XVII

XVIIGERTRUDE HALLMISS GERTRUDE HALL is a poet of the intimate mood, the personal touch, one who writes for herself primarily, and not for others. One fancies that verses such as these were penned in musing, introspective moments in the form in which they flitted through the mind, and were indesecrate of further touch. They are as words warm upon the lips, putting one in magneticrapportwith a speaker; and their defects, as well as distinctions, are such as spring from this spontaneity. Frequently a change of word or line, readily suggested to the reader, would have made technically perfect what now bears a flaw; but these lapses are neither so marked nor so frequent as to detract from the prevailing grace of the verse, and but serve to illustrate the point in question,—their unpremeditated note and freedom from posing.One is not so much arrested by the inevitable image and word in these lyrics of theAge of Fairygold, as by the feeling, the mood, that pervades them. It is not a buoyant mood, nor yet a sombre one, but rather the expression of a varied impulse, a melody of many stops, such as one might play for himself at evening, wandering from theme to theme. The poems convey the impression of coming in touch with a personality rather than a book, the veil between the author and reader being impalpable; and this, their most obvious distinction, is a quality in which many poets of the present day are lacking, either from a mistaken delicacy in regarding their own inner life as an isolated mood not of import to others, or in robbing it of personality and warmth by technical elaboration.One may confide to the world by means of art what he would not reveal to his closest friend, and yet keep inviolate his spiritual selfhood; but to withhold this disclosure, to become but a poet of externals, is to abrogate one’s claim to speak at all; for a life, however meagre, has something unique and essential to convey, and while one delights in the artist observation, the vivid pictorial touch, it must not be divorced from the subjective. The poems of Miss Hall are happily blended of the objective and subjective; here, for illustration,is a lighter note bringing one in thrall to that seductive, tantalizing charm, that irresistible allurement, of the Vita Nuova of the year:I try to fix my eyes upon my book,But just outside a budding sprayFlaunts its new leaves as if to say,“Look!—look!”I trim my pen, I make it fine and neat;There comes a flutter of brown wings.A little bird alights and sings,“Sweet!—sweet!”O little bird, O go away! be dumb!For I must ponder certain lines;And straight a nodding flower makes signs,“Come!—come!”O Spring, let me alone! O bird, bloom, beam,“I have no time to dream!” I cry;The echo breathes a soft, long sigh,“Dream!—dream!”The beautiful lyric,“Ah, worshipped one, ah, faithful Spring!”tempers this blitheness to a pensive strain, though only as one may introduce a note of minor in a staccato melody. In another bit of verse celebrating the renewing year, and noting how joy lays his finger on one’s lips and makes him mute, occur these delicate lines:Thrice happy, oh, thrice happy still the EarthThat can express herself in roses, yea,Can make the lily tell her inmost thought!One nature lyric of two stanzas, despite the fact that its cadence halts in the final couplet, is compact of atmosphere; and to one who has been companioned by the pines, it brings an aromatic breath, full of stimulus:The sun in the pine is sleeping, sleeping.The drops of resin gleam….There’s a mighty wizard with perfumes keepingMy brain benumbed in a dream!The wind in the pine is rushing, rushing,Fine and unfettered and wild….There’s a mighty mother imperiously hushingHer fretful, uneasy child!These lines give over pictures of mornings in the radiant sunlight of the North, that cloudless, lifted air; and “The drops of resin gleam,” has the same touch of transmutation that some suggestion of the brine has for the exiled native of the seaboard.Miss Hall’s themes are not sought far afield, but bring, in nearly all the poems, a hint of personal experience; nature, love, spiritual emotion, blending with lighter moods and fancies, comprise the record of theAge of Fairygold. We have glanced at the natureverse; that upon love is subtler in touch, but holds to the intimate note distinguishing all of her work. The second of these stanzas contains a graphic image:Be good to me! If all the world unitedShould bend its powers to gird my youth with pain,Still might I fly to thee, Dear, and be righted—But if thou wrong’st me, where shall I complain?I am the dove a random shot surprises,That from her flight she droppeth quivering,And in the deadly arrow recognizesA blood-wet feather—once in her own wing!In her poem called “The Rival” human nature speaks a direct word, particularly in the contradiction of the last stanza. The lines have the quality of speech rather than of print:This is the hardest of my fate:She’s better whom he doth preferThan I am that he worshipped late,As well as so much prettier,So much more fortunate!He’ll not repent; oh, you will see,She’ll never give him cause to grieve!I dream that he comes back to me,Leaving her,—but he’ll never leave!Hopelessly sweet is she.So that if in my place she stood,She’d spare to curse him, she’d forgive!I loathe her, but I know she would—And so will I, God, as I live,Not she alone is good!The ethical inconsistency of the above stanza, “I loathe her,” and “Not she alone is good,” is so human and racy with suggestion of these paradoxical moods of ours, that the stanza, together with its companion lines, becomes a leaf torn from the book of life.In its spiritual quality Miss Hall’s work shows, perhaps, its finest distinction: brave, strong, acquiescent, inducing in one a nobler mood,—such is the spirit of the volume. Its philosophy is free from didacticism or moralizing; indeed, it should scarcely be called philosophy, but rather the personal record of experiences touching the inner life,—phases of feeling interpreted in their spiritual import. These lines express the mood:Then lead me, Friend. Here is my hand,Not in dumb resignation lentBecause Thee one cannot withstand—In love, Lord, with complete consent.· · · · ·Lead. If we come to the cliff’s crest,And I hear deep below—O deep!—The torrent’s roar, and “Leap!” Thou say’st,I will not question—I will leap.The last stanza, in its vivid illustrative quality, is an admirable expression of spiritual assurance.Another brief lyric rings with the true note of valor, declaring the eternal potency of hope, and one’s obligation to pass on his unspent faith, though falling by the way:Could I not be the pilgrimTo reach my saint’s abode,I would make myself the roadTo lead some other pilgrimWhere my soul’s treasure glowed.Could not I in the eager vanBe the stalwart pioneerWho points where the way is clear,I would be the man who sinks in the swamp,And cries to the rest, “Not here!”From an Eastern Apologue Miss Hall has drawn a charming illustration of the power of influence and association:“Thou smell’st not ill, thou object plain,Thou art a small, pretentious grainOf amber, I suppose.”“Nay, my good friend, I am by birthA common clod of scentless earth….But I lived with the Rose.”In the poems of a blither note, Miss Hall excels, having a swift and sprightly fancy anda clever aptness of phrase, which, inAllegretto, her collection of lighter verse, reveals itself in charming witticisms and whimsicalities. Her children’s poems are delicate in touch and fancy, and quaintly humorous. Her lines, “To A Weed,” in the second collection, tuck away a moral in their sprightly comment; indeed, a bit of philosophy as to being glad in the sun and taking one’s due of life, despite limitations, which renders them more than the merry apostrophe they seem:You bold thing! thrusting ’neath the very noseOf her fastidious majesty, the rose,Even in the best ordainéd garden bed,Unauthorized, your smiling little head!The gardener, mind! will come in his big boots,And drag you up by your rebellious roots,And cast you forth to shrivel in the sun,Your daring quelled, your little weed’s life done.· · · · ·Meantime—ah, yes! the air is very blue,And gold the light, and diamond the dew,—You laugh and courtesy in your worthless way,And you are gay, ah, so exceeding gay!You argue, in your manner of a weed,You did not make yourself grow from a seed;You fancy you’ve a claim to standing-room,You dream yourself a right to breathe and bloom.· · · · ·You know, you weed, I quite agree with you,I am a weed myself, and I laugh too,—Both, just as long as we can shun his eye,Let’s sniff at the old gardener trudging by!In the art of compression, in consistent and restrained imagery, in clearness and simplicity, and in freedom from affectation, Miss Hall’s work is altogether commendable. In technique she makes no ambitious flights, employing almost wholly the more direct and simple forms and metres, but these suit the intimate mood and singing note of her themes better than more intricate measures. Technically her chief defect is in the disregard which she frequently shows for the demands of metre. I say disregard, for it is evident from the grace of the majority of her work that she allows herself to depart from metrical canons at her own will, with the occasional result of jagged lines which may have seemed more expressive to Miss Hall than those of a smoother cadence, but which are likely to offend the ear of one sensitive to rhythm. These lapses are not, however, so frequent or conspicuous as to constitute a general indictment against the work.The reflective predominates over the imaginative in theAge of Fairygold, notwithstanding the suggestion of the title. Indeed, there is asubtly pensive note running through the volume, which remains in one’s mind as a characteristic impression when the lighter notes are forgotten. They are not poems of vivid color, imagination, nor passion, though touched with all. They are not incrusted with verbal gems, though the diction is fitting and graceful. They have no daringly inventive metres, though the form is always in harmony with the thought,—in short, the poems of Miss Hall are such as please and satisfy without startling. They are leaves from the book of the heart, and admit us to many a kindred experience. These lines, in which we must take leave of them, carry the wistful, tender, sympathetic note, which distinguishes much of her work:Though true it be these splendid dreams of mineAre but as bubbles little children blow,And that Fate laughs to see them wax and shine,Then holds out her pale finger—and they go:One bitter drop falls with a tear-like gleam,—Still, dreaming is so sweet! Still, let me dream!Though true, to love may be definéd thus:To open wide your safe defenceless hallTo some great guest full-armed and dangerous,With power to ravage, to deface it all,A cast at dice, whether or no he will,—Still, loving is so sweet! Let me love still!

MISS GERTRUDE HALL is a poet of the intimate mood, the personal touch, one who writes for herself primarily, and not for others. One fancies that verses such as these were penned in musing, introspective moments in the form in which they flitted through the mind, and were indesecrate of further touch. They are as words warm upon the lips, putting one in magneticrapportwith a speaker; and their defects, as well as distinctions, are such as spring from this spontaneity. Frequently a change of word or line, readily suggested to the reader, would have made technically perfect what now bears a flaw; but these lapses are neither so marked nor so frequent as to detract from the prevailing grace of the verse, and but serve to illustrate the point in question,—their unpremeditated note and freedom from posing.

One is not so much arrested by the inevitable image and word in these lyrics of theAge of Fairygold, as by the feeling, the mood, that pervades them. It is not a buoyant mood, nor yet a sombre one, but rather the expression of a varied impulse, a melody of many stops, such as one might play for himself at evening, wandering from theme to theme. The poems convey the impression of coming in touch with a personality rather than a book, the veil between the author and reader being impalpable; and this, their most obvious distinction, is a quality in which many poets of the present day are lacking, either from a mistaken delicacy in regarding their own inner life as an isolated mood not of import to others, or in robbing it of personality and warmth by technical elaboration.

One may confide to the world by means of art what he would not reveal to his closest friend, and yet keep inviolate his spiritual selfhood; but to withhold this disclosure, to become but a poet of externals, is to abrogate one’s claim to speak at all; for a life, however meagre, has something unique and essential to convey, and while one delights in the artist observation, the vivid pictorial touch, it must not be divorced from the subjective. The poems of Miss Hall are happily blended of the objective and subjective; here, for illustration,is a lighter note bringing one in thrall to that seductive, tantalizing charm, that irresistible allurement, of the Vita Nuova of the year:

I try to fix my eyes upon my book,But just outside a budding sprayFlaunts its new leaves as if to say,“Look!—look!”I trim my pen, I make it fine and neat;There comes a flutter of brown wings.A little bird alights and sings,“Sweet!—sweet!”O little bird, O go away! be dumb!For I must ponder certain lines;And straight a nodding flower makes signs,“Come!—come!”O Spring, let me alone! O bird, bloom, beam,“I have no time to dream!” I cry;The echo breathes a soft, long sigh,“Dream!—dream!”

I try to fix my eyes upon my book,But just outside a budding sprayFlaunts its new leaves as if to say,“Look!—look!”

I try to fix my eyes upon my book,

But just outside a budding spray

Flaunts its new leaves as if to say,

“Look!—look!”

