The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-11-29
Through mid-sea now our ship doth roar
A wild, new, teeming world of men
That wakens in the poets brain
Thoughts that were never thought before.

4houShtS WC'O CfC AONSAb
0 million-centuried thoughts that make
The Past seem but a shallops wake"
What audacityi the wrinkled Shakspearoma-
MAC will cry, looking up from a heap of dusty
folios in a cobweoby corner, and forgetting the
steam engine, the electrical machine, and hear
ing not the rush and rumble of our age. But
in spite of those who draw a dead-line at the
Ellzabethan age and call it the boundary of the
possible, it is the young school in everything
that Is putting its shoulder to the wheel and
making the most of the present. 1t is not the
spirit that sits gazing at the monuments of a
dead age, a spirit whose back is always turned
toward the future. that is opening the treasures
OF earth, and sea. and air; 1t is the young, alert.
restless, inquiring, challenging spirit, looking
straight ahead and keeping pace with time, that
is of value to the world. Give me the true poet
of to-day, the singer whose harp echoes the very
latest suggestions, the newest, dewlest morn
ing thoughts, distilled from our advanced
conditions of life, of which Shakespeare could
have had not even a foretaste. / do not know
that Mr.. Glider would like to be represented as
preaching at all, and especially as preaching the
doctrine / have suggested; but he has ranged
himself with the nineteenth-century class of
young poets, and in America he easily stands at
the head, so far as sincerity of art-purpose and
uniform excellence of performance are con-
cerned. One may search in vain through these
poems for any sign of the bold immortality and
l~rreligion which is thought by some to give a
relish to literature. Here is no allusion to for
hidden things, no carmine dashes of impure
suggestion-all is clean, sane, wholesome. even
where the most fervid passion loads every verse.
Mr.. Glider has divided his bookinto four parts,
viz: Lyrics, Ballads. Sonnets and '"The New
Day." Under the title Lyrics, the little
christmas Hymn and "a Woman's Thought"
show how well endowed is the poets mind with
the true lyrical fexibility and elasticity, and all
the poems give evidence of a vocabulary richer
than that of any poet sine Gautier. One feels
in reading 1.-The New Day" some elusive trace of
the methods of Rossettis subtle art. but there is
nothing like imitation, and the purity of Mr..
elders strains is not marred by RossettiS flesh
ly influence. / suspect that Mr.. Glider has
studied the early French poets with loving care.
not for the spirit of them, but for the fertilizing
power they exert on the Imagination. Such
study would tend to tinge his poetry with that
medieval color so loved by Swinburne, Rossetti
and William Morris, and the tinge is here, but
Mr.. elders motif is neither French nor media
val. 1t is almost h~yper-modern. and his methods
catch some appreciable help from the latest
modes of science and art.
20 rushing steamer. hurry on thy way
Across the swirling kills and gusty bay,
To where the eddying tide
Strikes hard the city's side"
He sings of a steamship instead Of invoking a
gondola or a sail vessel. OF the poet he says:
'Thus you shall know him, this shall be his token,
Manners like other men, an u~nstrange gear"
a sheer, keen thrust at those would be poets who
seek notoriety by wearing %top-boots and a short
sack coat to an evening party, or by getting
drunk and forgetting to COMB their hair. Not
that Mr.. Glider has meant satire, c. has stopped
to burlesque: the thru"t is all the more telling
because it is wholly without personality or any
tlnge of sarcasm.
l choose the following scattered verses to give
the reader an idea of the force with which Mr..
Glider outlines a sketch or phrases a thought:
''Then sudden, as if a sword fell from on high,
A blade of gold flashed on the ocean RIM
speaking of the sunrise on the sea. Then, Of
nights silence:
One well might hear the opening of a flower,
1t day were hushed as this"
Now and then a sharp philosophic fragrance
and flavor, purgent as Thoreau's and as indi-
vidual as Emerson's, accompanies an artistic
touch as clever as Aldrich's best.
when no more is silver mill,
Golden stream, or golden hill
Search the New World from pole to pole.
Here you'll find its very SOUL"
He says, presumably to Edmund Gossc, in praise
of Emerson's POEMS, and it would be hard to for
mulate a j%uster criticism. a finer allusion to our
country's mineral stores and picturesque rivers,
or a more perfectly-balance stroke of art. The
strictly Elnersonian lapse from perfect
rhythm in the third line is a charming
accident, if nothing more. But the
true lyrlst is not to be quoted in fragments.
How few isolated verses. ~couplets or ouatrains
can be culled to advantage from Shelley or Keats.
Who would think of mutilating the lode to q
Nightingale" or that to "a West Wind?" Mr..
elders sonnets are all good, some of them are
of the highest order of excellence, and it is here
that the artistic spirit which controls him shows
to best advantage. Young, fresh, receptive
minds may catch from these poems the very es-
sence of culture; but, better still, they may also
absorb from almost every line elements as fresh
and sweet as bird-song and spring perfumes
The smile of her love is like the dawn
Whose touch makes Memnon sing"
And
birds that fit Ger wheat and wall,
And from cool holows pipe and call"