The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1913-01-07

niVoTSaTy OIL JOnu hcdIS OC0(A |
At midnight when the moonlit cypress
Have woven round his grave a magic
shade,
Still weeping th~eNnfinished hymn he
made.
There moves fresh Mala IKE a morn
ing breeze
Blown over jonquil beds when warm
rains ease.
And STOPPING where the poets mead Is
laid,
Selene weeps while all the tides are
stayed
And swaying seas are ~darkened into
But they who wake the ana
the tides
Have hearts too kind to bid him wake
from sleep
Who murmurs sometimes when his
dreams are deep.
Startling the Quiet Land where he
abideS,
And charming still, sad-eyed Perse--
phone
With visions of the earth and
Why. then, should h reviewer
take the time to give an extensive
notice Of Helen Of Troy? Why not
simply dismiss the book with the
statement that along with a hundred
other books it represents the present
vogue? The raison d'etre for a review
as long as the one I give here Is that
once in a while Miss Teasdale sur
priSes US by striking a very distinctive,
very individual note. I should, there
fore. be doing her a grave injustice II
1 left the reader with the impression
that which is cOnventionally good
For the sake of illustration, let US
take h dramatic monologues which
make UP the first twenty pages Of the
book: the title poem and its five com
panion pieces. It is neither gross
Islander Of Browning nor absurd fiat
terry Of Miss TeaSdale to assert hat in
all respects these six poems compare
favorably with h great Victorian
poets dramatic monologues. They
are vigorous, they are genuine. they
are human. And il they are not al
together as subtle as some of the
monologues which the author Of
Andrea del Sarto" wrote, they are
without doubt more consistently clear.
It Is not difficult to find praise
worthy characteristics in Miss Teas
dale's monologues: but to my mind
one Of the particularly admirable
qualities Of them Is the aptness Of
the fgurative language used. In the
first paragraph Of "Guenevere." when
the disgraced queen is speaking in a
tone Of decentralization, h uses a
figure such as Tennyson Would have
been proud to use in the finest pas
sages In the "IdyilS." She says:
II water, flowing silver over stones,
Is for6ed, and beneath the horses
} feet
} Grows turbid suddenly. it clears again
And men will drink it with no thought
Of harm.
Vet I am hrordod FOR q .;n~lo Fa,,l&
The n serious fault which I an
able to find with Miss Teasdale':
m~onologues is that in their mechanical.
perfection they are too regular. Sht
uses the trochee and the anapest to<
spAr1ngly, and she avoids the femiDin.
ending entirely. The result is tina:
her blank verse is often q bit arti
|. hclal, and sometimes m~onotonous
7 If trochees, anapests, and unstresset
! final syllables were largely confined
e to the work of such hasty writer's a
Shelley or Browning, young writer
might we'll adhere as closely as DOS
slble to strict regularity: but when s,
s~crupulOusly correct an artist as Ten
} nySon finds occasional "accide entails
good thing in blank verse, a Jesse
writer ought not to be afraid OF them
= But hope l am not misunder
q stood. l hope I have not create,
the impression that l consider con
y ventionality and artifciality the para
mount characteristics Of Miss Teas
dale's work. Just when she appear
to be getting most conventional, sh
~startles Vi with something very I'm
q usual. Her Union Square" is a b
of real tragedy, as significant as it
extraordinary.
o With the man 1 love who loves IA
not,
a ] walked in the sireet-lamps' fare
We watched the world go home thu
night
In a food through Onion Square.
W I leaned to catch the words he sa;
That were light as q snowhab
I, falling:
W All we'll that he never leaned to hes
The words my heart was auing
j., And on we walked Ind on we wake
y Past the fiery lights Of tho pictu1
a Where the girls with thirsty eye. s
In by
On the errand each man knows.
IT.
md on We walked and on we Wake
At the door at last ve said goo