forest brooks, from stone to stone; following -the alluring skid-roads, latticed by new growths -on either side and arched above by interlacing -green; penetrating into the tamarack thickets -at the lure of the hermit-thrush, that spirit-voice -of song; resting on a springy bed of -moss and fern,—becoming, in short, wayfellow -of desire, and thrall but to his will. Mr. Scollard -has also published within the past year a -book of nature verse called <cite>The Lyric Bough</cite>, -which contains some of his best work in this -way; one of its livelier fancies is that of “The -Wind”:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O the wind is a faun in the spring-time</div> - <div class="verse indent2">When the ways are green for the tread of the May;</div> - <div class="verse indent6">List! hark his lay!</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Whist! mark his play!</div> - <div class="verse indent8">T-r-r-r-l!</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Hear how gay!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--321.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O the wind is a dove in the summer</div> - <div class="verse indent2">When the ways are bright with the wash of the moon;</div> - <div class="verse indent6">List! hark him tune!</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Whist! mark him swoon!</div> - <div class="verse indent8">C-o-o-o-o!</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Hear him croon!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O the wind is a gnome in the autumn</div> - <div class="verse indent2">When the ways are brown with the leaf and burr;</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Hist! mark him stir!</div> - <div class="verse indent6">List! hark him whir!</div> - <div class="verse indent8">S-s-s-s-t!</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Hear him chirr!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O the wind is a wolf in the winter</div> - <div class="verse indent2">When the ways are white for the hornèd owl;</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Hist! mark him prowl!</div> - <div class="verse indent6">List! hark him howl!</div> - <div class="verse indent8">G-r-r-r-l!</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Hear him growl!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>One of the earlier books, <cite>The Hills of Song</cite>, -contained a brief, merry-toned lyric, with a cavalier -note, that sung itself into the <cite>American -Anthology</cite>, and is perhaps as characteristic and -charming a leave-taking of this phase of Mr. -Scollard’s work as one may cite:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Be ye in love with April-tide?</div> - <div class="verse indent4">I’ faith, in love am I!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">For now ’tis sun, and now ’tis shower,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And now ’tis frost, and now ’tis flower,</div> - <div class="verse">And now ’tis Laura laughing-eyed,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">And now ’tis Laura shy.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--322.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Ye doubtful days, O slower glide!</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Still smile and frown, O sky!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Some beauty unforeseen I trace</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In every change of Laura’s face;—</div> - <div class="verse">Be ye in love with April-tide?</div> - <div class="verse indent4">I’ faith, in love am I!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Balladry furnishes the third source of Mr. -Scollard’s singing impulse. The Oriental -poems have somewhat of this phase of his work, -though more especially inclining to the narrative -style; and the epic poem “Skenandoa,” -while written in a story-lyric, shows the ballad-making -qualities, which in their true note had -been heard earlier in “Taillefer the Trouvère,” -and have been heard more definitely in <cite>Ballads -of Valor and Victory</cite>, recently written in collaboration -with Mr. Wallace Rice, and reciting -the heroisms and adventures of soldier, sailor, -and explorer from Drake to Dewey.</p> - -<p>Ballad-writing is an art calling for distinct -gifts. The dramatic element must predominate. -The story first—and if this be -colorless, there is no true ballad; the verse -next—and if this be flaccid, or if it swing to -the other extreme and become too strained and -tense, there is no true ballad; for the essence -of ballad-writing is in the freedom of the movement, -the swing and verve with which one -<!--323.png--> -recounts a picturesque story. Mr. Scollard’s -contributions to the volume are sung with spontaneity -and with a virile note, and in the matter -of characterization, fixing the personality of -the hero before the mind, the work is especially -strong; witness “Riding With Kilpatrick;” -“Wayne at Stony Point;” “Montgomery at -Quebec;” the picture of Thomas Macdonough -at the Battle of Plattsburg Bay, or in more -recent times of “Private Blair of the Regulars,” -the modern Sidney, who, dying, gave the last -draught of his canteen to his wounded fellows.</p> - -<p>“The White November” and “The Eve of -Bunker Hill” are among the best of the ballads. -The former brings with it a well-known note, -but one newly bedight with brave phrase; indeed, -all the celebrated ballad measures appear -in these song stories, but well individualized in -diction and dramatic mood. They differ of -course in the degree of these qualities; some -have too slight an incident to chronicle; some -might with better effect have been omitted, -particularly “War in April,” by Mr. Rice; -but for this he atones by “The Minute-Men -of Northboro” and other vigorous contributions -to the collection. The ballads have the -merit of structural compactness. While the -necessary portrayal of the incident renders -<!--324.png--> -many of the best of them too long to quote, -there are, in Mr. Scollard’s contribution to -the book, few superfluous stanzas; each plays -its essential part in the development of the -story. They may not, then, be quoted without -their full complement of strophes, which debars -us from citing the “White November,” “Wayne -at Stony Point,” and others mentioned as most -representative; but here is the tale of “Riding -With Kilpatrick,” not more valiant than many -of the others, but celebrating a picturesque -figure. There are certain reminiscent notes of -“How They Brought the Good News from -Ghent to Aix” in this galloping anapestic measure; -and its graphic opening line calls to mind -that instantaneous picture, “At Aershot, up -leaped of a sudden the sun.”</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Dawn peered through the pines as we dashed at the ford;</div> - <div class="verse">Afar the grim guns of the infantry roared;</div> - <div class="verse">There were miles yet of dangerous pathway to pass,</div> - <div class="verse">And Moseby might menace, and Stuart might mass;</div> - <div class="verse">But we mocked every doubt, laughing danger to scorn,</div> - <div class="verse">As we quaffed with a shout from the wine of the morn</div> - <div class="verse">Those who rode with Kilpatrick to valor were born!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">How we chafed at delay! How we itched to be on!</div> - <div class="verse">How we yearned for the fray where the battle-reek shone!</div> - <div class="verse">It was <em>forward</em>, not <em>halt</em>, stirred the fire in our veins,</div> - <div class="verse">When our horses’ feet beat to the clink of the reins;</div> -<!--325.png--> - <div class="verse">It was <em>charge</em>, not <em>retreat</em>, we were wonted to hear;</div> - <div class="verse">It was <em>charge</em>, not <em>retreat</em>, that was sweet to the ear;</div> - <div class="verse">Those who rode with Kilpatrick had never felt fear!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">At last the word came, and troop tossed it to troop;</div> - <div class="verse">Two squadrons deployed with a falcon-like swoop;</div> - <div class="verse">While swiftly the others in echelons formed,</div> - <div class="verse">For there, just ahead, was the line to be stormed.</div> - <div class="verse">The trumpets rang out; there were guidons ablow;</div> - <div class="verse">The white summer sun set our sabres aglow;</div> - <div class="verse">Those who rode with Kilpatrick charged straight at the foe!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">We swept like the whirlwind; we closed; at the shock</div> - <div class="verse">The sky seemed to reel and the earth seemed to rock;</div> - <div class="verse">Steel clashed upon steel with a deafening sound,</div> - <div class="verse">While a redder than rose-stain encrimsoned the ground<a name="chg5" id="chg5"></a>;</div> - <div class="verse">If we gave back a space from the fierce pit of hell,</div> - <div class="verse">We were rallied again by a voice like a bell,</div> - <div class="verse">Those who rode with Kilpatrick rode valiantly well!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Rang sternly his orders from out of the wrack:</div> - <div class="verse"><em>Re-form there, New Yorkers! You, Harris Light, back!</em></div> - <div class="verse"><em>Come on, men of Maine! we will conquer or fall!</em></div> - <div class="verse"><em>Now, forward, boys, forward, and follow me, all!</em></div> - <div class="verse">A Bayard in boldness, a Sidney in grace,</div> - <div class="verse">A lion to lead, and a stag-hound to chase—</div> - <div class="verse">Those who rode with Kilpatrick looked Death in the face!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Though brave were our foemen, they faltered and fled;</div> - <div class="verse">Yet that was no marvel when such as he led!</div> - <div class="verse">Long ago, long ago, was that desperate day!</div> - <div class="verse">Long ago, long ago, strove the Blue and the Gray!</div> - <div class="verse">Praise God that the red sun of battle is set!</div> - <div class="verse">That our hand-clasp is loyal and loving—and yet</div> - <div class="verse">Those who rode with Kilpatrick can never forget!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<!--326.png--> -<p>The Lochinvar key is also struck in the description -of Kilpatrick. Mr. Scollard sounds -a less sanguinary note in most of the ballads, -as that of “The Troopers” or “King Philip’s -Last Stand.”</p> - -<p>“On the Eve of Bunker Hill,” while recording -no thrilling story, has a note of pensive -beauty in its quiet description of the preparation -for battle before that memorable day, and -of the prayer offered in the presence of the -soldiers, “ranged a-row” in the open night. -The initial stanza gives the setting and key:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">’Twas June on the face of the earth, June with the rose’s breath,</div> - <div class="verse">When life is a gladsome thing, and a distant dream is death;</div> - <div class="verse">There was gossip of birds in the air, and the lowing of herds by the wood,</div> - <div class="verse">And a sunset gleam in the sky that the heart of a man holds good;</div> - <div class="verse">Then the nun-like twilight came, violet-vestured and still,</div> - <div class="verse">And the night’s first star outshone afar on the eve of Bunker Hill.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Taking the volume throughout, it is a stirringly -sung <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">résumé</i> of all the chief deeds in -American history to which attach valor and -romance, and is not only attractive reading, but -should be in the hands of every lad as a stimulus -to patriotism, and to focus in his mind, as -<!--327.png--> -textbooks could never do, the exploits of the -brave and the strong.</p> - -<p>In the lyrical narrative poem, such as -“Guiraut, the Troubadour,” Mr. Scollard has -one of his most characteristic vehicles. The -adventures of the singer who sought a maid in -Carcassonne are, no doubt, romantically enhanced -by association of the name with that -of the hapless one who “had not been to Carcassonne;” -but it is certain that one follows -the troubadour in his “russet raimentry,” drawn -by his charm as</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Unto the gate of Carcassonne</div> - <div class="verse">(Ah, how his blithe lips smiled upon</div> - <div class="verse">The warded gate of Carcassonne!)</div> - <div class="verse indent2">As light of foot as Love he strode;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The budding flowers along the road</div> - <div class="verse">Bloomed sudden, with his song for lure;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And softlier the river flowed</div> - <div class="verse">Before Guiraut, the troubadour.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - <div class="verse">Unto a keep in Carcassonne</div> - <div class="verse">(No sweeter voice e’er drifted on</div> - <div class="verse">That frowning keep in Carcassonne!)</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Anon the singer drew anigh,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>but we may not follow his propitious fortunes, -glimpsed but to show the manner of their telling. -The parenthetical lines, recurring in each -stanza, impart a peculiar charm to the recital, -<!--328.png--> -but the diction and phrasing, while pleasant -and in harmony, have no especial distinction -in themselves, and this illustrates a frequent -characteristic of Mr. Scollard’s work that the -melody often carries the charm rather than the -expression or basic theme. He is primarily a -singer, he has the “lute in tune,” and the song -is so spontaneous as sometimes to outsing -the motive. There is always a felicitous, and -often unique, turn of phrase and a most imaginative -fancy, but one feels in a good deal of -the work a lack of acid; it is too bland to bite as -deeply as it ought. Just a bit sharper tang is -needful.</p> - -<p>The message should also inform more vitally -the melody, wedding more subtly the outer and -inner grace. A poet is a teacher, whether he -will or no, and the heart should be the vital textbook -of his expounding. It is because of their -deeper rooting in life, though a life foreign to us, -that the Oriental poems of Mr. Scollard have -often greater vitality than the Occidental ones, -whose inspiration is found chiefly in nature. -His ballads show that he has a sympathetic -insight into character and a knowledge of -human motive that would, if infused more -widely through his work, give to it a warmth -of personal appeal and a subjectivity which in -<!