VIII

VIIIEDITH M. THOMASAN 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 theart 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, theform 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 allusionsand 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 whichThe blossom and the sodFeel 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 beatForth 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 waySince 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 personalitythat 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 scientificfact 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 skillWhile 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 typicalwoman, 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 ofher 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 restWithin 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 foundRecourse 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 certainof 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 fedDark 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 spreadTo 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 misledTo 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 wedWith 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 treadLove’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 inconstantone 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 heartLong 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 notAs 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 seasonWhen that blithe, forerunning airBreathes 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 hasfor 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 feetLest 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 dealLest 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 yetUnder 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 dartLast 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 scathPiercing 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, andview 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.

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 theart 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, theform 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 allusionsand 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 sodFeel the unquiet God,

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 beatForth 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!

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 waySince 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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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 personalitythat 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 scientificfact 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 skillWhile 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!

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 skillWhile 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.

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.

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!

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!

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!

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 typicalwoman, 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!

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 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!

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!

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!

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 ofher 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 restWithin 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 foundRecourse 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.

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 foundRecourse 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.

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 certainof 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 fedDark 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 spreadTo 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 misledTo 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 wedWith 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 treadLove’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).· · · · ·

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 spreadTo 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 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 misledTo 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 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 wedWith 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).

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 treadLove’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).· · · · ·

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 inconstantone 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 heartLong 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?

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 heartLong 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?

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 notAs 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.

The love of my life came notAs love unto others is cast;For mine was a secret wound—But the wound grew a pearl, at last.

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.

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 airBreathes more hope than thou canst bear.

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 hasfor 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 feetLest 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 dealLest 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 yetUnder the leaf-mould dank and wet,· · · · ·Or is it the flower shed long ago?The soul of the violet haunts me so!

The brown earth raises a wistful face—Whenever about the fields I go,The soul of the violet haunts me so!

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 feetLest they trample the hope of something sweet!Here can no flower be blooming, I know—Yet 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 dealLest a spirit in trance should outward steal—So thrilling that breath, so vital that blow—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 yetUnder the leaf-mould dank and wet,· · · · ·Or is it the flower shed long ago?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!

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!

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!

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 dartLast 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 scathPiercing 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!

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 scathPiercing 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!

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, andview 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.

IXMADISON CAWEININ 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 stepsthrough 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 flameOf buds and blooms, the season writes its name.—Ah me! could I have seen him ere alarmOf my approach aroused him from his calm!As he, part Hamadryad and, mayhap,Part Faun, lay here; who left the shadow warmAs wild-wood rose, and filled the air with balmOf 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 clingThe 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 eyesAre 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 distressedStands 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 soundOf 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 of Madison CaweinWho 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 blondeBeside a wheat-shock in the white-topped mead,In her hot hair the oxeyed daisies wound,—O bird of rain, lend aught but sleepy heedTo thee? when no plumed weed, no feather’d seedBlows by her; and no ripple breaks the pond,That gleams like flint between its rim of grasses,Through which the dragonfly forever passesLike splintered diamond.Drouth weights the trees, and from the farmhouse eavesThe locust, pulse-beat of the summer day,Throbs; and the lane, that shambles under leavesLimp with the heat—a league of rutty way—Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hayBreathe 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 bringBrimming with freshness. How their dippers ringAnd flash and rumble! lavishing dark dewOn 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 inWeeds by the Wall,A Voice on the Wind, and inKentucky 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 hisspirit, 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, thecelandine, 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 forestWindowed 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 foldOf heavy mauve; and now, like the intenseMassed 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 thinThe bittersweet’s balls o’ goldTo 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 calledUndertoneshe has a group of poems uponthe withdrawing year, sounding only this note, which is the prevalent one when touching upon the same theme in his other volumes. He glimpses… the FallLike some lone woman in a ruined hallDreaming 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 whenThe hot sunflowers by the glaring pikeLift shields of sultry brass; the teasel tops,Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spikeAgainst the furious sunlight. Field and copseAre sick with summer: now, with breathless stops,The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beatTheir 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 layLike 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 calledWeeds 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 stateOf 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 silkenlyVeiled snowy faces,—that no bee might greetOr 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’sToo fervid kisses; every bud that drinksThe tipsy dew and to the starlight playsNocturnes of fragrance, thy winged shadow linksIn 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 matterof 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 howThe slow toad stool comes bulging, moony white,Through loosening loam; or how, against the night,The glow-worm gathers silver to endowThe darkness with; or how the dew conspiresTo hang at dusk with lamps of chilly firesEach blade that shrivels now.· · · · ·Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noonShows her tanned face among the thirsting cloverAnd parching meadows, thy tenebrious tuneWakes with the dew or when the rain is over.Thou troubadour of wetness and damp loverOf all cool things! admitted comrade boonOf twilight’s hush, and little intimateOf eve’s first fluttering star and delicateRound rim of rainy moon!Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy hornInform the gnomes and goblins of the hourWhen they may gambol under haw and thorn,Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower?Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall towerThe liriodendron is? from whence is borneThe elfin music of thy bell’s deep bassTo 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,” “TheQuest,” “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, beginningGo your own ways. Who shall persuade me nowTo 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 lightThe consolation of the dawn for me,—Between the shadowy bourns of Heaven and Hell,It is enough love leaves my soul to dwellWith 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 calledIntimations 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 laneAnd 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 foreverTheir 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 afterThe 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 inWeeds by the Wall, in that graphic poem “Feud,” sketching with the pencil of a realist the road to the spot… where all the landSeems burdened with some curse,and where, sunk in obliterative growth of briers, burrs, and ragweed, stands the… huddled houseWhere men have murdered men,and where a terrified silence still broods, forThe place seems thinking of that time of fearAnd dares not breathe a sound.Mr. Howells, in an appreciation of Mr. Cawein’s work, after the appearance ofWeeds 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 tendsto 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 whereOf honey and heat and weed and wheatThe day had made perfume.

