Recent Poetry

THE season does not bring us, as it fortunately did last year, any poetry by those who have won a great place in literature, but a few volumes of verse from younger writers maintain the practice of the art and assure us of its vitality, though it must be acknowledged that, like most minor poetry, these books have rather a literary than an inspired excellence. One among them, however, leads the rest by so wide an interval that it should hardly be classed with them. It has rare qualities of style, feeling, and thought. Mr. Gilder has published several volumes hitherto, but the body of his verse is still small in amount, and possibly it seems less because of the limitation of the short swallow-flight which he imposes on himself. Two Worlds and Other Poems,¹ as he entitles the present work, begins with a double quatrain, and the small scale of design thus indicated is adhered to in the volume as a whole. The poetry of single thoughts has been cultivated by him with much success, and he has used the form of expression which belongs to it with a fine control of its capabilities of point and contrast, and with a refinement and polish that are of the best. Single-thought poems, however, in the form of the epigram and the quatrain are rather the byplay of the poet’s mind than its serious work, and they seldom permit of sufficient elaboration to be memorable. If they are read consecutively, the effect is too much that of a string of proverbs without the saving grace which the proverb derives from being “ the wisdom of many ” as well as “ the wit of one.” In uttering maxims poetry approaches very near to prose.

Other instances of this lyrical power, which seems to us the most distinctive trait shown in the present volume, could be given ; in them Mr. Gilder carries to the most poetical expression that taste for single-thought poetry which is one of his marked literary preferences.

A second trait which has been leading in his work is sympathy with art, a disposition to see with a painter’s eyes and to interpret in words what others have put into plastic form or color. This is characteristic of much verse besides his own, and allies him with the artistic school in poetry of which Rossetti is the most conspicuous example. The influence of this group upon Mr. Gilder’s work has been noticeable always, and though in the present collection it is less marked, traces of it remain. The union, peculiarly shown in this school, between definite pictorial form and vague mystic suggestion, expressed by Rossetti in both the arts of which he was a master, is illustrated by Mr. Gilder’s sonnet, Love, Art, and Time, on a picture by Low : —

This element is not so great, however, as we have been led to expect from Mr. Gilder, and it is rather in purely descriptive passages that the artistic taste shows itself ; in such a poem as Moonlight, or “ I care not if the skies are white,” which have the color effect of etchings. In each of these examples a truer method is followed than is usual with the poetic sketches of light and shadow, — the method which bids the poet end with his own art, and not confine himself to mere pictorialness. Wordsworth pointed out the right way, though he did it without any thought of criticism, in that stanza of which the latter part is so often quoted, —

where the contrasted arts of painting and poetry are discriminated in a way which has its lesson for all those who are tempted to paint in verse.

Mr. Gilder, however, discloses in this volume something more than the lyrical and sonneteering impulse and the artistic prepossession with which his readers have been familiar from the first. Several of the poems not only attempt a sustained flight, but they deal with the broadest human interests in a reflective vein. Before directing attention to these, the memorial poems upon heroes of the war should be mentioned, in which fervid patriotism finds pure expression. It is proper, too, to single out the lyric The Star in the City, which has a unique quality in its lines descriptive of the city at nightfall, and in its identification of the poet in the throng : in fact, there is a touch of feeling in this little poem which, we think, is quite new and individual in our city verse. Doubtless it is out of life in the city that the more thoughtful poems of this volume have sprung; those which express the philanthropic spirit, or, as we should prefer to say, the spirit of humanity, — that principle of brotherhood with men in the strife of life, which shows no sign of weakening power in its hold on the poetic mind. Of these, The White Tsar’s People, The Prisoner’s Thought, and The Passing of Christ are most notable, though the same strain is heard more or less audibly in several of the verses where it is not the main tone. Its most personal expression is in the poem called Credo, at the end : —

Throughout this section of the poems there is more directness, strength, and immediacy of relation with life itself than in other parts ; the literary quality, which is felt more or less in the lighter verse, here disappears, and the writer expresses himself individually, without obligation to others, whether more or less remote ; and consequently there is an obvious sincerity to his tones which becomes very winning, owing to the sense of personality that they convey. The verse, certainly, is not better than that of the love lyrics, or the sonnets, or the quatrains ; but these poems have a freshness and natural power which make them peculiarly welcome. Nevertheless they make only a part of a much-varied collection, in which passion and reflection, nature and man, the country and city, have each a share ; the presence of the poetic temperament is felt on every page, and in point of expression Mr. Gilder’s art is refined and polished in a very high degree, and often strikes out form of a perfect kind. One thing only need be added : it is that these poems, as is usual in such cases, gain greatly by being collected and set one with another in a certain order. A considerable part of the whole has never been published before.