--329.png--> -many of its phases it now lacks. The golden -thread of Joy is woven so constantly into -the web of his song that those whose woof is -crossed with the hempen thread of Pain are -likely to feel that he has no word for them, no -hint as to the subtle transformation by which -the hempen thread may merge into the gold, -when the finished fabric hurtles from the -loom. In other words, Mr. Scollard’s work -is too objective to carry with it the spiritual -meaning that it would if ingrained more -deeply in the hidden life of the soul. Along -this line lies its finer development: not that -it shall lose a jot of its cheer, but that it shall -constantly inform it with a richer and deeper -meaning.</p> - -</div><!--end Scollard--> -<!--330.png--> - -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Fenollosa--> -<h3><a name="Fenollosa" id="Fenollosa"></a><abbr title="Fifteen">XV</abbr></h3> - -<h4>MARY MCNEIL FENOLLOSA</h4> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">TO be a poet of the East, one must be -a painter, using words as a colorist uses -pigment. His poem must be a picture -wherein form and detail are subjected to -the values of tone and atmosphere; like the -dawn-crest of Fujiyama it must glow, it must -dazzle with tints and light. To convert the -pen into an artist’s brush, the vocabulary into -a palette, is an end not to be gained by striving; -it is a talent <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">a priori</i>, a temperamental color, a -temperamental art.</p> - -<p>So vividly is this shown in the work of Mrs. -Mary McNeil Fenollosa that whereas in her -Eastern poems she is every whit the artist, in -her Western, her Occidental poems, she is without -special distinction. Certain of her Western -poems have a conventional, mechanical tone, -while those of the East are abrim with vitality -and impulse. They were not “reared by wan -degrees;” the craftsman did not fashion them; -and although varying in charm, there are few -that lack the Eastern spirit.</p> - -<!--331.png--> -<p>Mrs. Fenollosa’s bit of the Orient is Japan, -where nature is ever coquetting,—laughing in -the cherry, sighing in the lotos. Nature in the -Orient is invested with a personality foreign to -Western countries, a personality reminiscent of -the gods. Then, too, nature is given a more -prominent place in the poetry of the East than -is love, or any of the subjects, so infinite in -variety, which engross a Western singer; and -it happens that Mrs. Fenollosa, catching this -spirit during her life in Japan, gives us chiefly -nature poems in her Eastern collection. With -artist-strokes where each is sure, she flashes -this picture before us:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The day unfolds like a lotos-bloom,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Pink at the tip, and gold at the core,</div> - <div class="verse">Rising up swiftly through waters of gloom</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That lave night’s shore;</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>or this vision of—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The cloud-like curve,</div> - <div class="verse">The loosened sheaf,</div> - <div class="verse">The ineffable pink of a lotos leaf.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>One great charm of the imagery in Mrs. -Fenollosa’s Japanese poems is its subtlety of -suggestion. The imagination has play; something -is left for the fancy of the reader, which -can scarcely be said of some of the highly -<!--332.png--> -wrought verse of our own country. The -first lyric in the collection hints of a score -of things beyond its eight-line scope:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O let me die a singing!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">O let me drown in light!</div> - <div class="verse">Another day is winging</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Out from the nest of night.</div> - <div class="verse">The morning glory’s velvet eye</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Brims with a jewelled bead.</div> - <div class="verse">To-day my soul’s a dragon-fly,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The world a swaying reed!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>“To-day my soul’s a dragon-fly,”—a wingéd -incarnation of liberty and joy; “the world a -swaying reed,”—a pliant thing made for my -delight, an empery of which I am the sovereign -and may have my will.</p> -<!--333.png--> - -<div class="break figcenter"> - <a name="i333" id="i333"></a><img src="images/i333.jpg" - width="500" height="724" - alt="Illustration of Mary McNeil Fenollosa" - title="Mary McNeil Fenollosa" - /> -</div><!--end illustration--> - -<!--334.png--> -<p>But these Japanese songs have not wholly -the lighter melody; there are those that sing of -the devastation of the rice-fields after the floods, -a grim and tragic picture; and there are interpretations -of the dreams of the great bronze -Buddha, looking with sad, inscrutable eyes -upon the pilgrims who, with the recurrent -seasons, come creeping to his feet like insects -from the mould; and there is a story of “The -Path of Prayer,”—a Japanese superstition so -human that one is glad of a religion where -sentiment overtops reason. It pictures one -<!--335.png--> -walking at evening under gnarled old pines -until he chances upon a hidden path leading -through a hundred gates that keep a sacred -way; and as he passes he is amazed to see -along the route, springing as if from the earth, -fluttering white papers, tied</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">As banners pendent from a mimic wand.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>The poem continues:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I wondered long; when, from the drowsy wood,</div> - <div class="verse">A whisper reached me, “’Tis the Path of Prayer,</div> - <div class="verse">Where, nightly, Kwannon walks in pitying mood,</div> - <div class="verse">To read the sad petitions planted there.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Ah, simple faith! The sun was in the west;</div> - <div class="verse">And darkness smote with flails his quivering light.</div> - <div class="verse">Beside the path I knelt; and, with the rest,</div> - <div class="verse">My alien prayer was planted in the night.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>It is to be regretted that Mrs. Fenollosa -gives us so little of the religious or mystical -in Japanese thought, since no country is richer -in material of the sort, and especially as the -isolated poems and passages in which she -touches upon it are all so interpretative. She -has one poem, a petition of old people at a -temple, that strikes deep root both in pathos -and philosophy. Perhaps the Japanese excel -all other peoples in the reverence paid to age, -and yet no excess of consideration can supplant -<!--336.png--> -the melancholy of that time. The second -stanza of Mrs. Fenollosa’s poem expresses -the aloofness of the old,—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">For thy comfort, Lord, we pray,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Namu Amida Butsu!</div> - <div class="verse">In the rice-fields, day by day,</div> - <div class="verse">Now the strong ones comb the grain;</div> - <div class="verse">Once we laughed there in the rain,</div> - <div class="verse">Stooping low in sun and cold</div> - <div class="verse">For our helpless young and old;</div> - <div class="verse">In the rice-fields day by day,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Namu Amida Butsu!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>And the last stanza is imbued with the -Buddhistic resignation, the desire to pass, to -be reabsorbed, reinvested, reborn. It is philosophical -after the Karmic law, and beautiful in -spirit even to a Western mind:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">For thy mercy, Lord, we pray,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Namu Amida Butsu!</div> - <div class="verse">Let the old roots waste away,</div> - <div class="verse">That the green may pierce the light!</div> - <div class="verse">Life and thought, in withered plight,</div> - <div class="verse">Choke the morning. Far beneath</div> - <div class="verse">Stirs the young blade in its sheath.</div> - <div class="verse">Let the old roots pass away!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Namu Amida Butsu!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>This is symbolism which upon a cursory -reading one might lose entirely, thinking its -import to be, let the old die and give place -<!--337.png--> -to the young; whereas it is, let the old in -oneself, the outworn, the material, the inefficacious, -die, and give place to the new.</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">That the green may pierce the light:—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>that out of physical decay a regrowth of the -spirit may spring; for already,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent6">Far beneath</div> - <div class="verse">Stirs the young blade in its sheath:—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>the soul is quickening for the upper air and -making ready to burst its detaining mould. -How beautiful is the recognition that</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Life and thought, in withered plight,</div> - <div class="verse">Choke the morning,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>the young eternal self, that, having fulfilled the -conditions of Karma in its present embodiment -of destiny, is obeying the resistless law that calls -it to new modes of being. It is unnecessary to -be of the Buddhistic faith to feel the spell and -the beauty of its philosophy.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Fenollosa’s gift is chiefly lyrical, although -her sonnets and descriptive poems have many -passages of beauty; the picturesque in fancy -and phrasing is ever at her command, and -there are few poems in which one is not -<!--338.png--> -arrested by some unique expression, or bit -of imagery, as this from “An Eastern Cry”:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Beneath the maples crickets wake,</div> - <div class="verse"><em>And chip the silence, flake on flake</em>.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Or that in which the rain</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Brimmed great magnolias up with scented wine.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Or the fir-tree stood,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">With clotted plumage sagging to the land.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Or when Fujiyama seen at dawn is pictured as</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">A crown … self poised in mist,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>and again as</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">A frail mirage of Paradise</div> - <div class="verse">Set in the quickening air.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>So true in color and vision are Mrs. Fenollosa’s -lyrics that one cannot understand how -in a sonnet she can be guilty of so mixed -a metaphor as this describing a “Morning On -Fujisan”:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Through powdered mist of dawn-lit pearl and rose</div> - <div class="verse indent2">There lifts one lotos-peak of cleaving white,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The swan-like rhapsody of dying night,</div> - <div class="verse">Which, softly soaring through the ether, blows</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To hang there breathless….</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<!--339.png--> -<p>The first two lines are unimpeachable, but -when the “lotos-peak” is amplified into a -“swan-like rhapsody,” one is swept quite -away from his bearings. It is but an illustration -of the effort that often goes to the -building of a sonnet and renders forced and -inept what was designed to be artistic. Mrs. -Fenollosa’s sonnets, however, do not often -violate congruity, for while the sonnet is by -no means her representative form, she handles -it with as much ease as do most of the modern -singers, and occasionally one comes upon her -most characteristic lines in this compass; but -it is true of the sonnet form in general, except -in the hands of a thorough artist, that the -mechanism is too obvious and obscures the -theme.</p> - -<p>To know Mrs. Fenollosa at her best one -must read “Miyoko San,” “Full Moon Over -Sumidagawa,” “An Eastern Cry,” “Exiled,” -and this song “To a Japanese Nightingale,” -full of mystic, wistful beauty, of suggestive -spiritual grace. How delicate is its fashioning, -and yet how it defines a picture, silhouettes -it against the Orient night!</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Dark on the face of a low, full moon</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Swayeth the tall bamboo.</div> -<!--340.png--> - <div class="verse">No flute nor quiver of song is heard,</div> - <div class="verse">Though sheer on the tip a small brown bird</div> - <div class="verse">Sways to an inward tune.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O small brown bird, like a dusky star,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Lone on the tall bamboo,</div> - <div class="verse">Thou germ of the soul of a summer night,</div> - <div class="verse">Thou quickening core of a lost delight,</div> - <div class="verse">Of ecstasy born afar,</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Soar out thy bliss to the tingling air,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Sing from the tall bamboo!</div> - <div class="verse">Loosen the long, clear, syrup note</div> - <div class="verse">That shimmers and throbs in thy delicate throat;</div> - <div class="verse">Mellow my soul’s despair!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -</div><!--end Fenollosa--> -<!--341.png--> - -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Torrence--> -<h3><a name="Torrence" id="Torrence"></a><abbr title="Sixteen">XVI</abbr></h3> - -<h4>RIDGELY TORRENCE</h4> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">MR. RIDGELY TORRENCE, whose -poetic drama, <cite>El Dorado</cite>, brought -him generous recognition, gave earlier -hostages to fame in the shape of a small volume -with the caption, <cite>The House of a Hundred -Lights</cite>, and gravely subtitled, “A Psalm of -Experience after Reading a Couplet of Bidpai.”