The Three Heron's Feathers Part 27

II. A Group Of American Poets.[2]

1. Edmund Clarence Stedman.

_Readings from Stedman_:--'Hebe,' 'A Sea Change.' New York Scenes: 'Peter Stuyvesant,' 'Pan in Wall Street,' 'The Door Step.' A Sheaf of Patriotic Poems: 'The Pilgrims,' 'Old Brown,' 'Wanted a Man,'

'Treason's Device,' 'Israel Freyer,' 'Cuba.' (In 'Poems' Household Edition. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.50.)

_Query for Discussion_.--Are Mr. Stedman's local and patriotic themes inconsistent with the highest degree of lyric grace, or does his poetic gift appear to best advantage when enlivened by familiar home interests?

2. Louise Chandler Moulton.

_Readings_:--'A Quest,' 'The House of Death.' Sonnets: 'The New Day,'

'One Dread,' 'Afar,' 'Love's Empty House,' 'The Cup of Death,' 'Before the Shrine,' 'As in Vision,' 'Though We Were Dust,' 'Were but My Spirit Loosed Upon the Air,' 'The New Year Dawns,' 'Aspiration,' 'The Secret of Arcady,' 'Her Picture.' (The first two selections and first three sonnets are in 'Swallow Flights.' New edition of poems of 1877 with additional poems; the four following are in 'The Garden of Dreams'; and the four last sonnets and the other poems in 'At the Wind's Will.'

Boston: Little, Brown & Co. $1.25 each. For general review of work see, also, 'The Poetry of Louise Chandler Moulton.' Contemporary Writer Series in _Poet-lore_. Vol. IV. New Series. Opening Number, 1900, pp.

114-125.)

_Query for Discussion_.--Is Mrs. Moulton too narrowly restricted to emotional themes and emotional means of expression for bounteous poetic cheer, or is the perfect alliance of her emotional range and workmans.h.i.+p the very source of her lyric excellence.

3. Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

Readings:--'Unsung,' 'Nameless Pain,' 'Quits,' 'Andromeda,' 'Baby Bell,' 'An Untimely Thought,' 'Bagatelle,' 'Palabras Carinosas,' 'On an Intaglio of Head of Minerva.' Sonnets: 'Books and Seasons,' 'The Poets,' 'On Reading William Watson's "The Purple East."' (In Poetical Works. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $2.00.)

_Queries for Discussion_.--Does Mr. Aldrich escape the usual penalty for laying emphasis on delicacy of finish so that the result is satisfying in its happy precision? Or does he seem cold and elaborately superficial? Does he, so to speak, carve cherry-stones oftener than he engraves cameos?

4. Louise Imogen Guiney.

_Readings_:--'Peter Rugg,' 'Open Time,' 'The Still of the Year,'

'Hylas,' 'The Kings,' Alexandrina, I, x, and xiii. 'The Martyr's Idyl,'

'Sanctuary,' 'Arboricide,' 'To the Outbound Republic,' 'The Perfect Hour,' 'Deo Optimo Maximo,' 'Borderlands.' (From 'A Roadside Harp' are selected the first five poems and the Alexandrina, from 'The Martyr's Idyl and Shorter Poems' the others. $1.00 each. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.)

_Queries for Discussion_.--Is Miss Guiney's scholasticism too dominant in her work? Does she lack human warmth? Or are her restraint and good taste the index of deeper feeling? Does her cultured thought and chaste concentrated power of expression lift her above the ranks of the minor poets?

5. Richard Hovey.

_Readings_:--'Spring,' an Ode, 'The Wander-lovers.' 'Taliesin,' Second, Third, Movements. Sonnets: 'Love in the Winds,' 'After Business Hours,'

Act V from 'The Marriage of Guenevere.' ('Spring' first published in _Poet-lore_, is included in 'Along the Trail' ($1.25), which also contains the sonnets here selected. 'Taliesin' also originally published in _Poet-lore_, Vol. VIII, old series, January, February, and June, 1896, pp. 1-14, 63-78, 292-306, is recently published in 1 vol.

uniform with 'The Marriage of Guenevere' ($1.50). 'The Wander-lovers'

appears in 'Vagabondia.' Boston: Small, Maynard & Co. A general review of Hovey's work will be the second of the 'Contemporary Writer Series'

in next _Poet-lore_.)

_Queries for Discussion_.--Has Hovey's way of telling the story of Guenevere and Launcelot an advantage realistically over Tennyson's, but none either poetically or ethically? (See on this query, 'The Disloyal Wife in Literature: Comparative Study Programme,' _Poet-lore_, Vol. I., new series, pp. 265-274, Spring Number, 1897.) Does Hovey attain greatness by his liveliness and human quality joined to varied and skilful metrical effects? Is 'Taliesin' his best work, or is his best work done in his short pieces?

6. Bliss Carman.

_Readings_:--'Spring Song,' 'A More Ancient Mariner,' 'Envoy,' 'Beyond the Gaspereau,' 'Behind the Arras,' 'The Cruise of the Galleon,' 'A Song before Sailing,' 'The Lodger,' 'Beyond the Gamut,' 'The s.h.i.+ps of St. John,' 'The Marring of Malyn.' (The first, second, and third are in 'Vagabondia'; the fourth in _Poet-lore_, Vol. I., new series, pp.

