The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-12-21
BOOKS OF THE SEASON.
StantOn's Poems, "COmes One with a
SOnE''-Novels and Juvenile Tales.

The Bowen Merrill Company has pub
lished volume of verse by Frank L. Stan
ton, the Georgia poet, whose work is fa-
miliar to newspaper readers the country
over. A discriminating reviewer. in an esti-
mate of Mr. Stantons literary qualities,
contributed to the Journal some months
ago, said Mr.. Stanton is writing every
day for the average man who does not read
the poetry of the Elizabethans or even of
the Victorians for that natter but who
will read d poem in the newspaper if it be
about something familiar and within COM
mon human experience. The average man
has not seen Italian skies and he knows
the ROBIN and the mocking bird, not the
nightingale. so when he comes upon a piece
of verse that hits off musically the scenes
of his own neighborhood, with the landscape
he knows best for background, he is
made to feel that, after ALL poetry is not
wholly nonsense. So the poet who would
have an audience reports the world as he
finds it, not a world that exists in the work
of other men who live because they repro
duced through one art or another their own
environment. Those who take all forms of
art sadly and demand that words and poems
shall aim to reform something need not
stop at Mr.. Stanton's doorstep. He does
4Atb uACASly Llc ullIGlOIuICu WOIlQ DIS he
finds it, but he has enthusiasm for life
simple. sincere hopeful, everyday life. OPP
timism has no more devoted priest than he.
No mournful jeremiad ever escapes him.
He is persistently and constantly cheerful"
The first half of this volume is given up
to his more serious verse-tender and pa
thetic often, and having little of the roll
licking humor by which this writer is best
known, but not therefore morbid or melan-
choly. The opening poem is on patriotic
theme, Our Country" and was evidently
inspired by the war with Spain, for it calls
for the South to be one with the North:
IT'S freedom wears the loveliest coronal;
Her brow is to the morning; in the sod
She breathes the breath of patriots; every
Answers her call
And rises to the wall
Against the foes of liberty and God.
Perhaps the philosophy he most frequent
" expresses is summed up in "A Little
Thanksgiving Song" of which this is a
stanza
What are we thankful for? For all
The sunlight, the shadow, the song;
The blossoms may wither and fall,
But the world moves in music along;
For simple, sweet living
IT'S love that doth teach 1t,
A heaven forgiving
And faith that can reach it.
This quatrain, in homely phrase expresses
the same thought:
This world that we're alvin in
Is mighty hard to beat;
You git thorn with every rose,
But amt the roses sweet?
Mr.. Stanton is musical, his songs sing
themselves. he has the sympathetic quality
and his verses please where more preten-
tious lines on loftier themes would touch no
responsive chord. The latter half of the
book is made up of dialect verse and the
plantation ditties which none can write so
well as he and which, representing as they
do a phase of development fast passing
away, are a real contribution to folk lore
MT. Stanton is tr1lV n0pt of the nnOplp
and this volume will doubtless meet with the
favor it deserves. In it's mechanical fea-
lures 1t sustains the reputation the Bowen
Merrill Company is establishing for making
pretty books.