</p> - -<p>Into this little book were packed some -charming whimsicalities, together with some -graver thoughts—though not too grave—and -some fancies full tender. It had, however, -sufficient resemblance to Omar Khayyám to -bring it under a Philistine indictment, though -its point of view was in reality very different. -It was a clever bit of ruminating upon the -Where and How and Why and Whence, without -attempting to arrive at these mysteries, but -rather to laugh at those who did. Mr. Torrence -is so artistic as to know that only the -masters may go upon the road in search of the -Secret, and that the average wayfarer may not -<!--342.png--> -hope to overtake it, but rather to suggest it by -a hint now and then. The philosophy of <cite>The -House of a Hundred Lights</cite> is in the main of -the jocular sort; and Bidpai of indefinite -memory may well chuckle to himself in some -remote celestial corner that any couplet of his -should have been so potent as to produce it.</p> - -<p>Mr. Torrence has not, that I can see, filched -the fire from Omar’s altar to kindle his hundred -lights; this, for illustration, is pure whimsicality, -not fatalistic philosophy, as a similar -thought would be in Omar:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0a">“Doubt everything,” the Thinker said,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">When I was parch’d with Reason’s drought.</div> - <div class="verse">Said he, “Trust me, I’ve probed these things;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Have utter faith in me,—and doubt!”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Though the sky reel and Day dissolve,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And though a myriad suns fade out,</div> - <div class="verse">One thing of earth seems permanent</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And founded on Belief: ’tis—Doubt.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>But best of all is that quatrain in which he -exonerates Providence:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">What! doubt the Master Workman’s hand</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Because my fleshly ills increase?</div> - <div class="verse">No; for there still remains one chance</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That I am not His Masterpiece.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> -<!--343.png--> - -<div class="break figcenter"> - <a name="i343" id="i343"></a><img src="images/i343.jpg" - width="500" height="751" - alt="Illustration of Ridgely Torrence" - title="Ridgely Torrence" - /> -</div><!--end illustration--> - -<!--344.png--> -<p>If a cleverer bit of humor than that has been -put into four lines, I have not seen it, nor a -<!--345.png--> -more delightful epitome than this of the inconsistent -moralizing of youth:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Yet what have I to do with sweets</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Like Love, or Wine, or Fame’s dear curse?</div> - <div class="verse">For I can do without all things</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Except—except the universe.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Mr. Torrence’s quatrains penetrate into the -nebulous dreams of youth, or rather, interpret -them, since <cite>The House of a Hundred Lights</cite> -was reared in that charméd air, and carry -one through the realm of rainbows to the -land of the gray light, to which every pilgrim -comes anon. Love receives its toll, the -costliest and most precious as youth fares on; -and Mr. Torrence proves himself a poet in his -picture of this tribute-giving at the road-house -of Love. Not only the visioning, but the -lucidity of the words, and their soft consonance, -prove him sensitive to the values of -cadence and simplicity:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Last night I heard a wanton girl</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Call softly down unto her lover,</div> - <div class="verse">Or call at least unto the shade</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of Cypress where she knew he’d hover.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Said she, “Come forth, my Perfect One;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The old bugs sleep and take their ease;</div> - <div class="verse">We shall have honey overmuch</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Without the buzzing of the bees.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -<!--346.png--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Ah, Foolish Ones, I heard your vows</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And whispers underneath the tree.</div> - <div class="verse">Her father is more wakeful than</div> - <div class="verse indent2">She ever dreamed, for I—was he.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I saw them kissing in the shade</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And knew the sum of all my lore:</div> - <div class="verse">God gave them Youth, God gave them Love,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And even God can give no more.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>But much more delicate is this quatrain which -follows the last, and traces the unfolding of a -young girl’s nature in the years that shape the -dream. It is a bit of genuine artistry:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">At first, she loved nought else but flowers,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And then—she only loved the Rose;</div> - <div class="verse">And then—herself alone; and then—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">She knew not what, but now—she knows.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>This is a deftly fashioned lyric, rather than -a stanza conjoined to others, though, for -that matter, the thread of conjunction in the -poem is slight; almost any of the quatrains -might be detached without loss of value save -in atmosphere, as they are arranged with a -certain logical view and grow a bit more -serious as they progress. We spoke, for instance, -of the path of youth leading to the -grayer light, and incidentally that Youth acquaints -himself with pain as a wayfellow:</p> - -<!--347.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Yet even for Youth’s fevered blood</div> - <div class="verse indent2">There is a certain balm here in</div> - <div class="verse">This maiden’s mouth: O sweet disease!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And happy, happy medicine!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And maiden, should these bitter tears</div> - <div class="verse indent2">You shed be burdensome, know this:</div> - <div class="verse">There is a cure worth all the pain,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">—To-night—beneath the moon—a kiss.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Girl, when he gives you kisses twain,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Use one, and let the other stay;</div> - <div class="verse">And hoard it, for moons die, red fades,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And you may need a kiss—some day.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>No one will deny an individual grace of touch -upon these strings. The artistic value of the -quatrains is unequal; they would bear weeding; -and there is a hint of spent impulse in -the latter part of the volume, though it may -be only by virtue of the grouping that the -cleverer stanzas chance to be massed toward -the front, as they were probably not written -in the order in which they appear. Here -and there in the latter part of the volume -one comes upon some of Mr. Torrence’s most -unique fancies; and, too, if they do not always -give one the same pleasurable surprise, they -are more thoughtful and the verities are in -them. Indeed, Mr. Torrence’s “Psalm of Experience” -is not altogether born of a happy -<!--348.png--> -<em>insouciance</em>; look a bit more closely and you -penetrate the mask, and a face looks out at -you, like to your own face, questioning and -uncertain. We should be glad to quote more -of Mr. Torrence’s quatrains, but must look at -<cite>El Dorado</cite>, his more mature work, which won so -kindly a reception from the critics and public.</p> - -<p>It would be idle to assert that <cite>El Dorado</cite> is -a great achievement, but it is a fine achievement, -and notably so as a first incursion into -a field beset with snares for the unwary. Into -some of these Mr. Torrence has fallen, but the -majority of them he has avoided and has proven -his right to fare upon the way he has elected.</p> - -<p>As to plot, one may say that <cite>El Dorado</cite> is a -moving tale, full of incident and action, and -sharply defining the characters before the -mind. The action is focused to a definite point -in each scene, making an effective climax, and -in the subtler shading of the story, where Perth, -the released prisoner, mistaking the love of -Beatrix d’Estrada for the young officer of the -expedition, thinks it a requital of his own, Mr. -Torrence has shown himself sensitive to the -effects that are psychological rather than objective; -and, indeed, in this quality, as evinced -throughout the drama in the character of Perth, -the essence of Mr. Torrence’s art consists.</p> - -<!--349.png--> -<p>It is more or less an easy artifice for the -dramatist to reduce his hero to the verge of -despair just as his heroine is conveniently near -to save him from leaping over a precipice; but -artifice becomes art when the impalpable emotions -of a nature lost almost to its own consciousness -begin to be called from diffusion and -given direction and meaning. While the characterization -of Perth is not altogether free from -strained sentiment, one recognizes in it a higher -achievement than went to the making of the -more spectacular crises of the play. The dramatic -materials of <cite>El Dorado</cite> are in the main -skilfully handled, and there is logical congruity -in the situations as they evolve, assuming -the premise of the plot. As an acting play, -however, it would require the further introduction -of women characters, Beatrix sustaining -alone, in its present cast, the feminine element -of the drama.</p> - -<p>As to the play as literature, as poetry, there -is much to commend, and somewhat to deplore. -If it remain as literature, it must contain elements -that transcend those of its action; if a -well-developed plot were literature, then many -productions of the stage that are purely ephemeral -would take their place as works of art. -Between the dramatic and the theatrical there -<!--350.png--> -is a nice distinction, and only an artist may -wholly avoid the pitfalls of the latter. Mr. -Torrence’s drama seems to me to blend the -two qualities. For illustration the following -outpouring of Coronado, when he returns for -a last hour with Beatrix, then disguising to -follow his army, and finds her faithless to -the tryst, is purely melodramatic. The Friar -Ubeda reminds him that the trumpets call -him, whereupon Coronado exclaims:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">It is no call, but rather do their sounds</div> - <div class="verse">Lash me like brazen whips away from her.</div> - <div class="verse">They shriek two names to me, Honour and Hell;</div> - <div class="verse">They drive me with two words, Duty and Death.</div> - <div class="verse">These are the things that I can only find</div> - <div class="verse">Outside her arms.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>In the same scene, however, occurs this fine -passage, compact of hopelessness, and having -in it the whole heart-history of Perth, who -speaks it. He is urged by the friar to hasten -that they may join the expedition as it passes -the walls:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse"><span class="sc">Perth.</span> It would be useless.</div> - <div class="verse"><span class="sc">Ubeda.</span>  In what way?</div> - <div class="verse"><span class="sc">Perth.</span> <span class="ss" style="width:6em"> </span>If to go would be an ill,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">I need not hasten; it will come to me.</div> - <div class="verse indent4">And if a good, they will have gone too far;</div> - <div class="verse indent4">I could not overtake them.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<!--351.png--> -<p>This passage recalls another memorably fine,—that -in which Perth upon his release would -return to his dungeon, being oppressed by the -light:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I seem to have to bear the sky’s whole arch,</div> - <div class="verse">Like Atlas, on my shoulders.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>This is divining a sensation with subtle sympathy. -But to return to the consideration of -the literature of Mr. Torrence’s drama from the -standpoint of his characters. Beatrix is a -natural, elemental type of girl, untroubled by -subtleties. Impulse and will are one in her -understanding, and she counts it no shame to -follow where they lead. The love that exists -between herself and Coronado discloses no -great emotional features, no complexities; but -it is not strained nor unnatural, and in the -scene where Beatrix discloses her identity to -Coronado, as he in desperation at the failure of -the quest for <cite>El Dorado</cite> is about to throw himself -over the cliff,—while the situation itself -has elements of melodrama, the dialogue is -wholly free from it, and indeed contains some -of the truest poetry in the play. Coronado, -with distraught fancy, thinks it the spirit of -Beatrix by whom he is delivered, and fears to -approach her lest he dissolve the wraith, whereupon -<!--352.png--> -Beatrix, among other reassurances, speaks -these lovely lines:—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Have the snow-textured arms of dreams these pulses?</div> - <div class="verse">Has the pale spirit of sleep a mouth like this?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The counter-passion of Mr. Torrence’s drama, -in which its tragedy lies, the passion of -Perth for Beatrix, is so manifestly foredoomed -on the side of sentiment that one looks upon -it purely from a psychological standpoint, but -from that standpoint it is handled so skilfully -that the dramatic feeling of the play centres -chiefly in this character. The Friar Ubeda is -also strongly drawn, and one of the motive -forces of the drama. It is he who reveals to -Perth that he has a son born after his incarceration -who is none other than the young leader -of the expedition, Don Francis Coronado, although -his identity is not revealed by the priest, -and only the clew given that on his hand is -branded a crucifix, as a foolish penance for -some boyhood sin. Many of the finest passages -of the play are spoken between Perth and -Ubeda.