Delaware gazette and state journal. (Wilmington, Del.) 1883-1902, 1897-07-22
ION. DELAWARE THURSDAY. ~ 1897
on tho track that stretches two steel
ribbons across tho landscape.

on tho track that stretches two steel
ribbons across tho landscape.
His hand was on tie lever laid,
His oil can soothed the worrying cranks,
His whistle walked the snow-hound grade,
His fog-horn cut the reeking banks;
In dock and deep and mine and mill,
The boy god reckless, labored still.
There is the frequent perfect mating
of word and sentiment that Charles
Eliot Norton points out-of sound and
sense as perfect as that Of Tenpysop,
whose verse would still be music IL the
meaning were lost. He has the graphic
epithet, the force, the freedom, the
directness and simplicity of diction.
the exquisite movement and flow Of
rhythm,n and the felicity OF rhyme
that marks him the master. Huhas the
word that cuts like a whiplash, the one
that sinks as a plummet in your mem
ory. the word that accuses and the one
that persuades. He speaks of noise
Like the shouting of backstay in gale.
and OF train that plunees
Down the valley with its guttering brakes
asqueal,
Where the treste groans and quivcrs in the
snow.
The prosaic process OF taking on
water is descriped
So we ride the iron stations down to drink
| Through the canons to the waters of the
West
Is it possible our poet was prophet
alsoY Our December Issue told of an in
yention by which engines may take up
water from waYside rivers and bitches.
In The Three Sealers the ships were
waiting for the fog TO lift before begin
ming that awful fight, preceded by the
fusillade of strange curses:
And in the waiting silences the rudders
whined beneath.
Here is the first man since Coleridge
who could have written the Ancient
Mariner. lie pictures the modern
mariner more terrible, with his bias
phemy and his bullets, than was ever
the one who with his bow shot the bird
that made the breese TO blow. He
shows how souls are sped TO God with
the pistol. Lie is more beautiful,
deatinies wider to choose. death more
awful in its GREATNESS haste. But the
burden OF guilt rests on man just rs OF
old. The primal things are not touched.
In this vision of greed and bate and
blasphemy and hell. the thing which
"showed them whence they came" lie
blood guiltless stainless OF murder in
the assassin'a hand. All this possibili-
ties OF life have passed in the superla-
tive-the power for good and for i'll.
Will the rewards and punishments also
be added uptoi This is suggested in
The Song of the English.
lie touched commerce at every point.
Tennyson had no word for commences
but his contemplate clerk "perched
like crow on three legged stool. =
But Kipling has his coastwise lights
that "bridge across the dark and bid
the helinsman have cares" the liner
who lis lady by the paint upon her
face: ~ the little cargo heats that
must got their loads aud do the best
they can," and the merchantmen
steaming
Coastwise-cross seas-round the world and
back again.
Whittier the flaw shall fail us, or the
trades drive down:
Plain snil-storm sail-lay your board and
tack again.
And all to bring a cargo boat up to London
Town.
Have you a ship coming in to any
port laden with love or gain or grain ?
The bard is there to sing all their wan,
derings and to flash you a message a
thousand miles across the cables where--
- here on the tic ribs of earth
Words and words of men, flicker and fiutter
and beat
Warning, sorrow and gain, salutation and
mirth-
/, For Power troubles the Still that has neither
voice nor feet.
, Reading this book ia like hearing
about voyage of discovery. The
author is in new land never troGder
, before by any man of letters. under a
new sky with strange consultations oil
, which no chart has been made for his
I guidance. Here was this vast domain
of science and discovery and invention,
' peopled by silent men. 1t had insprad
the toilers to the performing of miracles,
/ hut none had proclaimed it. Its Ian,
+ guage was unknown except to those
n who wrought in it, and they. dslyinl
=; in mines, working on blue prints. ham,
i mering at the furge, Harvesting gas
i botting lightning; many of then
!. scorched and SCARED and furrowet
] with deeds, had no time to burn
/ on words Like the Ancient Mariner
a Kipling sis the first that ever hurs
a into this silent sea-" His the homo
q and praise, whose voice is heard abov,
' all singing. L. A.