I trim my pen, I make it fine and neat;There comes a flutter of brown wings.A little bird alights and sings,“Sweet!—sweet!”

I trim my pen, I make it fine and neat;

There comes a flutter of brown wings.

A little bird alights and sings,

“Sweet!—sweet!”

O little bird, O go away! be dumb!For I must ponder certain lines;And straight a nodding flower makes signs,“Come!—come!”

O little bird, O go away! be dumb!

For I must ponder certain lines;

And straight a nodding flower makes signs,

“Come!—come!”

O Spring, let me alone! O bird, bloom, beam,“I have no time to dream!” I cry;The echo breathes a soft, long sigh,“Dream!—dream!”

O Spring, let me alone! O bird, bloom, beam,

“I have no time to dream!” I cry;

The echo breathes a soft, long sigh,

“Dream!—dream!”

The beautiful lyric,

“Ah, worshipped one, ah, faithful Spring!”

tempers this blitheness to a pensive strain, though only as one may introduce a note of minor in a staccato melody. In another bit of verse celebrating the renewing year, and noting how joy lays his finger on one’s lips and makes him mute, occur these delicate lines:

Thrice happy, oh, thrice happy still the EarthThat can express herself in roses, yea,Can make the lily tell her inmost thought!

Thrice happy, oh, thrice happy still the Earth

That can express herself in roses, yea,

Can make the lily tell her inmost thought!

One nature lyric of two stanzas, despite the fact that its cadence halts in the final couplet, is compact of atmosphere; and to one who has been companioned by the pines, it brings an aromatic breath, full of stimulus:

The sun in the pine is sleeping, sleeping.The drops of resin gleam….There’s a mighty wizard with perfumes keepingMy brain benumbed in a dream!The wind in the pine is rushing, rushing,Fine and unfettered and wild….There’s a mighty mother imperiously hushingHer fretful, uneasy child!

The sun in the pine is sleeping, sleeping.The drops of resin gleam….There’s a mighty wizard with perfumes keepingMy brain benumbed in a dream!

The sun in the pine is sleeping, sleeping.

The drops of resin gleam….

There’s a mighty wizard with perfumes keeping

My brain benumbed in a dream!

The wind in the pine is rushing, rushing,Fine and unfettered and wild….There’s a mighty mother imperiously hushingHer fretful, uneasy child!

The wind in the pine is rushing, rushing,

Fine and unfettered and wild….

There’s a mighty mother imperiously hushing

Her fretful, uneasy child!

These lines give over pictures of mornings in the radiant sunlight of the North, that cloudless, lifted air; and “The drops of resin gleam,” has the same touch of transmutation that some suggestion of the brine has for the exiled native of the seaboard.

Miss Hall’s themes are not sought far afield, but bring, in nearly all the poems, a hint of personal experience; nature, love, spiritual emotion, blending with lighter moods and fancies, comprise the record of theAge of Fairygold. We have glanced at the natureverse; that upon love is subtler in touch, but holds to the intimate note distinguishing all of her work. The second of these stanzas contains a graphic image:

Be good to me! If all the world unitedShould bend its powers to gird my youth with pain,Still might I fly to thee, Dear, and be righted—But if thou wrong’st me, where shall I complain?I am the dove a random shot surprises,That from her flight she droppeth quivering,And in the deadly arrow recognizesA blood-wet feather—once in her own wing!

Be good to me! If all the world unitedShould bend its powers to gird my youth with pain,Still might I fly to thee, Dear, and be righted—But if thou wrong’st me, where shall I complain?

Be good to me! If all the world united

Should bend its powers to gird my youth with pain,

Still might I fly to thee, Dear, and be righted—

But if thou wrong’st me, where shall I complain?

I am the dove a random shot surprises,That from her flight she droppeth quivering,And in the deadly arrow recognizesA blood-wet feather—once in her own wing!

I am the dove a random shot surprises,

That from her flight she droppeth quivering,

And in the deadly arrow recognizes

A blood-wet feather—once in her own wing!

In her poem called “The Rival” human nature speaks a direct word, particularly in the contradiction of the last stanza. The lines have the quality of speech rather than of print:

This is the hardest of my fate:She’s better whom he doth preferThan I am that he worshipped late,As well as so much prettier,So much more fortunate!He’ll not repent; oh, you will see,She’ll never give him cause to grieve!I dream that he comes back to me,Leaving her,—but he’ll never leave!Hopelessly sweet is she.So that if in my place she stood,She’d spare to curse him, she’d forgive!I loathe her, but I know she would—And so will I, God, as I live,Not she alone is good!

This is the hardest of my fate:She’s better whom he doth preferThan I am that he worshipped late,As well as so much prettier,So much more fortunate!

This is the hardest of my fate:

She’s better whom he doth prefer

Than I am that he worshipped late,

As well as so much prettier,

So much more fortunate!

He’ll not repent; oh, you will see,She’ll never give him cause to grieve!I dream that he comes back to me,Leaving her,—but he’ll never leave!Hopelessly sweet is she.

He’ll not repent; oh, you will see,

She’ll never give him cause to grieve!

I dream that he comes back to me,

Leaving her,—but he’ll never leave!

Hopelessly sweet is she.

So that if in my place she stood,She’d spare to curse him, she’d forgive!I loathe her, but I know she would—And so will I, God, as I live,Not she alone is good!

So that if in my place she stood,

She’d spare to curse him, she’d forgive!

I loathe her, but I know she would—

And so will I, God, as I live,

Not she alone is good!

The ethical inconsistency of the above stanza, “I loathe her,” and “Not she alone is good,” is so human and racy with suggestion of these paradoxical moods of ours, that the stanza, together with its companion lines, becomes a leaf torn from the book of life.

In its spiritual quality Miss Hall’s work shows, perhaps, its finest distinction: brave, strong, acquiescent, inducing in one a nobler mood,—such is the spirit of the volume. Its philosophy is free from didacticism or moralizing; indeed, it should scarcely be called philosophy, but rather the personal record of experiences touching the inner life,—phases of feeling interpreted in their spiritual import. These lines express the mood:

Then lead me, Friend. Here is my hand,Not in dumb resignation lentBecause Thee one cannot withstand—In love, Lord, with complete consent.· · · · ·Lead. If we come to the cliff’s crest,And I hear deep below—O deep!—The torrent’s roar, and “Leap!” Thou say’st,I will not question—I will leap.

Then lead me, Friend. Here is my hand,

Not in dumb resignation lent

Because Thee one cannot withstand—

In love, Lord, with complete consent.

· · · · ·

Lead. If we come to the cliff’s crest,

And I hear deep below—O deep!—

The torrent’s roar, and “Leap!” Thou say’st,

I will not question—I will leap.

The last stanza, in its vivid illustrative quality, is an admirable expression of spiritual assurance.

Another brief lyric rings with the true note of valor, declaring the eternal potency of hope, and one’s obligation to pass on his unspent faith, though falling by the way:

Could I not be the pilgrimTo reach my saint’s abode,I would make myself the roadTo lead some other pilgrimWhere my soul’s treasure glowed.Could not I in the eager vanBe the stalwart pioneerWho points where the way is clear,I would be the man who sinks in the swamp,And cries to the rest, “Not here!”

Could I not be the pilgrimTo reach my saint’s abode,I would make myself the roadTo lead some other pilgrimWhere my soul’s treasure glowed.

Could I not be the pilgrim

To reach my saint’s abode,

I would make myself the road

To lead some other pilgrim

Where my soul’s treasure glowed.

Could not I in the eager vanBe the stalwart pioneerWho points where the way is clear,I would be the man who sinks in the swamp,And cries to the rest, “Not here!”

Could not I in the eager van

Be the stalwart pioneer

Who points where the way is clear,

I would be the man who sinks in the swamp,

And cries to the rest, “Not here!”

From an Eastern Apologue Miss Hall has drawn a charming illustration of the power of influence and association:

“Thou smell’st not ill, thou object plain,Thou art a small, pretentious grainOf amber, I suppose.”“Nay, my good friend, I am by birthA common clod of scentless earth….But I lived with the Rose.”

“Thou smell’st not ill, thou object plain,

Thou art a small, pretentious grain

Of amber, I suppose.”

“Nay, my good friend, I am by birth

A common clod of scentless earth….

But I lived with the Rose.”

In the poems of a blither note, Miss Hall excels, having a swift and sprightly fancy anda clever aptness of phrase, which, inAllegretto, her collection of lighter verse, reveals itself in charming witticisms and whimsicalities. Her children’s poems are delicate in touch and fancy, and quaintly humorous. Her lines, “To A Weed,” in the second collection, tuck away a moral in their sprightly comment; indeed, a bit of philosophy as to being glad in the sun and taking one’s due of life, despite limitations, which renders them more than the merry apostrophe they seem:

You bold thing! thrusting ’neath the very noseOf her fastidious majesty, the rose,Even in the best ordainéd garden bed,Unauthorized, your smiling little head!The gardener, mind! will come in his big boots,And drag you up by your rebellious roots,And cast you forth to shrivel in the sun,Your daring quelled, your little weed’s life done.· · · · ·Meantime—ah, yes! the air is very blue,And gold the light, and diamond the dew,—You laugh and courtesy in your worthless way,And you are gay, ah, so exceeding gay!You argue, in your manner of a weed,You did not make yourself grow from a seed;You fancy you’ve a claim to standing-room,You dream yourself a right to breathe and bloom.· · · · ·You know, you weed, I quite agree with you,I am a weed myself, and I laugh too,—Both, just as long as we can shun his eye,Let’s sniff at the old gardener trudging by!

You bold thing! thrusting ’neath the very noseOf her fastidious majesty, the rose,Even in the best ordainéd garden bed,Unauthorized, your smiling little head!

You bold thing! thrusting ’neath the very nose

Of her fastidious majesty, the rose,

Even in the best ordainéd garden bed,

Unauthorized, your smiling little head!

The gardener, mind! will come in his big boots,And drag you up by your rebellious roots,And cast you forth to shrivel in the sun,Your daring quelled, your little weed’s life done.· · · · ·Meantime—ah, yes! the air is very blue,And gold the light, and diamond the dew,—You laugh and courtesy in your worthless way,And you are gay, ah, so exceeding gay!

The gardener, mind! will come in his big boots,

And drag you up by your rebellious roots,

And cast you forth to shrivel in the sun,

Your daring quelled, your little weed’s life done.

· · · · ·

Meantime—ah, yes! the air is very blue,

And gold the light, and diamond the dew,—

You laugh and courtesy in your worthless way,

And you are gay, ah, so exceeding gay!

You argue, in your manner of a weed,You did not make yourself grow from a seed;You fancy you’ve a claim to standing-room,You dream yourself a right to breathe and bloom.· · · · ·You know, you weed, I quite agree with you,I am a weed myself, and I laugh too,—Both, just as long as we can shun his eye,Let’s sniff at the old gardener trudging by!

You argue, in your manner of a weed,

You did not make yourself grow from a seed;

You fancy you’ve a claim to standing-room,

You dream yourself a right to breathe and bloom.

· · · · ·

You know, you weed, I quite agree with you,

I am a weed myself, and I laugh too,—

Both, just as long as we can shun his eye,

Let’s sniff at the old gardener trudging by!

In the art of compression, in consistent and restrained imagery, in clearness and simplicity, and in freedom from affectation, Miss Hall’s work is altogether commendable. In technique she makes no ambitious flights, employing almost wholly the more direct and simple forms and metres, but these suit the intimate mood and singing note of her themes better than more intricate measures. Technically her chief defect is in the disregard which she frequently shows for the demands of metre. I say disregard, for it is evident from the grace of the majority of her work that she allows herself to depart from metrical canons at her own will, with the occasional result of jagged lines which may have seemed more expressive to Miss Hall than those of a smoother cadence, but which are likely to offend the ear of one sensitive to rhythm. These lapses are not, however, so frequent or conspicuous as to constitute a general indictment against the work.

