A friend once wrote to me: “What do you know about a poet who signs his name John B. Tabb, his poems are delicious?” My answer was, that I knew nothing of his personal history, but that his poems had found their way into my aristocratic scrap-book. Here I might pause to whisper that the adjective aristocratic, in my sense, has nothing haughty about it. When joined to the noun scrap-book, a good commentator—they are scarce—would freely translate the phrase the indwelling of good poetry. Since then my personal knowledge of the poet has grown slowly, a slight stock and no leaves. Even that, like my old coat, is second-handed. Such material, no matter how highly recommended by the keepers ofthe golden balls, is usually found to be a poor bargain. But here it is, keeping in mind that rags are better than no clothing, and that older proverb—half a loaf is better than no bread.
“John B. Tabb, (I quote) was born in Virginia, when or where I know not. Becoming a Catholic he studied for the priesthood and was ordained.” Here my data fails me. At present he is the professor of literature in St. Charles’ College, Maryland. It is something in his favor, this scanty biographical fare. Where the biography is long, laudatory, and in rounded periods, it is approached as one would a snake in the grass, with a kind of fear that in the end you may be bitten. “May I be skinned alive,” said that master of word-selection and phrase-juggler, Flaubert, “before I ever turn my private feelings to literary account.” And the reader, with the stench of recent keyhole biography in his nostrils,shouts “bravo.” Flaubert’s phrase might easily have hung on the pen of the retiring worshipper of the beautiful, “the Roman Catholic priest, who drudges through a daily round of pedagogical duties in St. Charles’ College.” This quoted phrase may stand. Pedagogy, at best, is a dull pursuit for a poet. It is not congenial, and I have held an odd idea that whatever was not congenial, disguise it as you may, is drudgery. And all this by way of propping the quoted sentence. The strange thing is that in the midst of this daily round of drudgery the poet finds time to produce what a recent critic well calls “verse-gems of thought.” These verse-gems, if judged by intrinsic evidence, would argue an environment other than a drudgery habitation. In truth, it is hard to desecrate them by predicating of them any environment other than a spiritual one.
This brings us to write of Fr. Tabb’spoetry that it is elusive, from a critical point of view. When you bring your preconceived literary canons to bear upon it, they are found wanting—too clumsy to test the delicacy, fineness of touch, and the permeated spiritualism embodied in the verse-gem. It is well summarized in the saying that “it possesses to the full a white estate of virginal prayerful art.” One might define it by negatives, such as the contrary of passion poetry. The point of view most likely to give the clearest conception would be found in the sentence: an evocation from within by a highly spiritualized intelligence. The poet has caught the higher music, the music of a soul in which dwell order and method. In other words, he has assiduously cultivated to its fullest development both the spiritual sense and the moral sense.
It is easy to trace in Fr. Tabb’s poetry the influence of Sidney Lanier. It hasbeen asserted, and with much truth, that Lanier’s influence has strangely fascinated the younger school of Southern poets. Sladen, in his book on Younger American Poets, tells us that “Lanier differs from the other dead poets included in his book, in that he was not only a poet but the founder of a school of poetry.” To his school belongs Fr. Tabb, a school following the founder whose aim is to depict
“All gracious curves of slender wings,Bark mottlings, fibre spiralings,Fern wavings and leaf flickerings.Yea, all fair forms and sounds and lights,And warmths and mysteries and mights,Of Nature’s utmost depths and heights.”
“All gracious curves of slender wings,Bark mottlings, fibre spiralings,Fern wavings and leaf flickerings.Yea, all fair forms and sounds and lights,And warmths and mysteries and mights,Of Nature’s utmost depths and heights.”
“All gracious curves of slender wings,Bark mottlings, fibre spiralings,Fern wavings and leaf flickerings.
“All gracious curves of slender wings,
Bark mottlings, fibre spiralings,
Fern wavings and leaf flickerings.
Yea, all fair forms and sounds and lights,And warmths and mysteries and mights,Of Nature’s utmost depths and heights.”
Yea, all fair forms and sounds and lights,
And warmths and mysteries and mights,
Of Nature’s utmost depths and heights.”
