XIV

XIVCLINTON SCOLLARDTHAT genial and delicate satirist, Miss Agnes Repplier, laments in one of her clever essays that our modern poets incline to dwell upon the sombre side of things, and hence contribute so little to the cheer of life. One cannot but wonder what poetry Miss Repplier has been reading, for our own acquaintance with the song of to-day has been so much the opposite that it is difficult on the spur of the moment to recall any poet of the present group in America whose work is not in the main wholesome and heartening and who is not facing toward the sun. To be sure, there must be the relief of shade, lest the light glare; but they who journey to Castaly are in general cheerful wayfarers, taking gladly the gift of the hours and rendering the Giver a song, and among the blithest of them is Clinton Scollard, to whom life is always smilingly envisaged, and to whom, whether spring or autumn betide, it is still the “sweet o’ the year.”If Mr. Scollard’s way has ever been “through dolor and dread, over crags and morasses,” he is too much the optimist to let the fact be known, or, better still, to recognize it as such; for we see what our own eyes reflect from within, and it is certain that Mr. Scollard’s outlook upon life is governed by the inherent conviction that her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace. Possibly this conviction would have more value to the less assured nature if the testimony of its winning were set down as a strength-giving force by the way, as we incline in daily life to undervalue the amiability and cheer which are matters of birthright rather than of overcoming; but this is a standard narrow in itself and wide of the issue at stake, which is so much cheerper se, whether the fortunate dower of nature, or the alchemic result of experience; nor may one draw too definite a line between the temperamental gift and the spiritual acquisition, especially when the psychology of literature furnishes the only data. It is sufficient to note the result in the work, and its bearing upon the art which shapes it. To Mr. Scollard, then, “Life’s enchanted cup” not only “sparkles at the brim;” but when he lifts it to his lips a rainbow arches in its depths, and he has communicated to hissong the flash of sunshine and color sparkling in the clearness of his own draught of life.Illustration of Clinton ScollardMr. Scollard is almost wholly an objective poet, and by method a painter. His palette is ever ready for the picture furnished him at every turn, and hence his several volumes relating to the Orient,Lutes of Morn,Lyrics of the Dawn,Songs of Sunrise Lands, etc., are perhaps truer standards by which to measure his work than any other, illustrating as they do the pictorial side of his talent. Every object in the Orient is a picture with its individual color and atmosphere, but Mr. Scollard does not merely offer us a sketch in color; the outwardly picturesque is made to interpret a phase of life, and the spiritual contrasts in this land—where one religion or philosophy succeeds another, bringing with it another civilization and leaving desolate the ancient shrines—are indicated with vivid phrase, as in these lines:A turbaned guard keeps stolid ward by the Zion gate in the sun,And the Paynim bows his shaven brows at the shrine of Solomon;At the chosen altars, long, long quenched is the flame of the sacred fire,And the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre.Great Herod’s pride with its columned aisles is grown with the olive bough,And Gath and Dan are but crumbling piles, while Gaza is gateless now;The sea on the sands of Ascalon sets hands to a mournful lyre,And the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre.The closing stanza draws the contrast, or rather makes the spiritual application of the poem by which “the starry fame of one holy name”Has blazoned Bethlehem for aye the heart of the world’s desire,While the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre.The final line of these stanzas may offer a metrical stumbling-block until one catches the sweep of the rhythm and falls in note with the cæsural pause after the word “tomb.” Mr. Scollard is nothing if not lyrical, and it would be easier for the traditional camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a captious critic to discover a metrical falsity in his tuneful song.But to return to the Orient, not alone the reverence for the Christian faith speaks in these poems, but the artistic beauty in the Moslem and other faiths has entered intothem; one is stirred to sympathetic devotion by these lines,—From many a marble minaretWe heard the rapt muezzin’s call;And to the prayerful cries my guide,During each trembling interval,With reverence serene replied,—and finds throughout the poems the higher assurance thatThe East and West are one in Allah’s grace:Which way so’er ye turn, behold—His face!It is difficult to choose from the several volumes portraying Oriental life, such poems as shall best represent it, since in any direction we shall find a picture full of color and of strange new charm: the white mosques and minarets; the gardens of citron and pomegranate; the bazaars, with their rare fabrics and curios; the pilgrims, dozing in the shade of the temples; the Bedouins, riding in from the desert; the women carrying from the springs their water-jars. We shall hear the sunrise cry of the muezzin from the minarets; the zither and lute in the gardens at evening; the jargon of tongues in booth and market-place; the philosopher expounding the Koran; the lover singing the songs of Araby. The dramaticlife of that impulsive, passionate people will be seen in such poems as the “Dancing of Suleima,” “At the Tomb of Abel,” and “Yousef and Melhem,” and the philosophical side in many a poem translating the precepts of the Koran into action; but it is, after all, for the picture in which all this is set that one comes with chief pleasure to these songs. Not only the human element of that strangely fascinating life is incorporated in them, but all the phenomena of nature in its swift-changing moods pass in review before one’s eyes, particularly of the swift transitions of the desert sun, stayed by no detaining cloud, and followed by the immediate gloom of night. The graphic lines—When on the desert’s rim,In sudden, awful splendor, stood the sun—are excelled in terse, pictorial force by the record of its setting,—Then sudden dipped the sun.—Nor easily forgotten are those pictures of lying in the open when the cooling dark had fallen upon the yearning land, or upon the hills whenThe night hung over Hebron all her stars,Miraculous processional of flame,and below from out the “purple blur” rose the minarets of the mosque whereSepulchred for centuries untold,The bones of Isaac and of Joseph lay;And broidered cloths of silver and of goldWere heaped and draped o’er Abraham’s crumbled clay.InThe Lutes of Mornthere are two sonnets—though lyrics in effect, so does the song prevail with Mr. Scollard—that serve hastily to sketch a moving scene and in their touch bring to mind Paul the chronicler. The first is “Passing Rhodes,” and contains these lines with a biblical tang,At day’s dim marge, hard on the shut of eve,We rocked abreast the rugged Rhodian isle,which tang appears in stronger flavor in the racy opening of the following:Cleaving the seadrift through the starlit night,We left the barren Patmian isle behind,And scudding northward with a favoring wind,Lay anigh Chios at the dawn of light.The shore, the tree-set slopes, the rugged height,Clear in the morning’s roseate air outlined,—This was his birthplace who, albeit blind,Saw tall Troy’s fall, and sang the tragic sight.Resting within the roadstead, while the dayGrew into gradual glory, on the earContinuous broke the surge-song of the brine;And as we marked it rise, or die awayTo rise again, it seemed that we could hearThe swell and sweep of Homer’s mighty line.Mr. Scollard’s musical and finely descriptive poem, “As I Came Down From Lebanon,” has become a favorite with the readers of his verse; but while it has great charm, it is not as strong a piece of work as are many other of the Oriental poems, contained in his later volumes,The Lutes of MornandLyrics of the Dawn, nor as that realistic poem, “Khamsin,” which appeared in the same collection. Here indeed is the breath of the sirocco:Oh, the wind from the desert blew in!Khamsin,The wind from the desert blew in!It blew from the heart of the fiery south,From the fervid sand and the hills of drouth,And it kissed the land with its scorching mouth;The wind from the desert blew in!It blasted the buds on the almond bough,And shrivelled the fruit on the orange-tree;The wizened dervish breathed no vow,So weary and parched was he.The lean muezzin could not cry;The dogs ran mad, and bayed the sky;The hot sun shone like a copper disk,And prone in the shade of an obeliskThe water-carrier sank with a sigh,For limp and dry was his water-skin;And the wind from the desert blew in.· · · · ·Into the cool of the mosque it crept,Where the poor sought rest at the prophet’s shrine;Its breath was fire to the jasmine vine;It fevered the brow of the maid who slept,And men grew haggard with revel of wine.The tiny fledglings died in the nest;The sick babe gasped at the mother’s breast.Then a rumor rose and swelled and spreadFrom a tremulous whisper, faint and vague,Till it burst in a terrible cry of dread,The plague! the plague! the plague!—Oh the wind, Khamsin,The scourge from the desert blew in!Of the lighter notes, upon love and kindred themes, Mr. Scollard has many in his poems of the Orient; “The Song of the Nargileh” is of especial charm, but unfortunately too long to quote. Very graceful, too, is the “Twilight Song” with one of Mr. Scollard’s graphic beginnings, but one quaint bit fromThe Lutes of Mornis so characteristic as showing Oriental felicity of speech that while merely a jotting in song, and less important in an artistic sense than many others touching upon the theme of love, I cannot refrain from citing it instead: it is called “Greetings—Cairo.”Upon El Muski did I meet Hassan,Beneath arched brows his deep eyes twinkling bright,Good dragoman (and eke good Mussulman)And cried unto him, “May your day be white!”“And yours, howadji!” came his swift reply,A smile illumining the words thereof,(All men are poets ’neath that kindling sky),“As white as are the thoughts of her you love!”The Oriental poems cover not only a varied range of subject, but pass in review nearly every important city and shrine in the length and breadth of that storied land, making poetical footnotes to one’s history and filling his memory with pictures.The second source of Mr. Scollard’s inspiration, doubtless the first in point of time, is his delight in nature. Here, too, the objective side predominates. He is footfaring, with every sense alert to see, to hear, and to enjoy; he slips the world of men as a leash and becomes the fetterless comrade of the vagrant things of earth. He stops to do no philosophizing by the way,—the analogies, the laws, the evolving purposes of nature, are rarely touched upon in his verse; nor is he one of the poet-naturalists, intent to observe and record with infinite fidelity the fact, with its mystic spirit of beauty. He finds in the obvious side of nature such glamour andmagic as suffice for inspiration and delight; and it is this side which enthralls him almost wholly. In other words, his nature vision is rather outlook than insight, though always sympathetic in fancy and delicate in touch. He seems to see only the gladness in the season’s phases, and greets white-shrouded winter with all the ardor that he would bestow upon flower-decked June.He has one volume entitledFootfarings, written partly in prose and partly in verse,—a book abrim with morning joy, and bringing with it the aroma of wood-flowers and the minstrelsy of birds. The prose predominates, and is worthy the pen of a poet: its imaginative grace, its enthusiasm, and its quaint and delicate fancy impart to it all the flavor of poetry while adhering to a crisp and racy style. Each chapter is prefaced by a keynote of verse, such as that which conducts one to the haunt of the trillium, whereThese nun-like flowers with spotless urns,That shine with such a snowy gloss,Will seem, amid the suppliant ferns,To bow above the cloistral moss.Then Hope, her starry eyes upraised,Will suddenly surprise you there,And you will feel that you have gazedOn the white sanctity of prayer!Were it within the province of this study, I should like to quote some of Mr. Scollard’s prose from a “Woodland Walk,” “A Search for the Lady’s Slipper,” or many another picturesque chapter. One loses thought of print, and is for the nonce following his errant fancy through meadow and coppice to the heart of the spicy fir-woods, picking his way over the forest brooks, from stone to stone; following the alluring skid-roads, latticed by new growths on either side and arched above by interlacing green; penetrating into the tamarack thickets at the lure of the hermit-thrush, that spirit-voice of song; resting on a springy bed of moss and fern,—becoming, in short, wayfellow of desire, and thrall but to his will. Mr. Scollard has also published within the past year a book of nature verse calledThe Lyric Bough, which contains some of his best work in this way; one of its livelier fancies is that of “The Wind”:O the wind is a faun in the spring-timeWhen the ways are green for the tread of the May;List! hark his lay!Whist! mark his play!T-r-r-r-l!Hear how gay!O the wind is a dove in the summerWhen the ways are bright with the wash of the moon;List! hark him tune!Whist! mark him swoon!C-o-o-o-o!Hear him croon!O the wind is a gnome in the autumnWhen the ways are brown with the leaf and burr;Hist! mark him stir!List! hark him whir!S-s-s-s-t!Hear him chirr!O the wind is a wolf in the winterWhen the ways are white for the hornèd owl;Hist! mark him prowl!List! hark him howl!G-r-r-r-l!Hear him growl!One of the earlier books,The Hills of Song, contained a brief, merry-toned lyric, with a cavalier note, that sung itself into theAmerican Anthology, and is perhaps as characteristic and charming a leave-taking of this phase of Mr. Scollard’s work as one may cite:Be ye in love with April-tide?I’ faith, in love am I!For now ’tis sun, and now ’tis shower,And now ’tis frost, and now ’tis flower,And now ’tis Laura laughing-eyed,And now ’tis Laura shy.Ye doubtful days, O slower glide!Still smile and frown, O sky!Some beauty unforeseen I traceIn every change of Laura’s face;—Be ye in love with April-tide?I’ faith, in love am I!Balladry furnishes the third source of Mr. Scollard’s singing impulse. The Oriental poems have somewhat of this phase of his work, though more especially inclining to the narrative style; and the epic poem “Skenandoa,” while written in a story-lyric, shows the ballad-making qualities, which in their true note had been heard earlier in “Taillefer the Trouvère,” and have been heard more definitely inBallads of Valor and Victory, recently written in collaboration with Mr. Wallace Rice, and reciting the heroisms and adventures of soldier, sailor, and explorer from Drake to Dewey.Ballad-writing is an art calling for distinct gifts. The dramatic element must predominate. The story first—and if this be colorless, there is no true ballad; the verse next—and if this be flaccid, or if it swing to the other extreme and become too strained and tense, there is no true ballad; for the essence of ballad-writing is in the freedom of the movement, the swing and verve with which onerecounts a picturesque story. Mr. Scollard’s contributions to the volume are sung with spontaneity and with a virile note, and in the matter of characterization, fixing the personality of the hero before the mind, the work is especially strong; witness “Riding With Kilpatrick;” “Wayne at Stony Point;” “Montgomery at Quebec;” the picture of Thomas Macdonough at the Battle of Plattsburg Bay, or in more recent times of “Private Blair of the Regulars,” the modern Sidney, who, dying, gave the last draught of his canteen to his wounded fellows.“The White November” and “The Eve of Bunker Hill” are among the best of the ballads. The former brings with it a well-known note, but one newly bedight with brave phrase; indeed, all the celebrated ballad measures appear in these song stories, but well individualized in diction and dramatic mood. They differ of course in the degree of these qualities; some have too slight an incident to chronicle; some might with better effect have been omitted, particularly “War in April,” by Mr. Rice; but for this he atones by “The Minute-Men of Northboro” and other vigorous contributions to the collection. The ballads have the merit of structural compactness. While the necessary portrayal of the incident rendersmany of the best of them too long to quote, there are, in Mr. Scollard’s contribution to the book, few superfluous stanzas; each plays its essential part in the development of the story. They may not, then, be quoted without their full complement of strophes, which debars us from citing the “White November,” “Wayne at Stony Point,” and others mentioned as most representative; but here is the tale of “Riding With Kilpatrick,” not more valiant than many of the others, but celebrating a picturesque figure. There are certain reminiscent notes of “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix” in this galloping anapestic measure; and its graphic opening line calls to mind that instantaneous picture, “At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun.”Dawn peered through the pines as we dashed at the ford;Afar the grim guns of the infantry roared;There were miles yet of dangerous pathway to pass,And Moseby might menace, and Stuart might mass;But we mocked every doubt, laughing danger to scorn,As we quaffed with a shout from the wine of the mornThose who rode with Kilpatrick to valor were born!How we chafed at delay! How we itched to be on!How we yearned for the fray where the battle-reek shone!It wasforward, nothalt, stirred the fire in our veins,When our horses’ feet beat to the clink of the reins;It wascharge, notretreat, we were wonted to hear;It wascharge, notretreat, that was sweet to the ear;Those who rode with Kilpatrick had never felt fear!At last the word came, and troop tossed it to troop;Two squadrons deployed with a falcon-like swoop;While swiftly the others in echelons formed,For there, just ahead, was the line to be stormed.The trumpets rang out; there were guidons ablow;The white summer sun set our sabres aglow;Those who rode with Kilpatrick charged straight at the foe!We swept like the whirlwind; we closed; at the shockThe sky seemed to reel and the earth seemed to rock;Steel clashed upon steel with a deafening sound,While a redder than rose-stain encrimsoned the ground;If we gave back a space from the fierce pit of hell,We were rallied again by a voice like a bell,Those who rode with Kilpatrick rode valiantly well!Rang sternly his orders from out of the wrack:Re-form there, New Yorkers! You, Harris Light, back!Come on, men of Maine! we will conquer or fall!Now, forward, boys, forward, and follow me, all!A Bayard in boldness, a Sidney in grace,A lion to lead, and a stag-hound to chase—Those who rode with Kilpatrick looked Death in the face!Though brave were our foemen, they faltered and fled;Yet that was no marvel when such as he led!Long ago, long ago, was that desperate day!Long ago, long ago, strove the Blue and the Gray!Praise God that the red sun of battle is set!That our hand-clasp is loyal and loving—and yetThose who rode with Kilpatrick can never forget!The Lochinvar key is also struck in the description of Kilpatrick. Mr. Scollard sounds a less sanguinary note in most of the ballads, as that of “The Troopers” or “King Philip’s Last Stand.”“On the Eve of Bunker Hill,” while recording no thrilling story, has a note of pensive beauty in its quiet description of the preparation for battle before that memorable day, and of the prayer offered in the presence of the soldiers, “ranged a-row” in the open night. The initial stanza gives the setting and key:’Twas June on the face of the earth, June with the rose’s breath,When life is a gladsome thing, and a distant dream is death;There was gossip of birds in the air, and the lowing of herds by the wood,And a sunset gleam in the sky that the heart of a man holds good;Then the nun-like twilight came, violet-vestured and still,And the night’s first star outshone afar on the eve of Bunker Hill.Taking the volume throughout, it is a stirringly sungrésuméof all the chief deeds in American history to which attach valor and romance, and is not only attractive reading, but should be in the hands of every lad as a stimulus to patriotism, and to focus in his mind, astextbooks could never do, the exploits of the brave and the strong.In the lyrical narrative poem, such as “Guiraut, the Troubadour,” Mr. Scollard has one of his most characteristic vehicles. The adventures of the singer who sought a maid in Carcassonne are, no doubt, romantically enhanced by association of the name with that of the hapless one who “had not been to Carcassonne;” but it is certain that one follows the troubadour in his “russet raimentry,” drawn by his charm asUnto the gate of Carcassonne(Ah, how his blithe lips smiled uponThe warded gate of Carcassonne!)As light of foot as Love he strode;The budding flowers along the roadBloomed sudden, with his song for lure;And softlier the river flowedBefore Guiraut, the troubadour.· · · · ·Unto a keep in Carcassonne(No sweeter voice e’er drifted onThat frowning keep in Carcassonne!)Anon the singer drew anigh,—but we may not follow his propitious fortunes, glimpsed but to show the manner of their telling. The parenthetical lines, recurring in each stanza, impart a peculiar charm to the recital,but the diction and phrasing, while pleasant and in harmony, have no especial distinction in themselves, and this illustrates a frequent characteristic of Mr. Scollard’s work that the melody often carries the charm rather than the expression or basic theme. He is primarily a singer, he has the “lute in tune,” and the song is so spontaneous as sometimes to outsing the motive. There is always a felicitous, and often unique, turn of phrase and a most imaginative fancy, but one feels in a good deal of the work a lack of acid; it is too bland to bite as deeply as it ought. Just a bit sharper tang is needful.The message should also inform more vitally the melody, wedding more subtly the outer and inner grace. A poet is a teacher, whether he will or no, and the heart should be the vital textbook of his expounding. It is because of their deeper rooting in life, though a life foreign to us, that the Oriental poems of Mr. Scollard have often greater vitality than the Occidental ones, whose inspiration is found chiefly in nature. His ballads show that he has a sympathetic insight into character and a knowledge of human motive that would, if infused more widely through his work, give to it a warmth of personal appeal and a subjectivity which inmany of its phases it now lacks. The golden thread of Joy is woven so constantly into the web of his song that those whose woof is crossed with the hempen thread of Pain are likely to feel that he has no word for them, no hint as to the subtle transformation by which the hempen thread may merge into the gold, when the finished fabric hurtles from the loom. In other words, Mr. Scollard’s work is too objective to carry with it the spiritual meaning that it would if ingrained more deeply in the hidden life of the soul. Along this line lies its finer development: not that it shall lose a jot of its cheer, but that it shall constantly inform it with a richer and deeper meaning.