The reflective predominates over the imaginative in theAge of Fairygold, notwithstanding the suggestion of the title. Indeed, there is asubtly pensive note running through the volume, which remains in one’s mind as a characteristic impression when the lighter notes are forgotten. They are not poems of vivid color, imagination, nor passion, though touched with all. They are not incrusted with verbal gems, though the diction is fitting and graceful. They have no daringly inventive metres, though the form is always in harmony with the thought,—in short, the poems of Miss Hall are such as please and satisfy without startling. They are leaves from the book of the heart, and admit us to many a kindred experience. These lines, in which we must take leave of them, carry the wistful, tender, sympathetic note, which distinguishes much of her work:

Though true it be these splendid dreams of mineAre but as bubbles little children blow,And that Fate laughs to see them wax and shine,Then holds out her pale finger—and they go:One bitter drop falls with a tear-like gleam,—Still, dreaming is so sweet! Still, let me dream!Though true, to love may be definéd thus:To open wide your safe defenceless hallTo some great guest full-armed and dangerous,With power to ravage, to deface it all,A cast at dice, whether or no he will,—Still, loving is so sweet! Let me love still!

Though true it be these splendid dreams of mine

Are but as bubbles little children blow,

And that Fate laughs to see them wax and shine,

Then holds out her pale finger—and they go:

One bitter drop falls with a tear-like gleam,—

Still, dreaming is so sweet! Still, let me dream!

Though true, to love may be definéd thus:To open wide your safe defenceless hallTo some great guest full-armed and dangerous,With power to ravage, to deface it all,A cast at dice, whether or no he will,—Still, loving is so sweet! Let me love still!

Though true, to love may be definéd thus:

To open wide your safe defenceless hall

To some great guest full-armed and dangerous,

With power to ravage, to deface it all,

A cast at dice, whether or no he will,—

Still, loving is so sweet! Let me love still!

XVIIIARTHUR UPSONWHEN a volume of verse by Mr. Arthur Upson, entitledOctaves In An Oxford Garden, was first brought to my notice by a poet friend with what seemed before reading it a somewhat extravagant comment as to its art, it evoked a certain scepticism as to whether the poet in question would be equally enthusiastic, had he read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested some eighty or more volumes of verse within a given period, thus rendering a more rarely flavored compound necessary to excite anew the poetry-sated appetite; but Mr. Upson’s Octaves proved to be a brew into which had fallen this magic drop, and moments had gone the way of oblivion until the charm was drained.The volume consists of some thirty Octaves written in Wadham Garden at Oxford in the reminiscent month of September; and so do they fix the mood of the place that one marvels at the restfulness, the brooding stillness, theflavor of time and association which Mr. Upson has managed to infuse into his musing, sabbatical lines. One regrets that the term “atmosphere” has become so cheapened, for in the exigent moment when no other will serve as well, he has the depressing consciousness that virtue has gone from the word he must employ. Despite this fact, it is atmosphere, in its most pervasive sense, that imbues Mr. Upson’s Octaves, as the first will attest:The day was like a Sabbath in a swoon.Under late summer’s blue were fair cloud-thingsPoising aslant upon their charméd wings,Arrested by some backward thought of June.Softly I trod and with repentant shoon,Half fearfully in sweet imaginings,Where lay, as might some golden court of kings,The old Quadrangle paved with afternoon.What else than a touch of genius is in those three words, “paved with afternoon,” as fixing the tempered light, the drowsy calm, of the place?The Octaves are written in groups, the poems of each having a slight dependence upon one another, so that to be quoted they require the connecting thought. In many cases also the first or the second quatrain of the Octave is more artistic than its companion lines, as inthe one which follows, where the first four lines hold the creative beauty:As here among the well-remembering boughs,Where every leaf is tongue to ancient breath,Speech of the yesteryears forgathereth,And all the winds are long-fulfilléd vows—So from of old those ringing names arouseA whispering in the foliate shades of death,Where History her golden rosary saith,Glowing, the light of Memory on her brows.This Octave illustrates also what may be made as a general statement regarding its companions in the volume, that while the glamour may not rest equally upon the poems, they do not lack charm and distinction even in their less creative touches; and there are few in which there does not lurk some surprise in the way of picturesque phrasing.In the ordering of his cadences Mr. Upson shows a musician’s sense of rhythm; note, for example, how the transposition in the following lines enhances their melody and conveys in the initial one the sense of a river flowing:It was the lip of murmuring Thames alongWhen new lights sought the wood all strangely fair,Such quiet lights as saints transfigured wearIn minster windows crept the glades among.And far as from some hazy hill, yet strong,Methought an upland shepherd piped it there,Waking a silvern echo from her lair:“Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song!”Mr. Upson not only obeys by artist instinct the laws of counterpoint, but employs the word with the music in it, and his effects are achieved by the innate harmony of his diction and the poetry in the theme he is shaping. Take as an illustration of this his Octave upon the “Roman Glassware Preserved in the Ashmolean.” Doubtless those fragments of crystal, sheathed, by centuries in the earth, in a translucent film through which shine tints of mother-of-pearl, have met the eyes of many of us, but it needed a poet to deduce from them this illustration:Fair crystal cups are dug from earth’s old crust,Shattered but lovely, for, at price of allTheir shameful exile from the banquet-hall,They have been bargaining beauties from the dust.So, dig my life but deep enough, you mustFind broken friendships round its inner wall—Which once my careless hand let slip and fall—Brave with faint memories, rich in rainbow-rust!One notes in Mr. Upson’s work a restraint that is the apogee of good taste. He conveys the mood, whether of love or other emotion,and makes his feeling another’s, but the veil of the temple is never wholly rent; one may but divine the ministries and sacrifices of its altar. He is an idealist, not yet come to the place of disillusion; though wandering at times near to the border of that chilly realm, he wraps his seamless robe of dreams more closely about him and turns back. Mr. Upson is not, however, an unthinking singer to whom all is cheer because he has not the insight to enter into those phases of life that have not yet touched him; on the contrary, his note is not a blithe one, it is meditative, inclining to the philosophical, and tinctured with a certain pensiveness.Now and again the cosmos thrusts forward a suggestion which becomes the motive of one of the Octaves, as when the garden breeze loosens from the chink a… measure of earthTo match my body’s dust when its rebirthTo sod restores old functions I forsook,—which, in turn, induces a reflection upon the microcosm:Strange that a sod for just a thrill or twoShould ever be seduced into the roundOf change in which its present state is foundIn this my form! forsake its quiet, trueAnd fruitfullest retirement, to go throughThe heat, the strain, the languor and the wound!Forget soft rain to hear the stormier sound,—Exchange for burning tears its peaceful dew!Again one has the applied illustration both of the pains and requitals that cling about the sod in its “strange estate of flesh,” in these lines declaring thatSome dust of Eden eddies round us yet.Some clay o’ the Garden, clinging in the breast,Down near the heart yet bides unmanifest.Last eve in gardens strange to me I letThe path lead far; and lo, my vision metOld forfeit hopes. I, as on homeward quest,By recognizing trees was bidden rest,And pitying leaves looked down and sighed, “Forget!”Mr. Upson has one of his characteristic touches in the words “old forfeit hopes,” pictured as starting suddenly before one in the new path that has beguiled him. In looking over the Octaves, which embrace a variety of themes, one doubts if his selections have adequately represented the finely textured lines, pure and individual diction, and the ripe and mellow flavor of it all.Mr. Upson’s work has had its meed of recognition abroad: his first volume,Westwind Songs, contained a warmly appreciative introduction by“Carmen Sylva,” the poet-queen of Roumania, and his drama,The City, just issued in Edinburgh, is introduced by Count Lützow of the University of Prague, a well-known scholar and authority upon Bohemian literature. Taking a backward glance at the first volume before looking atThe City, one finds few of the ear-marks of a first collection of poetry, which it must become the subsequent effort of the writer to live down.The lines “When We Said Good-Bye” are among the truest in feeling, though almost too intimate to quote; and this sympathetic lyric, entitled “Old Gardens,” has a delicate grace:The white rose tree that spent its muskFor lovers’ sweeter praise,The stately walks we sought at dusk,Have missed thee many days.Again, with once-familiar feet,I tread the old parterre—But, ah, its bloom is now less sweetThan when thy face was there.I hear the birds of evening call;I take the wild perfume;I pluck a rose—to let it fallAnd perish in the gloom.Westwind Songs, however, waft other thoughts than those of love. There is a heavier freight in this “Thought of Stevenson”:High and alone I stood on Calton HillAbove the scene that was so dear to himWhose exile dreams of it made exile dim.October wooed the folded valleys tillIn mist they blurred, even as our eyes upfillUnder a too sweet memory; spires did swim,And gables rust-red, on the gray sea’s brim—But on these heights the air was soft and still.Yet not all still: an alien breeze did turnHere as from bournes in aromatic seas,As round old shrines a new-freed soul might yearnWith incense to his earthly memories.And then this thought: Mist, exile, searching pain,But the brave soul is free, is home again!How fine is the imaginative thought of October wooing the valleys till they blurred with mist, as one’s “eyes upfill under a too sweet memory,” and still finer the touch of the “alien breeze” turningHere as from bournes in aromatic seas.So one might imagine the journeying winds blowing hither from Vaea, and the intensely human soul of Stevenson yearning to the vital sympathies of earth.Mr. Upson has recently published in Edinburghand America a poem-drama entitledThe City, and containing, as previously mentioned, a scholarly introduction by Count Lützow of the Bohemian University of Prague, who points out the historical and traditional sources of the story.The drama is embraced in one act, and covers a period of but one day, from dawn to dusk; nevertheless, it is not wanting in incident, since its operative causes reach their culmination in this period. The “conditions precedent” of the plot, briefly summarized, show that Abgar, King of Edessa, has married Cleonis, an Athenian, whose foster-sister, Stilbe, having been an earlier favorite of the king, is actuated by jealousy of the pair, and although dwelling as an inmate of the royal household, plots with her lover, Belarion, against the government of the king, ill at his palace outside the city and awaiting the arrival of Jesus to heal him of his disease.The subjects of Abgar have rebelled not only at his protracted absence from the city, in dalliance, as they deem it, with the Athenian queen, but because of measures of reform instituted by him which had done despite to their ancient idolatries and desecrated certain shrines in the public improvements of the city.Not only had the king progressed beyond his day in the material advancement of his realm, but his eager, swiftly conceiving mind had imaged a spiritual ideal even more vital; and at the opening of the drama he awaits the coming of the Nazarene to heal him, that he may devote himself to the development of his people.The scene opens at the dawn in the portico of the palace, where the queen’s women, attired in white pepli, have spent the night singing soft music to the accompaniment of the lyre to charm the fevered sleep of the king. They are dismissed by Agamede, cousin of the queen, who detains Stilbe to learn the cause of her discontent. Sufficient is revealed to indicate that Belarion, the betrothed of Stilbe, whom the oracle has declared a man of promise, is plotting against the life of the king, aided in this design by Stilbe, who has been summoned almost from the marriage altar to attend the queen.The second scene takes place four hours later, in the palace garden, and pictures the return of the messenger and his attendants sent to conduct Jesus to Edessa. The opening dialogue occurs between Ananias, the returned messenger, and the old and learned doctor of the court, who details with elaborate minuteness the ministries of his skill since thedeparture of the former to Jerusalem. While this dialogue is characteristic, well phrased, and indirectly humorous, it is a dramatic mistake to introduce it at such length, retarding the action, which should be focused sharply upon the essential motive of the scene,—the conveying to the queen the message of the Nazarene and the incidents of his refusal. The literary quality of the dialogue between the queen and Ananias has much beauty, being memorable for the picture it conveys of Jesus among his disciples at Bethany, “a hamlet up an olive-sprinkled hill,” where, guided by Philip, the Galilean, the messenger found him. The description of the personality and manner of Christ is a subtle piece of portraiture. To the question of Cleonis,—Tell me of his appearance. What said he?Ananias replies:He had prepared this scroll and gave it meWith courteous words, yet, as I after thought,Most singularly free from deferenceFor one who ranks with artisans. His lookBetrayed no satisfaction with our suit;Yet did he emanate a grave respectWhich seemed habitual, much as Stoics use,Yet kinder; and his bearing had more graceThan any Jew’s I ever saw before.As for his words, I own I scarce recall them,And have been wondering ever since that I,Bred at a Court and tutored to brave deeds,Should be so sudden silenced. For I stoodObedient to unknown authoritiesWhich spake in eye and tone and every move,In that his first mild answer of refusal.Ere the departure of the king’s embassy from Jerusalem, the tragic drama of the crucifixion had been enacted and in part witnessed by them, which Ananias also describes with graphic force; in it appears an adaptation of the Veronica story. The lines well convey the picture:As the way widened past the high-walled houseOf Berenis, the throng thinned, and I sawPlainer the moving figure of the manAnd the huge beam laid on him. SuddenlyFrom the great gate I saw a form dart forthStraight towards him, pause, and seem to have some speechWith the condemned, as, by old privilege,Sometimes the pious ladies do with thoseWho tread the shameful road. Her speech was brief.She turned, and, as I saw ’twas Berenis,Towards me she came, and her eyes, wet with tears,Smiled sadly, and she said these final words:“Such shame a mighty purpose led him to,Yet he shrinks not, but steadfast to this endInevitable hath he come his way.A woman of my house was healed of himBy kissing once the border of his garment.Take your King this, and say that as he draggedHis cruel but chosen cross to his own doomSome comfort in its cooling web he found,And left a blessing in its pungent folds.”In the third scene of the drama, occurring in the afternoon, Abgar is informed of the Healer’s refusal to accede to his request, but in the presence of the queen and the attendants assembled in the royal garden, the letter of the Nazarene, promising healing and peace, is read to him by the returned envoy, and at length the linen, received from the hand of Berenis, and upon whose folds the healing power of Christ had been invoked, is given into the keeping of Abgar, through whose veins, as by the visible touch of the divine hand, the current of new life throbs and courses. The moment is fraught with intense reality, which Mr. Upson has kept as much as possible to such effects as transcend words. Just previous to the vital transformation Abgar has said:I have not yet resolved the Healer’s wordsInto clear meaning; but their crystal soonIn the still cup of contemplation mayGive up its precious drug to heal our cares,—but the supreme end was not wrought by contemplation, nor could its processes be resolvedby analysis, or other words be found to proclaim it than the simple but thrilling exclamation:I feel it now! All through these withered veinsI feel it bound and glow! O life, life, life!From this period the incidents of the drama develop with all the tensity of action which previous to this scene it has lacked, giving to the close a certain sense of crowding when compared with the slow movement of the previous scenes consisting chiefly of recital, well told, but with little to enact, making the work to this point rather a graphically related story than a drama. The incidents which come on apace in the latter part of the play have, to be sure, been foreshadowed in the earlier part, but one is scarcely prepared for the swift succession of events, nor for their bloody character after the sabbatical mood into which the earlier scenes of the work have thrown him. If the drama covered a longer period, giving time between scenes for the development of events, even though such development were but suggested by a statement of dates, the impression of undue haste in the climax would be obviated; but in the interval of one day, even though all events leading to the issue have been working silently for months or years, their culmination seems to come without due preparation to thereader’s mind, and one is swept off his feet by consummations with whose causes he had scarcely reckoned.Immediately following the healing of Abgar, the queen’s cousin, Agamede, enters breathless and announces to the king the plot on foot to overthrow him, which inspires the king with a resolve to set forth at once to the city. Upon the attempt of the queen to deter him, Abgar relates a prophetic dream of his city and its destiny through him, which is one of the finest conceptions, both in spiritual import and elevation of phrase, contained in the drama. The dream is related as having appeared to the king in three distinct visions, glimpsing his city in its past, present, and future. It is too long to follow in detail, but this glimpse is from the vision of the past, whereThrough that wreck of fortress, mart and faneAnd fallen mausoleum crowded o’erWith characters forevermore unread,Only the wind’s soft hands went up and downScattering the obliterative sands.I, led in trance by shapes invisible,Approached a temple’s splendid architraveHalf sunk in sod betwixt its columns’ bases,And there by sudden divination readThe deep-cut legend of that awful gate:Appease with sacrifice the unknown powers.The next vision is of the city in its present state, “builded on like dust,” but teeming with activity and material purpose, through which a glimmering ideal begins to dawn:They toiled, or played, or fought, or sued the gods,Absorbed each in his own peculiar lust,As if there were no morrow watching them;Yet each was happier in the morrow-dreamThan ever in all achievéd yesterdays.Then is revealed to the mind of Abgar the high commission intrusted to him:And as I looked, I saw a man who longIn upward meditation on his roofSat all alone, communing with his soul,And he arose, and presently went down,Down in the long black streets among his kind,And there with patience taught them steadfastly;But, for the restless souls he made in them,They turned and slew him and went on their ways,And a great fog crept up and covered all.Here surely is keen spiritual psychology, that “for the restless souls he made in them” they slew him. All martyrdoms are traced to their source in this line, which holds also the suggestive truth as to the final acceptance of that for which the prophet dies. Once having planted the seed whose stirring makes the “restless soul,” its growth is committed to theLaw, and can no more be prevented than the shining of the sun or the flowing of the tides. Abgar was granted a third vision, of the city in its embodied ideal; its ultimate beauty and achievement were given definite shape before him, and the recital ends with the triumphal note:Fear not for me: I go unto the city!The last scene is enacted an hour later in the garden lighted only by the moon, and opens with the lyric sung by Agamede to the blossoming oleander-tree ’neath which her child lies buried. These are lines of a pathos as delicate and spiritual as the moonlight, the fragrance, the memory inspiring them:Grow, grow, thou little tree,His body at the roots of thee;Since last year’s loveliness in deathThe living beauty nourisheth.Bloom, bloom, thou little tree,Thy roots around the heart of me;Thou canst not blow too white and fairFrom all the sweetness hidden there.Die, die, thou little tree,And be as all sweet things must be;Deep where thy petals drift I, too,Would rest the changing seasons through.Then follows a dialogue of warmly emotional feeling between the king and queen, in the interval of waiting for the chariot and attendants to be brought to the gate. All the physical side of the healing of Abgar has now been resolved into its spiritual meaning, and he reinterprets the words of the Nazarene’s message that of his infirmity he shall know full cure and those most dear to him have peace; but while Abgar speaks of his changed ideal, looking now to a “city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God,” a clamor is heard at the gate, and the body-slave rushes to the king with the tidings that armed troops approach the palace, and begs him to flee in the waiting chariot. Spurning thought of escape, the king and queen mount the dais and stand calmly watching in the moonlight the heroic spectacle of the approaching army. At this moment the queen’s women rush into the garden, demanding flight; the conflict begins along the wall; the gate bursts open, and Ananias retreats to the garden, wounded, and shortly dies. A brief interval of quiet, but full of portent, succeeds, when Stilbe, who had plotted with the king’s enemies, rushes through the gate, pursued by the soldiers and bleeding from wounds of their sabres. She is shot, apparentlyby the hand of her former lover, Belarion, and falls dead at the king’s feet. Here Mr. Upson leaves an unravelled thread of his plot, or at least one for whose clew I have sought vainly. No cause has been shown for violence toward her on the part of the soldiers whom she aids, nor on that of her supposed lover and betrothed, Belarion. Why, then, she should become his victim, or why he should look upon her dead body and exclaim:“Thus Fate helps out!”is at least a riddle past my solving. If, as the results indicate, Belarion has been using Stilbe as a tool to aid his ambitions, it should scarcely have been related in good faith in the beginning of the drama that their marriage was to be celebrated the week in which the action of the play falls. If logical reasons exist for this change of front, Mr. Upson should have indicated them more clearly.The climax of the play follows immediately upon the death of Stilbe, when the king, called to account by the insolent Belarion, in righteous indignation strikes him down. It may be questioned whether such a deed could follow so quickly upon the rapt spiritual state to which the king had been lifted; but one inclines torejoice that the natural man, impelled by who shall say what higher force, triumphed, ere the queen, pointing to the dead body of the trusted messenger, Ananias, and repeating the Nazarene’s words, “Those most dear to you have peace,”—demanded of the king his blade.As they stand defenceless but assured, the soldiers, awed by the might of some inner force in the king, shrink back, and the drama closes with the victorious words,—Together, Love, we go unto the city!Though the play, looked upon from a dramatic standpoint, lacks in the earlier scenes a certain magnetism of touch and vividness of action, and in the last scene is somewhat overcharged with them, it has many finely conceived situations which strike the golden mean, and the characterization throughout is strongly defined. Its literary quality must, however, take precedence of its dramatic in the truer appraisal. In diction it shows none of the strained effort toward the supposed speech of an earlier time, which usually distinguishes poetic dramas laid far in the past, but has throughout a fitting dignity and harmony, combined with ease and flexibility of phrase and frequent eloquence ofdialogue, especially in the passages spoken by Abgar.It is a play rather of character and high motive than of plot, a piece of sheer idealism, notable alike for its spiritual and its poetic quality.