321-329, Summer Number, 1897; the next five in 'Behind the Arras'

($1.50); the others in 'Ballads of Lost Haven' ($1.00). Boston: Small, Maynard & Co.)

_Query for Discussion_.--Is Carman better in his earlier descriptive lyrics, or better in his later symbolical lyrics because these being richer in interest are stronger to hold the deeper reader?

7. Hannah Parker Kimball.

_Readings_:--'Revelation,' 'The Smoke,' 'The Sower,' 'Consummation,'

'Glory of Earth,' 'Primitive Man,' 'Man to Nature,' 'Eavesdroppers,'

'Social Appeal,' 'The Quiet Land Within,' 'The Saving of Judas Iscariot.' (The first four of the poems named are in 'Soul and Sense,'

75 cents; the last in _Poet-lore_, Vol. I., new series, pp. 161-168, Spring Number, 1897; the others in 'Victory and Other Poems.' Boston: Copeland & Day, now Small, Maynard & Co.)

_Queries for Discussion_.--Does Miss Kimball's portraiture of Judas Iscariot reveal a capacity for dramatically creating development in character? Are her lyrics too grave, or is it their especial blend of high seriousness and intellectual insight with unforced expression which gives them unusual richness?

_The Editors._

SONGS FROM THE GHETTO AND A VISION OF h.e.l.lAS.

Conceived amid the heat and discomfort of the sweating-shops, born in poverty and squalid surroundings, growing up with hunger and despair and failure, and at last an honored guest at the table of ease and culture--such is the history of the 'Songs from the Ghetto' by Morris Rosenfeld. Mr. Rosenfeld was born of poor parents in Poland in 1862.

Wandering in search of work in England and Holland, he at length found a scanty means of support as a tailor in the sweating-shops of New York. Of miserable origin, poorly educated, struggling for the barest necessities of life, there was yet in him a poet's soul, struggling for expression.

The poems of Mr. Rosenfeld, written in the Judeo-German dialect, which he has brought to great literary perfection, have been collected, translated into English prose and edited by Professor Leo Wiener, instructor in Slavic languages at Harvard.

The songs in this little volume are very beautiful, but whether they sing of labour or nature, of the shop or the country, there is in every one a strain of sadness, the melody of each is broken with tears. For the beauty of which the poet sings, the birds and the flowers, are only dreams from which he wakes to the misery in his life. It is not the bitter sadness of hate and rebellion, but the sadness of the Jewish race, resigned and oppressed, expecting no happiness among an alien people, but looking for a life of peace in a new Jerusalem.

"Again your lime will be fragrant, and your orange will gleam," he comforts the wanderer, "again G.o.d will awaken and bring you thither.

You will sing Shepherd songs as you will herd your sheep; you will live again, live eternally, without end. After your terrible wanderings you will again breathe freely; there will again beat a hero's heart under the silent mountain Moriah."

The songs are not all of labour, or of the sorrows of the Jews. In lighter vein is 'The Nightingale to the Labourer,' 'The Creation of Man'--which contains the pretty idea that the poet alone was given wings, and an angel stood always "ready day and night to attach the wings to him whenever his holy song will rise."

The last song in the little volume, called 'In the Wilderness,' is typical of the poet's spirit; but not, we believe, of his place in the world. For the world is always ready to listen to a song that carries with it the impress of truth and beauty.

"In a distant wilderness a bird stands alone and looks about him, sadly, and sings a beautiful song.

"His heavenly-sweet voice flows like the purest gold, and wakens the cold stones and the prairie wide and deserted.

"He wakens the dead rocks and the silent mountains round about,--but the dead remain dead, and the silent remain silent.

"For whom, sweet singer, do your clear tones resound? Who hears you, and who feels you? And whose concern are you?

"You may put your whole soul into your singing. You will not awaken a heart in the cold, hard rock!

"You will not sing there long,--I feel it, I know it: your heart will soon burst with loneliness and woe.

"In vain is your endeavour, it will not help you, no! Alone you have come, and alone you will pa.s.s away!"

'A Vison of New h.e.l.las' is one of the books that is destined to be more important than interesting, more noteworthy than popular. The conception is certainly very beautiful and very wonderful even if the author does not always reach the height of expression towards which he aims. But it is a book which can only appeal to the few, who are ready to search beneath the covering of fantastic imagery and strange verse forms which clothe a high poetic purpose and ideal. Even those who come to the work with a knowledge of the songs of old h.e.l.las and the philosophy of Plato must feel deeply grateful for the elucidating of the meaning of the book in an argument which the author has kindly supplied to forestall the vain imaginings of the uninitiated.

The poet's aim is as serious as was that of Milton or Dante--"to realize as best he can such visions of beauty as may be vouchsafed to him," that through his work he may "make richer the human world in things of the spirit that quicken and delight."