The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-04-07
RETROSPECT.
TLos Angeles.

Los Angeles.
breath of bam-of orange-bloom,
By what strange fancy waited me
Through the lone starlight Of my room?
And suddenly seem to see
The long low vale with tawny edge
OF hillside, in the sunsets glow;
Cool vine-rowS through the cactus hedge,
And fiuttering CLEANS of orchard snow.
Far off the slender line of white,
Against the blue, of oceans crest;
The slow sun sinking into night,
A quivering opal in the west;
Somewhere a stream sings, far away;
Somewhere, from out the hidden groves,
And dreamy as the dying day.,
Comes the soft coo OF mourning doves
One moment all the world is peace!
The years, like clouds, have rolled away,
And ON those sunlit leaSs
A child, amid the flowers at play.
With her mother she came to San Fran
cisco in 1865, and here, in the old Golden
Era, then under the management OF
Charles Henry Webb, her first poems were
published.
Her real literary work, however, began
in the Overland The Overland, as our
earlier writer's still love to speak of that
famous periodical, when Bret Harte sat in
the editorial chair and attracted to its
pages such an array OF talent as no man
agement has ever since succeeded in get
ting between its covers.
At this time Miss Coolbrith also did
considerable work for Eastern publications.
The Atlantic, Harper's and the Century,
then Just starting, all printed poems from
her pen. and inquiry began to be made
concerning this young Californian with an
ear for the richest cadences in the Ian
guage and a gift for making marvellous
melodies with words.
In 1873 it had been arranged that Miss
Coolbrith should accompany lady friend
to Europe leaving her mother with mar
ried daughter during her absence. The
sister, however, was taken i'll, and came to
the poets home in San Francisco. Here,
in 1874, she died, leaving her two children
to Miss Coolbrith's care. After this all
personal plans were given up. Ina en-
tered the Oakland Free Library as libra
rian, and began round of mingled pro-
fessional and household duties which
lasted for eighteen years, during which
time nearly all her literary work lapsed.
A volume of her poems appeared in
1881, but the edition was limited and the
book is not now easily attainable. The
volume which the Book Guild will put out
Will supply demand that has steadily in
creased OF late, particularly since Miss
Coolbrith's Eastern trip and enthusi-
astic reception, year or SO ago, In New
York's literary circles. The guild, in the
preliminary arrangements for the book,
Edmund Clarence Stedman, and the vol
ume is to be most handsomely and artis-
tically gotten up.
Miss Coolbrith is pre-eminently the poet
of California. Nothing more beautiful has
ever been said or sung of the golden State
than that poem of hers on the lovely land
where
The palm tree and the pine
Strike hands together under the same skies
In every wind that blows.
In the same poem occurs that passionate
appeal of California for a poet losing her
praise:
What matters though the morn
Redden upon my singing fields of corni
What matters though the winds unresting feet
Ripple the golden wheat,
And my wales run with wine,
And on these hills of mine
The orchard boughs droop heavy with ripe fruit?
When with nor sound of lutte,
Nor Tyre doth any singer chant and sing
Me, in my life's fair spring,
The matn song OF me in my young day.
But all my lays and legends fade away
From lake and mountain to the farther hem
OF sea, and there be none to gather them.
The cleaners have since come and have
garnered rich sheaves from the new land 8
store of legend and song, but none of these
have sung to us of the beauty and
gladness, the ripe, bounteous, over-t1owing
richness of the golden land as has Ina
Coolbrith and California may we'll pc
glad that her poems are soon to be col
1ected and put in q form so appropriate,
and under auspices of which our commu-
nifty may so we'll be proud.