Part 33 (1/2)

In a still room at hush of dawn, My Love and I lay side by side And heard the roaming forest wind Stir in the paling autumn-tide.

I watched her earth-brown eyes grow glad Because the round day was so fair; While memories of reluctant night Lurked in the blue dusk of her hair.

Outside, a yellow maple-tree, s.h.i.+fting upon the silvery blue With small innumerable sound, Rustled to let the sunlight through.

The livelong day the elvish leaves Danced with their shadows on the floor; And the lost children of the wind Went straying homeward by our door.

And all the swarthy afternoon We watched the great deliberate sun Walk through the crimsoned hazy world, Counting his hilltops one by one.

Then as the purple twilight came And touched the vines along our eaves, Another Shadow stood without And gloomed the dancing of the leaves.

The silence fell on my Love's lips; Her great brown eyes were veiled and sad With pondering some maze of dream, Though all the splendid year was glad.

Restless and vague as a gray wind Her heart had grown, she knew not why.

But hurrying to the open door, Against the verge of western sky

I saw retreating on the hills, Looming and sinister and black, The stealthy figure swift and huge Of One who strode and looked not back.

B. CARMAN.

Sesostris.

Sole Lord of Lords and very King of Kings, He sits within the desert, carved in stone; Inscrutable, colossal, and alone, And ancienter than memory of things.

Graved on his front the sacred beetle clings; Disdain sits on his lips; and in a frown Scorn lives upon his forehead for a crown.

The affrighted ostrich dare not dust her wings Anear this Presence. The long caravan's Dazed camels stop, and mute the Bedouins stare.

This symbol of past power more than man's Presages doom. Kings look--and Kings despair: Their sceptres tremble in their jewelled hands And dark thrones totter in the baleful air!

L. MIFFLIN.

NOTES.

American poetry before Bryant was considerable in amount, but, with few exceptions, it must be looked for by the curious student in the graveyard of old anthologies. Who now reads ”The Simple Cobbler of Agawam in America,” ”The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America,” ”The Day of Doom,” ”M'Fingal,” or ”The Columbiad?” Skipping a generation from Barlow's death, who reads with much seriousness any one of the group of poets of which Bryant in his earliest period was the centre: Halleck, Pierpont, Sprague, Drake, Dana, Percival, Allston, Brainard, Mrs.

Osgood, and Miss Brooks? A few of them, to be sure, are remembered by an occasional lyric,--Halleck by ”Marco Bozzaris,” a spirited ode in the manner of Campbell; Pierpont by his ringing lines, ”Warren's Address to the American Soldiers;” Drake by ”The American Flag,” conventional but not commonplace, and marked by one very imaginative line; and Allston by two rather excellent lyrics, ”Rosalie” and ”America to Great Britain.”

The first poet to accomplish work of high sustained excellence was Bryant. His poetry, though never impa.s.sioned, is uniformly elegant. It is often as chaste as Landor at his best. But it never surprises; it is not emotional, personal, suggestively imaginative. In fact, Bryant's muse is not lyrical. With the exception of Pinkney and Hoffman, whose ”Sparkling and Bright,” if technically defective, is a true song, we must wait for our lyric poet till we reach Edgar Allan Poe, the greatest--one inclines to say the only--master of musical quality in verse whom America has produced.

_The Wild Honeysuckle._--Philip Freneau, born in 1752, was a soldier in the American Revolution. Though never rising quite into the highest cla.s.s of poets, he is our first genuine singer. ”The Indian Burying-ground” and ”To a Honey-bee” are only less successful than the graceful lines quoted.

_A Health._--Poe was an enthusiastic admirer of this poem. He p.r.o.nounced it, in his essay ent.i.tled ”The Poetic Principle,” ”full of brilliancy and spirit,” and added: ”It was the misfortune of Mr. Pinkney to have been born too far south. Had he been a New Englander, it is probable that he would have been ranked as the first of American lyrists by that magnanimous cabal which has so long controlled the destinies of American Letters, in conducting the thing called _The North American Review_.”

This pa.s.sage, very characteristic of Poe's criticisms, ill.u.s.trates both his champions.h.i.+p of favorites, and unmerciful scourging of foes.

_Unseen Spirits._--The earnest sincerity, evident in every line of this poem, removes it at once from the company of those gay society verses sparkling with conceits which won for Willis the satiric comment of Lowell in ”A Fable for Critics:”

”There is Willis, all natty, and jaunty, and gay, Who says his best things in so foppish a way, With conceits and pet phrases so thickly o'erlaying 'em, That one hardly knows whether to thank him for saying 'em; Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose,-- Just conceive of a Muse with a ring in her nose!”