</p> - -<p>The temptation to Shakespearize into which -nearly all young dramatists fall, Mr. Torrence -has wholly avoided, nor has his verse any of -the grandiloquent strain that often mars dramatic -<!--353.png--> -poetry. It is at times over-sustained, -but is flexible and holds in the main to simplicity -of effect. Such a passage as the following -shows it in its finest quality. Here -are feeling, consistent beauty, and dignity of -word. The lines are spoken by Perth in -reply to Coronado’s parting injunction to remember -that the Font is there, pointing in -the direction of their quest:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">O God, ’tis everywhere!</div> - <div class="verse">But where for me? Youth, love, or hope fulfilled,</div> - <div class="verse">Whatever dew distils from out its depths,</div> - <div class="verse">Sparkles till it has lured my eager lips</div> - <div class="verse">And then sinks back. ’Tis in his desolate heart—</div> - <div class="verse">And yet I may not drink. ’Tis in her eyes—</div> - <div class="verse">And yet my own cannot be cooled by it.</div> - <div class="verse">The wilderness of life is full of wells,</div> - <div class="verse">But each is barred and walled about and guarded.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - <div class="verse">The Source! Can it be true? Oh, may it not be?</div> - <div class="verse">May it not at last await me in that garden</div> - <div class="verse">To which we bleed our way through all this waste?—</div> - <div class="verse">One cup—some little chalice that will hold</div> - <div class="verse">One drop that will not shudder into mist</div> - <div class="verse">Till I have drained it.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Passages of this sort might be duplicated in -<cite>El Dorado</cite>, were they not too long to quote -with the context necessary to them.</p> - -<p>The passage cited above holds a deep suggestion -in the lines:—</p> - -<!--354.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">One drop that will not shudder into mist</div> - <div class="verse">Till I have drained it.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Here is human longing epitomized; and again -the words in which Coronado speaks, as he -thinks, to the shade of Beatrix,—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">No, I will no more strive to anything</div> - <div class="verse">And so dispel it,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>are subtly typical of the fear in all joy, the -trembling dread to grasp, lest it elude us. -That, too, is a fine passage in which Coronado -replies to Perth, who seeks to cheer him with -thought of the Water of all Dreams:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Ah, that poor phantom Source! I never sought it.</div> - <div class="verse">I have found the thing called Youth too deadly bitter</div> - <div class="verse">To grasp at further tasting.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>“The thing called Youth” is often “deadly -bitter;” and Mr. Torrence has well suggested it -in the revulsion from hope to despair which -follows upon the knowledge that El Dorado is -but a land of Dead-Sea fruit. The atmosphere -with which Mr. Torrence has invested the -scene where all are waiting for the dawn to -lift and reveal the valley of their desire is -charged with mystery and portent; one becomes -a tense, breathless member of the group upon -the cliff, and not a spectator.</p> - -<!--355.png--> -<p>Mr. Torrence is occasionally led into temptation, -artistically speaking, by the seduction of -his imagination, and is carried a bit beyond the -point of discretion, as in this passage taken from -the scene where the expedition awaits the dawn -on the morning when its dream is expected to -be realized. Perth and Coronado are looking -to the mist to lift. Perth speaks:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4">And now in that far edge, as though a seed</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Were sown, there is a hint of budding gray,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">A bud not wholly innocent of night,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">And yet a color.</div> - - <div class="verse"><span class="sc">Cor.</span><span class="ss" style="width:1em"> </span>But see, it dies!</div> - - <div class="verse"><span class="sc">Perth.</span> Yet now it blooms again,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Whiter, and with a rumor of hidden trumpets.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Buds in the common day do not usually -bloom with a “rumor of hidden trumpets.” -In the same scene Coronado asks:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4"><span class="ss" style="width:8em"> </span>Can you not see</div> - <div class="verse indent4">The gem which is the mother of all dawn?</div> - <div class="verse"><span class="sc">Perth.</span> There is some gleam.</div> - <div class="verse"><span class="sc">Cor.</span><span class="ss" style="width:10em"> </span>It waits one moment yet</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Before it thunders upon our blinded sight!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>It is at least a new conception that <em>gems</em> should -<em>thunder</em> upon one’s <em>blinded sight</em>! In another -scene Mr. Torrence has the “devouring sun” -deepen its “wormlike course” to the world’s -edge. Again, his heroine’s mouth is a little -<!--356.png--> -tremulous “from all the troubled violets in -her veins.” We are a bit uncertain, too, as to -the significance of a “throne-galled night;” -but these are, after all, minor matters when -weighed with the prevailing grace and beauty -of Mr. Torrence’s lines.</p> - -<p>The last act of <cite>El Dorado</cite> has to my mind -less of strength and beauty than its predecessors, -and dramatically one may question -its conception and construction. In a general -study of Mr. Torrence’s plot it seemed -that the situations were all developed to the -best advantage, but an exception must, I think, -be made in regard to the last act. One of the -vital requisites of drama is that the suspense -of the action shall hold to the end; there may -be minor <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">dénouements</i>, but the plot must not -be so constructed that the element of mystery -shall have been eliminated ere the close, and -this is exactly what has been done in <cite>El -Dorado</cite>. The two great scenes have already -taken place: <cite>El Dorado</cite> has been proven a myth, -and Beatrix has been united to her lover; there -remains but one thread to unravel, the love of -Perth for Beatrix; and of that the audience has -already the full knowledge and clew, having -seen her rejoined to her lover. The only motive -of the last act is that the audience may see the -<!--357.png--> -effect upon Perth when the revelation of his -loss is made to him; and it is more than a -question whether a scene depending so entirely -upon the psychology of the situation could hold -as a climax to the play.</p> - -<p>There is a revelation, however, logically -demanded by the premises of the plot, in -expectation of which the interest is held, and -in whose nonfulfilment I cannot but think that -Mr. Torrence has lost the opportunity for the -most humanly true and effective climax of his -play,—the disclosure to Coronado of his parentage. -Ubeda, earlier in the drama, has enjoined -Perth not to reveal his identity to his -son, lest it injure his public career; but in the -hour when the supreme loss has come, when -Beatrix, as the wife of Coronado, rejoins the -homeward detachment of Perth and his friend, -and the mortal stroke has fallen,—then Ubeda -should have declared the relationship and -placed to Perth’s lips ere he died the one -draught that would not “shudder into mist” -ere he had drained it,—the draught of love -from the heart of his child. The bird of hope -and light should hover just above the darkest -tragedy,—should brood above it with healing -in its wings. This is partially realized in the -lines in which Mr. Torrence has chosen to veil, -<!--358.png--> -and yet hint, the relationship which Coronado -does not understand:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse"><span class="sc">Perth.</span> At last I see! always I seemed to know</div> - <div class="verse indent4">That one day,—though I knew not when,—some hour,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">I should behold and know it and possess it,—</div> - <div class="verse indent4">The Font!</div> - - <div class="verse"><span class="sc">Cor.</span><span class="ss" style="width:1em"> </span>No, it is snow and wine.</div> - - <div class="verse"><span class="sc">Beat.</span><span class="ss" style="width:11em"> </span>He wanders!</div> - - <div class="verse"><span class="sc">Perth.</span> I had not thought to find it so at last,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Yet here, and here alone, it has arisen</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Within these two—my only youth! Yes—now!</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Upon this hour and place at last! The Source!</div> - <div class="verse indent4">It is a barren place—yet flowers are here,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Those which for certain days I seemed to lose;</div> - <div class="verse indent4">A desolate tender fatherhood has here</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Found growth, and bears, but all too piteously,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">A futile bud.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>The impression left upon one by <cite>El Dorado</cite> -is that of poetic distinction, and the drama in -its character drawing, plot and action is an -augury of finer possibilities in the same branch -of art.</p> - -</div><!--end Torrence--> -<!--359.png--> - -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Hall--> -<h3><a name="Hall" id="Hall"></a><abbr title="Seventeen">XVII</abbr></h3> - -<h4>GERTRUDE HALL</h4> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">MISS GERTRUDE HALL is a poet -of the intimate mood, the personal -touch, one who writes for herself -primarily, and not for others. One fancies -that verses such as these were penned in -musing, introspective moments in the form in -which they flitted through the mind, and were -indesecrate of further touch. They are as -words warm upon the lips, putting one in -magnetic <em>rapport</em> with a speaker; and their -defects, as well as distinctions, are such as -spring from this spontaneity. Frequently a -change of word or line, readily suggested to -the reader, would have made technically perfect -what now bears a flaw; but these lapses are -neither so marked nor so frequent as to detract -from the prevailing grace of the verse, and but -serve to illustrate the point in question,—their -unpremeditated note and freedom from posing.</p> - -<p>One is not so much arrested by the inevitable -image and word in these lyrics of the -<!--360.png--> -<cite>Age of Fairygold</cite>, as by the feeling, the mood, -that pervades them. It is not a buoyant mood, -nor yet a sombre one, but rather the expression -of a varied impulse, a melody of many stops, -such as one might play for himself at evening, -wandering from theme to theme. The poems -convey the impression of coming in touch with -a personality rather than a book, the veil between -the author and reader being impalpable; -and this, their most obvious distinction, is a -quality in which many poets of the present day -are lacking, either from a mistaken delicacy in -regarding their own inner life as an isolated -mood not of import to others, or in robbing -it of personality and warmth by technical -elaboration.</p> - -<p>One may confide to the world by means of -art what he would not reveal to his closest -friend, and yet keep inviolate his spiritual selfhood; -but to withhold this disclosure, to become -but a poet of externals, is to abrogate -one’s claim to speak at all; for a life, however -meagre, has something unique and essential -to convey, and while one delights in the artist -observation, the vivid pictorial touch, it must -not be divorced from the subjective. The -poems of Miss Hall are happily blended of the -objective and subjective; here, for illustration, -<!--361.png--> -is a lighter note bringing one in thrall to that -seductive, tantalizing charm, that irresistible -allurement, of the Vita Nuova of the year:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I try to fix my eyes upon my book,</div> - <div class="verse">But just outside a budding spray</div> - <div class="verse">Flaunts its new leaves as if to say,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">“Look!—look!”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I trim my pen, I make it fine and neat;</div> - <div class="verse">There comes a flutter of brown wings.</div> - <div class="verse">A little bird alights and sings,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">“Sweet!—sweet!”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O little bird, O go away! be dumb!</div> - <div class="verse">For I must ponder certain lines;</div> - <div class="verse">And straight a nodding flower makes signs,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">“Come!—come!”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">O Spring, let me alone! O bird, bloom, beam,</div> - <div class="verse">“I have no time to dream!” I cry;</div> - <div class="verse">The echo breathes a soft, long sigh,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">“Dream!—dream!”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>The beautiful lyric,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">“Ah, worshipped one, ah, faithful Spring!”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>tempers this blitheness to a pensive strain, -though only as one may introduce a note of -minor in a staccato melody. In another bit of -verse celebrating the renewing year, and noting -how joy lays his finger on one’s lips and makes -him mute, occur these delicate lines:</p> - -<!--362.png--> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Thrice happy, oh, thrice happy still the Earth</div> - <div class="verse">That can express herself in roses, yea,</div> - <div class="verse">Can make the lily tell her inmost thought!