WHEN a volume of verse by Mr. Arthur Upson, entitledOctaves In An Oxford Garden, was first brought to my notice by a poet friend with what seemed before reading it a somewhat extravagant comment as to its art, it evoked a certain scepticism as to whether the poet in question would be equally enthusiastic, had he read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested some eighty or more volumes of verse within a given period, thus rendering a more rarely flavored compound necessary to excite anew the poetry-sated appetite; but Mr. Upson’s Octaves proved to be a brew into which had fallen this magic drop, and moments had gone the way of oblivion until the charm was drained.

The volume consists of some thirty Octaves written in Wadham Garden at Oxford in the reminiscent month of September; and so do they fix the mood of the place that one marvels at the restfulness, the brooding stillness, theflavor of time and association which Mr. Upson has managed to infuse into his musing, sabbatical lines. One regrets that the term “atmosphere” has become so cheapened, for in the exigent moment when no other will serve as well, he has the depressing consciousness that virtue has gone from the word he must employ. Despite this fact, it is atmosphere, in its most pervasive sense, that imbues Mr. Upson’s Octaves, as the first will attest:

The day was like a Sabbath in a swoon.Under late summer’s blue were fair cloud-thingsPoising aslant upon their charméd wings,Arrested by some backward thought of June.Softly I trod and with repentant shoon,Half fearfully in sweet imaginings,Where lay, as might some golden court of kings,The old Quadrangle paved with afternoon.

The day was like a Sabbath in a swoon.

Under late summer’s blue were fair cloud-things

Poising aslant upon their charméd wings,

Arrested by some backward thought of June.

Softly I trod and with repentant shoon,

Half fearfully in sweet imaginings,

Where lay, as might some golden court of kings,

The old Quadrangle paved with afternoon.

What else than a touch of genius is in those three words, “paved with afternoon,” as fixing the tempered light, the drowsy calm, of the place?

The Octaves are written in groups, the poems of each having a slight dependence upon one another, so that to be quoted they require the connecting thought. In many cases also the first or the second quatrain of the Octave is more artistic than its companion lines, as inthe one which follows, where the first four lines hold the creative beauty:

As here among the well-remembering boughs,Where every leaf is tongue to ancient breath,Speech of the yesteryears forgathereth,And all the winds are long-fulfilléd vows—So from of old those ringing names arouseA whispering in the foliate shades of death,Where History her golden rosary saith,Glowing, the light of Memory on her brows.

As here among the well-remembering boughs,

Where every leaf is tongue to ancient breath,

Speech of the yesteryears forgathereth,

And all the winds are long-fulfilléd vows—

So from of old those ringing names arouse

A whispering in the foliate shades of death,

Where History her golden rosary saith,

Glowing, the light of Memory on her brows.

This Octave illustrates also what may be made as a general statement regarding its companions in the volume, that while the glamour may not rest equally upon the poems, they do not lack charm and distinction even in their less creative touches; and there are few in which there does not lurk some surprise in the way of picturesque phrasing.