The defects of this school are best seen in the founder. He was a musician before a poet, and helplessly strove to catch shades by words that can only be rendered bymusic. Fr. Tabb has learned this limitation of his school. For the glowing semi-pantheism of Lanier he has substituted the true and no less beautiful doctrine of Christianity. All his verse-gems are redolent of his faith. They are religious in the sense that they are begotten by faith and breathe the air of the sanctuary. To read them is to leave the hum and pain of life behind, and enter the cloister where all is silent and peaceful, where dwelleth the spirit of God. Of them it is safe to assert that their white estate of virginal, prayerful art shall constitute their immortality. Fr. Tabb has not, as yet, thought fit to give them a more permanent form than they have in the current magazines. Catholic literature, and especially poetry, is so meagre that when a true singer touches the lyre it is not to be wondered at that those of his household should desire to possess his songs in amore worthy dwelling than that of an ephemeral magazine. In the absence of the coming charming volume I quote from my scrap-book a few of the verse-gems, thereby trusting to widen the poet’s audience and in an humble way gain lovers for his long-promised volume.
What could illustrate the peculiar genius of our poet better than the delicious gem that he has called
“The White Jessamine.”I knew she lay above me,Where the casement all the nightShone, softened with a phosphor glowOf sympathetic light,And that her fledgling spirit pureWas pluming fast for flight.Each tendril throbbed and quickenedAs I nightly climbed apace,And could scarce restrain the blossomsWhen, anear the destined place,Her gentle whisper thrilled meEre I gazed upon her face.I waited, darkling, till the dawnShould touch me into bloom,While all my being pantedTo outpour its first perfume,When, lo! a paler flower than mineHad blossomed in the gloom!
“The White Jessamine.”I knew she lay above me,Where the casement all the nightShone, softened with a phosphor glowOf sympathetic light,And that her fledgling spirit pureWas pluming fast for flight.Each tendril throbbed and quickenedAs I nightly climbed apace,And could scarce restrain the blossomsWhen, anear the destined place,Her gentle whisper thrilled meEre I gazed upon her face.I waited, darkling, till the dawnShould touch me into bloom,While all my being pantedTo outpour its first perfume,When, lo! a paler flower than mineHad blossomed in the gloom!
“The White Jessamine.”I knew she lay above me,Where the casement all the nightShone, softened with a phosphor glowOf sympathetic light,And that her fledgling spirit pureWas pluming fast for flight.
“The White Jessamine.”
I knew she lay above me,
Where the casement all the night
Shone, softened with a phosphor glow
Of sympathetic light,
And that her fledgling spirit pure
Was pluming fast for flight.
Each tendril throbbed and quickenedAs I nightly climbed apace,And could scarce restrain the blossomsWhen, anear the destined place,Her gentle whisper thrilled meEre I gazed upon her face.
Each tendril throbbed and quickened
As I nightly climbed apace,
And could scarce restrain the blossoms
When, anear the destined place,
Her gentle whisper thrilled me
Ere I gazed upon her face.
I waited, darkling, till the dawnShould touch me into bloom,While all my being pantedTo outpour its first perfume,When, lo! a paler flower than mineHad blossomed in the gloom!
I waited, darkling, till the dawn
Should touch me into bloom,
While all my being panted
To outpour its first perfume,
When, lo! a paler flower than mine
Had blossomed in the gloom!
“Content” is another gem of exquisite thought and workmanship.
Content.Were all the heavens an overladen boughOf ripened benediction lowered above me,What could I crave, soul-satisfied as now,That thou dost love me?The door is shut. To each unsheltered blessingHenceforth I say, “Depart! What wouldst thou of me?”Beggared I am of want, this boon possessing,That thou dost love me.
Content.Were all the heavens an overladen boughOf ripened benediction lowered above me,What could I crave, soul-satisfied as now,That thou dost love me?The door is shut. To each unsheltered blessingHenceforth I say, “Depart! What wouldst thou of me?”Beggared I am of want, this boon possessing,That thou dost love me.
Content.Were all the heavens an overladen boughOf ripened benediction lowered above me,What could I crave, soul-satisfied as now,That thou dost love me?
Content.
Were all the heavens an overladen bough
Of ripened benediction lowered above me,
What could I crave, soul-satisfied as now,
That thou dost love me?
The door is shut. To each unsheltered blessingHenceforth I say, “Depart! What wouldst thou of me?”Beggared I am of want, this boon possessing,That thou dost love me.
The door is shut. To each unsheltered blessing
Henceforth I say, “Depart! What wouldst thou of me?”