THAT genial and delicate satirist, Miss Agnes Repplier, laments in one of her clever essays that our modern poets incline to dwell upon the sombre side of things, and hence contribute so little to the cheer of life. One cannot but wonder what poetry Miss Repplier has been reading, for our own acquaintance with the song of to-day has been so much the opposite that it is difficult on the spur of the moment to recall any poet of the present group in America whose work is not in the main wholesome and heartening and who is not facing toward the sun. To be sure, there must be the relief of shade, lest the light glare; but they who journey to Castaly are in general cheerful wayfarers, taking gladly the gift of the hours and rendering the Giver a song, and among the blithest of them is Clinton Scollard, to whom life is always smilingly envisaged, and to whom, whether spring or autumn betide, it is still the “sweet o’ the year.”

If Mr. Scollard’s way has ever been “through dolor and dread, over crags and morasses,” he is too much the optimist to let the fact be known, or, better still, to recognize it as such; for we see what our own eyes reflect from within, and it is certain that Mr. Scollard’s outlook upon life is governed by the inherent conviction that her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace. Possibly this conviction would have more value to the less assured nature if the testimony of its winning were set down as a strength-giving force by the way, as we incline in daily life to undervalue the amiability and cheer which are matters of birthright rather than of overcoming; but this is a standard narrow in itself and wide of the issue at stake, which is so much cheerper se, whether the fortunate dower of nature, or the alchemic result of experience; nor may one draw too definite a line between the temperamental gift and the spiritual acquisition, especially when the psychology of literature furnishes the only data. It is sufficient to note the result in the work, and its bearing upon the art which shapes it. To Mr. Scollard, then, “Life’s enchanted cup” not only “sparkles at the brim;” but when he lifts it to his lips a rainbow arches in its depths, and he has communicated to hissong the flash of sunshine and color sparkling in the clearness of his own draught of life.

Illustration of Clinton Scollard

Mr. Scollard is almost wholly an objective poet, and by method a painter. His palette is ever ready for the picture furnished him at every turn, and hence his several volumes relating to the Orient,Lutes of Morn,Lyrics of the Dawn,Songs of Sunrise Lands, etc., are perhaps truer standards by which to measure his work than any other, illustrating as they do the pictorial side of his talent. Every object in the Orient is a picture with its individual color and atmosphere, but Mr. Scollard does not merely offer us a sketch in color; the outwardly picturesque is made to interpret a phase of life, and the spiritual contrasts in this land—where one religion or philosophy succeeds another, bringing with it another civilization and leaving desolate the ancient shrines—are indicated with vivid phrase, as in these lines:

A turbaned guard keeps stolid ward by the Zion gate in the sun,And the Paynim bows his shaven brows at the shrine of Solomon;At the chosen altars, long, long quenched is the flame of the sacred fire,And the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre.Great Herod’s pride with its columned aisles is grown with the olive bough,And Gath and Dan are but crumbling piles, while Gaza is gateless now;The sea on the sands of Ascalon sets hands to a mournful lyre,And the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre.

A turbaned guard keeps stolid ward by the Zion gate in the sun,

And the Paynim bows his shaven brows at the shrine of Solomon;

At the chosen altars, long, long quenched is the flame of the sacred fire,

And the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre.

Great Herod’s pride with its columned aisles is grown with the olive bough,And Gath and Dan are but crumbling piles, while Gaza is gateless now;The sea on the sands of Ascalon sets hands to a mournful lyre,And the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre.

Great Herod’s pride with its columned aisles is grown with the olive bough,

And Gath and Dan are but crumbling piles, while Gaza is gateless now;

The sea on the sands of Ascalon sets hands to a mournful lyre,

And the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre.

The closing stanza draws the contrast, or rather makes the spiritual application of the poem by which “the starry fame of one holy name”

Has blazoned Bethlehem for aye the heart of the world’s desire,While the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre.

Has blazoned Bethlehem for aye the heart of the world’s desire,

While the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre.

The final line of these stanzas may offer a metrical stumbling-block until one catches the sweep of the rhythm and falls in note with the cæsural pause after the word “tomb.” Mr. Scollard is nothing if not lyrical, and it would be easier for the traditional camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a captious critic to discover a metrical falsity in his tuneful song.

But to return to the Orient, not alone the reverence for the Christian faith speaks in these poems, but the artistic beauty in the Moslem and other faiths has entered intothem; one is stirred to sympathetic devotion by these lines,—

From many a marble minaretWe heard the rapt muezzin’s call;And to the prayerful cries my guide,During each trembling interval,With reverence serene replied,—

From many a marble minaret

We heard the rapt muezzin’s call;

And to the prayerful cries my guide,

During each trembling interval,

With reverence serene replied,—

and finds throughout the poems the higher assurance that

The East and West are one in Allah’s grace:Which way so’er ye turn, behold—His face!

The East and West are one in Allah’s grace:

Which way so’er ye turn, behold—His face!

It is difficult to choose from the several volumes portraying Oriental life, such poems as shall best represent it, since in any direction we shall find a picture full of color and of strange new charm: the white mosques and minarets; the gardens of citron and pomegranate; the bazaars, with their rare fabrics and curios; the pilgrims, dozing in the shade of the temples; the Bedouins, riding in from the desert; the women carrying from the springs their water-jars. We shall hear the sunrise cry of the muezzin from the minarets; the zither and lute in the gardens at evening; the jargon of tongues in booth and market-place; the philosopher expounding the Koran; the lover singing the songs of Araby. The dramaticlife of that impulsive, passionate people will be seen in such poems as the “Dancing of Suleima,” “At the Tomb of Abel,” and “Yousef and Melhem,” and the philosophical side in many a poem translating the precepts of the Koran into action; but it is, after all, for the picture in which all this is set that one comes with chief pleasure to these songs. Not only the human element of that strangely fascinating life is incorporated in them, but all the phenomena of nature in its swift-changing moods pass in review before one’s eyes, particularly of the swift transitions of the desert sun, stayed by no detaining cloud, and followed by the immediate gloom of night. The graphic lines—

When on the desert’s rim,In sudden, awful splendor, stood the sun—

When on the desert’s rim,

In sudden, awful splendor, stood the sun—

are excelled in terse, pictorial force by the record of its setting,—

Then sudden dipped the sun.—

Nor easily forgotten are those pictures of lying in the open when the cooling dark had fallen upon the yearning land, or upon the hills when

The night hung over Hebron all her stars,Miraculous processional of flame,

The night hung over Hebron all her stars,

Miraculous processional of flame,

and below from out the “purple blur” rose the minarets of the mosque where

Sepulchred for centuries untold,The bones of Isaac and of Joseph lay;And broidered cloths of silver and of goldWere heaped and draped o’er Abraham’s crumbled clay.