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>One nature lyric of two stanzas, despite the -fact that its cadence halts in the final couplet, -is compact of atmosphere; and to one who has -been companioned by the pines, it brings an -aromatic breath, full of stimulus:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The sun in the pine is sleeping, sleeping.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The drops of resin gleam….</div> - <div class="verse">There’s a mighty wizard with perfumes keeping</div> - <div class="verse indent2">My brain benumbed in a dream!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The wind in the pine is rushing, rushing,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Fine and unfettered and wild….</div> - <div class="verse">There’s a mighty mother imperiously hushing</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Her fretful, uneasy child!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>These lines give over pictures of mornings in -the radiant sunlight of the North, that cloudless, -lifted air; and “The drops of resin gleam,” -has the same touch of transmutation that some -suggestion of the brine has for the exiled native -of the seaboard.</p> - -<p>Miss Hall’s themes are not sought far afield, -but bring, in nearly all the poems, a hint of -personal experience; nature, love, spiritual -emotion, blending with lighter moods and -fancies, comprise the record of the <cite>Age of -Fairygold</cite>. We have glanced at the nature -<!--363.png--> -verse; that upon love is subtler in touch, but -holds to the intimate note distinguishing all of -her work. The second of these stanzas contains -a graphic image:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Be good to me! If all the world united</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Should bend its powers to gird my youth with pain,</div> - <div class="verse">Still might I fly to thee, Dear, and be righted—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">But if thou wrong’st me, where shall I complain?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I am the dove a random shot surprises,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That from her flight she droppeth quivering,</div> - <div class="verse">And in the deadly arrow recognizes</div> - <div class="verse indent2">A blood-wet feather—once in her own wing!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>In her poem called “The Rival” human nature -speaks a direct word, particularly in the contradiction -of the last stanza. The lines have -the quality of speech rather than of print:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">This is the hardest of my fate:</div> - <div class="verse indent2">She’s better whom he doth prefer</div> - <div class="verse">Than I am that he worshipped late,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">As well as so much prettier,</div> - <div class="verse">So much more fortunate!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">He’ll not repent; oh, you will see,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">She’ll never give him cause to grieve!</div> - <div class="verse">I dream that he comes back to me,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Leaving her,—but he’ll never leave!</div> - <div class="verse">Hopelessly sweet is she.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">So that if in my place she stood,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">She’d spare to curse him, she’d forgive!</div> -<!--364.png--> - <div class="verse">I loathe her, but I know she would—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And so will I, God, as I live,</div> - <div class="verse">Not she alone is good!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>The ethical inconsistency of the above stanza, -“I loathe her,” and “Not she alone is good,” -is so human and racy with suggestion of these -paradoxical moods of ours, that the stanza, -together with its companion lines, becomes a -leaf torn from the book of life.</p> - -<p>In its spiritual quality Miss Hall’s work -shows, perhaps, its finest distinction: brave, -strong, acquiescent, inducing in one a nobler -mood,—such is the spirit of the volume. Its -philosophy is free from didacticism or moralizing; -indeed, it should scarcely be called -philosophy, but rather the personal record of -experiences touching the inner life,—phases -of feeling interpreted in their spiritual import. -These lines express the mood:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Then lead me, Friend. Here is my hand,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Not in dumb resignation lent</div> - <div class="verse">Because Thee one cannot withstand—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In love, Lord, with complete consent.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - <div class="verse">Lead. If we come to the cliff’s crest,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And I hear deep below—O deep!—</div> - <div class="verse">The torrent’s roar, and “Leap!” Thou say’st,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I will not question—I will leap.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<!--365.png--> -<p>The last stanza, in its vivid illustrative quality, -is an admirable expression of spiritual -assurance.</p> - -<p>Another brief lyric rings with the true note -of valor, declaring the eternal potency of hope, -and one’s obligation to pass on his unspent -faith, though falling by the way:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Could I not be the pilgrim</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To reach my saint’s abode,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I would make myself the road</div> - <div class="verse">To lead some other pilgrim</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Where my soul’s treasure glowed.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Could not I in the eager van</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Be the stalwart pioneer</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Who points where the way is clear,</div> - <div class="verse">I would be the man who sinks in the swamp,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And cries to the rest, “Not here!”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>From an Eastern Apologue Miss Hall has -drawn a charming illustration of the power of -influence and association:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">“Thou smell’st not ill, thou object plain,</div> - <div class="verse">Thou art a small, pretentious grain</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Of amber, I suppose.”</div> - <div class="verse">“Nay, my good friend, I am by birth</div> - <div class="verse">A common clod of scentless earth<a name="chg4" id="chg4"></a>….</div> - <div class="verse indent4">But I lived with the Rose.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>In the poems of a blither note, Miss Hall -excels, having a swift and sprightly fancy and -<!--366.png--> -a clever aptness of phrase, which, in <cite>Allegretto</cite>, -her collection of lighter verse, reveals itself in -charming witticisms and whimsicalities. Her -children’s poems are delicate in touch and -fancy, and quaintly humorous. Her lines, -“To A Weed,” in the second collection, tuck -away a moral in their sprightly comment; indeed, -a bit of philosophy as to being glad in -the sun and taking one’s due of life, despite -limitations, which renders them more than the -merry apostrophe they seem:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">You bold thing! thrusting ’neath the very nose</div> - <div class="verse">Of her fastidious majesty, the rose,</div> - <div class="verse">Even in the best ordainéd garden bed,</div> - <div class="verse">Unauthorized, your smiling little head!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The gardener, mind! will come in his big boots,</div> - <div class="verse">And drag you up by your rebellious roots,</div> - <div class="verse">And cast you forth to shrivel in the sun,</div> - <div class="verse">Your daring quelled, your little weed’s life done.</div> - - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> - - <div class="verse">Meantime—ah, yes! the air is very blue,</div> - <div class="verse">And gold the light, and diamond the dew,—</div> - <div class="verse">You laugh and courtesy in your worthless way,</div> - <div class="verse">And you are gay, ah, so exceeding gay!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">You argue, in your manner of a weed,</div> - <div class="verse">You did not make yourself grow from a seed;</div> - <div class="verse">You fancy you’ve a claim to standing-room,</div> - <div class="verse">You dream yourself a right to breathe and bloom.</div> - - <div class="verse indent2">·  ·  ·  ·  ·</div> -<!--367.png--> - <div class="verse">You know, you weed, I quite agree with you,</div> - <div class="verse">I am a weed myself, and I laugh too,—</div> - <div class="verse">Both, just as long as we can shun his eye,</div> - <div class="verse">Let’s sniff at the old gardener trudging by!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>In the art of compression, in consistent and restrained -imagery, in clearness and simplicity, -and in freedom from affectation, Miss Hall’s -work is altogether commendable. In technique -she makes no ambitious flights, employing -almost wholly the more direct and simple forms -and metres, but these suit the intimate mood -and singing note of her themes better than -more intricate measures. Technically her chief -defect is in the disregard which she frequently -shows for the demands of metre. I say disregard, -for it is evident from the grace of -the majority of her work that she allows herself -to depart from metrical canons at her -own will, with the occasional result of jagged -lines which may have seemed more expressive -to Miss Hall than those of a smoother cadence, -but which are likely to offend the ear of one -sensitive to rhythm. These lapses are not, -however, so frequent or conspicuous as to constitute -a general indictment against the work.</p> - -<p>The reflective predominates over the imaginative -in the <cite>Age of Fairygold</cite>, notwithstanding -the suggestion of the title. Indeed, there is a -<!--368.png--> -subtly pensive note running through the volume, -which remains in one’s mind as a characteristic -impression when the lighter notes are forgotten. -They are not poems of vivid color, imagination, -nor passion, though touched with all. They -are not incrusted with verbal gems, though -the diction is fitting and graceful. They have -no daringly inventive metres, though the form -is always in harmony with the thought,—in -short, the poems of Miss Hall are such as -please and satisfy without startling. They are -leaves from the book of the heart, and admit us -to many a kindred experience. These lines, -in which we must take leave of them, carry -the wistful, tender, sympathetic note, which distinguishes -much of her work:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Though true it be these splendid dreams of mine</div> - <div class="verse">Are but as bubbles little children blow,</div> - <div class="verse">And that Fate laughs to see them wax and shine,</div> - <div class="verse">Then holds out her pale finger—and they go:</div> - <div class="verse">One bitter drop falls with a tear-like gleam,—</div> - <div class="verse">Still, dreaming is so sweet! Still, let me dream!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Though true, to love may be definéd thus:</div> - <div class="verse">To open wide your safe defenceless hall</div> - <div class="verse">To some great guest full-armed and dangerous,</div> - <div class="verse">With power to ravage, to deface it all,</div> - <div class="verse">A cast at dice, whether or no he will,—</div> - <div class="verse">Still, loving is so sweet! Let me love still!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -</div><!--end Hall--> -<!--369.png--> -<div class="p4 break"><!--start Upson--> -<h3><a name="Upson" id="Upson"></a><abbr title="Eighteen">XVIII</abbr></h3> - -<h4>ARTHUR UPSON</h4> - -<p class="p2 dropcap">WHEN a volume of verse by Mr. -Arthur Upson, entitled <cite>Octaves In -An Oxford Garden</cite>, was first brought -to my notice by a poet friend with what seemed -before reading it a somewhat extravagant comment -as to its art, it evoked a certain scepticism -as to whether the poet in question would -be equally enthusiastic, had he read, marked, -learned, and inwardly digested some eighty or -more volumes of verse within a given period, -thus rendering a more rarely flavored compound -necessary to excite anew the poetry-sated -appetite; but Mr. Upson’s Octaves proved to -be a brew into which had fallen this magic -drop, and moments had gone the way of oblivion -until the charm was drained.</p> - -<p>The volume consists of some thirty Octaves -written in Wadham Garden at Oxford in the -reminiscent month of September; and so do -they fix the mood of the place that one marvels -at the restfulness, the brooding stillness, the -<!--370.png--> -flavor of time and association which Mr. Upson -has managed to infuse into his musing, -sabbatical lines. One regrets that the term -“atmosphere” has become so cheapened, for in -the exigent moment when no other will serve -as well, he has the depressing consciousness -that virtue has gone from the word he must -employ. Despite this fact, it is atmosphere, in -its most pervasive sense, that imbues Mr. Upson’s -Octaves, as the first will attest:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The day was like a Sabbath in a swoon.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Under late summer’s blue were fair cloud-things</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Poising aslant upon their charméd wings,</div> - <div class="verse">Arrested by some backward thought of June.</div> - <div class="verse">Softly I trod and with repentant shoon,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Half fearfully in sweet imaginings,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Where lay, as might some golden court of kings,</div> - <div class="verse">The old Quadrangle paved with afternoon.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>What else than a touch of genius is in those -three words, “paved with afternoon,” as fixing -the tempered light, the drowsy calm, of the -place?</p> - -<p>The Octaves are written in groups, the -poems of each having a slight dependence upon -one another, so that to be quoted they require -the connecting thought. In many cases also -the first or the second quatrain of the Octave -is more artistic than its companion lines, as in -<!