Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1902-09-14
THE FREEMAN AND OTHER POEMS.
Ellen Glasgow. Doubleday, Page & Co..

THE FREEMAN AND OTHER POEMS.
Ellen Glasgow. Doubleday, Page & Co.
New York.
I ISIS Glasgow's poetry traces its
AE close kinshtp to her earlier books
AVA rather than TO the more usual
t5 sweetness and hope found In her
tsy story OF the battle-ground"
Like THE Descendant" and
PHASES of an Inferior Planet" her poems
voice a tragic pain and a lonely human
bravery that is almost defiant in its cour-
age Through them all there is a beauty
elusive. far-off, and reckoning. yet the
dominant note IS that of pain and sin,
and of human i,croisn In the bearing OF
LIES deadening weight.
THE Freeman is cry OF bitter cour-
A vagabond between the East and West
Careless I gree the scourgins and the
rod:
I fear no terror any man may bring
Nor any god.
The clanking chains that bound me have
rent
No more slave to hope cringe or
captives to Fate. men rear their prison
walls.
But free am I.
T tread where arrows press upon my
path
I smile to see the danger and the dart:
My breast is barred to meet the sings of
hate.
But not my heart.
] feel the thunder and I face the rain,
] lift my head. defiance far fling
My feet are set, face the autumn as
] face the spring.
Around me, on the battlefields of life
/ see men fight and fail and crouch in
prayer:
Aloft stand unfettered. for know
The freedom Of despair.
Other poems in the book, as "a Pray
err" "The Sage" "a Battle Cry sound
the same note Of an unconquerable hero
Ism that is courageous. but without hope.
In Resurrection the pain and bitterness
go far beyond the lines which express
them
The trumpet of the Judgment shook the
night.
Dust quickened and was flesh; grave
clothes were shed;
With moaning Of strong travail and Ia
ment,
The sea gave up her dead.
One, rising from rotting tomb behe1d
The heavens unfold beneath Jehovah's
breath.
Great God!" he cried, with Thine
Eternity,
Couldst Thou not leave me Death?"
But more full Of tragedy than this, be-
cause more real in its appeal, are these
lines called "Aridity':
She looked unto the east and saw
A pallid stretch of sickly sea;
Unto the west she turned and met
The lands aridity.
A bloodless wave of rising sun
Was flung across her open door;
Il smote her like a Shiny thing,
And crawled along the floor.
Her hands took UP the weary round
A colorless and common part.
Her stillhorn hopes were buried in
The desert of her heart.
The three love-poems of the little vol
ume. "The Reunion Love Has Passed
Along the Way and the heart-breaking
me called The suppliant.' are not the
lender verses Of the long-read singers,
but are tuned instead to a sweetness that
Is wrought into pain, and overwhelmed
with despair. And SO throughout the list,
whether the themes be of praise or eager
ness. love. doubt, faith, or alteration, they
echo and re-echo alike the same strain of
balm, tragedy. stoical endurance human
bravery and anguish and swift-escaping
beauty, and while the poems rouse the
thought and lift up the will to indomita-
ole endeavor they leave the heart and
soul unsolaced and afraid
THE BURIED TEMPLE. Maurice Mae
terlinck. Cloth, s14o Dood, Meade &
Co., New York.
ESYvT is a beautiful thought which
tm I / Maeterlinck holds at the center
tAk Of all his mystic idealism and
KRNaAt one of large helpfulness and in