Sepulchred for centuries untold,

The bones of Isaac and of Joseph lay;

And broidered cloths of silver and of gold

Were heaped and draped o’er Abraham’s crumbled clay.

InThe Lutes of Mornthere are two sonnets—though lyrics in effect, so does the song prevail with Mr. Scollard—that serve hastily to sketch a moving scene and in their touch bring to mind Paul the chronicler. The first is “Passing Rhodes,” and contains these lines with a biblical tang,

At day’s dim marge, hard on the shut of eve,We rocked abreast the rugged Rhodian isle,

At day’s dim marge, hard on the shut of eve,

We rocked abreast the rugged Rhodian isle,

which tang appears in stronger flavor in the racy opening of the following:

Cleaving the seadrift through the starlit night,We left the barren Patmian isle behind,And scudding northward with a favoring wind,Lay anigh Chios at the dawn of light.The shore, the tree-set slopes, the rugged height,Clear in the morning’s roseate air outlined,—This was his birthplace who, albeit blind,Saw tall Troy’s fall, and sang the tragic sight.Resting within the roadstead, while the dayGrew into gradual glory, on the earContinuous broke the surge-song of the brine;And as we marked it rise, or die awayTo rise again, it seemed that we could hearThe swell and sweep of Homer’s mighty line.

Cleaving the seadrift through the starlit night,

We left the barren Patmian isle behind,

And scudding northward with a favoring wind,

Lay anigh Chios at the dawn of light.

The shore, the tree-set slopes, the rugged height,

Clear in the morning’s roseate air outlined,—

This was his birthplace who, albeit blind,

Saw tall Troy’s fall, and sang the tragic sight.

Resting within the roadstead, while the day

Grew into gradual glory, on the ear

Continuous broke the surge-song of the brine;

And as we marked it rise, or die away

To rise again, it seemed that we could hear

The swell and sweep of Homer’s mighty line.

Mr. Scollard’s musical and finely descriptive poem, “As I Came Down From Lebanon,” has become a favorite with the readers of his verse; but while it has great charm, it is not as strong a piece of work as are many other of the Oriental poems, contained in his later volumes,The Lutes of MornandLyrics of the Dawn, nor as that realistic poem, “Khamsin,” which appeared in the same collection. Here indeed is the breath of the sirocco:

Oh, the wind from the desert blew in!Khamsin,The wind from the desert blew in!It blew from the heart of the fiery south,From the fervid sand and the hills of drouth,And it kissed the land with its scorching mouth;The wind from the desert blew in!It blasted the buds on the almond bough,And shrivelled the fruit on the orange-tree;The wizened dervish breathed no vow,So weary and parched was he.The lean muezzin could not cry;The dogs ran mad, and bayed the sky;The hot sun shone like a copper disk,And prone in the shade of an obeliskThe water-carrier sank with a sigh,For limp and dry was his water-skin;And the wind from the desert blew in.· · · · ·Into the cool of the mosque it crept,Where the poor sought rest at the prophet’s shrine;Its breath was fire to the jasmine vine;It fevered the brow of the maid who slept,And men grew haggard with revel of wine.The tiny fledglings died in the nest;The sick babe gasped at the mother’s breast.Then a rumor rose and swelled and spreadFrom a tremulous whisper, faint and vague,Till it burst in a terrible cry of dread,The plague! the plague! the plague!—Oh the wind, Khamsin,The scourge from the desert blew in!

Oh, the wind from the desert blew in!

Khamsin,

The wind from the desert blew in!

It blew from the heart of the fiery south,

From the fervid sand and the hills of drouth,

And it kissed the land with its scorching mouth;

The wind from the desert blew in!

It blasted the buds on the almond bough,And shrivelled the fruit on the orange-tree;The wizened dervish breathed no vow,So weary and parched was he.The lean muezzin could not cry;The dogs ran mad, and bayed the sky;The hot sun shone like a copper disk,And prone in the shade of an obeliskThe water-carrier sank with a sigh,For limp and dry was his water-skin;And the wind from the desert blew in.· · · · ·Into the cool of the mosque it crept,Where the poor sought rest at the prophet’s shrine;Its breath was fire to the jasmine vine;It fevered the brow of the maid who slept,And men grew haggard with revel of wine.The tiny fledglings died in the nest;The sick babe gasped at the mother’s breast.Then a rumor rose and swelled and spreadFrom a tremulous whisper, faint and vague,Till it burst in a terrible cry of dread,The plague! the plague! the plague!—Oh the wind, Khamsin,The scourge from the desert blew in!

It blasted the buds on the almond bough,

And shrivelled the fruit on the orange-tree;

The wizened dervish breathed no vow,

So weary and parched was he.

The lean muezzin could not cry;

The dogs ran mad, and bayed the sky;

The hot sun shone like a copper disk,

And prone in the shade of an obelisk

The water-carrier sank with a sigh,

For limp and dry was his water-skin;

And the wind from the desert blew in.

· · · · ·

Into the cool of the mosque it crept,

Where the poor sought rest at the prophet’s shrine;

Its breath was fire to the jasmine vine;

It fevered the brow of the maid who slept,

And men grew haggard with revel of wine.

The tiny fledglings died in the nest;

The sick babe gasped at the mother’s breast.

Then a rumor rose and swelled and spread

From a tremulous whisper, faint and vague,

Till it burst in a terrible cry of dread,

The plague! the plague! the plague!—

Oh the wind, Khamsin,

The scourge from the desert blew in!

Of the lighter notes, upon love and kindred themes, Mr. Scollard has many in his poems of the Orient; “The Song of the Nargileh” is of especial charm, but unfortunately too long to quote. Very graceful, too, is the “Twilight Song” with one of Mr. Scollard’s graphic beginnings, but one quaint bit fromThe Lutes of Mornis so characteristic as showing Oriental felicity of speech that while merely a jotting in song, and less important in an artistic sense than many others touching upon the theme of love, I cannot refrain from citing it instead: it is called “Greetings—Cairo.”

Upon El Muski did I meet Hassan,Beneath arched brows his deep eyes twinkling bright,Good dragoman (and eke good Mussulman)And cried unto him, “May your day be white!”“And yours, howadji!” came his swift reply,A smile illumining the words thereof,(All men are poets ’neath that kindling sky),“As white as are the thoughts of her you love!”

Upon El Muski did I meet Hassan,Beneath arched brows his deep eyes twinkling bright,Good dragoman (and eke good Mussulman)And cried unto him, “May your day be white!”

Upon El Muski did I meet Hassan,

Beneath arched brows his deep eyes twinkling bright,

Good dragoman (and eke good Mussulman)

And cried unto him, “May your day be white!”

“And yours, howadji!” came his swift reply,A smile illumining the words thereof,(All men are poets ’neath that kindling sky),“As white as are the thoughts of her you love!”

“And yours, howadji!” came his swift reply,

A smile illumining the words thereof,

(All men are poets ’neath that kindling sky),

“As white as are the thoughts of her you love!”

The Oriental poems cover not only a varied range of subject, but pass in review nearly every important city and shrine in the length and breadth of that storied land, making poetical footnotes to one’s history and filling his memory with pictures.

The second source of Mr. Scollard’s inspiration, doubtless the first in point of time, is his delight in nature. Here, too, the objective side predominates. He is footfaring, with every sense alert to see, to hear, and to enjoy; he slips the world of men as a leash and becomes the fetterless comrade of the vagrant things of earth. He stops to do no philosophizing by the way,—the analogies, the laws, the evolving purposes of nature, are rarely touched upon in his verse; nor is he one of the poet-naturalists, intent to observe and record with infinite fidelity the fact, with its mystic spirit of beauty. He finds in the obvious side of nature such glamour andmagic as suffice for inspiration and delight; and it is this side which enthralls him almost wholly. In other words, his nature vision is rather outlook than insight, though always sympathetic in fancy and delicate in touch. He seems to see only the gladness in the season’s phases, and greets white-shrouded winter with all the ardor that he would bestow upon flower-decked June.

He has one volume entitledFootfarings, written partly in prose and partly in verse,—a book abrim with morning joy, and bringing with it the aroma of wood-flowers and the minstrelsy of birds. The prose predominates, and is worthy the pen of a poet: its imaginative grace, its enthusiasm, and its quaint and delicate fancy impart to it all the flavor of poetry while adhering to a crisp and racy style. Each chapter is prefaced by a keynote of verse, such as that which conducts one to the haunt of the trillium, where

These nun-like flowers with spotless urns,That shine with such a snowy gloss,Will seem, amid the suppliant ferns,To bow above the cloistral moss.Then Hope, her starry eyes upraised,Will suddenly surprise you there,And you will feel that you have gazedOn the white sanctity of prayer!

These nun-like flowers with spotless urns,That shine with such a snowy gloss,Will seem, amid the suppliant ferns,To bow above the cloistral moss.

These nun-like flowers with spotless urns,

That shine with such a snowy gloss,

Will seem, amid the suppliant ferns,

To bow above the cloistral moss.

Then Hope, her starry eyes upraised,Will suddenly surprise you there,And you will feel that you have gazedOn the white sanctity of prayer!

Then Hope, her starry eyes upraised,

Will suddenly surprise you there,

And you will feel that you have gazed

On the white sanctity of prayer!

Were it within the province of this study, I should like to quote some of Mr. Scollard’s prose from a “Woodland Walk,” “A Search for the Lady’s Slipper,” or many another picturesque chapter. One loses thought of print, and is for the nonce following his errant fancy through meadow and coppice to the heart of the spicy fir-woods, picking his way over the forest brooks, from stone to stone; following the alluring skid-roads, latticed by new growths on either side and arched above by interlacing green; penetrating into the tamarack thickets at the lure of the hermit-thrush, that spirit-voice of song; resting on a springy bed of moss and fern,—becoming, in short, wayfellow of desire, and thrall but to his will. Mr. Scollard has also published within the past year a book of nature verse calledThe Lyric Bough, which contains some of his best work in this way; one of its livelier fancies is that of “The Wind”:

O the wind is a faun in the spring-timeWhen the ways are green for the tread of the May;List! hark his lay!Whist! mark his play!T-r-r-r-l!Hear how gay!O the wind is a dove in the summerWhen the ways are bright with the wash of the moon;List! hark him tune!Whist! mark him swoon!C-o-o-o-o!Hear him croon!O the wind is a gnome in the autumnWhen the ways are brown with the leaf and burr;Hist! mark him stir!List! hark him whir!S-s-s-s-t!Hear him chirr!O the wind is a wolf in the winterWhen the ways are white for the hornèd owl;Hist! mark him prowl!List! hark him howl!G-r-r-r-l!Hear him growl!

O the wind is a faun in the spring-timeWhen the ways are green for the tread of the May;List! hark his lay!Whist! mark his play!T-r-r-r-l!Hear how gay!

O the wind is a faun in the spring-time

When the ways are green for the tread of the May;

List! hark his lay!

Whist! mark his play!

T-r-r-r-l!

Hear how gay!

O the wind is a dove in the summerWhen the ways are bright with the wash of the moon;List! hark him tune!Whist! mark him swoon!C-o-o-o-o!Hear him croon!

O the wind is a dove in the summer

When the ways are bright with the wash of the moon;

List! hark him tune!

Whist! mark him swoon!

C-o-o-o-o!

Hear him croon!

O the wind is a gnome in the autumnWhen the ways are brown with the leaf and burr;Hist! mark him stir!List! hark him whir!S-s-s-s-t!Hear him chirr!

O the wind is a gnome in the autumn

When the ways are brown with the leaf and burr;

Hist! mark him stir!

List! hark him whir!

S-s-s-s-t!

Hear him chirr!

O the wind is a wolf in the winterWhen the ways are white for the hornèd owl;Hist! mark him prowl!List! hark him howl!G-r-r-r-l!Hear him growl!

O the wind is a wolf in the winter

When the ways are white for the hornèd owl;

Hist! mark him prowl!

List! hark him howl!

G-r-r-r-l!

Hear him growl!

One of the earlier books,The Hills of Song, contained a brief, merry-toned lyric, with a cavalier note, that sung itself into theAmerican Anthology, and is perhaps as characteristic and charming a leave-taking of this phase of Mr. Scollard’s work as one may cite:

Be ye in love with April-tide?I’ faith, in love am I!For now ’tis sun, and now ’tis shower,And now ’tis frost, and now ’tis flower,And now ’tis Laura laughing-eyed,And now ’tis Laura shy.Ye doubtful days, O slower glide!Still smile and frown, O sky!Some beauty unforeseen I traceIn every change of Laura’s face;—Be ye in love with April-tide?I’ faith, in love am I!

Be ye in love with April-tide?

I’ faith, in love am I!

For now ’tis sun, and now ’tis shower,

And now ’tis frost, and now ’tis flower,

And now ’tis Laura laughing-eyed,

And now ’tis Laura shy.