In the ordering of his cadences Mr. Upson shows a musician’s sense of rhythm; note, for example, how the transposition in the following lines enhances their melody and conveys in the initial one the sense of a river flowing:

It was the lip of murmuring Thames alongWhen new lights sought the wood all strangely fair,Such quiet lights as saints transfigured wearIn minster windows crept the glades among.And far as from some hazy hill, yet strong,Methought an upland shepherd piped it there,Waking a silvern echo from her lair:“Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song!”

It was the lip of murmuring Thames along

When new lights sought the wood all strangely fair,

Such quiet lights as saints transfigured wear

In minster windows crept the glades among.

And far as from some hazy hill, yet strong,

Methought an upland shepherd piped it there,

Waking a silvern echo from her lair:

“Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song!”

Mr. Upson not only obeys by artist instinct the laws of counterpoint, but employs the word with the music in it, and his effects are achieved by the innate harmony of his diction and the poetry in the theme he is shaping. Take as an illustration of this his Octave upon the “Roman Glassware Preserved in the Ashmolean.” Doubtless those fragments of crystal, sheathed, by centuries in the earth, in a translucent film through which shine tints of mother-of-pearl, have met the eyes of many of us, but it needed a poet to deduce from them this illustration:

Fair crystal cups are dug from earth’s old crust,Shattered but lovely, for, at price of allTheir shameful exile from the banquet-hall,They have been bargaining beauties from the dust.So, dig my life but deep enough, you mustFind broken friendships round its inner wall—Which once my careless hand let slip and fall—Brave with faint memories, rich in rainbow-rust!

Fair crystal cups are dug from earth’s old crust,

Shattered but lovely, for, at price of all

Their shameful exile from the banquet-hall,

They have been bargaining beauties from the dust.

So, dig my life but deep enough, you must

Find broken friendships round its inner wall—

Which once my careless hand let slip and fall—

Brave with faint memories, rich in rainbow-rust!

One notes in Mr. Upson’s work a restraint that is the apogee of good taste. He conveys the mood, whether of love or other emotion,and makes his feeling another’s, but the veil of the temple is never wholly rent; one may but divine the ministries and sacrifices of its altar. He is an idealist, not yet come to the place of disillusion; though wandering at times near to the border of that chilly realm, he wraps his seamless robe of dreams more closely about him and turns back. Mr. Upson is not, however, an unthinking singer to whom all is cheer because he has not the insight to enter into those phases of life that have not yet touched him; on the contrary, his note is not a blithe one, it is meditative, inclining to the philosophical, and tinctured with a certain pensiveness.

Now and again the cosmos thrusts forward a suggestion which becomes the motive of one of the Octaves, as when the garden breeze loosens from the chink a

… measure of earthTo match my body’s dust when its rebirthTo sod restores old functions I forsook,—

… measure of earth

To match my body’s dust when its rebirth

To sod restores old functions I forsook,—

which, in turn, induces a reflection upon the microcosm:

Strange that a sod for just a thrill or twoShould ever be seduced into the roundOf change in which its present state is foundIn this my form! forsake its quiet, trueAnd fruitfullest retirement, to go throughThe heat, the strain, the languor and the wound!Forget soft rain to hear the stormier sound,—Exchange for burning tears its peaceful dew!

Strange that a sod for just a thrill or two

Should ever be seduced into the round

Of change in which its present state is found

In this my form! forsake its quiet, true

And fruitfullest retirement, to go through

The heat, the strain, the languor and the wound!

Forget soft rain to hear the stormier sound,—

Exchange for burning tears its peaceful dew!

Again one has the applied illustration both of the pains and requitals that cling about the sod in its “strange estate of flesh,” in these lines declaring that

Some dust of Eden eddies round us yet.Some clay o’ the Garden, clinging in the breast,Down near the heart yet bides unmanifest.Last eve in gardens strange to me I letThe path lead far; and lo, my vision metOld forfeit hopes. I, as on homeward quest,By recognizing trees was bidden rest,And pitying leaves looked down and sighed, “Forget!”

Some dust of Eden eddies round us yet.

Some clay o’ the Garden, clinging in the breast,

Down near the heart yet bides unmanifest.

Last eve in gardens strange to me I let

The path lead far; and lo, my vision met

Old forfeit hopes. I, as on homeward quest,

By recognizing trees was bidden rest,

And pitying leaves looked down and sighed, “Forget!”

Mr. Upson has one of his characteristic touches in the words “old forfeit hopes,” pictured as starting suddenly before one in the new path that has beguiled him. In looking over the Octaves, which embrace a variety of themes, one doubts if his selections have adequately represented the finely textured lines, pure and individual diction, and the ripe and mellow flavor of it all.

Mr. Upson’s work has had its meed of recognition abroad: his first volume,Westwind Songs, contained a warmly appreciative introduction by“Carmen Sylva,” the poet-queen of Roumania, and his drama,The City, just issued in Edinburgh, is introduced by Count Lützow of the University of Prague, a well-known scholar and authority upon Bohemian literature. Taking a backward glance at the first volume before looking atThe City, one finds few of the ear-marks of a first collection of poetry, which it must become the subsequent effort of the writer to live down.

The lines “When We Said Good-Bye” are among the truest in feeling, though almost too intimate to quote; and this sympathetic lyric, entitled “Old Gardens,” has a delicate grace:

The white rose tree that spent its muskFor lovers’ sweeter praise,The stately walks we sought at dusk,Have missed thee many days.Again, with once-familiar feet,I tread the old parterre—But, ah, its bloom is now less sweetThan when thy face was there.I hear the birds of evening call;I take the wild perfume;I pluck a rose—to let it fallAnd perish in the gloom.

The white rose tree that spent its muskFor lovers’ sweeter praise,The stately walks we sought at dusk,Have missed thee many days.

The white rose tree that spent its musk

For lovers’ sweeter praise,

The stately walks we sought at dusk,

Have missed thee many days.

Again, with once-familiar feet,I tread the old parterre—But, ah, its bloom is now less sweetThan when thy face was there.

Again, with once-familiar feet,

I tread the old parterre—

But, ah, its bloom is now less sweet

Than when thy face was there.

I hear the birds of evening call;I take the wild perfume;I pluck a rose—to let it fallAnd perish in the gloom.

I hear the birds of evening call;

I take the wild perfume;

I pluck a rose—to let it fall

And perish in the gloom.

Westwind Songs, however, waft other thoughts than those of love. There is a heavier freight in this “Thought of Stevenson”:

High and alone I stood on Calton HillAbove the scene that was so dear to himWhose exile dreams of it made exile dim.October wooed the folded valleys tillIn mist they blurred, even as our eyes upfillUnder a too sweet memory; spires did swim,And gables rust-red, on the gray sea’s brim—But on these heights the air was soft and still.Yet not all still: an alien breeze did turnHere as from bournes in aromatic seas,As round old shrines a new-freed soul might yearnWith incense to his earthly memories.And then this thought: Mist, exile, searching pain,But the brave soul is free, is home again!

High and alone I stood on Calton Hill

Above the scene that was so dear to him

Whose exile dreams of it made exile dim.

October wooed the folded valleys till

In mist they blurred, even as our eyes upfill

Under a too sweet memory; spires did swim,

And gables rust-red, on the gray sea’s brim—

But on these heights the air was soft and still.

Yet not all still: an alien breeze did turn

Here as from bournes in aromatic seas,

As round old shrines a new-freed soul might yearn

With incense to his earthly memories.

And then this thought: Mist, exile, searching pain,

But the brave soul is free, is home again!

How fine is the imaginative thought of October wooing the valleys till they blurred with mist, as one’s “eyes upfill under a too sweet memory,” and still finer the touch of the “alien breeze” turning

Here as from bournes in aromatic seas.

So one might imagine the journeying winds blowing hither from Vaea, and the intensely human soul of Stevenson yearning to the vital sympathies of earth.

Mr. Upson has recently published in Edinburghand America a poem-drama entitledThe City, and containing, as previously mentioned, a scholarly introduction by Count Lützow of the Bohemian University of Prague, who points out the historical and traditional sources of the story.

The drama is embraced in one act, and covers a period of but one day, from dawn to dusk; nevertheless, it is not wanting in incident, since its operative causes reach their culmination in this period. The “conditions precedent” of the plot, briefly summarized, show that Abgar, King of Edessa, has married Cleonis, an Athenian, whose foster-sister, Stilbe, having been an earlier favorite of the king, is actuated by jealousy of the pair, and although dwelling as an inmate of the royal household, plots with her lover, Belarion, against the government of the king, ill at his palace outside the city and awaiting the arrival of Jesus to heal him of his disease.

The subjects of Abgar have rebelled not only at his protracted absence from the city, in dalliance, as they deem it, with the Athenian queen, but because of measures of reform instituted by him which had done despite to their ancient idolatries and desecrated certain shrines in the public improvements of the city.

Not only had the king progressed beyond his day in the material advancement of his realm, but his eager, swiftly conceiving mind had imaged a spiritual ideal even more vital; and at the opening of the drama he awaits the coming of the Nazarene to heal him, that he may devote himself to the development of his people.

The scene opens at the dawn in the portico of the palace, where the queen’s women, attired in white pepli, have spent the night singing soft music to the accompaniment of the lyre to charm the fevered sleep of the king. They are dismissed by Agamede, cousin of the queen, who detains Stilbe to learn the cause of her discontent. Sufficient is revealed to indicate that Belarion, the betrothed of Stilbe, whom the oracle has declared a man of promise, is plotting against the life of the king, aided in this design by Stilbe, who has been summoned almost from the marriage altar to attend the queen.

The second scene takes place four hours later, in the palace garden, and pictures the return of the messenger and his attendants sent to conduct Jesus to Edessa. The opening dialogue occurs between Ananias, the returned messenger, and the old and learned doctor of the court, who details with elaborate minuteness the ministries of his skill since thedeparture of the former to Jerusalem. While this dialogue is characteristic, well phrased, and indirectly humorous, it is a dramatic mistake to introduce it at such length, retarding the action, which should be focused sharply upon the essential motive of the scene,—the conveying to the queen the message of the Nazarene and the incidents of his refusal. The literary quality of the dialogue between the queen and Ananias has much beauty, being memorable for the picture it conveys of Jesus among his disciples at Bethany, “a hamlet up an olive-sprinkled hill,” where, guided by Philip, the Galilean, the messenger found him. The description of the personality and manner of Christ is a subtle piece of portraiture. To the question of Cleonis,—

Tell me of his appearance. What said he?

Ananias replies:

He had prepared this scroll and gave it meWith courteous words, yet, as I after thought,Most singularly free from deferenceFor one who ranks with artisans. His lookBetrayed no satisfaction with our suit;Yet did he emanate a grave respectWhich seemed habitual, much as Stoics use,Yet kinder; and his bearing had more graceThan any Jew’s I ever saw before.As for his words, I own I scarce recall them,And have been wondering ever since that I,Bred at a Court and tutored to brave deeds,Should be so sudden silenced. For I stoodObedient to unknown authoritiesWhich spake in eye and tone and every move,In that his first mild answer of refusal.

He had prepared this scroll and gave it me

With courteous words, yet, as I after thought,

Most singularly free from deference

For one who ranks with artisans. His look

Betrayed no satisfaction with our suit;

Yet did he emanate a grave respect

Which seemed habitual, much as Stoics use,

Yet kinder; and his bearing had more grace

Than any Jew’s I ever saw before.

As for his words, I own I scarce recall them,

And have been wondering ever since that I,

Bred at a Court and tutored to brave deeds,

Should be so sudden silenced. For I stood

Obedient to unknown authorities

Which spake in eye and tone and every move,

In that his first mild answer of refusal.

