Poems
By . Boston : Fields, Osgood, & Co.
IN the millennium, when each of us shall want to do only the work for which he is most fit, we imagine that Miss Larcom will not care to write poems of so great variety as we have here. All her performance is respectable, but from her who gave us “ Hannah Binding Shoes” we should not have asked pieces which doubtless cost her more trouble. We should not have asked “ Skipper Ben,” for instance, though this and the poem before named deal with the same feeling. One, however, is drawn from life, and the other is drawn from a favorite poet; when Skipper Ben goes down, that is the last of him ; but poor lone Hannah is an immortal pathos, and haunts whatever shape binds shoes at windows. It is a very touching poem, and wrought with such perfect simplicity and self-control, that we do not see how it could be better. The local truth, too, is most admirable and valuable ; so little life gets into verse, in any time, and especially in this, when the Muse has shown herself not indisposed to patronize reality. The study of the little Yankee maiden “ Prudence ” is also charmingly easy and lifelike; the touches are very light, but each tells, and there is none too many. In “ Getting Along,” the art is not so good, or the luck not so great, but the sentiment is genuine, and the poem is history and nature, and is full of a delicately veiled sadness of half-conscious disappointment. “Elsie in Illinois ” is as pretty and dainty a little idyl as we care to read, told in sparing and fortunate words, and with a true sense of East and West in it.
Throughout the book we see evidences of a quick fancy and of thoughtful effort, of a tolerably distinct ideal, and of conscientious and praiseworthy work; but in these five poems we are aware of a gift to move and please, which certainly does not come from the poetic culture of our age, and which we do not mind calling genius.