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 stepsthrough 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 flameOf buds and blooms, the season writes its name.—Ah me! could I have seen him ere alarmOf my approach aroused him from his calm!As he, part Hamadryad and, mayhap,Part Faun, lay here; who left the shadow warmAs wild-wood rose, and filled the air with balmOf his sweet breath as with ethereal sap.

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 clingThe 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 eyesAre 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 distressedStands 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 soundOf 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?

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 of 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 blondeBeside a wheat-shock in the white-topped mead,In her hot hair the oxeyed daisies wound,—O bird of rain, lend aught but sleepy heedTo thee? when no plumed weed, no feather’d seedBlows by her; and no ripple breaks the pond,That gleams like flint between its rim of grasses,Through which the dragonfly forever passesLike splintered diamond.Drouth weights the trees, and from the farmhouse eavesThe locust, pulse-beat of the summer day,Throbs; and the lane, that shambles under leavesLimp with the heat—a league of rutty way—Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hayBreathe 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 bringBrimming with freshness. How their dippers ringAnd flash and rumble! lavishing dark dewOn 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.

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 eavesThe locust, pulse-beat of the summer day,Throbs; and the lane, that shambles under leavesLimp with the heat—a league of rutty way—Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hayBreathe 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?

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 bringBrimming with freshness. How their dippers ringAnd flash and rumble! lavishing dark dewOn corn and forestland, that, streaming wet,Their hilly backs against the downpour set,Like giants vague in view.

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.

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 inWeeds by the Wall,A Voice on the Wind, and inKentucky 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 hisspirit, 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, thecelandine, 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 foldOf heavy mauve; and now, like the intenseMassed iron-weed, a purple opulence;

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 thinThe bittersweet’s balls o’ goldTo show the coal-red berries packed within.

… 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 calledUndertoneshe has a group of poems uponthe withdrawing year, sounding only this note, which is the prevalent one when touching upon the same theme in his other volumes. He glimpses

… the FallLike some lone woman in a ruined hallDreaming of desolation and the shroud;Or through decaying woodlands goes, down-bowed,Hugging the tatters of her gipsy shawl;

… 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.

… 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 pikeLift shields of sultry brass; the teasel tops,Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spikeAgainst the furious sunlight. Field and copseAre sick with summer: now, with breathless stops,The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beatTheir castanets: and rolled in dust, a team,—Like some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream,—An empty wagon rattles through the heat.

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 layLike 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.

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 calledWeeds 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 stateOf 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 silkenlyVeiled snowy faces,—that no bee might greetOr 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’sToo fervid kisses; every bud that drinksThe tipsy dew and to the starlight playsNocturnes of fragrance, thy winged shadow linksIn bonds of secret brotherhood and faith;O bearer of their order’s shibboleth,Like some pale symbol fluttering o’er these pinks.

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 silkenlyVeiled snowy faces,—that no bee might greetOr butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed;—Keeping Sultana charms for thee, at last,Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet.

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’sToo fervid kisses; every bud that drinksThe tipsy dew and to the starlight playsNocturnes of fragrance, thy winged shadow linksIn bonds of secret brotherhood and faith;O bearer of their order’s shibboleth,Like some pale symbol fluttering o’er these pinks.

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 matterof 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 howThe slow toad stool comes bulging, moony white,Through loosening loam; or how, against the night,The glow-worm gathers silver to endowThe darkness with; or how the dew conspiresTo hang at dusk with lamps of chilly firesEach blade that shrivels now.· · · · ·Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noonShows her tanned face among the thirsting cloverAnd parching meadows, thy tenebrious tuneWakes with the dew or when the rain is over.Thou troubadour of wetness and damp loverOf all cool things! admitted comrade boonOf twilight’s hush, and little intimateOf eve’s first fluttering star and delicateRound rim of rainy moon!Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy hornInform the gnomes and goblins of the hourWhen they may gambol under haw and thorn,Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower?Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall towerThe liriodendron is? from whence is borneThe elfin music of thy bell’s deep bassTo summon fairies to their starlit maze,To summon them or warn.

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 hornInform the gnomes and goblins of the hourWhen they may gambol under haw and thorn,Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower?Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall towerThe liriodendron is? from whence is borneThe elfin music of thy bell’s deep bassTo summon fairies to their starlit maze,To summon them or warn.

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,” “TheQuest,” “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 nowTo seek with high face for a star of hope?

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 lightThe consolation of the dawn for me,—Between the shadowy bourns of Heaven and Hell,It is enough love leaves my soul to dwellWith memory.

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 calledIntimations 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 laneAnd dusk and dew and home again!

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 foreverTheir 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 afterThe dreamy patience that is theirs forever.

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.

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 foreverTheir 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 afterThe dreamy patience that is theirs forever.

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 inWeeds by the Wall, in that graphic poem “Feud,” sketching with the pencil of a realist the road to the spot

… where all the landSeems burdened with some curse,

… where all the land

Seems burdened with some curse,

and where, sunk in obliterative growth of briers, burrs, and ragweed, stands the

… huddled houseWhere men have murdered men,

… huddled house

Where men have murdered men,

and where a terrified silence still broods, for

The place seems thinking of that time of fearAnd dares not breathe a sound.

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 ofWeeds 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.

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 tendsto 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 wheatThe day had made perfume.

Of honey and heat and weed and wheat

The day had made perfume.

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