Ere the departure of the king’s embassy from Jerusalem, the tragic drama of the crucifixion had been enacted and in part witnessed by them, which Ananias also describes with graphic force; in it appears an adaptation of the Veronica story. The lines well convey the picture:

As the way widened past the high-walled houseOf Berenis, the throng thinned, and I sawPlainer the moving figure of the manAnd the huge beam laid on him. SuddenlyFrom the great gate I saw a form dart forthStraight towards him, pause, and seem to have some speechWith the condemned, as, by old privilege,Sometimes the pious ladies do with thoseWho tread the shameful road. Her speech was brief.She turned, and, as I saw ’twas Berenis,Towards me she came, and her eyes, wet with tears,Smiled sadly, and she said these final words:“Such shame a mighty purpose led him to,Yet he shrinks not, but steadfast to this endInevitable hath he come his way.A woman of my house was healed of himBy kissing once the border of his garment.Take your King this, and say that as he draggedHis cruel but chosen cross to his own doomSome comfort in its cooling web he found,And left a blessing in its pungent folds.”

As the way widened past the high-walled house

Of Berenis, the throng thinned, and I saw

Plainer the moving figure of the man

And the huge beam laid on him. Suddenly

From the great gate I saw a form dart forth

Straight towards him, pause, and seem to have some speech

With the condemned, as, by old privilege,

Sometimes the pious ladies do with those

Who tread the shameful road. Her speech was brief.

She turned, and, as I saw ’twas Berenis,

Towards me she came, and her eyes, wet with tears,

Smiled sadly, and she said these final words:

“Such shame a mighty purpose led him to,Yet he shrinks not, but steadfast to this endInevitable hath he come his way.A woman of my house was healed of himBy kissing once the border of his garment.Take your King this, and say that as he draggedHis cruel but chosen cross to his own doomSome comfort in its cooling web he found,And left a blessing in its pungent folds.”

“Such shame a mighty purpose led him to,

Yet he shrinks not, but steadfast to this end

Inevitable hath he come his way.

A woman of my house was healed of him

By kissing once the border of his garment.

Take your King this, and say that as he dragged

His cruel but chosen cross to his own doom

Some comfort in its cooling web he found,

And left a blessing in its pungent folds.”

In the third scene of the drama, occurring in the afternoon, Abgar is informed of the Healer’s refusal to accede to his request, but in the presence of the queen and the attendants assembled in the royal garden, the letter of the Nazarene, promising healing and peace, is read to him by the returned envoy, and at length the linen, received from the hand of Berenis, and upon whose folds the healing power of Christ had been invoked, is given into the keeping of Abgar, through whose veins, as by the visible touch of the divine hand, the current of new life throbs and courses. The moment is fraught with intense reality, which Mr. Upson has kept as much as possible to such effects as transcend words. Just previous to the vital transformation Abgar has said:

I have not yet resolved the Healer’s wordsInto clear meaning; but their crystal soonIn the still cup of contemplation mayGive up its precious drug to heal our cares,—

I have not yet resolved the Healer’s words

Into clear meaning; but their crystal soon

In the still cup of contemplation may

Give up its precious drug to heal our cares,—

but the supreme end was not wrought by contemplation, nor could its processes be resolvedby analysis, or other words be found to proclaim it than the simple but thrilling exclamation:

I feel it now! All through these withered veinsI feel it bound and glow! O life, life, life!

I feel it now! All through these withered veins

I feel it bound and glow! O life, life, life!

From this period the incidents of the drama develop with all the tensity of action which previous to this scene it has lacked, giving to the close a certain sense of crowding when compared with the slow movement of the previous scenes consisting chiefly of recital, well told, but with little to enact, making the work to this point rather a graphically related story than a drama. The incidents which come on apace in the latter part of the play have, to be sure, been foreshadowed in the earlier part, but one is scarcely prepared for the swift succession of events, nor for their bloody character after the sabbatical mood into which the earlier scenes of the work have thrown him. If the drama covered a longer period, giving time between scenes for the development of events, even though such development were but suggested by a statement of dates, the impression of undue haste in the climax would be obviated; but in the interval of one day, even though all events leading to the issue have been working silently for months or years, their culmination seems to come without due preparation to thereader’s mind, and one is swept off his feet by consummations with whose causes he had scarcely reckoned.

Immediately following the healing of Abgar, the queen’s cousin, Agamede, enters breathless and announces to the king the plot on foot to overthrow him, which inspires the king with a resolve to set forth at once to the city. Upon the attempt of the queen to deter him, Abgar relates a prophetic dream of his city and its destiny through him, which is one of the finest conceptions, both in spiritual import and elevation of phrase, contained in the drama. The dream is related as having appeared to the king in three distinct visions, glimpsing his city in its past, present, and future. It is too long to follow in detail, but this glimpse is from the vision of the past, where

Through that wreck of fortress, mart and faneAnd fallen mausoleum crowded o’erWith characters forevermore unread,Only the wind’s soft hands went up and downScattering the obliterative sands.I, led in trance by shapes invisible,Approached a temple’s splendid architraveHalf sunk in sod betwixt its columns’ bases,And there by sudden divination readThe deep-cut legend of that awful gate:Appease with sacrifice the unknown powers.

Through that wreck of fortress, mart and fane

And fallen mausoleum crowded o’er

With characters forevermore unread,

Only the wind’s soft hands went up and down

Scattering the obliterative sands.

I, led in trance by shapes invisible,

Approached a temple’s splendid architrave

Half sunk in sod betwixt its columns’ bases,

And there by sudden divination read

The deep-cut legend of that awful gate:

Appease with sacrifice the unknown powers.

The next vision is of the city in its present state, “builded on like dust,” but teeming with activity and material purpose, through which a glimmering ideal begins to dawn:

They toiled, or played, or fought, or sued the gods,Absorbed each in his own peculiar lust,As if there were no morrow watching them;Yet each was happier in the morrow-dreamThan ever in all achievéd yesterdays.

They toiled, or played, or fought, or sued the gods,

Absorbed each in his own peculiar lust,

As if there were no morrow watching them;

Yet each was happier in the morrow-dream

Than ever in all achievéd yesterdays.

Then is revealed to the mind of Abgar the high commission intrusted to him:

And as I looked, I saw a man who longIn upward meditation on his roofSat all alone, communing with his soul,And he arose, and presently went down,Down in the long black streets among his kind,And there with patience taught them steadfastly;But, for the restless souls he made in them,They turned and slew him and went on their ways,And a great fog crept up and covered all.

And as I looked, I saw a man who long

In upward meditation on his roof

Sat all alone, communing with his soul,

And he arose, and presently went down,

Down in the long black streets among his kind,

And there with patience taught them steadfastly;

But, for the restless souls he made in them,

They turned and slew him and went on their ways,

And a great fog crept up and covered all.

Here surely is keen spiritual psychology, that “for the restless souls he made in them” they slew him. All martyrdoms are traced to their source in this line, which holds also the suggestive truth as to the final acceptance of that for which the prophet dies. Once having planted the seed whose stirring makes the “restless soul,” its growth is committed to theLaw, and can no more be prevented than the shining of the sun or the flowing of the tides. Abgar was granted a third vision, of the city in its embodied ideal; its ultimate beauty and achievement were given definite shape before him, and the recital ends with the triumphal note:

Fear not for me: I go unto the city!

The last scene is enacted an hour later in the garden lighted only by the moon, and opens with the lyric sung by Agamede to the blossoming oleander-tree ’neath which her child lies buried. These are lines of a pathos as delicate and spiritual as the moonlight, the fragrance, the memory inspiring them:

Grow, grow, thou little tree,His body at the roots of thee;Since last year’s loveliness in deathThe living beauty nourisheth.Bloom, bloom, thou little tree,Thy roots around the heart of me;Thou canst not blow too white and fairFrom all the sweetness hidden there.Die, die, thou little tree,And be as all sweet things must be;Deep where thy petals drift I, too,Would rest the changing seasons through.

Grow, grow, thou little tree,His body at the roots of thee;Since last year’s loveliness in deathThe living beauty nourisheth.

Grow, grow, thou little tree,

His body at the roots of thee;

Since last year’s loveliness in death

The living beauty nourisheth.

Bloom, bloom, thou little tree,Thy roots around the heart of me;Thou canst not blow too white and fairFrom all the sweetness hidden there.

Bloom, bloom, thou little tree,

Thy roots around the heart of me;

Thou canst not blow too white and fair

From all the sweetness hidden there.

Die, die, thou little tree,And be as all sweet things must be;Deep where thy petals drift I, too,Would rest the changing seasons through.

Die, die, thou little tree,

And be as all sweet things must be;

Deep where thy petals drift I, too,

Would rest the changing seasons through.

Then follows a dialogue of warmly emotional feeling between the king and queen, in the interval of waiting for the chariot and attendants to be brought to the gate. All the physical side of the healing of Abgar has now been resolved into its spiritual meaning, and he reinterprets the words of the Nazarene’s message that of his infirmity he shall know full cure and those most dear to him have peace; but while Abgar speaks of his changed ideal, looking now to a “city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God,” a clamor is heard at the gate, and the body-slave rushes to the king with the tidings that armed troops approach the palace, and begs him to flee in the waiting chariot. Spurning thought of escape, the king and queen mount the dais and stand calmly watching in the moonlight the heroic spectacle of the approaching army. At this moment the queen’s women rush into the garden, demanding flight; the conflict begins along the wall; the gate bursts open, and Ananias retreats to the garden, wounded, and shortly dies. A brief interval of quiet, but full of portent, succeeds, when Stilbe, who had plotted with the king’s enemies, rushes through the gate, pursued by the soldiers and bleeding from wounds of their sabres. She is shot, apparentlyby the hand of her former lover, Belarion, and falls dead at the king’s feet. Here Mr. Upson leaves an unravelled thread of his plot, or at least one for whose clew I have sought vainly. No cause has been shown for violence toward her on the part of the soldiers whom she aids, nor on that of her supposed lover and betrothed, Belarion. Why, then, she should become his victim, or why he should look upon her dead body and exclaim:

“Thus Fate helps out!”

is at least a riddle past my solving. If, as the results indicate, Belarion has been using Stilbe as a tool to aid his ambitions, it should scarcely have been related in good faith in the beginning of the drama that their marriage was to be celebrated the week in which the action of the play falls. If logical reasons exist for this change of front, Mr. Upson should have indicated them more clearly.

The climax of the play follows immediately upon the death of Stilbe, when the king, called to account by the insolent Belarion, in righteous indignation strikes him down. It may be questioned whether such a deed could follow so quickly upon the rapt spiritual state to which the king had been lifted; but one inclines torejoice that the natural man, impelled by who shall say what higher force, triumphed, ere the queen, pointing to the dead body of the trusted messenger, Ananias, and repeating the Nazarene’s words, “Those most dear to you have peace,”—demanded of the king his blade.

As they stand defenceless but assured, the soldiers, awed by the might of some inner force in the king, shrink back, and the drama closes with the victorious words,—

Together, Love, we go unto the city!

Though the play, looked upon from a dramatic standpoint, lacks in the earlier scenes a certain magnetism of touch and vividness of action, and in the last scene is somewhat overcharged with them, it has many finely conceived situations which strike the golden mean, and the characterization throughout is strongly defined. Its literary quality must, however, take precedence of its dramatic in the truer appraisal. In diction it shows none of the strained effort toward the supposed speech of an earlier time, which usually distinguishes poetic dramas laid far in the past, but has throughout a fitting dignity and harmony, combined with ease and flexibility of phrase and frequent eloquence ofdialogue, especially in the passages spoken by Abgar.

It is a play rather of character and high motive than of plot, a piece of sheer idealism, notable alike for its spiritual and its poetic quality.