--371.png--> -the one which follows, where the first four lines -hold the creative beauty:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">As here among the well-remembering boughs,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Where every leaf is tongue to ancient breath,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Speech of the yesteryears forgathereth,</div> - <div class="verse">And all the winds are long-fulfilléd vows—</div> - <div class="verse">So from of old those ringing names arouse</div> - <div class="verse indent2">A whispering in the foliate shades of death,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Where History her golden rosary saith,</div> - <div class="verse">Glowing, the light of Memory on her brows.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>This Octave illustrates also what may be -made as a general statement regarding its companions -in the volume, that while the glamour -may not rest equally upon the poems, they do -not lack charm and distinction even in their -less creative touches; and there are few in -which there does not lurk some surprise in -the way of picturesque phrasing.</p> - -<p>In the ordering of his cadences Mr. Upson -shows a musician’s sense of rhythm; note, -for example, how the transposition in the -following lines enhances their melody and conveys -in the initial one the sense of a river -flowing:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">It was the lip of murmuring Thames along</div> - <div class="verse indent2">When new lights sought the wood all strangely fair,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Such quiet lights as saints transfigured wear</div> - <div class="verse">In minster windows crept the glades among.</div> -<!--372.png--> - <div class="verse">And far as from some hazy hill, yet strong,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Methought an upland shepherd piped it there,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Waking a silvern echo from her lair:</div> - <div class="verse">“Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song!”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Mr. Upson not only obeys by artist instinct -the laws of counterpoint, but employs the -word with the music in it, and his effects are -achieved by the innate harmony of his diction -and the poetry in the theme he is shaping. -Take as an illustration of this his Octave -upon the “Roman Glassware Preserved in the -Ashmolean.” Doubtless those fragments of -crystal, sheathed, by centuries in the earth, in a -translucent film through which shine tints of -mother-of-pearl, have met the eyes of many -of us, but it needed a poet to deduce from them -this illustration:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Fair crystal cups are dug from earth’s old crust,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Shattered but lovely, for, at price of all</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Their shameful exile from the banquet-hall,</div> - <div class="verse">They have been bargaining beauties from the dust.</div> - <div class="verse">So, dig my life but deep enough, you must</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Find broken friendships round its inner wall—</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Which once my careless hand let slip and fall—</div> - <div class="verse">Brave with faint memories, rich in rainbow-rust!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>One notes in Mr. Upson’s work a restraint -that is the apogee of good taste. He conveys -the mood, whether of love or other emotion, -<!--373.png--> -and makes his feeling another’s, but the veil of -the temple is never wholly rent; one may but -divine the ministries and sacrifices of its altar. -He is an idealist, not yet come to the place of -disillusion; though wandering at times near to -the border of that chilly realm, he wraps his -seamless robe of dreams more closely about -him and turns back. Mr. Upson is not, however, -an unthinking singer to whom all is cheer -because he has not the insight to enter into -those phases of life that have not yet touched -him; on the contrary, his note is not a blithe one, -it is meditative, inclining to the philosophical, -and tinctured with a certain pensiveness.</p> - -<p>Now and again the cosmos thrusts forward a -suggestion which becomes the motive of one of -the Octaves, as when the garden breeze loosens -from the chink a</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4"> … measure of earth</div> - <div class="verse">To match my body’s dust when its rebirth</div> - <div class="verse">To sod restores old functions I forsook,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>which, in turn, induces a reflection upon the -microcosm:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Strange that a sod for just a thrill or two</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Should ever be seduced into the round</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of change in which its present state is found</div> - <div class="verse">In this my form! forsake its quiet, true</div> -<!--374.png--> - <div class="verse">And fruitfullest retirement, to go through</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The heat, the strain, the languor and the wound!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Forget soft rain to hear the stormier sound,—</div> - <div class="verse">Exchange for burning tears its peaceful dew!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Again one has the applied illustration both -of the pains and requitals that cling about the -sod in its “strange estate of flesh,” in these -lines declaring that</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Some dust of Eden eddies round us yet.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Some clay o’ the Garden, clinging in the breast,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Down near the heart yet bides unmanifest.</div> - <div class="verse">Last eve in gardens strange to me I let</div> - <div class="verse">The path lead far; and lo, my vision met</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Old forfeit hopes. I, as on homeward quest,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">By recognizing trees was bidden rest,</div> - <div class="verse">And pitying leaves looked down and sighed, “Forget!”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>Mr. Upson has one of his characteristic touches -in the words “old forfeit hopes,” pictured as -starting suddenly before one in the new path -that has beguiled him. In looking over the Octaves, -which embrace a variety of themes, one -doubts if his selections have adequately represented -the finely textured lines, pure and individual -diction, and the ripe and mellow flavor -of it all.</p> - -<p>Mr. Upson’s work has had its meed of recognition -abroad: his first volume, <cite>Westwind Songs</cite>, -contained a warmly appreciative introduction by -<!--375.png--> -“Carmen Sylva,” the poet-queen of Roumania, -and his drama, <cite>The City</cite>, just issued in Edinburgh, -is introduced by Count Lützow of the -University of Prague, a well-known scholar -and authority upon Bohemian literature. Taking -a backward glance at the first volume -before looking at <cite>The City</cite>, one finds few of -the ear-marks of a first collection of poetry, -which it must become the subsequent effort -of the writer to live down.</p> - -<p>The lines “When We Said Good-Bye” are -among the truest in feeling, though almost -too intimate to quote; and this sympathetic -lyric, entitled “Old Gardens,” has a delicate -grace:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">The white rose tree that spent its musk</div> - <div class="verse indent2">For lovers’ sweeter praise,</div> - <div class="verse">The stately walks we sought at dusk,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Have missed thee many days.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Again, with once-familiar feet,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I tread the old parterre—</div> - <div class="verse">But, ah, its bloom is now less sweet</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Than when thy face was there.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I hear the birds of evening call;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I take the wild perfume;</div> - <div class="verse">I pluck a rose—to let it fall</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And perish in the gloom.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> -<!--376.png--> - -<p><cite>Westwind Songs</cite>, however, waft other thoughts -than those of love. There is a heavier freight -in this “Thought of Stevenson”:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">High and alone I stood on Calton Hill</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Above the scene that was so dear to him</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Whose exile dreams of it made exile dim.</div> - <div class="verse">October wooed the folded valleys till</div> - <div class="verse">In mist they blurred, even as our eyes upfill</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Under a too sweet memory; spires did swim,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And gables rust-red, on the gray sea’s brim—</div> - <div class="verse">But on these heights the air was soft and still.</div> - <div class="verse">Yet not all still: an alien breeze did turn</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Here as from bournes in aromatic seas,</div> - <div class="verse">As round old shrines a new-freed soul might yearn</div> - <div class="verse indent2">With incense to his earthly memories.</div> - <div class="verse">And then this thought: Mist, exile, searching pain,</div> - <div class="verse">But the brave soul is free, is home again!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>How fine is the imaginative thought of -October wooing the valleys till they blurred -with mist, as one’s “eyes upfill under a too -sweet memory,” and still finer the touch of the -“alien breeze” turning</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Here as from bournes in aromatic seas.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>So one might imagine the journeying winds -blowing hither from Vaea, and the intensely -human soul of Stevenson yearning to the vital -sympathies of earth.</p> - -<p>Mr. Upson has recently published in Edinburgh -<!--377.png--> -and America a poem-drama entitled <cite>The -City</cite>, and containing, as previously mentioned, -a scholarly introduction by Count Lützow of -the Bohemian University of Prague, who points -out the historical and traditional sources of the -story.</p> - -<p>The drama is embraced in one act, and covers -a period of but one day, from dawn to dusk; -nevertheless, it is not wanting in incident, since -its operative causes reach their culmination in -this period. The “conditions precedent” of -the plot, briefly summarized, show that Abgar, -King of Edessa, has married Cleonis, an Athenian, -whose foster-sister, Stilbe, having been an -earlier favorite of the king, is actuated by jealousy -of the pair, and although dwelling as an -inmate of the royal household, plots with her -lover, Belarion, against the government of the -king, ill at his palace outside the city and -awaiting the arrival of Jesus to heal him of -his disease.</p> - -<p>The subjects of Abgar have rebelled not only -at his protracted absence from the city, in dalliance, -as they deem it, with the Athenian queen, -but because of measures of reform instituted -by him which had done despite to their ancient -idolatries and desecrated certain shrines in the -public improvements of the city.</p> - -<!--378.png--> -<p>Not only had the king progressed beyond -his day in the material advancement of his -realm, but his eager, swiftly conceiving mind -had imaged a spiritual ideal even more vital; -and at the opening of the drama he awaits the -coming of the Nazarene to heal him, that he may -devote himself to the development of his people.</p> - -<p>The scene opens at the dawn in the portico -of the palace, where the queen’s women, attired -in white pepli, have spent the night singing -soft music to the accompaniment of the lyre to -charm the fevered sleep of the king. They are -dismissed by Agamede, cousin of the queen, -who detains Stilbe to learn the cause of her -discontent. Sufficient is revealed to indicate that -Belarion, the betrothed of Stilbe, whom the -oracle has declared a man of promise, is plotting -against the life of the king, aided in this -design by Stilbe, who has been summoned almost -from the marriage altar to attend the queen.</p> - -<p>The second scene takes place four hours -later, in the palace garden, and pictures the -return of the messenger and his attendants -sent to conduct Jesus to Edessa. The opening -dialogue occurs between Ananias, the -returned messenger, and the old and learned -doctor of the court, who details with elaborate -minuteness the ministries of his skill since the -<!--379.png--> -departure of the former to Jerusalem. While -this dialogue is characteristic, well phrased, -and indirectly humorous, it is a dramatic mistake -to introduce it at such length, retarding -the action, which should be focused sharply -upon the essential motive of the scene,—the -conveying to the queen the message of the -Nazarene and the incidents of his refusal. -The literary quality of the dialogue between the -queen and Ananias has much beauty, being -memorable for the picture it conveys of Jesus -among his disciples at Bethany, “a hamlet up -an olive-sprinkled hill,” where, guided by Philip, -the Galilean, the messenger found him. The -description of the personality and manner of -Christ is a subtle piece of portraiture. To the -question of Cleonis,—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Tell me of his appearance. What said he?</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Ananias replies:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">He had prepared this scroll and gave it me</div> - <div class="verse">With courteous words, yet, as I after thought,</div> - <div class="verse">Most singularly free from deference</div> - <div class="verse">For one who ranks with artisans. His look</div> - <div class="verse">Betrayed no satisfaction with our suit;</div> - <div class="verse">Yet did he emanate a grave respect</div> - <div class="verse">Which seemed habitual, much as Stoics use,</div> - <div class="verse">Yet kinder; and his bearing had more grace</div> - <div class="verse">Than any Jew’s I ever saw before.</div> -<!