The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1912-03-16
MORE GOOD: POETRY WRITTEN THAN EVER
In Indiana Poetic Literature Has Been Produced Wor-
thy Place Among the Great-Orth Stein,
the Gifted and Erratic Genius.
~ ESTHER GRIFFIN WHITE.

~ ESTHER GRIFFIN WHITE.
We too often neglect that which is
within our gates.
Or, rather, overlook it.
And it is frequently far more exquis-
lite than that which enchand us mere
ly because it is remote.
For. Notwithstanding its ill-use
and abuse there is sardonic truth in
the old saw-'distance lends enchant-
ment to the view"
In instance, we have, and have had.
in Indiana some delightful writer's of
poetry.
Aside from the celebrities. as Riley.
Those not so we'll known but whose
poetic product. il put out at some ear
lier period would have landed them in
the hall Of fame.
At no period in the worlds history
Is more good poetry being written
than now.
1t has been well said that if some of
those alleged ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, for
example-had been living at this time
they could not have passed muster.
All you need to do to substantiate
this by your own critical judgment is
to fish Gut from the library discard
those dusty volumes of portentous
bulk and flip over their pages.
In almost any newspaper you may
read fugitive poems that excel them
in both sentiment and form.
The writer has taken occasion this
week to run in on another page of the
paper two poems by Louise Vickroy
Boyd-"Once Loved"-and IAN AL
tumn Picture"-an Indiana poet, now
dead, who is too little known by this
generation and to whom frequent ref
erence has been made here.
When the former poem appeared
Mrs. Boyd was in her prime and
we'll known writer Of verse for the
leading magazines. Mrs. Boyd stating
in manuscript left to the writer from
which to compile the volume of po-
ems which was recently issued
through the Nicholson Press of this
city, that "Once Loved" was copied in
the press Of the country from Maine
to California.
This readily can be believed since
its sentiment Is one whose appeal is
universal.
Mrs. Boyd was a technician.
And an emotional thermometer if it
may SO be put.
She registered every fine shade of
feeling. every infinitesimal change in
the gamut of sentiment.
Much that she produced might not
interest the general reader for it's sub
ject. None but will render it the
tribute of admirable FORM
Among the less we'll known poets
OF the state, was Orth H. Stein, an
erratic and gifted genius and a most
lovable personality.
Stein was newspaper writer. fit
ting from one section of the country
to another. But everywhere welcome,
his contributions to the news columns
of the papers with which he became
from time to time connected, being
classics in their way.
He wrote much verse that possesses
the indefinable quality that brings the
blood to the cheek. the tears to the
eye. the emotions to the surface. Here
Is one of them:
IN MEMORY.
Last night as I leaned from my win.
dow,
High over the darkling street,
A song came floating upward,
Broken and incomplete.
The words were lost in the chasm,
l. Where traffic rumbled and roared-
It was only the melody reached me,
But 1t pierced my soul like sword.
What was it: God, 1 know not;
stood with my lips apart,
While it slipt like sands escaping
From the troubled grasp of my heart.
What sorrow. dead and forgotten,
| Haunted the vagrant strain;
We bury such things. like paupers,
In the potter's field Of pain.
What delicate wrath of passion,
What ghost of the yester years
Twas something as sweet as kisses,
Something as sad as tears.
Rising only to vanish,
Battling, yet half revealed,