BIOGRAPHICAL INDEXBROWN, Alice.Born Hampton Falls,N. H., Dec. 5, 1857. Graduated Robinson Seminary, Exeter,N. H., 1876. On staff of Youth’s Companion. Author: Fools of Nature; Meadow-Grass; By Oak and Thorn (English travels); Life of Mercy Otis Warren; The Road to Castaly (poems); The Days of his Youth; Robert Louis Stevenson, A Study (with Louise I. Guiney); Tiverton Tales; King’s End; Margaret Warrener; The Mannerings; Judgment. Resides in Boston.BURTON, Richard.Born Hartford,Conn., March 14, 1859. Graduated Trinity College, Hartford. Ph.D. Johns Hopkins, 1887. MarriedOct.7, 1889. Taught Old English Johns Hopkins, 1888. Managing EditorN. Y.Churchman, 1888-89. Travelled in Europe, 1889-90. Literary Editor Hartford Courant, 1890-97. Associate Editor Warner Library World’s Best Literature, 1897-99. Professor English Literature, University of Minnesota, 1898-1902. Editor Lothrop PublishingCo., 1902-04. Lectures upon literature and the drama. Author: (verse) Dumb in June, 1895; Memorial Day, 1897; Lyrics of Brotherhood, 1899; Message and Melody, 1903; (prose) Literary Likings, essays, 1898; Life of Whittier, in Beacon Biography Series, 1900; Forces in Fiction, essays, 1902. Resides in Boston.CARMAN, Bliss.Born Fredericton,N. B., April 15, 1861. Graduate University of New Brunswick, 1881. Postgraduate student University of Edinburgh, 1882-83, and of Harvard, 1886-88. Studied law, practised civil engineering, taught school. Office EditorN. Y.Independent, 1890-1902. For past four years has contributed a weekly column, called “Marginal Notes,” to the Evening Post,Chicago, The Transcript, Boston, and the Commercial Advertiser,N. Y.Unmarried. Author: Low Tide on Grand Pré, 1893; A Sea-Mark, 1895; Behind the Arras, 1895; Ballads of Lost Haven, 1897; By the Aurelian Wall, 1897; Songs from Vagabondia, in collaboration with Richard Hovey, 1894; More Songs from Vagabondia, 1896; Last Songs from Vagabondia, 1900; St. Kavin, a Ballad, 1894; At Michaelmas, 1895; The Girl in the Poster, 1897; The Green Book of the Bards, 1898; Vengeance of Noel Bassard, 1899; Ode on the Coronation of King Edward, 1902; From the Book of Myths, 1902; Pipes of PanNo.1, 1902; Pipes of PanNo.2, 1903; The Word at St. Kavins, 1903; Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics, 1903. Resides in New York.CAWEIN, Madison Julius.Born Louisville,Ky., March 23, 1865. Graduated at High School in Louisville, 1886. Since then has confined himself to the writing of verse. Author: Blooms of the Berry, 1887; The Triumph of Music, 1888; Accolon of Gaul, 1889; Lyrics and Idyls, 1890; Days and Dreams, 1891; Moods and Memories, 1892; Red Leaves and Roses, 1893; Poems of Nature and Love, 1893; Intimations of the Beautiful, 1894; The White Snake (translations from German poets), 1895; Undertones, 1896; The Garden of Dreams, 1896; Shapes and Shadows, 1898; Idyllic Monologues, 1898; Myth and Romance, 1899; Weeds by the Wall, 1901; One Day and Another, 1901; Kentucky Poems (selections published in London with an Introduction by Edmund Gosse), 1902; A Voice on the Wind, 1902. Resides Louisville,Ky.FENOLLOSA, Mary McNeil.Born in Alabama. Graduated Irving Academy, Mobile. Married, 1895, Ernest F. Fenollosa. Resided in Japan about eight years. Author: Out of the Nest: A Flight of Verses, 1899; and Child Verses on Japanese Subjects. Wrote Monograph upon Heroshige, the Artist of Mist, Snow, and Rain; also verses, sketches, and stories in many magazines.GUINEY, Louise Imogen.Born Boston, Jan. 7, 1861. Graduated Elmhurst Academy, Providence,R. I., 1879. Studied afterwards under private tutors and abroad. Contributorsince 1885 to Harper’s, Atlantic, and other magazines. Author: The White Sail and Other Poems, 1887; Monsieur Henri: A Footnote to French History, 1892; A Roadside Harp, 1893; A Little English Gallery, 1894; Patrins, essays, 1897; England and Yesterday, 1898; A Martyr’s Idyl, and Shorter Poems, 1899; Editor James Clarence Mangan, His Selected Poems, with Study by the Editor, 1897; of the Matthew Arnold (in small Riverside Literature Series); of Dr. T. W. Parsons’ Translation of Divina Commedia of Dante, 1893; of Henry Vaughn’s Mount of Olives, 1902. Resides since 1901 in Oxford, England.HALL, Gertrude.Born Boston,Sept.8, 1863. Educated private schools in Florence, Italy. Author: (verse) Far from To-day; Allegretto (light verse): Foam of the Sea; Age of Fairygold; Translator Paul Verlaine’s Poems, and of Cyrano de Bergerac; (prose) The Hundred, and Other Stories; April’s Sowing; The Legend of Sainte Cariberte des Ois. Resides New York City.HOVEY, Richard.Born Normal,Ill., 1864. Educated Dartmouth College. Author: Poems, privately printed, 1880; Songs from Vagabondia; More Songs from Vagabondia; and Last Songs from Vagabondia (in collaboration with Bliss Carman); Seaward: An Elegy (on the death of Thomas William Parsons); The Quest of Merlin: A Masque; The Marriage of Guenevere: A Tragedy; The Birth of Galahad; A Romantic Drama; Taliesin: A Masque; Along the Trail: A Book of Lyrics; Translator the Plays of Maeterlinck (in two series). Died 1900.KNOWLES, Frederic Lawrence.Born Lawrence,Mass.,Sept.8, 1869. Graduated Wesleyan University, 1894. Harvard, 1896. In editorial department Houghton, Mifflin andCo., from February to September of 1898. Literary adviser of L. C. Page andCo., 1899-1900. Since that time adviser for Dana Estes and Company. Unmarried. Author: (prose) Practical Hints for Young Writers, Readers, and Book Buyers, 1897; A Kipling Primer, 1900. (Republished in England); (verse) On Life’s Stairway, 1900; Love Triumphant, 1904. Edited Cap and Gown Second Series,1897; Golden Treasury of American Lyrics, 1897; Treasury Humorous Poetry, 1902; The Famous Children of Literature Series, 1902. Resides in Boston.PEABODY, Josephine Preston.Born in New York. Educated Girls’ Latin School, Boston, and at Radcliffe College, 1894-96. Instructor in English Literature at Wellesley College, 1901-03. Author: Old Greek Folk-Stories (Riverside Lit. Series) 1899; The Wayfarers, a book of verse, 1898; Fortune and Men’s Eyes; New Poems with a Play, 1900; Marlowe, A Drama, 1901; The Singing Leaves, 1903. Contributor to leading magazines. Resides Cambridge,Mass.REESE, Lizette Woodworth.Born in BaltimoreCo., Md.,Jan.9, 1856. Teacher of English, West High School, Baltimore. Author: A Branch of May; A Handful of Lavender, 1891; A Quiet Road, 1896. Resides in Baltimore.ROBERTS, Charles George Douglas.Born Douglas,N. B.,Jan.10, 1860. Graduated University of New Brunswick, 1879 (A. M. 1880). Married 1880. Head Master Chatham Grammar School, 1879-81; York St. School, Fredericton, 1881-83. Editor Week, Toronto, 1883-84. Professor English and French Literature, King’s College, Windsor,N. S., 1885-88. Professor English and Economics, same, 1888-95. Associate Editor Illustrated American, 1897-98. Author: (verse) Orion and Other Poems, 1880; In Divers Tones, 1887; Ave: An Ode for the Shelley Centenary, 1892; Songs of the Common Day, and Ave, 1893; The Book of the Native, 1896; New York Nocturnes, 1898; Poems, 1901; The Book of the Rose, 1903; (prose) The Canadians of Old; Earth’s Enigmas; The Raid from Beauséjour; A History of Canada; The Forge in the Forest; Around the Camp-fire; Reube Dare’s Shad Boat; A Sister to Evangeline; Appleton’s Canadian Guide-Book, 1899; By the Marshes of Minas, 1900; The Heart of the Ancient Wood, 1900; The Kindred of the Wild, 1902; Barbara Ladd, 1902; The Bird Book, 1903; The Watchers of the Trails, 1904. Editor the Alastor and Adonais of Shelley with Introduction and Notes, 1902. Resides New York City.SANTAYANA, George E.Born in Spain, 1863. Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University. Author: (verse) Sonnets and Other Poems, 1894; Lucifer: ATheological Tragedy, 1899; The Hermit of Carmel and Other Poems, 1901; (prose) The Sense of Beauty, 1896; Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, 1900. Resides Cambridge,Mass.SCOLLARD, Clinton.Born Clinton,N. Y.,Sept.18, 1860. Graduated from Hamilton College, 1881. Also studied at Harvard and at Cambridge, England. Professor of English Literature at Hamilton College, 1888-96. Author: (verse) Pictures in Song, 1884; With Reed and Lyre, 1888; Old and New World Lyrics, 1888; Giovio and Giulia, 1891; Songs of Sunrise Lands, 1892; The Hills of Song, 1895; A Boy’s Book of Rhyme, 1896; Skenandoa, 1896; The Lutes of Morn, 1901; Lyrics of the Dawn, 1902; The Lyric Bough, 1904; Ballads of Valor and Victory, 1904 (in collaboration with Wallace Rice); Footfarings (prose and verse), 1904; (prose) Under Summer Skies, 1892; On Sunny Shores, 1893; A Man-at-Arms, 1898; The Son of a Tory, 1900; A Knight of the Highway; The Cloistering of Ursula, 1902; Lawton, 1900; Editor Ford’s Broken Hearts, 1904, and of Ballads of American Bravery, 1900. Resides Clinton,N. Y.THOMAS, Edith Matilda.Born Chatham,O., August 12, 1854. Educated Normal School, Geneva, Ohio. Removed to New York, 1888. Author: (verse) A New Year’s Masque and Other Poems, 1885; Lyrics and Sonnets, 1887; Babes of the Year, 1888; The Inverted Torch, 1890; Fair Shadow Land, 1893; A Winter Swallow, 1896; The Dancers, 1903; (prose) The Round Year. Resides West New Brighton, Staten Island.TORRENCE, Frederic Ridgely.Born Xenia,O.,Nov.27, 1875. Educated under private tutors and at Miami University,O., also Princeton. Librarian Astor Library, 1897-1901. Librarian Lenox Library, 1901-03. At present Associate Editor of The Critic, New York. Unmarried. Author: (verse) The House of a Hundred Lights, 1900; El Dorado, A Tragedy, 1903. Resides in New York.UPSON, Arthur.Born in Camden,N. Y., 1877. Graduated from Camden Academy, 1894. B. A. University of Minnesota. Author: Poems (with George Norton Northrop); Westwind Songs (with an Introduction by “Carmen Sylva”); Octaves in An Oxford Garden; The City, a Poem-Drama (with Introduction by Count Lützow). Resides Minneapolis,Minn.WOODBERRY, George E.Born Beverly,Mass., May 12, 1855. Graduated Harvard, 1877. Professor of English at University of Nebraska, 1877-78, and 1880-82. On editorial staff of the Nation, 1878-79. Author: History of Wood Engraving, 1883; Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1885; Studies in Letters and Life, 1890; The North Shore Watch and Other Poems, 1890; Heart of Man, 1899; Wild Eden, 1899; Makers of Literature, 1900; Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1902; Poems (collected edition), 1903. Editor: Complete Poems of Shelley; Complete Works of Poe (with Mr. Stedman); National Studies in American Letters; Columbia Studies in Comparative Literature; Lamb’s Essays of Elia; Aubrey de Vere’s Selected Poems, and Bacon’s Essays. Editor of the Journal of Comparative Literature. From 1891 to 1903 Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

BROWN, Alice.Born Hampton Falls,N. H., Dec. 5, 1857. Graduated Robinson Seminary, Exeter,N. H., 1876. On staff of Youth’s Companion. Author: Fools of Nature; Meadow-Grass; By Oak and Thorn (English travels); Life of Mercy Otis Warren; The Road to Castaly (poems); The Days of his Youth; Robert Louis Stevenson, A Study (with Louise I. Guiney); Tiverton Tales; King’s End; Margaret Warrener; The Mannerings; Judgment. Resides in Boston.