Of other volumes, none call for such attention as is due to Mr. Gilder’s. The most notable, certainly, is The Ride to the Lady and Other Poems,² by Helen Gray Cone. The narrative poems in this collection have much energy, the phrase is often strong and full, and the sonnets have in their number some of quite remarkable vigor of thought and handling, among which may be mentioned that addressed to Lowell on his seventieth birthday and that entitled The Immortal Word. Several of the longer poems are familiar to our readers through these pages, and the best of them have been warmly praised. Next to those which resemble the ballad in form The Arrow-Maker seems to us most individual. The following sonnet is perhaps as fresh as anything in the volume: —

Miss Cone’s volume, however, is not characterized by the womanly sentiment which so strongly colors this sonnet, though here and there are poems which show the hand and intuition of a woman, and have in particular a certain tenderness of expression that in a man’s work would be felt as a fault of taste. In general her expression has less of sentiment and grace than of action and emphasis. The Ride to the Lady has a motive which is strong, and it is worked out wholly on the thought of the dying man’s journey, and for that reason it is not free from a certain ghastliness ; the other leading poem, The Story of the Orient, gains much from the humanitarian suggestion, which, though subordinate in the narrative, finally absorbs the thought and interest; and in the remaining poems, which do not stand out like those that have been named, there is a very even execution together with power in the thought itself.

In Miss Reese’s collection, A Handful of Lavender,³ the most excellent portion is that which describes in minute detail objects of nature, and especially scenes about the house and garden which appeal to the reader through old and familiar associations. The writer studies these sketches very carefully and renders them faithfully, and in the sonnets in particular she frames vignettes of landscape that are almost photographic. Possibly there are more daffodils in her verse than usually blow in our gardens, but the blackberry sprays and other favorites of the American roadside are also to be found, and she succeeds in introducing a bit of fine sky here and there with good effect. It was in such work that her verse first attracted attention, and it is not unnatural, therefore, to find this still the best; but in other parts of the collection there is more ambition, and, as was to be expected, in these later poems there is something of literary affectation. The proof is to be found in her metres, which are not simple, and in the imitativeness of the diction and the mood. In a young writer such work as this represents a period of experiment and trial; but as yet her original talent has not freed itself from the literary traditions, not altogether of the best, which she has adopted. It is as a landscape writer that she succeeds,— in minute realistic rendering of the traits of nature which she knows by heart. This is one of the provinces in which minor poetry is often especially fortunate, and, by the modesty of its aim, avoids many dangers. Here, at least, Miss Reese is most pleasing, while in her “lily” poems, refrains, and Browningesque tragedy there is less of value.

Mr. Cawein, in his latest volume, Days and Dreams,⁴ has avoided some of the graver faults of taste and the absurdities of his earlier verse, but in so doing he has lost what chiefly characterized it without developing anything new to take the place of the old. The single remarkable thing in his muse which still remains is the fluency of his words. There is no effort in his utterance, and it goes on without any sign of weariness; but, excepting verbal flow, there is nothing distinctive in his verse. The gift of language is a useless gift when one has nothing to say, and this is the trick which some bad fairy seems to have played on him.

The Epic of Saul⁵ is one of those long poems upon religious subjects which appear about once in a decade, and appeal to a certain part of the community on pious rather than on poetical grounds. The present epic describes the career of Saul as a persecutor, and finds its dénoûment in his conversion. It has occupied, we are told, several years in the composition, and the author took the trouble to visit Palestine in order to make the work more valuable by fidelity to the actual scenes of the story. So much pains deserves reward. The study of Milton, too, is apparent in the blank verse, though the presence also of the incongruous style of Browning makes an odd mixture. It is hardly necessary to say that judgment should not be delivered in such a case on poetical grounds merely. The substance of the work is reflection upon St. Paul’s character blended with a fictitious narrative of his early experiences. Much thought of a religious sort is necessarily introduced, and there are, as a matter of course, minor characters, such as Stephen the Martyr and Rachel and Ruth out of the Scriptural side, and Sergius the Roman soldier out of the pagan side. The labor shown is considerable; the thought is apposite to the subject; the characterization commits no fault in violation of sacred associations; and to many readers, doubtless, the book will be welcome, and by them it will be valued. We are bound in conscience to add that with all this it has one singular defect, — we have been unable to discover any poetry in it.