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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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