Ye doubtful days, O slower glide!Still smile and frown, O sky!Some beauty unforeseen I traceIn every change of Laura’s face;—Be ye in love with April-tide?I’ faith, in love am I!

Ye doubtful days, O slower glide!

Still smile and frown, O sky!

Some beauty unforeseen I trace

In every change of Laura’s face;—

Be ye in love with April-tide?

I’ faith, in love am I!

Balladry furnishes the third source of Mr. Scollard’s singing impulse. The Oriental poems have somewhat of this phase of his work, though more especially inclining to the narrative style; and the epic poem “Skenandoa,” while written in a story-lyric, shows the ballad-making qualities, which in their true note had been heard earlier in “Taillefer the Trouvère,” and have been heard more definitely inBallads of Valor and Victory, recently written in collaboration with Mr. Wallace Rice, and reciting the heroisms and adventures of soldier, sailor, and explorer from Drake to Dewey.

Ballad-writing is an art calling for distinct gifts. The dramatic element must predominate. The story first—and if this be colorless, there is no true ballad; the verse next—and if this be flaccid, or if it swing to the other extreme and become too strained and tense, there is no true ballad; for the essence of ballad-writing is in the freedom of the movement, the swing and verve with which onerecounts a picturesque story. Mr. Scollard’s contributions to the volume are sung with spontaneity and with a virile note, and in the matter of characterization, fixing the personality of the hero before the mind, the work is especially strong; witness “Riding With Kilpatrick;” “Wayne at Stony Point;” “Montgomery at Quebec;” the picture of Thomas Macdonough at the Battle of Plattsburg Bay, or in more recent times of “Private Blair of the Regulars,” the modern Sidney, who, dying, gave the last draught of his canteen to his wounded fellows.

“The White November” and “The Eve of Bunker Hill” are among the best of the ballads. The former brings with it a well-known note, but one newly bedight with brave phrase; indeed, all the celebrated ballad measures appear in these song stories, but well individualized in diction and dramatic mood. They differ of course in the degree of these qualities; some have too slight an incident to chronicle; some might with better effect have been omitted, particularly “War in April,” by Mr. Rice; but for this he atones by “The Minute-Men of Northboro” and other vigorous contributions to the collection. The ballads have the merit of structural compactness. While the necessary portrayal of the incident rendersmany of the best of them too long to quote, there are, in Mr. Scollard’s contribution to the book, few superfluous stanzas; each plays its essential part in the development of the story. They may not, then, be quoted without their full complement of strophes, which debars us from citing the “White November,” “Wayne at Stony Point,” and others mentioned as most representative; but here is the tale of “Riding With Kilpatrick,” not more valiant than many of the others, but celebrating a picturesque figure. There are certain reminiscent notes of “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix” in this galloping anapestic measure; and its graphic opening line calls to mind that instantaneous picture, “At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun.”

Dawn peered through the pines as we dashed at the ford;Afar the grim guns of the infantry roared;There were miles yet of dangerous pathway to pass,And Moseby might menace, and Stuart might mass;But we mocked every doubt, laughing danger to scorn,As we quaffed with a shout from the wine of the mornThose who rode with Kilpatrick to valor were born!How we chafed at delay! How we itched to be on!How we yearned for the fray where the battle-reek shone!It wasforward, nothalt, stirred the fire in our veins,When our horses’ feet beat to the clink of the reins;It wascharge, notretreat, we were wonted to hear;It wascharge, notretreat, that was sweet to the ear;Those who rode with Kilpatrick had never felt fear!At last the word came, and troop tossed it to troop;Two squadrons deployed with a falcon-like swoop;While swiftly the others in echelons formed,For there, just ahead, was the line to be stormed.The trumpets rang out; there were guidons ablow;The white summer sun set our sabres aglow;Those who rode with Kilpatrick charged straight at the foe!We swept like the whirlwind; we closed; at the shockThe sky seemed to reel and the earth seemed to rock;Steel clashed upon steel with a deafening sound,While a redder than rose-stain encrimsoned the ground;If we gave back a space from the fierce pit of hell,We were rallied again by a voice like a bell,Those who rode with Kilpatrick rode valiantly well!Rang sternly his orders from out of the wrack:Re-form there, New Yorkers! You, Harris Light, back!Come on, men of Maine! we will conquer or fall!Now, forward, boys, forward, and follow me, all!A Bayard in boldness, a Sidney in grace,A lion to lead, and a stag-hound to chase—Those who rode with Kilpatrick looked Death in the face!Though brave were our foemen, they faltered and fled;Yet that was no marvel when such as he led!Long ago, long ago, was that desperate day!Long ago, long ago, strove the Blue and the Gray!Praise God that the red sun of battle is set!That our hand-clasp is loyal and loving—and yetThose who rode with Kilpatrick can never forget!

Dawn peered through the pines as we dashed at the ford;

Afar the grim guns of the infantry roared;

There were miles yet of dangerous pathway to pass,

And Moseby might menace, and Stuart might mass;

But we mocked every doubt, laughing danger to scorn,

As we quaffed with a shout from the wine of the morn

Those who rode with Kilpatrick to valor were born!

How we chafed at delay! How we itched to be on!How we yearned for the fray where the battle-reek shone!It wasforward, nothalt, stirred the fire in our veins,When our horses’ feet beat to the clink of the reins;It wascharge, notretreat, we were wonted to hear;It wascharge, notretreat, that was sweet to the ear;Those who rode with Kilpatrick had never felt fear!

How we chafed at delay! How we itched to be on!

How we yearned for the fray where the battle-reek shone!

It wasforward, nothalt, stirred the fire in our veins,

When our horses’ feet beat to the clink of the reins;

It wascharge, notretreat, we were wonted to hear;

It wascharge, notretreat, that was sweet to the ear;

Those who rode with Kilpatrick had never felt fear!

At last the word came, and troop tossed it to troop;Two squadrons deployed with a falcon-like swoop;While swiftly the others in echelons formed,For there, just ahead, was the line to be stormed.The trumpets rang out; there were guidons ablow;The white summer sun set our sabres aglow;Those who rode with Kilpatrick charged straight at the foe!

At last the word came, and troop tossed it to troop;

Two squadrons deployed with a falcon-like swoop;

While swiftly the others in echelons formed,

For there, just ahead, was the line to be stormed.

The trumpets rang out; there were guidons ablow;

The white summer sun set our sabres aglow;

Those who rode with Kilpatrick charged straight at the foe!

We swept like the whirlwind; we closed; at the shockThe sky seemed to reel and the earth seemed to rock;Steel clashed upon steel with a deafening sound,While a redder than rose-stain encrimsoned the ground;If we gave back a space from the fierce pit of hell,We were rallied again by a voice like a bell,Those who rode with Kilpatrick rode valiantly well!

We swept like the whirlwind; we closed; at the shock

The sky seemed to reel and the earth seemed to rock;

Steel clashed upon steel with a deafening sound,

While a redder than rose-stain encrimsoned the ground;

If we gave back a space from the fierce pit of hell,

We were rallied again by a voice like a bell,

Those who rode with Kilpatrick rode valiantly well!

Rang sternly his orders from out of the wrack:Re-form there, New Yorkers! You, Harris Light, back!Come on, men of Maine! we will conquer or fall!Now, forward, boys, forward, and follow me, all!A Bayard in boldness, a Sidney in grace,A lion to lead, and a stag-hound to chase—Those who rode with Kilpatrick looked Death in the face!

Rang sternly his orders from out of the wrack:

Re-form there, New Yorkers! You, Harris Light, back!

Come on, men of Maine! we will conquer or fall!

Now, forward, boys, forward, and follow me, all!

A Bayard in boldness, a Sidney in grace,

A lion to lead, and a stag-hound to chase—

Those who rode with Kilpatrick looked Death in the face!

Though brave were our foemen, they faltered and fled;Yet that was no marvel when such as he led!Long ago, long ago, was that desperate day!Long ago, long ago, strove the Blue and the Gray!Praise God that the red sun of battle is set!That our hand-clasp is loyal and loving—and yetThose who rode with Kilpatrick can never forget!

Though brave were our foemen, they faltered and fled;

Yet that was no marvel when such as he led!

Long ago, long ago, was that desperate day!

Long ago, long ago, strove the Blue and the Gray!

Praise God that the red sun of battle is set!

That our hand-clasp is loyal and loving—and yet

Those who rode with Kilpatrick can never forget!

The Lochinvar key is also struck in the description of Kilpatrick. Mr. Scollard sounds a less sanguinary note in most of the ballads, as that of “The Troopers” or “King Philip’s Last Stand.”

“On the Eve of Bunker Hill,” while recording no thrilling story, has a note of pensive beauty in its quiet description of the preparation for battle before that memorable day, and of the prayer offered in the presence of the soldiers, “ranged a-row” in the open night. The initial stanza gives the setting and key:

’Twas June on the face of the earth, June with the rose’s breath,When life is a gladsome thing, and a distant dream is death;There was gossip of birds in the air, and the lowing of herds by the wood,And a sunset gleam in the sky that the heart of a man holds good;Then the nun-like twilight came, violet-vestured and still,And the night’s first star outshone afar on the eve of Bunker Hill.

’Twas June on the face of the earth, June with the rose’s breath,

When life is a gladsome thing, and a distant dream is death;

There was gossip of birds in the air, and the lowing of herds by the wood,

And a sunset gleam in the sky that the heart of a man holds good;

Then the nun-like twilight came, violet-vestured and still,

And the night’s first star outshone afar on the eve of Bunker Hill.

Taking the volume throughout, it is a stirringly sungrésuméof all the chief deeds in American history to which attach valor and romance, and is not only attractive reading, but should be in the hands of every lad as a stimulus to patriotism, and to focus in his mind, astextbooks could never do, the exploits of the brave and the strong.

In the lyrical narrative poem, such as “Guiraut, the Troubadour,” Mr. Scollard has one of his most characteristic vehicles. The adventures of the singer who sought a maid in Carcassonne are, no doubt, romantically enhanced by association of the name with that of the hapless one who “had not been to Carcassonne;” but it is certain that one follows the troubadour in his “russet raimentry,” drawn by his charm as

Unto the gate of Carcassonne(Ah, how his blithe lips smiled uponThe warded gate of Carcassonne!)As light of foot as Love he strode;The budding flowers along the roadBloomed sudden, with his song for lure;And softlier the river flowedBefore Guiraut, the troubadour.· · · · ·Unto a keep in Carcassonne(No sweeter voice e’er drifted onThat frowning keep in Carcassonne!)Anon the singer drew anigh,—

Unto the gate of Carcassonne

(Ah, how his blithe lips smiled upon

The warded gate of Carcassonne!)

As light of foot as Love he strode;

The budding flowers along the road

Bloomed sudden, with his song for lure;

And softlier the river flowed

Before Guiraut, the troubadour.

· · · · ·

Unto a keep in Carcassonne

(No sweeter voice e’er drifted on

That frowning keep in Carcassonne!)

Anon the singer drew anigh,—

but we may not follow his propitious fortunes, glimpsed but to show the manner of their telling. The parenthetical lines, recurring in each stanza, impart a peculiar charm to the recital,but the diction and phrasing, while pleasant and in harmony, have no especial distinction in themselves, and this illustrates a frequent characteristic of Mr. Scollard’s work that the melody often carries the charm rather than the expression or basic theme. He is primarily a singer, he has the “lute in tune,” and the song is so spontaneous as sometimes to outsing the motive. There is always a felicitous, and often unique, turn of phrase and a most imaginative fancy, but one feels in a good deal of the work a lack of acid; it is too bland to bite as deeply as it ought. Just a bit sharper tang is needful.

The message should also inform more vitally the melody, wedding more subtly the outer and inner grace. A poet is a teacher, whether he will or no, and the heart should be the vital textbook of his expounding. It is because of their deeper rooting in life, though a life foreign to us, that the Oriental poems of Mr. Scollard have often greater vitality than the Occidental ones, whose inspiration is found chiefly in nature. His ballads show that he has a sympathetic insight into character and a knowledge of human motive that would, if infused more widely through his work, give to it a warmth of personal appeal and a subjectivity which inmany of its phases it now lacks. The golden thread of Joy is woven so constantly into the web of his song that those whose woof is crossed with the hempen thread of Pain are likely to feel that he has no word for them, no hint as to the subtle transformation by which the hempen thread may merge into the gold, when the finished fabric hurtles from the loom. In other words, Mr. Scollard’s work is too objective to carry with it the spiritual meaning that it would if ingrained more deeply in the hidden life of the soul. Along this line lies its finer development: not that it shall lose a jot of its cheer, but that it shall constantly inform it with a richer and deeper meaning.