Beggared I am of want, this boon possessing,
That thou dost love me.
“Photographed” may well make the trio in the more fully illustrating his genius:—
Photographed.For years, an ever-shifting shadeThe sunshine of thy visage made;Then, spider-like, the captive caughtIn meshes of immortal thought.E’en so, with half-averted eye,Day after day I passed thee by,Till, suddenly, a subtler artEnshrined thee in my heart of heart.
Photographed.For years, an ever-shifting shadeThe sunshine of thy visage made;Then, spider-like, the captive caughtIn meshes of immortal thought.E’en so, with half-averted eye,Day after day I passed thee by,Till, suddenly, a subtler artEnshrined thee in my heart of heart.
Photographed.For years, an ever-shifting shadeThe sunshine of thy visage made;Then, spider-like, the captive caughtIn meshes of immortal thought.
Photographed.
For years, an ever-shifting shade
The sunshine of thy visage made;
Then, spider-like, the captive caught
In meshes of immortal thought.
E’en so, with half-averted eye,Day after day I passed thee by,Till, suddenly, a subtler artEnshrined thee in my heart of heart.
E’en so, with half-averted eye,
Day after day I passed thee by,
Till, suddenly, a subtler art
Enshrined thee in my heart of heart.
“Not even the infinite surfeit of Columbus literature of the last six months can deprive Fr. Tabb’s tribute in Lippincott’s of its sweetness and light,” says theReview of Reviews:
With faith unshadowed by the night,Undazzled by the day,With hope that plumed thee for the flightAnd courage to assay,God sent thee from the crowded ark,Christ bearer, like the dove,To find, o’er sundering waters dark,New lands for conquering love.
With faith unshadowed by the night,Undazzled by the day,With hope that plumed thee for the flightAnd courage to assay,God sent thee from the crowded ark,Christ bearer, like the dove,To find, o’er sundering waters dark,New lands for conquering love.
With faith unshadowed by the night,
Undazzled by the day,
With hope that plumed thee for the flight
And courage to assay,
God sent thee from the crowded ark,
Christ bearer, like the dove,
To find, o’er sundering waters dark,
New lands for conquering love.
As a final selection, we may well conclude these brief notes on a poet with staying powers by quoting a poem, contributed to theCosmopolitan, called “Silence;” a poem permeated with his fine spiritual sense:
Temple of God, from all eternityAlone like Him without beginning found;Of time, and space, and solitude the bound,Yet in thyself of all communion free.Is, then, the temple holier than heThat dwells therein? Must reverence surroundWith barriers the portal, lest a soundProfane it? Nay; behold a mystery!What was, remains; what is, has ever been:The lowliest the loftiest sustains.A silence, by no breath of utterance stirred—Virginity in motherhood—remains,Clear, midst a cloud of all-pervading sin,The voice of Love’s unutterable word.
Temple of God, from all eternityAlone like Him without beginning found;Of time, and space, and solitude the bound,Yet in thyself of all communion free.Is, then, the temple holier than heThat dwells therein? Must reverence surroundWith barriers the portal, lest a soundProfane it? Nay; behold a mystery!What was, remains; what is, has ever been:The lowliest the loftiest sustains.A silence, by no breath of utterance stirred—Virginity in motherhood—remains,Clear, midst a cloud of all-pervading sin,The voice of Love’s unutterable word.
Temple of God, from all eternityAlone like Him without beginning found;Of time, and space, and solitude the bound,Yet in thyself of all communion free.Is, then, the temple holier than heThat dwells therein? Must reverence surroundWith barriers the portal, lest a soundProfane it? Nay; behold a mystery!
Temple of God, from all eternity
Alone like Him without beginning found;
Of time, and space, and solitude the bound,
Yet in thyself of all communion free.
Is, then, the temple holier than he
That dwells therein? Must reverence surround
With barriers the portal, lest a sound
Profane it? Nay; behold a mystery!
What was, remains; what is, has ever been:The lowliest the loftiest sustains.A silence, by no breath of utterance stirred—Virginity in motherhood—remains,Clear, midst a cloud of all-pervading sin,The voice of Love’s unutterable word.
What was, remains; what is, has ever been:
The lowliest the loftiest sustains.
A silence, by no breath of utterance stirred—
Virginity in motherhood—remains,
Clear, midst a cloud of all-pervading sin,
The voice of Love’s unutterable word.