The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-03-24
THE DEAD POET.

To all lovers of the beautiful in literature the announcement in the papers last Tuesday of the death of Thomas Bailey AIdrich brought a feeling of genuine sorrow. Although he had by a few months passed the PsaImist's limit of human life he was still young in his love for the true and the beautiful in verse and in his power of interpreting the voice of poesy.
 Mir. Aldrich may perhaps not be placed among the great poets of the world, but among the minor poets he certainly held a high place. Like Keats and Shelley his muse unfolded at an early age, but more fortunate than they he lived half a century af- ter he became known as poet of rare worth and was thus enabled to witness and enjoy his own fame in the ranks of American poets. He was but a boy when he began to write poetry, and soon attracted notice for the beauty of his verses. He was only about twenty years old when, in 1856 his Ballad of Baby Bell" was given to the world and it at once drew attention to his powers. That ballad beginning with
 Have you not heard the poets tell How came the dainty Baby Bell Into this world of ours?
 The gates of Heaven were left ajar.
 With folded hands and dreamy eyes, Wandering out of Paradise, She saw this planet like star Hung in the glistening depths of even---f
 | Its bridges running to and fro ] On which the white-winged Angels go, Bearing the Holy Dead to Heaven. :" was enough to have established his fame, if he had written nothing else, but for half a century he continued to write both poetry and prose. and this dual talent won him position long ago among the poet-romancers like Scott and Poe and Hugo and Holmes and others who have written fine verse and equally fine prose. His story of a Bad Boy," written almost two-score years ago proved that his ability to write good things was not confined to rhyme.
 In some respects Aldrich may al- most be looked on as an exotic. Born ct Portsmouth, N. H., and passing much of his life in Portsmouth and Boston, one might have thought that his environments would have given to his nature something of the chill and rigid materialism of the New England character, but 1t was not so. Both his poetry and his prose writings are redolent with the perfumes of the | tropics and of the far East. There Is little in his writings to suggest the chilly, rock-b bound regions of his na- tivity, or of the grinding commercial ism of the cties in winch he spent much of his life. On the contrary we find all through his writings the warm, luxurious imagery which might have been expected of him had he been born and raised amid the palms and flowers of the South, or within touch of the glowing legends and lyrics of the Eastern nations. In short, it was
 
 should be grown and domesticated in New England and still retain all their tropical characteristics. Edgar Allan Poe, also, was born in cold New Eng land. but as the greater part of his life was spent in the South it was not surprising that he brought with him little of the cold and often austere materialism of his birthplace.
 Thomas Bailey Aldrich. in the lam guage of a contemporary, had the lyrical quality to a degree beyond most American poets. Emotion and sentiment are expressed by him with a delicacy and yet with an effectiveness that make his songs known and re- membered in circles far outside of the