XVMARY MCNEIL FENOLLOSATO be a poet of the East, one must be a painter, using words as a colorist uses pigment. His poem must be a picture wherein form and detail are subjected to the values of tone and atmosphere; like the dawn-crest of Fujiyama it must glow, it must dazzle with tints and light. To convert the pen into an artist’s brush, the vocabulary into a palette, is an end not to be gained by striving; it is a talenta priori, a temperamental color, a temperamental art.So vividly is this shown in the work of Mrs. Mary McNeil Fenollosa that whereas in her Eastern poems she is every whit the artist, in her Western, her Occidental poems, she is without special distinction. Certain of her Western poems have a conventional, mechanical tone, while those of the East are abrim with vitality and impulse. They were not “reared by wan degrees;” the craftsman did not fashion them; and although varying in charm, there are few that lack the Eastern spirit.Mrs. Fenollosa’s bit of the Orient is Japan, where nature is ever coquetting,—laughing in the cherry, sighing in the lotos. Nature in the Orient is invested with a personality foreign to Western countries, a personality reminiscent of the gods. Then, too, nature is given a more prominent place in the poetry of the East than is love, or any of the subjects, so infinite in variety, which engross a Western singer; and it happens that Mrs. Fenollosa, catching this spirit during her life in Japan, gives us chiefly nature poems in her Eastern collection. With artist-strokes where each is sure, she flashes this picture before us:The day unfolds like a lotos-bloom,Pink at the tip, and gold at the core,Rising up swiftly through waters of gloomThat lave night’s shore;or this vision of—The cloud-like curve,The loosened sheaf,The ineffable pink of a lotos leaf.One great charm of the imagery in Mrs. Fenollosa’s Japanese poems is its subtlety of suggestion. The imagination has play; something is left for the fancy of the reader, which can scarcely be said of some of the highlywrought verse of our own country. The first lyric in the collection hints of a score of things beyond its eight-line scope:O let me die a singing!O let me drown in light!Another day is wingingOut from the nest of night.The morning glory’s velvet eyeBrims with a jewelled bead.To-day my soul’s a dragon-fly,The world a swaying reed!“To-day my soul’s a dragon-fly,”—a wingéd incarnation of liberty and joy; “the world a swaying reed,”—a pliant thing made for my delight, an empery of which I am the sovereign and may have my will.Illustration of Mary McNeil FenollosaBut these Japanese songs have not wholly the lighter melody; there are those that sing of the devastation of the rice-fields after the floods, a grim and tragic picture; and there are interpretations of the dreams of the great bronze Buddha, looking with sad, inscrutable eyes upon the pilgrims who, with the recurrent seasons, come creeping to his feet like insects from the mould; and there is a story of “The Path of Prayer,”—a Japanese superstition so human that one is glad of a religion where sentiment overtops reason. It pictures onewalking at evening under gnarled old pines until he chances upon a hidden path leading through a hundred gates that keep a sacred way; and as he passes he is amazed to see along the route, springing as if from the earth, fluttering white papers, tiedAs banners pendent from a mimic wand.The poem continues:I wondered long; when, from the drowsy wood,A whisper reached me, “’Tis the Path of Prayer,Where, nightly, Kwannon walks in pitying mood,To read the sad petitions planted there.”Ah, simple faith! The sun was in the west;And darkness smote with flails his quivering light.Beside the path I knelt; and, with the rest,My alien prayer was planted in the night.It is to be regretted that Mrs. Fenollosa gives us so little of the religious or mystical in Japanese thought, since no country is richer in material of the sort, and especially as the isolated poems and passages in which she touches upon it are all so interpretative. She has one poem, a petition of old people at a temple, that strikes deep root both in pathos and philosophy. Perhaps the Japanese excel all other peoples in the reverence paid to age, and yet no excess of consideration can supplantthe melancholy of that time. The second stanza of Mrs. Fenollosa’s poem expresses the aloofness of the old,—For thy comfort, Lord, we pray,Namu Amida Butsu!In the rice-fields, day by day,Now the strong ones comb the grain;Once we laughed there in the rain,Stooping low in sun and coldFor our helpless young and old;In the rice-fields day by day,Namu Amida Butsu!And the last stanza is imbued with the Buddhistic resignation, the desire to pass, to be reabsorbed, reinvested, reborn. It is philosophical after the Karmic law, and beautiful in spirit even to a Western mind:For thy mercy, Lord, we pray,Namu Amida Butsu!Let the old roots waste away,That the green may pierce the light!Life and thought, in withered plight,Choke the morning. Far beneathStirs the young blade in its sheath.Let the old roots pass away!Namu Amida Butsu!This is symbolism which upon a cursory reading one might lose entirely, thinking its import to be, let the old die and give placeto the young; whereas it is, let the old in oneself, the outworn, the material, the inefficacious, die, and give place to the new.That the green may pierce the light:—that out of physical decay a regrowth of the spirit may spring; for already,Far beneathStirs the young blade in its sheath:—the soul is quickening for the upper air and making ready to burst its detaining mould. How beautiful is the recognition thatLife and thought, in withered plight,Choke the morning,the young eternal self, that, having fulfilled the conditions of Karma in its present embodiment of destiny, is obeying the resistless law that calls it to new modes of being. It is unnecessary to be of the Buddhistic faith to feel the spell and the beauty of its philosophy.Mrs. Fenollosa’s gift is chiefly lyrical, although her sonnets and descriptive poems have many passages of beauty; the picturesque in fancy and phrasing is ever at her command, and there are few poems in which one is notarrested by some unique expression, or bit of imagery, as this from “An Eastern Cry”:Beneath the maples crickets wake,And chip the silence, flake on flake.Or that in which the rainBrimmed great magnolias up with scented wine.Or the fir-tree stood,With clotted plumage sagging to the land.Or when Fujiyama seen at dawn is pictured asA crown … self poised in mist,and again asA frail mirage of ParadiseSet in the quickening air.So true in color and vision are Mrs. Fenollosa’s lyrics that one cannot understand how in a sonnet she can be guilty of so mixed a metaphor as this describing a “Morning On Fujisan”:Through powdered mist of dawn-lit pearl and roseThere lifts one lotos-peak of cleaving white,The swan-like rhapsody of dying night,Which, softly soaring through the ether, blowsTo hang there breathless….The first two lines are unimpeachable, but when the “lotos-peak” is amplified into a “swan-like rhapsody,” one is swept quite away from his bearings. It is but an illustration of the effort that often goes to the building of a sonnet and renders forced and inept what was designed to be artistic. Mrs. Fenollosa’s sonnets, however, do not often violate congruity, for while the sonnet is by no means her representative form, she handles it with as much ease as do most of the modern singers, and occasionally one comes upon her most characteristic lines in this compass; but it is true of the sonnet form in general, except in the hands of a thorough artist, that the mechanism is too obvious and obscures the theme.To know Mrs. Fenollosa at her best one must read “Miyoko San,” “Full Moon Over Sumidagawa,” “An Eastern Cry,” “Exiled,” and this song “To a Japanese Nightingale,” full of mystic, wistful beauty, of suggestive spiritual grace. How delicate is its fashioning, and yet how it defines a picture, silhouettes it against the Orient night!Dark on the face of a low, full moonSwayeth the tall bamboo.No flute nor quiver of song is heard,Though sheer on the tip a small brown birdSways to an inward tune.O small brown bird, like a dusky star,Lone on the tall bamboo,Thou germ of the soul of a summer night,Thou quickening core of a lost delight,Of ecstasy born afar,Soar out thy bliss to the tingling air,Sing from the tall bamboo!Loosen the long, clear, syrup noteThat shimmers and throbs in thy delicate throat;Mellow my soul’s despair!

TO be a poet of the East, one must be a painter, using words as a colorist uses pigment. His poem must be a picture wherein form and detail are subjected to the values of tone and atmosphere; like the dawn-crest of Fujiyama it must glow, it must dazzle with tints and light. To convert the pen into an artist’s brush, the vocabulary into a palette, is an end not to be gained by striving; it is a talenta priori, a temperamental color, a temperamental art.

So vividly is this shown in the work of Mrs. Mary McNeil Fenollosa that whereas in her Eastern poems she is every whit the artist, in her Western, her Occidental poems, she is without special distinction. Certain of her Western poems have a conventional, mechanical tone, while those of the East are abrim with vitality and impulse. They were not “reared by wan degrees;” the craftsman did not fashion them; and although varying in charm, there are few that lack the Eastern spirit.

Mrs. Fenollosa’s bit of the Orient is Japan, where nature is ever coquetting,—laughing in the cherry, sighing in the lotos. Nature in the Orient is invested with a personality foreign to Western countries, a personality reminiscent of the gods. Then, too, nature is given a more prominent place in the poetry of the East than is love, or any of the subjects, so infinite in variety, which engross a Western singer; and it happens that Mrs. Fenollosa, catching this spirit during her life in Japan, gives us chiefly nature poems in her Eastern collection. With artist-strokes where each is sure, she flashes this picture before us:

The day unfolds like a lotos-bloom,Pink at the tip, and gold at the core,Rising up swiftly through waters of gloomThat lave night’s shore;

The day unfolds like a lotos-bloom,

Pink at the tip, and gold at the core,

Rising up swiftly through waters of gloom

That lave night’s shore;

or this vision of—

The cloud-like curve,The loosened sheaf,The ineffable pink of a lotos leaf.

The cloud-like curve,

The loosened sheaf,

The ineffable pink of a lotos leaf.

One great charm of the imagery in Mrs. Fenollosa’s Japanese poems is its subtlety of suggestion. The imagination has play; something is left for the fancy of the reader, which can scarcely be said of some of the highlywrought verse of our own country. The first lyric in the collection hints of a score of things beyond its eight-line scope:

O let me die a singing!O let me drown in light!Another day is wingingOut from the nest of night.The morning glory’s velvet eyeBrims with a jewelled bead.To-day my soul’s a dragon-fly,The world a swaying reed!

O let me die a singing!

O let me drown in light!

Another day is winging

Out from the nest of night.

The morning glory’s velvet eye

Brims with a jewelled bead.

To-day my soul’s a dragon-fly,

The world a swaying reed!

“To-day my soul’s a dragon-fly,”—a wingéd incarnation of liberty and joy; “the world a swaying reed,”—a pliant thing made for my delight, an empery of which I am the sovereign and may have my will.

Illustration of Mary McNeil Fenollosa

But these Japanese songs have not wholly the lighter melody; there are those that sing of the devastation of the rice-fields after the floods, a grim and tragic picture; and there are interpretations of the dreams of the great bronze Buddha, looking with sad, inscrutable eyes upon the pilgrims who, with the recurrent seasons, come creeping to his feet like insects from the mould; and there is a story of “The Path of Prayer,”—a Japanese superstition so human that one is glad of a religion where sentiment overtops reason. It pictures onewalking at evening under gnarled old pines until he chances upon a hidden path leading through a hundred gates that keep a sacred way; and as he passes he is amazed to see along the route, springing as if from the earth, fluttering white papers, tied

As banners pendent from a mimic wand.

The poem continues:

I wondered long; when, from the drowsy wood,A whisper reached me, “’Tis the Path of Prayer,Where, nightly, Kwannon walks in pitying mood,To read the sad petitions planted there.”Ah, simple faith! The sun was in the west;And darkness smote with flails his quivering light.Beside the path I knelt; and, with the rest,My alien prayer was planted in the night.

I wondered long; when, from the drowsy wood,A whisper reached me, “’Tis the Path of Prayer,Where, nightly, Kwannon walks in pitying mood,To read the sad petitions planted there.”

I wondered long; when, from the drowsy wood,

A whisper reached me, “’Tis the Path of Prayer,

Where, nightly, Kwannon walks in pitying mood,

To read the sad petitions planted there.”

Ah, simple faith! The sun was in the west;And darkness smote with flails his quivering light.Beside the path I knelt; and, with the rest,My alien prayer was planted in the night.

Ah, simple faith! The sun was in the west;

And darkness smote with flails his quivering light.

Beside the path I knelt; and, with the rest,

My alien prayer was planted in the night.

It is to be regretted that Mrs. Fenollosa gives us so little of the religious or mystical in Japanese thought, since no country is richer in material of the sort, and especially as the isolated poems and passages in which she touches upon it are all so interpretative. She has one poem, a petition of old people at a temple, that strikes deep root both in pathos and philosophy. Perhaps the Japanese excel all other peoples in the reverence paid to age, and yet no excess of consideration can supplantthe melancholy of that time. The second stanza of Mrs. Fenollosa’s poem expresses the aloofness of the old,—

For thy comfort, Lord, we pray,Namu Amida Butsu!In the rice-fields, day by day,Now the strong ones comb the grain;Once we laughed there in the rain,Stooping low in sun and coldFor our helpless young and old;In the rice-fields day by day,Namu Amida Butsu!

For thy comfort, Lord, we pray,

Namu Amida Butsu!

In the rice-fields, day by day,

Now the strong ones comb the grain;

Once we laughed there in the rain,

Stooping low in sun and cold

For our helpless young and old;

In the rice-fields day by day,

Namu Amida Butsu!

And the last stanza is imbued with the Buddhistic resignation, the desire to pass, to be reabsorbed, reinvested, reborn. It is philosophical after the Karmic law, and beautiful in spirit even to a Western mind:

For thy mercy, Lord, we pray,Namu Amida Butsu!Let the old roots waste away,That the green may pierce the light!Life and thought, in withered plight,Choke the morning. Far beneathStirs the young blade in its sheath.Let the old roots pass away!Namu Amida Butsu!

For thy mercy, Lord, we pray,

Namu Amida Butsu!

Let the old roots waste away,

That the green may pierce the light!

Life and thought, in withered plight,

Choke the morning. Far beneath

Stirs the young blade in its sheath.

Let the old roots pass away!

Namu Amida Butsu!