--380.png--> - <div class="verse">As for his words, I own I scarce recall them,</div> - <div class="verse">And have been wondering ever since that I,</div> - <div class="verse">Bred at a Court and tutored to brave deeds,</div> - <div class="verse">Should be so sudden silenced. For I stood</div> - <div class="verse">Obedient to unknown authorities</div> - <div class="verse">Which spake in eye and tone and every move,</div> - <div class="verse">In that his first mild answer of refusal.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Ere the departure of the king’s embassy from -Jerusalem, the tragic drama of the crucifixion -had been enacted and in part witnessed by them, -which Ananias also describes with graphic -force; in it appears an adaptation of the Veronica -story. The lines well convey the picture:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">As the way widened past the high-walled house</div> - <div class="verse">Of Berenis, the throng thinned, and I saw</div> - <div class="verse">Plainer the moving figure of the man</div> - <div class="verse">And the huge beam laid on him. Suddenly</div> - <div class="verse">From the great gate I saw a form dart forth</div> - <div class="verse">Straight towards him, pause, and seem to have some speech</div> - <div class="verse">With the condemned, as, by old privilege,</div> - <div class="verse">Sometimes the pious ladies do with those</div> - <div class="verse">Who tread the shameful road. Her speech was brief.</div> - <div class="verse">She turned, and, as I saw ’twas Berenis,</div> - <div class="verse">Towards me she came, and her eyes, wet with tears,</div> - <div class="verse">Smiled sadly, and she said these final words:</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">“Such shame a mighty purpose led him to,</div> - <div class="verse">Yet he shrinks not, but steadfast to this end</div> - <div class="verse">Inevitable hath he come his way.</div> - <div class="verse">A woman of my house was healed of him</div> - <div class="verse">By kissing once the border of his garment.</div> -<!--381.png--> - <div class="verse">Take your King this, and say that as he dragged</div> - <div class="verse">His cruel but chosen cross to his own doom</div> - <div class="verse">Some comfort in its cooling web he found,</div> - <div class="verse">And left a blessing in its pungent folds.”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end container--> - -<p>In the third scene of the drama, occurring -in the afternoon, Abgar is informed of the -Healer’s refusal to accede to his request, but in -the presence of the queen and the attendants -assembled in the royal garden, the letter of the -Nazarene, promising healing and peace, is read -to him by the returned envoy, and at length the -linen, received from the hand of Berenis, and -upon whose folds the healing power of Christ -had been invoked, is given into the keeping of -Abgar, through whose veins, as by the visible -touch of the divine hand, the current of new -life throbs and courses. The moment is fraught -with intense reality, which Mr. Upson has kept -as much as possible to such effects as transcend -words. Just previous to the vital transformation -Abgar has said:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I have not yet resolved the Healer’s words</div> - <div class="verse">Into clear meaning; but their crystal soon</div> - <div class="verse">In the still cup of contemplation may</div> - <div class="verse">Give up its precious drug to heal our cares,—</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>but the supreme end was not wrought by contemplation, -nor could its processes be resolved -<!--382.png--> -by analysis, or other words be found to proclaim -it than the simple but thrilling exclamation:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">I feel it now! All through these withered veins</div> - <div class="verse">I feel it bound and glow! O life, life, life!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>From this period the incidents of the drama -develop with all the tensity of action which previous -to this scene it has lacked, giving to the -close a certain sense of crowding when compared -with the slow movement of the previous scenes -consisting chiefly of recital, well told, but with -little to enact, making the work to this point -rather a graphically related story than a drama. -The incidents which come on apace in the -latter part of the play have, to be sure, been -foreshadowed in the earlier part, but one is -scarcely prepared for the swift succession of -events, nor for their bloody character after the -sabbatical mood into which the earlier scenes -of the work have thrown him. If the drama -covered a longer period, giving time between -scenes for the development of events, even -though such development were but suggested -by a statement of dates, the impression of -undue haste in the climax would be obviated; -but in the interval of one day, even though all -events leading to the issue have been working -silently for months or years, their culmination -seems to come without due preparation to the -<!--383.png--> -reader’s mind, and one is swept off his feet by -consummations with whose causes he had -scarcely reckoned.</p> - -<p>Immediately following the healing of Abgar, -the queen’s cousin, Agamede, enters breathless -and announces to the king the plot on foot to -overthrow him, which inspires the king with a -resolve to set forth at once to the city. Upon -the attempt of the queen to deter him, Abgar -relates a prophetic dream of his city and its -destiny through him, which is one of the finest -conceptions, both in spiritual import and elevation -of phrase, contained in the drama. The -dream is related as having appeared to the -king in three distinct visions, glimpsing his -city in its past, present, and future. It is too -long to follow in detail, but this glimpse is from -the vision of the past, where</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse indent2">Through that wreck of fortress, mart and fane</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And fallen mausoleum crowded o’er</div> - <div class="verse indent2">With characters forevermore unread,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Only the wind’s soft hands went up and down</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Scattering the obliterative sands.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I, led in trance by shapes invisible,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Approached a temple’s splendid architrave</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Half sunk in sod betwixt its columns’ bases,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And there by sudden divination read</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The deep-cut legend of that awful gate:</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><span class="sc">Appease with sacrifice the unknown powers.</span></div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<!--384.png--> -<p>The next vision is of the city in its present -state, “builded on like dust,” but teeming with -activity and material purpose, through which -a glimmering ideal begins to dawn:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">They toiled, or played, or fought, or sued the gods,</div> - <div class="verse">Absorbed each in his own peculiar lust,</div> - <div class="verse">As if there were no morrow watching them;</div> - <div class="verse">Yet each was happier in the morrow-dream</div> - <div class="verse">Than ever in all achievéd yesterdays.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Then is revealed to the mind of Abgar the -high commission intrusted to him:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">And as I looked, I saw a man who long</div> - <div class="verse">In upward meditation on his roof</div> - <div class="verse">Sat all alone, communing with his soul,</div> - <div class="verse">And he arose, and presently went down,</div> - <div class="verse">Down in the long black streets among his kind,</div> - <div class="verse">And there with patience taught them steadfastly;</div> - <div class="verse">But, for the restless souls he made in them,</div> - <div class="verse">They turned and slew him and went on their ways,</div> - <div class="verse">And a great fog crept up and covered all.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Here surely is keen spiritual psychology, -that “for the restless souls he made in them” -they slew him. All martyrdoms are traced to -their source in this line, which holds also the -suggestive truth as to the final acceptance of -that for which the prophet dies. Once having -planted the seed whose stirring makes the -“restless soul,” its growth is committed to the -<!--385.png--> -Law, and can no more be prevented than the -shining of the sun or the flowing of the tides. -Abgar was granted a third vision, of the city -in its embodied ideal; its ultimate beauty and -achievement were given definite shape before -him, and the recital ends with the triumphal -note:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Fear not for me: I go unto the city!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>The last scene is enacted an hour later in -the garden lighted only by the moon, and opens -with the lyric sung by Agamede to the blossoming -oleander-tree ’neath which her child lies -buried. These are lines of a pathos as delicate -and spiritual as the moonlight, the fragrance, -the memory inspiring them:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Grow, grow, thou little tree,</div> - <div class="verse">His body at the roots of thee;</div> - <div class="verse">Since last year’s loveliness in death</div> - <div class="verse">The living beauty nourisheth.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Bloom, bloom, thou little tree,</div> - <div class="verse">Thy roots around the heart of me;</div> - <div class="verse">Thou canst not blow too white and fair</div> - <div class="verse">From all the sweetness hidden there.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Die, die, thou little tree,</div> - <div class="verse">And be as all sweet things must be;</div> - <div class="verse">Deep where thy petals drift I, too,</div> - <div class="verse">Would rest the changing seasons through.</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<!--386.png--> -<p>Then follows a dialogue of warmly emotional -feeling between the king and queen, in the interval -of waiting for the chariot and attendants -to be brought to the gate. All the physical -side of the healing of Abgar has now been -resolved into its spiritual meaning, and he -reinterprets the words of the Nazarene’s message -that of his infirmity he shall know full cure -and those most dear to him have peace; but -while Abgar speaks of his changed ideal, looking -now to a “city which hath foundations, -whose builder and maker is God,” a clamor is -heard at the gate, and the body-slave rushes -to the king with the tidings that armed troops -approach the palace, and begs him to flee in the -waiting chariot. Spurning thought of escape, -the king and queen mount the dais and stand -calmly watching in the moonlight the heroic -spectacle of the approaching army. At this -moment the queen’s women rush into the -garden, demanding flight; the conflict begins -along the wall; the gate bursts open, and Ananias -retreats to the garden, wounded, and -shortly dies. A brief interval of quiet, but full -of portent, succeeds, when Stilbe, who had plotted -with the king’s enemies, rushes through -the gate, pursued by the soldiers and bleeding -from wounds of their sabres. She is shot, apparently -<!--387.png--> -by the hand of her former lover, Belarion, -and falls dead at the king’s feet. Here -Mr. Upson leaves an unravelled thread of his -plot, or at least one for whose clew I have -sought vainly. No cause has been shown for -violence toward her on the part of the soldiers -whom she aids, nor on that of her supposed -lover and betrothed, Belarion. Why, then, she -should become his victim, or why he should -look upon her dead body and exclaim:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">“Thus Fate helps out!”</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>is at least a riddle past my solving. If, as the -results indicate, Belarion has been using Stilbe -as a tool to aid his ambitions, it should scarcely -have been related in good faith in the beginning -of the drama that their marriage was to be -celebrated the week in which the action of the -play falls. If logical reasons exist for this -change of front, Mr. Upson should have indicated -them more clearly.</p> - -<p>The climax of the play follows immediately -upon the death of Stilbe, when the king, called -to account by the insolent Belarion, in righteous -indignation strikes him down. It may be -questioned whether such a deed could follow so -quickly upon the rapt spiritual state to which -the king had been lifted; but one inclines to -<!--388.png--> -rejoice that the natural man, impelled by who -shall say what higher force, triumphed, ere -the queen, pointing to the dead body of the -trusted messenger, Ananias, and repeating -the Nazarene’s words, “Those most dear to -you have peace,”—demanded of the king his -blade.</p> - -<p>As they stand defenceless but assured, the -soldiers, awed by the might of some inner force -in the king, shrink back, and the drama closes -with the victorious words,—</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Together, Love, we go unto the city!</div> - </div><!--end stanza--> -</div><!--end poem--> -</div><!--end poem container--> - -<p>Though the play, looked upon from a dramatic -standpoint, lacks in the earlier scenes a -certain magnetism of touch and vividness of -action, and in the last scene is somewhat overcharged -with them, it has many finely conceived -situations which strike the golden mean, -and the characterization throughout is strongly -defined. Its literary quality must, however, -take precedence of its dramatic in the truer appraisal. -In diction it shows none of the strained -effort toward the supposed speech of an earlier -time, which usually distinguishes poetic dramas -laid far in the past, but has throughout a fitting -dignity and harmony, combined with ease and -flexibility of phrase and frequent eloquence of -<!--389.png--> -dialogue, especially in the passages spoken by -Abgar.</p> - -<p>It is a play rather of character and high -motive than of plot, a piece of sheer idealism, -notable alike for its spiritual and its -poetic quality.</p> -</div><!--end Upson--> -<!--390.png--> -<!--391.png--> -<div class="p4 break"><!--start index--> -<h3><a name="Index" id="Index"></a>BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX</h3> - -<p class="p2 hanging"><strong>BROWN, Alice.