Daily Kennebec journal., 1905-08-15
MAINE EDITORIAL COMMENT,
The President and a Maine Poet.
Bangor Commercial


1t is indeed remarkable that President
Roosevelt finds time amid the multi
tude of cares and responsibilities which,
after all, seem to rest upon him lightly
and which he throws off with so much
apparent ease, for a wide reading of
standard and current literature as was
attributed to him in a late number of
The Century Magazine. More remark
| able still is the fact that he has found
time for the work of a literary critic;
but readers of the Outlook of Aug IL,
cannot fail to have noticed on page 913,
a literary review by Theodore Roose-
welt" This is two-page article being a
review of a little volume of verse. by
Edward Arlington Robinson, entitled
Children of the Night"
How many people in Maine know
that this is a Maine book and that its
author is a resident of Gardiner? This
is what gives the book and its author
additional interest and to Maine read
ers the remarkable thing about it is
that President Roosevelt in these most
strenuous days finds time to critically
read and review q book of poems by
Maine author.
Gus praise to our Maine poet. His work
has ''the touch of the purple which
makes a poem out of verse and for
which, if it is not there, there is no SUBJ
stitute." 1t is true President Roose-
welt, our new literary critic. says he is
| not sure that he understands Mr.. Rob-
inson's poem, Luke Havergal." but l
am entirely sure that 1 like it." He
praises the poem, "The House on the
Hill. "a gray, empty house from which
the life has gone out" OF the poem.
"Richard Cory" Mr.. Roosevelt says:
ut illustrates a very ancient but very
profound philosophy of life with a cur
iously local touch which points its keen
| insight. Those who feel poetry in their
marrow and fibre are the spiritual
heirs of the ages and so it is natural
that this man from Maine. many of
whose poems could have been written
only by one to whom the most real of
lives in the life Of the American small
town should write his "Ballade OF
Broken Flutes where "a lonely surge
of ancient spray told of an unforgetful
sea; ;"-should write the poem beginning
"Since Persia fell at Marathon" or the
very original sonnet on Amaryllis.
Some of his images stay fixed in ones
mind" says Mr.. Roosevelt, as in "The
Pity of the Leaves while in "Thc
Tavern" he writes "of what most of us
feel we have seen; and then again of
what we have seen only with the souls
eyes The poem 1.-THE Wilderness"
could have been written only by a
man into whose heart there entered
deep the very spirit of the vast and
melancholy northern forests
In summing up his review Of Mr..
Robinson's work. President Roosevelt
says he has written mot verse but
poetry" and concludes:
at is rather curious that Mr.. Rob-
inson's volume should not have attract
doubtabie touch of genius in the poems
collected in this volume. and a curious
simplicity and good faith all of which
qualities differentiate them sharply
from ordinary collections of the kind
There is in them just a little of the
light that never was on land or sea.
| and in such light the objects described
often have nebulus outlines; but it is
not always necessary i'm order to enjoy
poem that one should be able to trans
late it into terms of mathematical ac-
curacy. Indeed, those who admire the
coloring of Turner, those who like to
read how-and to wonder why-Childe
Roland to the Dark Tower came. do
not wish always to have the ideas pre-
sented to them with cold. hard. definite
outlines; and to a man with the poetic
temperament it is inevitable that life
should often appear clothed with a GER
tain sad mysticism