This is symbolism which upon a cursory reading one might lose entirely, thinking its import to be, let the old die and give placeto the young; whereas it is, let the old in oneself, the outworn, the material, the inefficacious, die, and give place to the new.

That the green may pierce the light:—

that out of physical decay a regrowth of the spirit may spring; for already,

Far beneathStirs the young blade in its sheath:—

Far beneath

Stirs the young blade in its sheath:—

the soul is quickening for the upper air and making ready to burst its detaining mould. How beautiful is the recognition that

Life and thought, in withered plight,Choke the morning,

Life and thought, in withered plight,

Choke the morning,

the young eternal self, that, having fulfilled the conditions of Karma in its present embodiment of destiny, is obeying the resistless law that calls it to new modes of being. It is unnecessary to be of the Buddhistic faith to feel the spell and the beauty of its philosophy.

Mrs. Fenollosa’s gift is chiefly lyrical, although her sonnets and descriptive poems have many passages of beauty; the picturesque in fancy and phrasing is ever at her command, and there are few poems in which one is notarrested by some unique expression, or bit of imagery, as this from “An Eastern Cry”:

Beneath the maples crickets wake,And chip the silence, flake on flake.

Beneath the maples crickets wake,

And chip the silence, flake on flake.

Or that in which the rain

Brimmed great magnolias up with scented wine.

Or the fir-tree stood,

With clotted plumage sagging to the land.

Or when Fujiyama seen at dawn is pictured as

A crown … self poised in mist,

and again as

A frail mirage of ParadiseSet in the quickening air.

A frail mirage of Paradise

Set in the quickening air.

So true in color and vision are Mrs. Fenollosa’s lyrics that one cannot understand how in a sonnet she can be guilty of so mixed a metaphor as this describing a “Morning On Fujisan”:

Through powdered mist of dawn-lit pearl and roseThere lifts one lotos-peak of cleaving white,The swan-like rhapsody of dying night,Which, softly soaring through the ether, blowsTo hang there breathless….

Through powdered mist of dawn-lit pearl and rose

There lifts one lotos-peak of cleaving white,

The swan-like rhapsody of dying night,

Which, softly soaring through the ether, blows

To hang there breathless….

The first two lines are unimpeachable, but when the “lotos-peak” is amplified into a “swan-like rhapsody,” one is swept quite away from his bearings. It is but an illustration of the effort that often goes to the building of a sonnet and renders forced and inept what was designed to be artistic. Mrs. Fenollosa’s sonnets, however, do not often violate congruity, for while the sonnet is by no means her representative form, she handles it with as much ease as do most of the modern singers, and occasionally one comes upon her most characteristic lines in this compass; but it is true of the sonnet form in general, except in the hands of a thorough artist, that the mechanism is too obvious and obscures the theme.

To know Mrs. Fenollosa at her best one must read “Miyoko San,” “Full Moon Over Sumidagawa,” “An Eastern Cry,” “Exiled,” and this song “To a Japanese Nightingale,” full of mystic, wistful beauty, of suggestive spiritual grace. How delicate is its fashioning, and yet how it defines a picture, silhouettes it against the Orient night!

Dark on the face of a low, full moonSwayeth the tall bamboo.No flute nor quiver of song is heard,Though sheer on the tip a small brown birdSways to an inward tune.O small brown bird, like a dusky star,Lone on the tall bamboo,Thou germ of the soul of a summer night,Thou quickening core of a lost delight,Of ecstasy born afar,Soar out thy bliss to the tingling air,Sing from the tall bamboo!Loosen the long, clear, syrup noteThat shimmers and throbs in thy delicate throat;Mellow my soul’s despair!

Dark on the face of a low, full moonSwayeth the tall bamboo.No flute nor quiver of song is heard,Though sheer on the tip a small brown birdSways to an inward tune.

Dark on the face of a low, full moon

Swayeth the tall bamboo.

No flute nor quiver of song is heard,

Though sheer on the tip a small brown bird

Sways to an inward tune.

O small brown bird, like a dusky star,Lone on the tall bamboo,Thou germ of the soul of a summer night,Thou quickening core of a lost delight,Of ecstasy born afar,

O small brown bird, like a dusky star,

Lone on the tall bamboo,

Thou germ of the soul of a summer night,

Thou quickening core of a lost delight,

Of ecstasy born afar,

Soar out thy bliss to the tingling air,Sing from the tall bamboo!Loosen the long, clear, syrup noteThat shimmers and throbs in thy delicate throat;Mellow my soul’s despair!

Soar out thy bliss to the tingling air,

Sing from the tall bamboo!

Loosen the long, clear, syrup note

That shimmers and throbs in thy delicate throat;

Mellow my soul’s despair!

XVIRIDGELY TORRENCEMR. RIDGELY TORRENCE, whose poetic drama,El Dorado, brought him generous recognition, gave earlier hostages to fame in the shape of a small volume with the caption,The House of a Hundred Lights, and gravely subtitled, “A Psalm of Experience after Reading a Couplet of Bidpai.”Into this little book were packed some charming whimsicalities, together with some graver thoughts—though not too grave—and some fancies full tender. It had, however, sufficient resemblance to Omar Khayyám to bring it under a Philistine indictment, though its point of view was in reality very different. It was a clever bit of ruminating upon the Where and How and Why and Whence, without attempting to arrive at these mysteries, but rather to laugh at those who did. Mr. Torrence is so artistic as to know that only the masters may go upon the road in search of the Secret, and that the average wayfarer may nothope to overtake it, but rather to suggest it by a hint now and then. The philosophy ofThe House of a Hundred Lightsis in the main of the jocular sort; and Bidpai of indefinite memory may well chuckle to himself in some remote celestial corner that any couplet of his should have been so potent as to produce it.Mr. Torrence has not, that I can see, filched the fire from Omar’s altar to kindle his hundred lights; this, for illustration, is pure whimsicality, not fatalistic philosophy, as a similar thought would be in Omar:“Doubt everything,” the Thinker said,When I was parch’d with Reason’s drought.Said he, “Trust me, I’ve probed these things;Have utter faith in me,—and doubt!”Though the sky reel and Day dissolve,And though a myriad suns fade out,One thing of earth seems permanentAnd founded on Belief: ’tis—Doubt.But best of all is that quatrain in which he exonerates Providence:What! doubt the Master Workman’s handBecause my fleshly ills increase?No; for there still remains one chanceThat I am not His Masterpiece.Illustration of Ridgely TorrenceIf a cleverer bit of humor than that has been put into four lines, I have not seen it, nor amore delightful epitome than this of the inconsistent moralizing of youth:Yet what have I to do with sweetsLike Love, or Wine, or Fame’s dear curse?For I can do without all thingsExcept—except the universe.Mr. Torrence’s quatrains penetrate into the nebulous dreams of youth, or rather, interpret them, sinceThe House of a Hundred Lightswas reared in that charméd air, and carry one through the realm of rainbows to the land of the gray light, to which every pilgrim comes anon. Love receives its toll, the costliest and most precious as youth fares on; and Mr. Torrence proves himself a poet in his picture of this tribute-giving at the road-house of Love. Not only the visioning, but the lucidity of the words, and their soft consonance, prove him sensitive to the values of cadence and simplicity:Last night I heard a wanton girlCall softly down unto her lover,Or call at least unto the shadeOf Cypress where she knew he’d hover.Said she, “Come forth, my Perfect One;The old bugs sleep and take their ease;We shall have honey overmuchWithout the buzzing of the bees.”Ah, Foolish Ones, I heard your vowsAnd whispers underneath the tree.Her father is more wakeful thanShe ever dreamed, for I—was he.I saw them kissing in the shadeAnd knew the sum of all my lore:God gave them Youth, God gave them Love,And even God can give no more.But much more delicate is this quatrain which follows the last, and traces the unfolding of a young girl’s nature in the years that shape the dream. It is a bit of genuine artistry:At first, she loved nought else but flowers,And then—she only loved the Rose;And then—herself alone; and then—She knew not what, but now—she knows.This is a deftly fashioned lyric, rather than a stanza conjoined to others, though, for that matter, the thread of conjunction in the poem is slight; almost any of the quatrains might be detached without loss of value save in atmosphere, as they are arranged with a certain logical view and grow a bit more serious as they progress. We spoke, for instance, of the path of youth leading to the grayer light, and incidentally that Youth acquaints himself with pain as a wayfellow:Yet even for Youth’s fevered bloodThere is a certain balm here inThis maiden’s mouth: O sweet disease!And happy, happy medicine!And maiden, should these bitter tearsYou shed be burdensome, know this:There is a cure worth all the pain,—To-night—beneath the moon—a kiss.Girl, when he gives you kisses twain,Use one, and let the other stay;And hoard it, for moons die, red fades,And you may need a kiss—some day.No one will deny an individual grace of touch upon these strings. The artistic value of the quatrains is unequal; they would bear weeding; and there is a hint of spent impulse in the latter part of the volume, though it may be only by virtue of the grouping that the cleverer stanzas chance to be massed toward the front, as they were probably not written in the order in which they appear. Here and there in the latter part of the volume one comes upon some of Mr. Torrence’s most unique fancies; and, too, if they do not always give one the same pleasurable surprise, they are more thoughtful and the verities are in them. Indeed, Mr. Torrence’s “Psalm of Experience” is not altogether born of a happyinsouciance; look a bit more closely and you penetrate the mask, and a face looks out at you, like to your own face, questioning and uncertain. We should be glad to quote more of Mr. Torrence’s quatrains, but must look atEl Dorado, his more mature work, which won so kindly a reception from the critics and public.It would be idle to assert thatEl Doradois a great achievement, but it is a fine achievement, and notably so as a first incursion into a field beset with snares for the unwary. Into some of these Mr. Torrence has fallen, but the majority of them he has avoided and has proven his right to fare upon the way he has elected.As to plot, one may say thatEl Doradois a moving tale, full of incident and action, and sharply defining the characters before the mind. The action is focused to a definite point in each scene, making an effective climax, and in the subtler shading of the story, where Perth, the released prisoner, mistaking the love of Beatrix d’Estrada for the young officer of the expedition, thinks it a requital of his own, Mr. Torrence has shown himself sensitive to the effects that are psychological rather than objective; and, indeed, in this quality, as evinced throughout the drama in the character of Perth, the essence of Mr. Torrence’s art consists.It is more or less an easy artifice for the dramatist to reduce his hero to the verge of despair just as his heroine is conveniently near to save him from leaping over a precipice; but artifice becomes art when the impalpable emotions of a nature lost almost to its own consciousness begin to be called from diffusion and given direction and meaning. While the characterization of Perth is not altogether free from strained sentiment, one recognizes in it a higher achievement than went to the making of the more spectacular crises of the play. The dramatic materials ofEl Doradoare in the main skilfully handled, and there is logical congruity in the situations as they evolve, assuming the premise of the plot. As an acting play, however, it would require the further introduction of women characters, Beatrix sustaining alone, in its present cast, the feminine element of the drama.As to the play as literature, as poetry, there is much to commend, and somewhat to deplore. If it remain as literature, it must contain elements that transcend those of its action; if a well-developed plot were literature, then many productions of the stage that are purely ephemeral would take their place as works of art. Between the dramatic and the theatrical thereis a nice distinction, and only an artist may wholly avoid the pitfalls of the latter. Mr. Torrence’s drama seems to me to blend the two qualities. For illustration the following outpouring of Coronado, when he returns for a last hour with Beatrix, then disguising to follow his army, and finds her faithless to the tryst, is purely melodramatic. The Friar Ubeda reminds him that the trumpets call him, whereupon Coronado exclaims:It is no call, but rather do their soundsLash me like brazen whips away from her.They shriek two names to me, Honour and Hell;They drive me with two words, Duty and Death.These are the things that I can only findOutside her arms.In the same scene, however, occurs this fine passage, compact of hopelessness, and having in it the whole heart-history of Perth, who speaks it. He is urged by the friar to hasten that they may join the expedition as it passes the walls:Perth.It would be useless.Ubeda.In what way?Perth.If to go would be an ill,I need not hasten; it will come to me.And if a good, they will have gone too far;I could not overtake them.This passage recalls another memorably fine,—that in which Perth upon his release would return to his dungeon, being oppressed by the light:I seem to have to bear the sky’s whole arch,Like Atlas, on my shoulders.This is divining a sensation with subtle sympathy. But to return to the consideration of the literature of Mr. Torrence’s drama from the standpoint of his characters. Beatrix is a natural, elemental type of girl, untroubled by subtleties. Impulse and will are one in her understanding, and she counts it no shame to follow where they lead. The love that exists between herself and Coronado discloses no great emotional features, no complexities; but it is not strained nor unnatural, and in the scene where Beatrix discloses her identity to Coronado, as he in desperation at the failure of the quest forEl Doradois about to throw himself over the cliff,—while the situation itself has elements of melodrama, the dialogue is wholly free from it, and indeed contains some of the truest poetry in the play. Coronado, with distraught fancy, thinks it the spirit of Beatrix by whom he is delivered, and fears to approach her lest he dissolve the wraith, whereuponBeatrix, among other reassurances, speaks these lovely lines:—Have the snow-textured arms of dreams these pulses?Has the pale spirit of sleep a mouth like this?The counter-passion of Mr. Torrence’s drama, in which its tragedy lies, the passion of Perth for Beatrix, is so manifestly foredoomed on the side of sentiment that one looks upon it purely from a psychological standpoint, but from that standpoint it is handled so skilfully that the dramatic feeling of the play centres chiefly in this character. The Friar Ubeda is also strongly drawn, and one of the motive forces of the drama. It is he who reveals to Perth that he has a son born after his incarceration who is none other than the young leader of the expedition, Don Francis Coronado, although his identity is not revealed by the priest, and only the clew given that on his hand is branded a crucifix, as a foolish penance for some boyhood sin. Many of the finest passages of the play are spoken between Perth and Ubeda.The temptation to Shakespearize into which nearly all young dramatists fall, Mr. Torrence has wholly avoided, nor has his verse any of the grandiloquent strain that often mars dramaticpoetry. It is at times over-sustained, but is flexible and holds in the main to simplicity of effect. Such a passage as the following shows it in its finest quality. Here are feeling, consistent beauty, and dignity of word. The lines are spoken by Perth in reply to Coronado’s parting injunction to remember that the Font is there, pointing in the direction of their quest:O God, ’tis everywhere!But where for me? Youth, love, or hope fulfilled,Whatever dew distils from out its depths,Sparkles till it has lured my eager lipsAnd then sinks back. ’Tis in his desolate heart—And yet I may not drink. ’Tis in her eyes—And yet my own cannot be cooled by it.The wilderness of life is full of wells,But each is barred and walled about and guarded.· · · · ·The Source! Can it be true? Oh, may it not be?May it not at last await me in that gardenTo which we bleed our way through all this waste?—One cup—some little chalice that will holdOne drop that will not shudder into mistTill I have drained it.Passages of this sort might be duplicated inEl Dorado, were they not too long to quote with the context necessary to them.The passage cited above holds a deep suggestion in the lines:—One drop that will not shudder into mistTill I have drained it.Here is human longing epitomized; and again the words in which Coronado speaks, as he thinks, to the shade of Beatrix,—No, I will no more strive to anythingAnd so dispel it,—are subtly typical of the fear in all joy, the trembling dread to grasp, lest it elude us. That, too, is a fine passage in which Coronado replies to Perth, who seeks to cheer him with thought of the Water of all Dreams:Ah, that poor phantom Source! I never sought it.I have found the thing called Youth too deadly bitterTo grasp at further tasting.“The thing called Youth” is often “deadly bitter;” and Mr. Torrence has well suggested it in the revulsion from hope to despair which follows upon the knowledge that El Dorado is but a land of Dead-Sea fruit. The atmosphere with which Mr. Torrence has invested the scene where all are waiting for the dawn to lift and reveal the valley of their desire is charged with mystery and portent; one becomes a tense, breathless member of the group upon the cliff, and not a spectator.Mr. Torrence is occasionally led into temptation, artistically speaking, by the seduction of his imagination, and is carried a bit beyond the point of discretion, as in this passage taken from the scene where the expedition awaits the dawn on the morning when its dream is expected to be realized. Perth and Coronado are looking to the mist to lift. Perth speaks:And now in that far edge, as though a seedWere sown, there is a hint of budding gray,A bud not wholly innocent of night,And yet a color.Cor.But see, it dies!Perth.Yet now it blooms again,Whiter, and with a rumor of hidden trumpets.Buds in the common day do not usually bloom with a “rumor of hidden trumpets.” In the same scene Coronado asks:Can you not seeThe gem which is the mother of all dawn?Perth.There is some gleam.Cor.It waits one moment yetBefore it thunders upon our blinded sight!It is at least a new conception thatgemsshouldthunderupon one’sblinded sight! In another scene Mr. Torrence has the “devouring sun” deepen its “wormlike course” to the world’s edge. Again, his heroine’s mouth is a littletremulous “from all the troubled violets in her veins.” We are a bit uncertain, too, as to the significance of a “throne-galled night;” but these are, after all, minor matters when weighed with the prevailing grace and beauty of Mr. Torrence’s lines.The last act ofEl Doradohas to my mind less of strength and beauty than its predecessors, and dramatically one may question its conception and construction. In a general study of Mr. Torrence’s plot it seemed that the situations were all developed to the best advantage, but an exception must, I think, be made in regard to the last act. One of the vital requisites of drama is that the suspense of the action shall hold to the end; there may be minordénouements, but the plot must not be so constructed that the element of mystery shall have been eliminated ere the close, and this is exactly what has been done inEl Dorado. The two great scenes have already taken place:El Doradohas been proven a myth, and Beatrix has been united to her lover; there remains but one thread to unravel, the love of Perth for Beatrix; and of that the audience has already the full knowledge and clew, having seen her rejoined to her lover. The only motive of the last act is that the audience may see theeffect upon Perth when the revelation of his loss is made to him; and it is more than a question whether a scene depending so entirely upon the psychology of the situation could hold as a climax to the play.There is a revelation, however, logically demanded by the premises of the plot, in expectation of which the interest is held, and in whose nonfulfilment I cannot but think that Mr. Torrence has lost the opportunity for the most humanly true and effective climax of his play,—the disclosure to Coronado of his parentage. Ubeda, earlier in the drama, has enjoined Perth not to reveal his identity to his son, lest it injure his public career; but in the hour when the supreme loss has come, when Beatrix, as the wife of Coronado, rejoins the homeward detachment of Perth and his friend, and the mortal stroke has fallen,—then Ubeda should have declared the relationship and placed to Perth’s lips ere he died the one draught that would not “shudder into mist” ere he had drained it,—the draught of love from the heart of his child. The bird of hope and light should hover just above the darkest tragedy,—should brood above it with healing in its wings. This is partially realized in the lines in which Mr. Torrence has chosen to veil,and yet hint, the relationship which Coronado does not understand:Perth.At last I see! always I seemed to knowThat one day,—though I knew not when,—some hour,I should behold and know it and possess it,—The Font!Cor.No, it is snow and wine.Beat.He wanders!Perth.I had not thought to find it so at last,Yet here, and here alone, it has arisenWithin these two—my only youth! Yes—now!Upon this hour and place at last! The Source!It is a barren place—yet flowers are here,Those which for certain days I seemed to lose;A desolate tender fatherhood has hereFound growth, and bears, but all too piteously,A futile bud.The impression left upon one byEl Doradois that of poetic distinction, and the drama in its character drawing, plot and action is an augury of finer possibilities in the same branch of art.

