The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-01-29
BOOKS AND THEIR MAKERS.

verse. and her habit of perpetual doubt
| and Interrogation is sometimes weari-
| some, but she has a lyric gift of rare
| elevation and f1exibility. Her poems
! will appeal with especial force to the
cultivated feminine mind, as will those
| II Lila Cabot Perry, whose "Impres-
| ions" are characterized by sweetness
and distantly Shaksperian ring, at
times. Many of them are personal and
ethical, and all are subjective. some
OF the love poems are especially strong
IN their suppressed passion.
Dr. Iaidlaw's book combines warllke
sentiments and love neatly sandwlehed
together in about equal proportions.
the soldier songs are full of move
ment and variety of expression, and
are manly and often melodious The
American girl seems to have made a
deep impression upon the poets mind,
ana many of the poems celebrate her
| wit, charm and beauty. DR.. Laidlaw
mas passion for the refrain; he e.n-
ploys it in nearly every poem, in an
endless variety of form and effect.
sometimes the effect is martial, some
times it is only droll and curious.
Whim AMI impulse appear to be treat
ed inspirers of the Doctors muse, and
they. not infrequently led him out of
poetic paths altogether into the mo-
RAISES OF prose absurdity, as when he
talks about the chap who went off
to the war, and the boys in blue who
| 'skedaddle"
Always for your veal and never for
your woe,
Your little heart will gallop on the go,
| And 1t will not give you rest
Within your manly breast
III you land yourself in toto at her
toe"
does credit to his gallantry. but one
can fancy how the Gibson Girl would
curl her lips in derision If she should
ever chance to see it. On the whole.
Il is difficult to take this book serious
"; But why try, when the author
taxes himself and his art so lightly?
Alf. savage deserves to be more wide
" known Anything more lovely than
some OF the poems in this newly pub
.isiied collection II would be hard to
ana ~ contemporary verse. He has q
pecuherly li1upid transparent, simple
style which is fine harmony with his
noDie feeiing for nature. He seems to
pc at once rapturous child and q Sc
fIouS man. and the combination results
IN poetic vein that is at once ioyous
and grave, oDulent and restrained. AS
piration and q delicate constituencies for
ana sympathy With nature mark these
verses. Take these two stanzas de-
scIdptive of q rainy day In the woods:
Through rain the forest. roof and floor
Is green as it was ne'er before
And, dense along the forest-traclz,
The boles of trees We're ne'er so black
Each driving cataract of rain
The picture dyes a deeper stain.
Yet, though the black be blacker seen,
More vivid groWs the vital green.
| Or this vignette of a gray day:
Pale as pearl the morning lay
In cloud diaphanous and gray;
| While slow the smothered sun goes by
A smouldering opal in the sky.
Faint color i'll the wood he throws
| Like scattered petals of a rose;
And lays by every stem a hue
Most sagely, delicately blue.
Mr.. Scott shows the same fine sensi-
bility to nature, and an even greater
faculty for rendering her subtlest
moods and tenderest graces. What
could be prettier in its way than this
Spring song:
Sing me song Of the early spring.
| OF the yellow light where the clear
air cools,
! OF the 1.-THE willows burgeoning
In the amber pools.
Sing me song of the spangled dells,
Where hepaticas tremble in starry
groups,
OF the adder-tongue swinging its gold
den bells
AS the light wind swoops.
Sing me a song of the shallow lakes,
| OF the hollow fall of the nimble rill
| OF the trolling rapture the robin makes
| On the windy hill.
| Sing me a song of the cleaning swift
OF the vivid Maryland throat,
OF the vesper swallows silver drift
From the rise remote.
%#*&@
Sing me a song of the glow -afar,
OF the misty air and the crocus light,
OF the new moon following a silver star
Through the early night.
After this love of nature deepens and
widens into the thrill of human pas
sion, as when the heart of the exile
pours itself out in 1.-THE Canadians
Home Song" beginning:
There is rain upon the window,
| There is wind upon the tree;
The rain is slowly sobbng,
The wind is blowing free;
| 1t bears my weary heart
To my own country.
Few lines by minor poets of the
| day surpass in tragic splendor of die
| ton this sonnet on The Onondaga Ma
| DONNA:
She stands full-throated and with care
| less pose,
This woman Of a weird and waning
race.
The tragic savage lurking in her face,
Where all her pagan passion burns and
| CLOVIS;
Her blood is mingled with her ancient
And thrills with war and wildness in
| her veins;
Her rebel lips are dablnrd with the
stains
OF feuds and forays and her fathers
| woes.
And closer in the shawl about her
breast
The latest promise of her nations
doom,
Paler than she her baby cIings and
| lies
The primal warrior sieam.ng from his
| eyes,
He sulks. and burdaned with his infant
| gloom,
He draws his heavy brows and win not
rest
Mr.. Lodge, who is the most ambitious
IN his verse Of The present group Of
poets. is sometimes confused in thought
and incoherent in expression, although