The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-08-04

known magazine said to the present writer:
Poetry? Oh, when we need poem to
fill out page we set one of the staff off in
a corner until he has ground out the reQui-
site number of verses"
Looking through the pages of our maya
zines to-day it almost seems as though
this description of poetry done to order"
would apply to most of the current verse
Here is batch gathered from the June
and July magazines:
In the July McClure's appears a poem
by Ed mund Gosse, which, however, we
must feel assured was not made for filing
in purposes, although it is difficult to see
for what other purpose it is printed. 1t is
entitled "Tusitala in Vailima, - and is
tribute to Robert Louis Stevenson, on
whom be peace.
We are told, in footnote, that the eff
fusion reached Stevenson just three days
prior to his death. The poet reviews the
days, years gone by, when he had known
Stevenson in Scotland, and asks him:
Does your heart remember,
Westward in our Scotch September,
Blue against the suns pale ember
That low rim of faint, long islands,
Barren, granit-snouted nesses
Plunging in the dulld Atlantic,
Where beyond Three guesses
At the full tide loud and frantic?
And he then proceeds to wrest from the
language this lament over Tusitala's
absence from his native land:
VANISHED? Ay, that's still the trouble,
Tustalai
Though your tropic isle rejoces,
'ris to us Isle of Voices
Hollow like the elfin double
Cry of disemboded echoes,
Or an owlet's wicked laughter,
Or the cold and horned gecko's
Croaking from ruined rafter-
Voices these of things existing,
Yet necessarily resisting
Eyes and hands that follow after;
You are crced, as by magic,
In the surf built palmy bubble,
Tusitala;
Fate hath chosen, but the choice Is
Half delectabe, half tragic,
For we hear you speak, like Moses
And we greet you back, enchanted,
But reply's no sooner granted
Then the rifted cloud-land closes.
There is a certain rhythmical beauty
about these lines that captivates the ear
and cheats the reason in the reading, but
it were easier to track the jabberwock TO
his lair than to follow the poets idea amid
the mazes of language in which he has en-
meshed it,
The July Muncey's gives us some verses
by Bliss Carmen, who enjoys an unmistak-
able vogue just now as one of the Chap
Books pet poets. In this screed, which he
calls ga Son of the Sea" he tells US:
was sired among the surges:
was dubbed beside the foam:
All my heart is in its verges,
And the sea wind Is my home.
The first two lines, although strained
and uncouth, are ineligible, but who
shall say what the poet means when he
says:
"An my heart is in its verges,"
And who shall follow the fancy-hights
of the genius that makes his home in the
sea wind?
The next verse is:
All my boyhood, from far vernal
Bournes of being came to
Dream-like. plangent and eternal
Memories Of the plunging
There is certain pleasingness of sound
about this which, for the moment, OBJ
scures the fact that it is pure nonsense.
The memories of the sea waited from
'vernal bournes" is fatal lapsus nature,
and one only equaled by that of another
poet in a recent magazine. The offender
this time is Emma Carleton. who, in the
Chap Book for June l, writes:
Still peers the golden daffodil
Along thy footpath way;
Still chant the jay, the thrush. the lark
Their summer songs all day.
The jay does not sing at all. The thrush
sings only in the evening, and who that