MR. RIDGELY TORRENCE, whose poetic drama,El Dorado, brought him generous recognition, gave earlier hostages to fame in the shape of a small volume with the caption,The House of a Hundred Lights, and gravely subtitled, “A Psalm of Experience after Reading a Couplet of Bidpai.”

Into this little book were packed some charming whimsicalities, together with some graver thoughts—though not too grave—and some fancies full tender. It had, however, sufficient resemblance to Omar Khayyám to bring it under a Philistine indictment, though its point of view was in reality very different. It was a clever bit of ruminating upon the Where and How and Why and Whence, without attempting to arrive at these mysteries, but rather to laugh at those who did. Mr. Torrence is so artistic as to know that only the masters may go upon the road in search of the Secret, and that the average wayfarer may nothope to overtake it, but rather to suggest it by a hint now and then. The philosophy ofThe House of a Hundred Lightsis in the main of the jocular sort; and Bidpai of indefinite memory may well chuckle to himself in some remote celestial corner that any couplet of his should have been so potent as to produce it.

Mr. Torrence has not, that I can see, filched the fire from Omar’s altar to kindle his hundred lights; this, for illustration, is pure whimsicality, not fatalistic philosophy, as a similar thought would be in Omar:

“Doubt everything,” the Thinker said,When I was parch’d with Reason’s drought.Said he, “Trust me, I’ve probed these things;Have utter faith in me,—and doubt!”Though the sky reel and Day dissolve,And though a myriad suns fade out,One thing of earth seems permanentAnd founded on Belief: ’tis—Doubt.

“Doubt everything,” the Thinker said,When I was parch’d with Reason’s drought.Said he, “Trust me, I’ve probed these things;Have utter faith in me,—and doubt!”

“Doubt everything,” the Thinker said,

When I was parch’d with Reason’s drought.

Said he, “Trust me, I’ve probed these things;

Have utter faith in me,—and doubt!”

Though the sky reel and Day dissolve,And though a myriad suns fade out,One thing of earth seems permanentAnd founded on Belief: ’tis—Doubt.

Though the sky reel and Day dissolve,

And though a myriad suns fade out,

One thing of earth seems permanent

And founded on Belief: ’tis—Doubt.

But best of all is that quatrain in which he exonerates Providence:

What! doubt the Master Workman’s handBecause my fleshly ills increase?No; for there still remains one chanceThat I am not His Masterpiece.

What! doubt the Master Workman’s hand

Because my fleshly ills increase?

No; for there still remains one chance

That I am not His Masterpiece.

Illustration of Ridgely Torrence

If a cleverer bit of humor than that has been put into four lines, I have not seen it, nor amore delightful epitome than this of the inconsistent moralizing of youth:

Yet what have I to do with sweetsLike Love, or Wine, or Fame’s dear curse?For I can do without all thingsExcept—except the universe.

Yet what have I to do with sweets

Like Love, or Wine, or Fame’s dear curse?

For I can do without all things

Except—except the universe.

Mr. Torrence’s quatrains penetrate into the nebulous dreams of youth, or rather, interpret them, sinceThe House of a Hundred Lightswas reared in that charméd air, and carry one through the realm of rainbows to the land of the gray light, to which every pilgrim comes anon. Love receives its toll, the costliest and most precious as youth fares on; and Mr. Torrence proves himself a poet in his picture of this tribute-giving at the road-house of Love. Not only the visioning, but the lucidity of the words, and their soft consonance, prove him sensitive to the values of cadence and simplicity:

Last night I heard a wanton girlCall softly down unto her lover,Or call at least unto the shadeOf Cypress where she knew he’d hover.Said she, “Come forth, my Perfect One;The old bugs sleep and take their ease;We shall have honey overmuchWithout the buzzing of the bees.”Ah, Foolish Ones, I heard your vowsAnd whispers underneath the tree.Her father is more wakeful thanShe ever dreamed, for I—was he.I saw them kissing in the shadeAnd knew the sum of all my lore:God gave them Youth, God gave them Love,And even God can give no more.

Last night I heard a wanton girlCall softly down unto her lover,Or call at least unto the shadeOf Cypress where she knew he’d hover.

Last night I heard a wanton girl

Call softly down unto her lover,

Or call at least unto the shade

Of Cypress where she knew he’d hover.

Said she, “Come forth, my Perfect One;The old bugs sleep and take their ease;We shall have honey overmuchWithout the buzzing of the bees.”

Said she, “Come forth, my Perfect One;

The old bugs sleep and take their ease;

We shall have honey overmuch

Without the buzzing of the bees.”

Ah, Foolish Ones, I heard your vowsAnd whispers underneath the tree.Her father is more wakeful thanShe ever dreamed, for I—was he.

Ah, Foolish Ones, I heard your vows

And whispers underneath the tree.

Her father is more wakeful than

She ever dreamed, for I—was he.

I saw them kissing in the shadeAnd knew the sum of all my lore:God gave them Youth, God gave them Love,And even God can give no more.

I saw them kissing in the shade

And knew the sum of all my lore:

God gave them Youth, God gave them Love,

And even God can give no more.

But much more delicate is this quatrain which follows the last, and traces the unfolding of a young girl’s nature in the years that shape the dream. It is a bit of genuine artistry:

At first, she loved nought else but flowers,And then—she only loved the Rose;And then—herself alone; and then—She knew not what, but now—she knows.

At first, she loved nought else but flowers,

And then—she only loved the Rose;

And then—herself alone; and then—

She knew not what, but now—she knows.

This is a deftly fashioned lyric, rather than a stanza conjoined to others, though, for that matter, the thread of conjunction in the poem is slight; almost any of the quatrains might be detached without loss of value save in atmosphere, as they are arranged with a certain logical view and grow a bit more serious as they progress. We spoke, for instance, of the path of youth leading to the grayer light, and incidentally that Youth acquaints himself with pain as a wayfellow:

Yet even for Youth’s fevered bloodThere is a certain balm here inThis maiden’s mouth: O sweet disease!And happy, happy medicine!And maiden, should these bitter tearsYou shed be burdensome, know this:There is a cure worth all the pain,—To-night—beneath the moon—a kiss.Girl, when he gives you kisses twain,Use one, and let the other stay;And hoard it, for moons die, red fades,And you may need a kiss—some day.

Yet even for Youth’s fevered bloodThere is a certain balm here inThis maiden’s mouth: O sweet disease!And happy, happy medicine!

Yet even for Youth’s fevered blood

There is a certain balm here in

This maiden’s mouth: O sweet disease!

And happy, happy medicine!

And maiden, should these bitter tearsYou shed be burdensome, know this:There is a cure worth all the pain,—To-night—beneath the moon—a kiss.

And maiden, should these bitter tears

You shed be burdensome, know this:

There is a cure worth all the pain,

—To-night—beneath the moon—a kiss.

Girl, when he gives you kisses twain,Use one, and let the other stay;And hoard it, for moons die, red fades,And you may need a kiss—some day.

Girl, when he gives you kisses twain,

Use one, and let the other stay;

And hoard it, for moons die, red fades,

And you may need a kiss—some day.

