The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1898-01-02

Of veng9fu1, dlT2r forms they take
And vampire wings above him shake,
Like the gathering vultures of fate.
1t is pity that we must omit a single
line of the poem, in the Valley of the
Shadow but we can only snatch sen
tence or two from each verse:
There was no light,
And yet / felt that height on height
Shut in the dead black vast
Weary / might not rest nor pause
With desolation's mighty jaws
Gaping behind, and in my hair
And on my neck its strange chill breath
( wept and murmured, Better Death!'
Nor heard my voice in that mute air.
/ A picture of despair; but see the light
Now came from where the dawn had
been
A Eight that hardly might be seen.
- y y
Then aforementioned was the night,
The plain, the sea; as summers green
Makes doubt that winter e'er has been,
Strong arms were stretched to clasp and
save:
| saw beneath a new-made grave
And heard gentle whispered breath,
Thy life begins, which men call death. =
He takes up life's darkest side in "Out
of the Depths" a poem that will move
the hardest heart to sorrow; it is a
mothers desperate cry in the night:
He gives the sparrow food to still her
clamoring nest,
And stretches gentle hands to break
the young birds fall;
But does He hear in vain the widowed
mothers call,
Nor heeds the little life starved at
her withered breast
call aloud to Him, the God in whom
we trust;
| work till throat and eyes seem filled
with burning dust,
And my fingers are ragged and numb
with the needles cruel thrust
The children cry for bread, my babe
can only moan;
have but love for It. my breast is :
dry as stone.
A world apart but no less sorrowful is
the soliloquy of one who loved and lost:
How vain are all things else, where love
is not.
Can never earth and heaven be fair
again?
Is all their brightness gone with two
dark eyes?
And all their sweetness with one little
mouth?
Which even now is pressed to his scared
lips
A moment since warm on wanton's
cheek.
But let us not leave off with the sor-
rowful; for though many Of the verses
are pitched in the low note of grief or
longing, there is sunshine in the little
book. Here is poem light and pretty
and cheering:
! Why, love, when wandering clouds
The sun for a moment conceal,
Ger the sunlight of thine eyes
VIII a shade OF sadness steal?
For. see, how the landscape brightens
As the shadows eastward fly;
And the sunshine, swiftly pursuing
Goes racing merr.ly by.
Frerher the green of June
For the quickening moment Of shade;
And brighter, too, are thine eyes
For the sadness that it made.
1t is to be noted that in this work
there is no suggestion of the lamp and
the study; Professor Sledd's inspiration
il evidently Nature round about him
and Life that he has lived.
Professor Sledd's style is remarkably
; easy, considering the large meaning in
most of his expressions. In description
so graphic, one would expect ruggedness
or perhaps vagueness, but there 10 Meth
err; only a subtlety that bids Gne read
again and again, and always pays one in
the coin of its realm for doing so. His
lines are. indeed, marble-like in finish, II
] refinement, and in purity. Herein is re
! compensa OF re-reading ten times
Whether he plays upon some soulful in
strument, or draws the picture in the
minds eye, or touches the silver,
/ strings of the Tyre OF love, or sends fortl
/ to God a prayer from life's deeps, thert
| is ever that same genuineness, delicacy
simplicity and refinement which mark
| the artist.
The book is worthily printed. The
!. author SIS 10 be8eongTatulated upon his
publishers, the Putnams. If any read