BURTON, Richard.Born Hartford,Conn., March 14, 1859. Graduated Trinity College, Hartford. Ph.D. Johns Hopkins, 1887. MarriedOct.7, 1889. Taught Old English Johns Hopkins, 1888. Managing EditorN. Y.Churchman, 1888-89. Travelled in Europe, 1889-90. Literary Editor Hartford Courant, 1890-97. Associate Editor Warner Library World’s Best Literature, 1897-99. Professor English Literature, University of Minnesota, 1898-1902. Editor Lothrop PublishingCo., 1902-04. Lectures upon literature and the drama. Author: (verse) Dumb in June, 1895; Memorial Day, 1897; Lyrics of Brotherhood, 1899; Message and Melody, 1903; (prose) Literary Likings, essays, 1898; Life of Whittier, in Beacon Biography Series, 1900; Forces in Fiction, essays, 1902. Resides in Boston.

CARMAN, Bliss.Born Fredericton,N. B., April 15, 1861. Graduate University of New Brunswick, 1881. Postgraduate student University of Edinburgh, 1882-83, and of Harvard, 1886-88. Studied law, practised civil engineering, taught school. Office EditorN. Y.Independent, 1890-1902. For past four years has contributed a weekly column, called “Marginal Notes,” to the Evening Post,Chicago, The Transcript, Boston, and the Commercial Advertiser,N. Y.Unmarried. Author: Low Tide on Grand Pré, 1893; A Sea-Mark, 1895; Behind the Arras, 1895; Ballads of Lost Haven, 1897; By the Aurelian Wall, 1897; Songs from Vagabondia, in collaboration with Richard Hovey, 1894; More Songs from Vagabondia, 1896; Last Songs from Vagabondia, 1900; St. Kavin, a Ballad, 1894; At Michaelmas, 1895; The Girl in the Poster, 1897; The Green Book of the Bards, 1898; Vengeance of Noel Bassard, 1899; Ode on the Coronation of King Edward, 1902; From the Book of Myths, 1902; Pipes of PanNo.1, 1902; Pipes of PanNo.2, 1903; The Word at St. Kavins, 1903; Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics, 1903. Resides in New York.

CAWEIN, Madison Julius.Born Louisville,Ky., March 23, 1865. Graduated at High School in Louisville, 1886. Since then has confined himself to the writing of verse. Author: Blooms of the Berry, 1887; The Triumph of Music, 1888; Accolon of Gaul, 1889; Lyrics and Idyls, 1890; Days and Dreams, 1891; Moods and Memories, 1892; Red Leaves and Roses, 1893; Poems of Nature and Love, 1893; Intimations of the Beautiful, 1894; The White Snake (translations from German poets), 1895; Undertones, 1896; The Garden of Dreams, 1896; Shapes and Shadows, 1898; Idyllic Monologues, 1898; Myth and Romance, 1899; Weeds by the Wall, 1901; One Day and Another, 1901; Kentucky Poems (selections published in London with an Introduction by Edmund Gosse), 1902; A Voice on the Wind, 1902. Resides Louisville,Ky.

FENOLLOSA, Mary McNeil.Born in Alabama. Graduated Irving Academy, Mobile. Married, 1895, Ernest F. Fenollosa. Resided in Japan about eight years. Author: Out of the Nest: A Flight of Verses, 1899; and Child Verses on Japanese Subjects. Wrote Monograph upon Heroshige, the Artist of Mist, Snow, and Rain; also verses, sketches, and stories in many magazines.

GUINEY, Louise Imogen.Born Boston, Jan. 7, 1861. Graduated Elmhurst Academy, Providence,R. I., 1879. Studied afterwards under private tutors and abroad. Contributorsince 1885 to Harper’s, Atlantic, and other magazines. Author: The White Sail and Other Poems, 1887; Monsieur Henri: A Footnote to French History, 1892; A Roadside Harp, 1893; A Little English Gallery, 1894; Patrins, essays, 1897; England and Yesterday, 1898; A Martyr’s Idyl, and Shorter Poems, 1899; Editor James Clarence Mangan, His Selected Poems, with Study by the Editor, 1897; of the Matthew Arnold (in small Riverside Literature Series); of Dr. T. W. Parsons’ Translation of Divina Commedia of Dante, 1893; of Henry Vaughn’s Mount of Olives, 1902. Resides since 1901 in Oxford, England.

HALL, Gertrude.Born Boston,Sept.8, 1863. Educated private schools in Florence, Italy. Author: (verse) Far from To-day; Allegretto (light verse): Foam of the Sea; Age of Fairygold; Translator Paul Verlaine’s Poems, and of Cyrano de Bergerac; (prose) The Hundred, and Other Stories; April’s Sowing; The Legend of Sainte Cariberte des Ois. Resides New York City.

HOVEY, Richard.Born Normal,Ill., 1864. Educated Dartmouth College. Author: Poems, privately printed, 1880; Songs from Vagabondia; More Songs from Vagabondia; and Last Songs from Vagabondia (in collaboration with Bliss Carman); Seaward: An Elegy (on the death of Thomas William Parsons); The Quest of Merlin: A Masque; The Marriage of Guenevere: A Tragedy; The Birth of Galahad; A Romantic Drama; Taliesin: A Masque; Along the Trail: A Book of Lyrics; Translator the Plays of Maeterlinck (in two series). Died 1900.

KNOWLES, Frederic Lawrence.Born Lawrence,Mass.,Sept.8, 1869. Graduated Wesleyan University, 1894. Harvard, 1896. In editorial department Houghton, Mifflin andCo., from February to September of 1898. Literary adviser of L. C. Page andCo., 1899-1900. Since that time adviser for Dana Estes and Company. Unmarried. Author: (prose) Practical Hints for Young Writers, Readers, and Book Buyers, 1897; A Kipling Primer, 1900. (Republished in England); (verse) On Life’s Stairway, 1900; Love Triumphant, 1904. Edited Cap and Gown Second Series,1897; Golden Treasury of American Lyrics, 1897; Treasury Humorous Poetry, 1902; The Famous Children of Literature Series, 1902. Resides in Boston.

PEABODY, Josephine Preston.Born in New York. Educated Girls’ Latin School, Boston, and at Radcliffe College, 1894-96. Instructor in English Literature at Wellesley College, 1901-03. Author: Old Greek Folk-Stories (Riverside Lit. Series) 1899; The Wayfarers, a book of verse, 1898; Fortune and Men’s Eyes; New Poems with a Play, 1900; Marlowe, A Drama, 1901; The Singing Leaves, 1903. Contributor to leading magazines. Resides Cambridge,Mass.

REESE, Lizette Woodworth.Born in BaltimoreCo., Md.,Jan.9, 1856. Teacher of English, West High School, Baltimore. Author: A Branch of May; A Handful of Lavender, 1891; A Quiet Road, 1896. Resides in Baltimore.

ROBERTS, Charles George Douglas.Born Douglas,N. B.,Jan.10, 1860. Graduated University of New Brunswick, 1879 (A. M. 1880). Married 1880. Head Master Chatham Grammar School, 1879-81; York St. School, Fredericton, 1881-83. Editor Week, Toronto, 1883-84. Professor English and French Literature, King’s College, Windsor,N. S., 1885-88. Professor English and Economics, same, 1888-95. Associate Editor Illustrated American, 1897-98. Author: (verse) Orion and Other Poems, 1880; In Divers Tones, 1887; Ave: An Ode for the Shelley Centenary, 1892; Songs of the Common Day, and Ave, 1893; The Book of the Native, 1896; New York Nocturnes, 1898; Poems, 1901; The Book of the Rose, 1903; (prose) The Canadians of Old; Earth’s Enigmas; The Raid from Beauséjour; A History of Canada; The Forge in the Forest; Around the Camp-fire; Reube Dare’s Shad Boat; A Sister to Evangeline; Appleton’s Canadian Guide-Book, 1899; By the Marshes of Minas, 1900; The Heart of the Ancient Wood, 1900; The Kindred of the Wild, 1902; Barbara Ladd, 1902; The Bird Book, 1903; The Watchers of the Trails, 1904. Editor the Alastor and Adonais of Shelley with Introduction and Notes, 1902. Resides New York City.

SANTAYANA, George E.Born in Spain, 1863. Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University. Author: (verse) Sonnets and Other Poems, 1894; Lucifer: ATheological Tragedy, 1899; The Hermit of Carmel and Other Poems, 1901; (prose) The Sense of Beauty, 1896; Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, 1900. Resides Cambridge,Mass.

SCOLLARD, Clinton.Born Clinton,N. Y.,Sept.18, 1860. Graduated from Hamilton College, 1881. Also studied at Harvard and at Cambridge, England. Professor of English Literature at Hamilton College, 1888-96. Author: (verse) Pictures in Song, 1884; With Reed and Lyre, 1888; Old and New World Lyrics, 1888; Giovio and Giulia, 1891; Songs of Sunrise Lands, 1892; The Hills of Song, 1895; A Boy’s Book of Rhyme, 1896; Skenandoa, 1896; The Lutes of Morn, 1901; Lyrics of the Dawn, 1902; The Lyric Bough, 1904; Ballads of Valor and Victory, 1904 (in collaboration with Wallace Rice); Footfarings (prose and verse), 1904; (prose) Under Summer Skies, 1892; On Sunny Shores, 1893; A Man-at-Arms, 1898; The Son of a Tory, 1900; A Knight of the Highway; The Cloistering of Ursula, 1902; Lawton, 1900; Editor Ford’s Broken Hearts, 1904, and of Ballads of American Bravery, 1900. Resides Clinton,N. Y.

THOMAS, Edith Matilda.Born Chatham,O., August 12, 1854. Educated Normal School, Geneva, Ohio. Removed to New York, 1888. Author: (verse) A New Year’s Masque and Other Poems, 1885; Lyrics and Sonnets, 1887; Babes of the Year, 1888; The Inverted Torch, 1890; Fair Shadow Land, 1893; A Winter Swallow, 1896; The Dancers, 1903; (prose) The Round Year. Resides West New Brighton, Staten Island.

TORRENCE, Frederic Ridgely.Born Xenia,O.,Nov.27, 1875. Educated under private tutors and at Miami University,O., also Princeton. Librarian Astor Library, 1897-1901. Librarian Lenox Library, 1901-03. At present Associate Editor of The Critic, New York. Unmarried. Author: (verse) The House of a Hundred Lights, 1900; El Dorado, A Tragedy, 1903. Resides in New York.

UPSON, Arthur.Born in Camden,N. Y., 1877. Graduated from Camden Academy, 1894. B. A. University of Minnesota. Author: Poems (with George Norton Northrop); Westwind Songs (with an Introduction by “Carmen Sylva”); Octaves in An Oxford Garden; The City, a Poem-Drama (with Introduction by Count Lützow). Resides Minneapolis,Minn.

WOODBERRY, George E.Born Beverly,Mass., May 12, 1855. Graduated Harvard, 1877. Professor of English at University of Nebraska, 1877-78, and 1880-82. On editorial staff of the Nation, 1878-79. Author: History of Wood Engraving, 1883; Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1885; Studies in Letters and Life, 1890; The North Shore Watch and Other Poems, 1890; Heart of Man, 1899; Wild Eden, 1899; Makers of Literature, 1900; Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1902; Poems (collected edition), 1903. Editor: Complete Poems of Shelley; Complete Works of Poe (with Mr. Stedman); National Studies in American Letters; Columbia Studies in Comparative Literature; Lamb’s Essays of Elia; Aubrey de Vere’s Selected Poems, and Bacon’s Essays. Editor of the Journal of Comparative Literature. From 1891 to 1903 Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

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