No one will deny an individual grace of touch upon these strings. The artistic value of the quatrains is unequal; they would bear weeding; and there is a hint of spent impulse in the latter part of the volume, though it may be only by virtue of the grouping that the cleverer stanzas chance to be massed toward the front, as they were probably not written in the order in which they appear. Here and there in the latter part of the volume one comes upon some of Mr. Torrence’s most unique fancies; and, too, if they do not always give one the same pleasurable surprise, they are more thoughtful and the verities are in them. Indeed, Mr. Torrence’s “Psalm of Experience” is not altogether born of a happyinsouciance; look a bit more closely and you penetrate the mask, and a face looks out at you, like to your own face, questioning and uncertain. We should be glad to quote more of Mr. Torrence’s quatrains, but must look atEl Dorado, his more mature work, which won so kindly a reception from the critics and public.

It would be idle to assert thatEl Doradois a great achievement, but it is a fine achievement, and notably so as a first incursion into a field beset with snares for the unwary. Into some of these Mr. Torrence has fallen, but the majority of them he has avoided and has proven his right to fare upon the way he has elected.

As to plot, one may say thatEl Doradois a moving tale, full of incident and action, and sharply defining the characters before the mind. The action is focused to a definite point in each scene, making an effective climax, and in the subtler shading of the story, where Perth, the released prisoner, mistaking the love of Beatrix d’Estrada for the young officer of the expedition, thinks it a requital of his own, Mr. Torrence has shown himself sensitive to the effects that are psychological rather than objective; and, indeed, in this quality, as evinced throughout the drama in the character of Perth, the essence of Mr. Torrence’s art consists.

It is more or less an easy artifice for the dramatist to reduce his hero to the verge of despair just as his heroine is conveniently near to save him from leaping over a precipice; but artifice becomes art when the impalpable emotions of a nature lost almost to its own consciousness begin to be called from diffusion and given direction and meaning. While the characterization of Perth is not altogether free from strained sentiment, one recognizes in it a higher achievement than went to the making of the more spectacular crises of the play. The dramatic materials ofEl Doradoare in the main skilfully handled, and there is logical congruity in the situations as they evolve, assuming the premise of the plot. As an acting play, however, it would require the further introduction of women characters, Beatrix sustaining alone, in its present cast, the feminine element of the drama.

As to the play as literature, as poetry, there is much to commend, and somewhat to deplore. If it remain as literature, it must contain elements that transcend those of its action; if a well-developed plot were literature, then many productions of the stage that are purely ephemeral would take their place as works of art. Between the dramatic and the theatrical thereis a nice distinction, and only an artist may wholly avoid the pitfalls of the latter. Mr. Torrence’s drama seems to me to blend the two qualities. For illustration the following outpouring of Coronado, when he returns for a last hour with Beatrix, then disguising to follow his army, and finds her faithless to the tryst, is purely melodramatic. The Friar Ubeda reminds him that the trumpets call him, whereupon Coronado exclaims:

It is no call, but rather do their soundsLash me like brazen whips away from her.They shriek two names to me, Honour and Hell;They drive me with two words, Duty and Death.These are the things that I can only findOutside her arms.

It is no call, but rather do their sounds

Lash me like brazen whips away from her.

They shriek two names to me, Honour and Hell;

They drive me with two words, Duty and Death.

These are the things that I can only find

Outside her arms.

In the same scene, however, occurs this fine passage, compact of hopelessness, and having in it the whole heart-history of Perth, who speaks it. He is urged by the friar to hasten that they may join the expedition as it passes the walls:

Perth.It would be useless.Ubeda.In what way?Perth.If to go would be an ill,I need not hasten; it will come to me.And if a good, they will have gone too far;I could not overtake them.

Perth.It would be useless.

Ubeda.In what way?

Perth.If to go would be an ill,

I need not hasten; it will come to me.

And if a good, they will have gone too far;

I could not overtake them.

This passage recalls another memorably fine,—that in which Perth upon his release would return to his dungeon, being oppressed by the light:

I seem to have to bear the sky’s whole arch,Like Atlas, on my shoulders.

I seem to have to bear the sky’s whole arch,

Like Atlas, on my shoulders.

This is divining a sensation with subtle sympathy. But to return to the consideration of the literature of Mr. Torrence’s drama from the standpoint of his characters. Beatrix is a natural, elemental type of girl, untroubled by subtleties. Impulse and will are one in her understanding, and she counts it no shame to follow where they lead. The love that exists between herself and Coronado discloses no great emotional features, no complexities; but it is not strained nor unnatural, and in the scene where Beatrix discloses her identity to Coronado, as he in desperation at the failure of the quest forEl Doradois about to throw himself over the cliff,—while the situation itself has elements of melodrama, the dialogue is wholly free from it, and indeed contains some of the truest poetry in the play. Coronado, with distraught fancy, thinks it the spirit of Beatrix by whom he is delivered, and fears to approach her lest he dissolve the wraith, whereuponBeatrix, among other reassurances, speaks these lovely lines:—

Have the snow-textured arms of dreams these pulses?Has the pale spirit of sleep a mouth like this?

Have the snow-textured arms of dreams these pulses?

Has the pale spirit of sleep a mouth like this?

The counter-passion of Mr. Torrence’s drama, in which its tragedy lies, the passion of Perth for Beatrix, is so manifestly foredoomed on the side of sentiment that one looks upon it purely from a psychological standpoint, but from that standpoint it is handled so skilfully that the dramatic feeling of the play centres chiefly in this character. The Friar Ubeda is also strongly drawn, and one of the motive forces of the drama. It is he who reveals to Perth that he has a son born after his incarceration who is none other than the young leader of the expedition, Don Francis Coronado, although his identity is not revealed by the priest, and only the clew given that on his hand is branded a crucifix, as a foolish penance for some boyhood sin. Many of the finest passages of the play are spoken between Perth and Ubeda.

The temptation to Shakespearize into which nearly all young dramatists fall, Mr. Torrence has wholly avoided, nor has his verse any of the grandiloquent strain that often mars dramaticpoetry. It is at times over-sustained, but is flexible and holds in the main to simplicity of effect. Such a passage as the following shows it in its finest quality. Here are feeling, consistent beauty, and dignity of word. The lines are spoken by Perth in reply to Coronado’s parting injunction to remember that the Font is there, pointing in the direction of their quest:

O God, ’tis everywhere!But where for me? Youth, love, or hope fulfilled,Whatever dew distils from out its depths,Sparkles till it has lured my eager lipsAnd then sinks back. ’Tis in his desolate heart—And yet I may not drink. ’Tis in her eyes—And yet my own cannot be cooled by it.The wilderness of life is full of wells,But each is barred and walled about and guarded.· · · · ·The Source! Can it be true? Oh, may it not be?May it not at last await me in that gardenTo which we bleed our way through all this waste?—One cup—some little chalice that will holdOne drop that will not shudder into mistTill I have drained it.

O God, ’tis everywhere!

But where for me? Youth, love, or hope fulfilled,

Whatever dew distils from out its depths,

Sparkles till it has lured my eager lips

And then sinks back. ’Tis in his desolate heart—

And yet I may not drink. ’Tis in her eyes—

And yet my own cannot be cooled by it.

The wilderness of life is full of wells,

But each is barred and walled about and guarded.

· · · · ·

The Source! Can it be true? Oh, may it not be?

May it not at last await me in that garden

To which we bleed our way through all this waste?—

One cup—some little chalice that will hold

One drop that will not shudder into mist

Till I have drained it.

Passages of this sort might be duplicated inEl Dorado, were they not too long to quote with the context necessary to them.

The passage cited above holds a deep suggestion in the lines:—

One drop that will not shudder into mistTill I have drained it.

One drop that will not shudder into mist

Till I have drained it.

Here is human longing epitomized; and again the words in which Coronado speaks, as he thinks, to the shade of Beatrix,—

No, I will no more strive to anythingAnd so dispel it,—

No, I will no more strive to anything

And so dispel it,—

are subtly typical of the fear in all joy, the trembling dread to grasp, lest it elude us. That, too, is a fine passage in which Coronado replies to Perth, who seeks to cheer him with thought of the Water of all Dreams:

Ah, that poor phantom Source! I never sought it.I have found the thing called Youth too deadly bitterTo grasp at further tasting.

Ah, that poor phantom Source! I never sought it.

I have found the thing called Youth too deadly bitter

To grasp at further tasting.

“The thing called Youth” is often “deadly bitter;” and Mr. Torrence has well suggested it in the revulsion from hope to despair which follows upon the knowledge that El Dorado is but a land of Dead-Sea fruit. The atmosphere with which Mr. Torrence has invested the scene where all are waiting for the dawn to lift and reveal the valley of their desire is charged with mystery and portent; one becomes a tense, breathless member of the group upon the cliff, and not a spectator.

Mr. Torrence is occasionally led into temptation, artistically speaking, by the seduction of his imagination, and is carried a bit beyond the point of discretion, as in this passage taken from the scene where the expedition awaits the dawn on the morning when its dream is expected to be realized. Perth and Coronado are looking to the mist to lift. Perth speaks:

And now in that far edge, as though a seedWere sown, there is a hint of budding gray,A bud not wholly innocent of night,And yet a color.Cor.But see, it dies!Perth.Yet now it blooms again,Whiter, and with a rumor of hidden trumpets.

And now in that far edge, as though a seed

Were sown, there is a hint of budding gray,

A bud not wholly innocent of night,

And yet a color.

Cor.But see, it dies!

Perth.Yet now it blooms again,

Whiter, and with a rumor of hidden trumpets.

Buds in the common day do not usually bloom with a “rumor of hidden trumpets.” In the same scene Coronado asks:

Can you not seeThe gem which is the mother of all dawn?Perth.There is some gleam.Cor.It waits one moment yetBefore it thunders upon our blinded sight!

Can you not see

The gem which is the mother of all dawn?

Perth.There is some gleam.

Cor.It waits one moment yet

Before it thunders upon our blinded sight!

It is at least a new conception thatgemsshouldthunderupon one’sblinded sight! In another scene Mr. Torrence has the “devouring sun” deepen its “wormlike course” to the world’s edge. Again, his heroine’s mouth is a littletremulous “from all the troubled violets in her veins.” We are a bit uncertain, too, as to the significance of a “throne-galled night;” but these are, after all, minor matters when weighed with the prevailing grace and beauty of Mr. Torrence’s lines.

The last act ofEl Doradohas to my mind less of strength and beauty than its predecessors, and dramatically one may question its conception and construction. In a general study of Mr. Torrence’s plot it seemed that the situations were all developed to the best advantage, but an exception must, I think, be made in regard to the last act. One of the vital requisites of drama is that the suspense of the action shall hold to the end; there may be minordénouements, but the plot must not be so constructed that the element of mystery shall have been eliminated ere the close, and this is exactly what has been done inEl Dorado. The two great scenes have already taken place:El Doradohas been proven a myth, and Beatrix has been united to her lover; there remains but one thread to unravel, the love of Perth for Beatrix; and of that the audience has already the full knowledge and clew, having seen her rejoined to her lover. The only motive of the last act is that the audience may see theeffect upon Perth when the revelation of his loss is made to him; and it is more than a question whether a scene depending so entirely upon the psychology of the situation could hold as a climax to the play.

There is a revelation, however, logically demanded by the premises of the plot, in expectation of which the interest is held, and in whose nonfulfilment I cannot but think that Mr. Torrence has lost the opportunity for the most humanly true and effective climax of his play,—the disclosure to Coronado of his parentage. Ubeda, earlier in the drama, has enjoined Perth not to reveal his identity to his son, lest it injure his public career; but in the hour when the supreme loss has come, when Beatrix, as the wife of Coronado, rejoins the homeward detachment of Perth and his friend, and the mortal stroke has fallen,—then Ubeda should have declared the relationship and placed to Perth’s lips ere he died the one draught that would not “shudder into mist” ere he had drained it,—the draught of love from the heart of his child. The bird of hope and light should hover just above the darkest tragedy,—should brood above it with healing in its wings. This is partially realized in the lines in which Mr. Torrence has chosen to veil,and yet hint, the relationship which Coronado does not understand:

Perth.At last I see! always I seemed to knowThat one day,—though I knew not when,—some hour,I should behold and know it and possess it,—The Font!Cor.No, it is snow and wine.Beat.He wanders!Perth.I had not thought to find it so at last,Yet here, and here alone, it has arisenWithin these two—my only youth! Yes—now!Upon this hour and place at last! The Source!It is a barren place—yet flowers are here,Those which for certain days I seemed to lose;A desolate tender fatherhood has hereFound growth, and bears, but all too piteously,A futile bud.

Perth.At last I see! always I seemed to know

That one day,—though I knew not when,—some hour,

I should behold and know it and possess it,—

The Font!

Cor.No, it is snow and wine.

Beat.He wanders!

Perth.I had not thought to find it so at last,

Yet here, and here alone, it has arisen

Within these two—my only youth! Yes—now!

Upon this hour and place at last! The Source!

It is a barren place—yet flowers are here,

Those which for certain days I seemed to lose;

A desolate tender fatherhood has here

Found growth, and bears, but all too piteously,

A futile bud.

The impression left upon one byEl Doradois that of poetic distinction, and the drama in its character drawing, plot and action is an augury of finer possibilities in the same branch of art.

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