Book Reviews [pp. 103-112]

Book Reviews.
And a tearlet clove
Her calm she had won for the aching breast,
And nothing more smote her perfect rest,
For life went away with love;
but this is a fairer average stanza:
The rosy feet of spring stepped light,
Where winter slept still, solemn and white,
And clouds of downy bloom were seen
Trailing their rosy and pearly sheen,
Tangled in trees, plum, cherry, and peach,
On bending boughs in a young child's reach.
Heart's Own prejudices the reader strongly by
prefacing: "Most of the pieces in this book have
not been published; those which have been will
doubtless be readily recognized by most readers."
It need scarcely be said that there is nothing in
the book that "most readers" have ever heard of;
and it might be conjectured that the author intended the assertion for a modest suggestion that he
expected few readers outside his circle of familiars,
did he not go on to say, "My aimn in bringing these
together, has been to present a representative collection of my later verse." A sonnet addressed
"'To D. G. R.," and beginning
'Rossetti! I who know thee not, but may
Some day when I can trace to thine abode,"
helps also to fix the class of literati to which he
belongs, whose unwarrantable incursions upon the
privacy of well-known writers form so grievous a
penalty of greatness. The verses on which the
author appears to place so high a value, are neither
good nor very bad: occasionally a stanza is quite
fair. Thus.:
A Victor's Message.
O living men and dying!
The way to conquer death
Is not by weak defying,
Nor cowardly complying,
But by a joyful breath,
With all life's colors flying!
An exact meaning in this is not clear, looked for
closely, but it has a pleasant, spirited sound.
In Thoughtsfrom the Visions of the Night is a mere
pamphlet slip, containing a poem of meditations on
death, which has some very strong pictures, and
lines. The Perpetual Fire' is also in paper covers,
but makes four pamphlet numbers of about one
hundred and thirty pages in all. It is a very sin gular series of poems, which read like the work of
a slightly unbalanced religious enthusiast. Poetry,
he says, has lost faith in its own inspiration, and
consequently no more great poems are written. It
is all dilettant. If a man would first have a great
and unselfish motive, and then trust himself to the
1The Perpetual Fire. Published by W. E. Davenport,
No. 11 Garden Place, Brooklyn, New York. 1886.
inspiring Spirit, a great poem would be written.
He is now going to do this. And hle proceeds,
through the one hundred and thirty pages, to do so,
with, apparently, great single-mindedness and good
faith. The motive from first to last is an earnest appeal to the people about him in New York City to
care no more for ambition and gold,but for righteousness and mercy. Labor-troubles, the miseries of the
slums, politics, creeds-all these he touches on
only to penetrate through all superficials to the
simple, constantly repeated demand that men should
do justice, and love mercy, and live in the Spirit.
There is not much poetry about it, but there is a
quality that really arrests the attention somewhat
There is a simple and straightforward egotism in
everything, which is scarcely offensive. "As the
only evidence of honesty of purpose, the author and
publisher of this work proposes to send to the address of anyone who is an earnest lover of the
Truth a copy of this or or any other number of this
book." "Let no man care about his reputation
now; this is not the time.... Righteousness of action and purity of heart, these are the necessities of
life.... It is wrong to consider whether good poetry
can be written without a moral purpose. Since the
foundation of the world was it never known that
such a thing could be. It is a sin to deny the sufficiency of the spirit of God to sustain and exalt a
living literature, which shall have divine authority
and be again his'Word.'"'Wordsworth.was a
prophet equally with Jeremiah.... Keats, too was
a sacred man; so was Emerson, and so was Carlyle
.... Artistic, or, more properly, intellectual verse
which is an accomplishment of ingenuity and skill
and study is forever different from true poetry....
He who would be the servant of its inspiration
hears a voice which the apostle heard of old, say ing: "When thou art brought before judges thou
shalt not consider thy words: for in that hour it
shall be given thee what thou shalt speak.'
"Wherefore I preach; not Grecian art nor wit
Not human knowledge, nor the terms of sense,
But Goodness, Truth, and Righteousness on
Earth."
He prefaces to a rather ordinary, but earnest,
boyish poem, composed in an exalted mnood of
mind, which renders its memory sacred to him, an
assertion of his private conviction that he may
"claim for the state of mind in which it was
composed the solemn dignity of a designation
which the oldest of the Hebrew Prophets applied
to its operations only when under the influence of
a power not its own." He closes his work with
a "Hymn of the Author's Life," in which he says,
But I was chosen even from a youth,
And taught by thee in a peculiar way.
Jan.
108