</strong> Born Hampton Falls, <abbr title="New Hampshire">N. H.</abbr>, Dec. 5, 1857. -Graduated Robinson Seminary, Exeter, <abbr title="New Hampshire">N. H.</abbr>, 1876. -On staff of Youth’s Companion. Author: Fools of Nature; -Meadow-Grass; By Oak and Thorn (English travels); -Life of Mercy Otis Warren; The Road to Castaly -(poems); The Days of his Youth; Robert Louis Stevenson, -A Study (with Louise I. Guiney); Tiverton -Tales; King’s End; Margaret Warrener; The Mannerings; -Judgment. Resides in Boston.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><strong>BURTON, Richard.</strong> Born Hartford, <abbr title="Connecticut">Conn.</abbr>, March 14, 1859. -Graduated Trinity College, Hartford. Ph.D. Johns Hopkins, -1887. Married <abbr title="October">Oct.</abbr> 7, 1889. Taught Old English -Johns Hopkins, 1888. Managing Editor <abbr title="New York">N. Y.</abbr> Churchman, -1888-89. Travelled in Europe, 1889-90. Literary -Editor Hartford Courant, 1890-97. Associate Editor Warner -Library World’s Best Literature, 1897-99. Professor -English Literature, University of Minnesota, 1898-1902. -Editor Lothrop Publishing <abbr title="Company">Co.</abbr>, 1902-04. Lectures upon -literature and the drama. Author: (verse) Dumb in June, -1895; Memorial Day, 1897; Lyrics of Brotherhood, 1899; -Message and Melody, 1903; (prose) Literary Likings, -essays, 1898; Life of Whittier, in Beacon Biography -Series, 1900; Forces in Fiction, essays, 1902. Resides -in Boston.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><strong>CARMAN, Bliss.</strong> Born Fredericton, <abbr title="New Brunswick">N. B.</abbr>, April 15, 1861. -Graduate University of New Brunswick, 1881. Postgraduate -student University of Edinburgh, 1882-83, and of -Harvard, 1886-88. Studied law, practised civil engineering, -taught school. Office Editor <abbr title="New York">N. Y.</abbr> Independent, -1890-1902. For past four years has contributed a weekly -column, called “Marginal Notes,” to the Evening Post, -<!--392.png--> -Chicago, The Transcript, Boston, and the Commercial -Advertiser, <abbr title="New York">N. Y.</abbr> Unmarried. Author: Low Tide on -Grand Pré, 1893; A Sea-Mark, 1895; Behind the Arras, -1895; Ballads of Lost Haven, 1897; By the Aurelian Wall, -1897; Songs from Vagabondia, in collaboration with -Richard Hovey, 1894; More Songs from Vagabondia, -1896; Last Songs from Vagabondia, 1900; St. Kavin, a -Ballad, 1894; At Michaelmas, 1895; The Girl in the -Poster, 1897; The Green Book of the Bards, 1898; Vengeance -of Noel Bassard, 1899; Ode on the Coronation of -King Edward, 1902; From the Book of Myths, 1902; -Pipes of Pan <abbr title="Number">No.</abbr> 1, 1902; Pipes of Pan <abbr title="Number">No.</abbr> 2, 1903; -The Word at St. Kavins, 1903; Sappho: One Hundred -Lyrics, 1903. Resides in New York.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><strong>CAWEIN, Madison Julius.</strong> Born Louisville, <abbr title="Kentucky">Ky.</abbr>, March 23, -1865. Graduated at High School in Louisville, 1886. -Since then has confined himself to the writing of verse. -Author: Blooms of the Berry, 1887; The Triumph of -Music, 1888; Accolon of Gaul, 1889; Lyrics and Idyls, -1890; Days and Dreams, 1891; Moods and Memories, -1892; Red Leaves and Roses, 1893; Poems of Nature and -Love, 1893; Intimations of the Beautiful, 1894; The White -Snake (translations from German poets), 1895; Undertones, -1896; The Garden of Dreams, 1896; Shapes and -Shadows, 1898; Idyllic Monologues, 1898; Myth and -Romance, 1899; Weeds by the Wall, 1901; One Day -and Another, 1901; Kentucky Poems (selections published -in London with an Introduction by Edmund Gosse), -1902; A Voice on the Wind, 1902. Resides Louisville, -<abbr title="Kentucky">Ky.</abbr></p> - -<p class="hanging"><strong>FENOLLOSA, Mary McNeil.</strong> Born in Alabama. Graduated -Irving Academy, Mobile. Married, 1895, Ernest F. Fenollosa. -Resided in Japan about eight years. Author: Out -of the Nest: A Flight of Verses, 1899; and Child Verses -on Japanese Subjects. Wrote Monograph upon Heroshige, -the Artist of Mist, Snow, and Rain; also verses, sketches, -and stories in many magazines.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><strong>GUINEY, Louise Imogen.</strong> Born Boston, Jan. 7, 1861. Graduated -Elmhurst Academy, Providence, <abbr title="Rhode Island">R. I.</abbr>, 1879. Studied -afterwards under private tutors and abroad. Contributor -<!--393.png--> -since 1885 to Harper’s, Atlantic, and other magazines. -Author: The White Sail and Other Poems, 1887; Monsieur -Henri: A Footnote to French History, 1892; A -Roadside Harp, 1893; A Little English Gallery, 1894; -Patrins, essays, 1897; England and Yesterday, 1898; A -Martyr’s Idyl, and Shorter Poems, 1899; Editor James -Clarence Mangan, His Selected Poems, with Study by the -Editor, 1897; of the Matthew Arnold (in small Riverside -Literature Series); of Dr. T. W. Parsons’ Translation of -Divina Commedia of Dante, 1893; of Henry Vaughn’s -Mount of Olives, 1902. Resides since 1901 in Oxford, -England.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><strong>HALL, Gertrude.</strong> Born Boston, <abbr title="September">Sept.</abbr> 8, 1863. Educated -private schools in Florence, Italy. Author: (verse) Far -from To-day; Allegretto (light verse): Foam of the Sea; -Age of Fairygold; Translator Paul Verlaine’s Poems, -and of Cyrano de Bergerac; (prose) The Hundred, and -Other Stories; April’s Sowing; The Legend of Sainte -Cariberte des Ois. Resides New York City.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><strong>HOVEY, Richard.</strong> Born Normal, <abbr title="Illinois">Ill.</abbr>, 1864. Educated Dartmouth -College. Author: Poems, privately printed, 1880; -Songs from Vagabondia; More Songs from Vagabondia; -and Last Songs from Vagabondia (in collaboration with -Bliss Carman); Seaward: An Elegy (on the death of -Thomas William Parsons); The Quest of Merlin: A -Masque; The Marriage of Guenevere: A Tragedy; The -Birth of Galahad; A Romantic Drama; Taliesin: A -Masque; Along the Trail: A Book of Lyrics; Translator -the Plays of Maeterlinck (in two series). Died -1900.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><strong>KNOWLES, Frederic Lawrence.</strong> Born Lawrence, <abbr title="Massachusetts">Mass.</abbr>, -<abbr title="September">Sept.</abbr> 8, 1869. Graduated Wesleyan University, 1894. -Harvard, 1896. In editorial department Houghton, Mifflin -and <abbr title="Company">Co.</abbr>, from February to September of 1898. Literary -adviser of L. C. Page and <abbr title="Company">Co.</abbr>, 1899-1900. Since that time -adviser for Dana Estes and Company. Unmarried. Author: -(prose) Practical Hints for Young Writers, Readers, -and Book Buyers, 1897; A Kipling Primer, 1900. (Republished -in England); (verse) On Life’s Stairway, 1900; Love -Triumphant, 1904. Edited Cap and Gown Second Series, -<!--394.png--> -1897; Golden Treasury of American Lyrics, 1897; Treasury -Humorous Poetry, 1902; The Famous Children of -Literature Series, 1902. Resides in Boston.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><strong>PEABODY, Josephine Preston.</strong> Born in New York. Educated -Girls’ Latin School, Boston, and at Radcliffe College, -1894-96. Instructor in English Literature at Wellesley -College, 1901-03. Author: Old Greek Folk-Stories (Riverside -Lit. Series) 1899; The Wayfarers, a book of verse, -1898; Fortune and Men’s Eyes; New Poems with a -Play, 1900; Marlowe, A Drama, 1901; The Singing -Leaves, 1903. Contributor to leading magazines. Resides -Cambridge, <abbr title="Massachusetts">Mass.</abbr></p> - -<p class="hanging"><strong>REESE, Lizette Woodworth.</strong> Born in Baltimore <abbr title="County, Maryland">Co., Md.</abbr>, -<abbr title="January">Jan.</abbr> 9, 1856. Teacher of English, West High School, -Baltimore. Author: A Branch of May; A Handful of -Lavender, 1891; A Quiet Road, 1896. Resides in -Baltimore.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><strong>ROBERTS, Charles George Douglas.</strong> Born Douglas, <abbr title="New Brunswick">N. B.</abbr>, -<abbr title="January">Jan.</abbr> 10, 1860. Graduated University of New Brunswick, -1879 (A. M. 1880). Married 1880. Head Master Chatham -Grammar School, 1879-81; York St. School, Fredericton, -1881-83. Editor Week, Toronto, 1883-84. Professor -English and French Literature, King’s College, Windsor, -<abbr title="Nova Scotia">N. S.</abbr>, 1885-88. Professor English and Economics, same, -1888-95. Associate Editor Illustrated American, 1897-98. -Author: (verse) Orion and Other Poems, 1880; In Divers -Tones, 1887; Ave: An Ode for the Shelley Centenary, -1892; Songs of the Common Day, and Ave, 1893; The -Book of the Native, 1896; New York Nocturnes, 1898; -Poems, 1901; The Book of the Rose, 1903; (prose) The -Canadians of Old; Earth’s Enigmas; The Raid from -Beauséjour; A History of Canada; The Forge in the -Forest; Around the Camp-fire; Reube Dare’s Shad -Boat; A Sister to Evangeline; Appleton’s Canadian -Guide-Book, 1899; By the Marshes of Minas, 1900; The -Heart of the Ancient Wood, 1900; The Kindred of the -Wild, 1902; Barbara Ladd, 1902; The Bird Book, 1903; -The Watchers of the Trails, 1904. Editor the Alastor and -Adonais of Shelley with Introduction and Notes, 1902. -Resides New York City.</p> - -<p class="hanging"> -<!--395.png--> -<strong>SANTAYANA, George E.</strong> Born in Spain, 1863. Assistant -Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University. Author: -(verse) Sonnets and Other Poems, 1894; Lucifer: A <a name="chg1" id="chg1"></a>Theological -Tragedy, 1899; The Hermit of Carmel and Other -Poems, 1901; (prose) The Sense of Beauty, 1896; Interpretations -of Poetry and Religion, 1900. Resides Cambridge, -<abbr title="Massachusetts">Mass.</abbr></p> - -<p class="hanging"><strong>SCOLLARD, Clinton.</strong> Born Clinton, -<abbr title="New York">N. Y.</abbr>, <abbr title="September">Sept.</abbr> 18, 1860. -Graduated from Hamilton College, 1881. Also studied -at Harvard and at Cambridge, England. Professor of -English Literature at Hamilton College, 1888-96. Author: -(verse) Pictures in Song, 1884; With Reed and Lyre, -1888; Old and New World Lyrics, 1888; Giovio and -Giulia, 1891; Songs of Sunrise Lands, 1892; The Hills of -Song, 1895; A Boy’s Book of Rhyme, 1896; Skenandoa, -1896; The Lutes of Morn, 1901; Lyrics of the Dawn, 1902; -The Lyric Bough, 1904; Ballads of Valor and Victory, -1904 (in collaboration with Wallace Rice); Footfarings -(prose and verse)<a name="chg7" id="chg7"></a>, 1904; (prose) Under Summer Skies, -1892; On Sunny Shores, 1893; A Man-at-Arms, 1898; -The Son of a Tory, 1900; A Knight of the Highway; The -Cloistering of Ursula, 1902; Lawton, 1900; Editor Ford’s -Broken Hearts, 1904, and of Ballads of American Bravery, -1900. Resides Clinton, <abbr title="New York">N. Y.</abbr></p> - -<p class="hanging"><strong>THOMAS, Edith Matilda.</strong> Born Chatham, <abbr title="Ohio">O.</abbr>, August 12, -1854. Educated Normal School, Geneva, Ohio. Removed -to New York, 1888. Author: (verse) A New Year’s -Masque and Other Poems, 1885; Lyrics and Sonnets, -1887; Babes of the Year, 1888; The Inverted Torch, 1890; -Fair Shadow Land, 1893; A Winter Swallow, 1896; The -Dancers, 1903; (prose) The Round Year. Resides West -New Brighton, Staten Island.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><strong>TORRENCE, Frederic Ridgely.</strong> Born Xenia, -<abbr title="Ohio">O.</abbr>, <abbr title="November">Nov.</abbr> 27, -1875. Educated under private tutors and at Miami University, -<abbr title="Ohio">O.</abbr>, also Princeton. Librarian Astor Library, -1897-1901. Librarian Lenox Library, 1901-03. At present -Associate Editor of The Critic, New York. Unmarried. -Author: (verse) The House of a Hundred Lights, -1900; El Dorado, A Tragedy, 1903. Resides in New -York.</p> - -<!--396.png--> -<p class="hanging"> -<strong>UPSON, Arthur.</strong> Born in Camden, <abbr title="New York">N. Y.</abbr>, 1877. Graduated -from Camden Academy, 1894. B. A. University of Minnesota. -Author: Poems (with George Norton Northrop); -Westwind Songs (with an Introduction by “Carmen -Sylva”); Octaves in An Oxford Garden; The City, a -Poem-Drama (with Introduction by Count Lützow). Resides -Minneapolis, <abbr title="Minnesota">Minn.</abbr></p> - -<p class="hanging"><strong>WOODBERRY, George E.</strong> Born Beverly, <abbr title="Massachusetts">Mass.</abbr>, May 12, -1855. Graduated Harvard, 1877. Professor of English -at University of Nebraska, 1877-78, and 1880-82. On -editorial staff of the Nation, 1878-79. Author: History -of Wood Engraving, 1883; Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1885; -Studies in Letters and Life, 1890; The North Shore Watch -and Other Poems, 1890; Heart of Man, 1899; Wild Eden, -1899; Makers of Literature, 1900; Nathaniel Hawthorne, -1902; Poems (collected edition), 1903. Editor<a name="chg8" id="chg8"></a>: Complete -Poems of Shelley; Complete Works of Poe (with Mr. -Stedman); National Studies in American Letters; Columbia -Studies in Comparative Literature; Lamb’s Essays of -Elia; Aubrey de Vere’s Selected Poems, and Bacon’s -Essays. Editor of the Journal of Comparative Literature. -From 1891 to 1903 Professor of Comparative Literature -at Columbia University.</p> -</div><!--end bio index--> - -<div class="break p4 tnote"> -<h4>Transcriber’s Note</h4> - -<p>Dialect, obsolete, alternative spellings, and accent marks were -left unchanged.</p> - -<p>Footnotes were numbered sequentially and moved to the -end of the section in which the anchor occurs.</p> - -<p>Adjustments:<br /> --‘Thelogical’ changed to <a href="#chg1">‘Theological’</a></p> - -<p>- Punctuation additions:<br /> - - <a href="#chg2">final stop</a>: ‘Of the missing Nancy’s Pride.’<br /> - - <a href="#chg3">final stop</a>: ‘The night is loud; the pavements roar.’<br /> - - <a href="#chg4">final stop after ellipsis</a>: ‘clod of scentless earth….’<br /> - - <a href="#chg5">semicolon</a>: ‘rose-stain encrimsoned the ground;’<br /> - - <a href="#chg6">comma</a>: ‘Ah, fortunate he roams who roameth’<br /> - - <a href="#chg7">comma</a>: ‘Footfarings (prose and verse), 1904;’<br /> - - <a href="#chg8">colon</a>: ‘1903. Editor: Complete’</p> -</div><!--end transcriber note--> - -<p> </p> -<p> </p> -<hr class="full" /> -<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS***</p> -<p>******* This file should be named 55447-h.htm or 55447-h.zip *******</p> -<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> -<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/5/5/4/4/55447">http://www.gutenberg.org/5/5/4/4/55447</a></p> -<p> -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed.</p> - -<p>Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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