The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-06-25

/ women will weep" but each arm of iron
| takes the burden from an arm of flesh
| and the song of labor is more and more
\ the song of freedom.
| The poet who is to come to the waiting
l throne is not the apostle of despair, but
! the prophet of hope, not simply because
| men want cheer and not despair, but pc
! cause the facts of life mean nope not tah-
/ ure advance not retrOgression NO poet
| who sings in minor chords can be the
/ apostle who can have large leadership.
Too much cannot be said in praise OF
! one who sees and feels the sorrows of his
/ kind who hears the moaning of impris-
| oned souls and utters protest against OPP
preston. But that is only a partial vision
which interprets the clouds as the Moor
of heaven, when they are only the cur
tain of the sun, that mistakes the sttug-
giles of Miltons lion for an ultimate con-
dition, when it is only striving Ito get
free his hinder parts which associates
lOwly toll with degradation and mistakes
the driver Of the OK for the brother OF it.
This little volume is not too large for
the reading of a single sitting. What is
the mood it leaves one in? That of des-
pair There are but few poems in it that
are visions of hope.
There is no worth in any world to come
Nor any in the world we left behind
1.-THE dice of God were loaded and we
lost"
The ending of almost every poem is a
wall;
LET dead men sink into the dust of
things"
The poem, "a meeting" ends with
"Of endless grief for which there is no
tongue"
Infinite debts" pictures the heart as a
pool, not in which the kindly heavens
mirrored themselves, but as some tarn
in which
1.-The Eternal throws its awful shadow
form"
"A leaf from the Devils jest book" has
this ending:
"A white face floating in the whirling
ball,
A dead face FLASHING in the river reeds -
1.-THE last furrow," is the place where
Death the ploughman walks, the place
where
Grasses hurry to the graves, the flowers
Toss their wild torches on the windy
Yet are the black graves lonely in the
rain
Even the joys of youth are saddened by
the coming on of age, for
thine murders our youth, with his sor-
rows and sin
And pushes us on to the windowless Inn"
The poem, "In death valley" is as dark
as one of Dore's forests
I'm. the gray soil there was a purple stain
And the gray reticent rocks were dyed
with blood
Blood of a vast unknown calamity,
1t was the mark of some ancestral grief
Grief that began before the ancient
flood"
And this:
ooh the fret of the brain
And the wounds and the worry, -.
And the traglcal life of man goes on
1.-The toilers" is picture of 'perfidious
wrongs, immedicable woes:
Their blind feet drift in the darkness,
and no one is leading;
Their soil is the pasture. where hyens and
harpies are feeding.
= the toilers in all lands the jest and
the laughter
OF NOTES.-The topers scourged on in the
furrow as cattle
Or flung as meat to the cannonS that
hunger in battle
In THE rock breakers" man is
"A labor-flashed toiler
Its life a sacrifice
To some blind purpose of the destinies."
Not that there are not some glimpses of
star-shining beyond the clouds, but they
are moods and not temperament. Hardly
ever does the poets song become blithe-
some, and somewhere in almost every
picture there is the place of graves. But
there is in this poet, surely, the gift of
song and If only the bird will soar to
higher branches 1t will sing of the suns
and not of the mists. THE desire of ma
tons may take It's place beside some of
the best poetry that Lowell wrote, and The
divine vision" finds no superior till we
get back to Emerson. The nature songs"
are exquisite In expression, and in all his
poems there is the subtle touch and some
thing of the vision that marks the singer
elected of the gods. The poet Is a native
Of Oregon, born upon a ranch and ac-
quainted with toil-though not in its more
serYile conditions. He has the blood Of
fine ancestors in his veins, and is a man
of culture. The work already accomp-
lished is full of promise, and il only he
will sing of the day and not of the night
will court hope and not despair It is not
impossible that America will find in him
its laureate.
The Man and the Hoe" is for sale by
Putnam, Davis & Coz