The Year's Verse, Part II [pp. 101-106]

The Year's Verse.
of the hospital, which is equally unaware
of their existence; many a time the kindergartner struggles with as child who
should be in the Asylum for the Feebleminded, not knowing enough of work
outside her own to know that the ex
perts say such children should always
be segregated,- n6r, perhaps, knowing
the accommodation the State now provides for them. San Francisco is certainly behind other cities in directing
all these means to the best advantage.
M. W. Shinn.
THE YEAR'S VERSE. II
- WE reviewed last month such of the
year's verse as came from writers already
more or less known between covers, reserving for a second chapter the "first
volumes," and one or two that are to
ourselves, and probably to all our readers, practically first volumes, since we
have to learn from the title page that
they are not. Now and then the little collection bears a name not altogether unknown through magazine and stray
verse. Readers of the OVERLAND know
quite well the signature of Wilbur Larremore,- always attached to poems not
striking, but thoughtful, refined, and
*pervaded with a certain modesty and
sincerity that make their best quality.
Nearly half of the brief poems collected
in the little volume, Mother Carey's
Chickens,' appeared in the OVERLAND.
They and the others here gathered with
them have about three notes,- one, that
of a very real, yet not restless or excited,
1Mother Carey's Chickens. A Book of Verse. By
Wilbur Larremore. New York: Cassell & Co.
sense of what we call "the problems of
the age"; one of love, either in the direct and natural expression of a few
moods, or in some imagined episode;
and one of a quiet humor. There is
here and there a visibly labored line or
stanza, - ot labored in the manner of
one who strives for effect, but of one
who wishes to speak his mood or
thought exactly, and does not find the
material of rhyme and metre that he
works in yield easily to the expression
he wishes to mould it to. This, with its
perceptible jar of metre and infelicity of
diction toward the end, its thoroughly
poetic thought, and a certain honesty of
word and manner not so common in our
minor verse, is characteristic not of the
best, but of the average.
The zgeophyte.
In fervent clasp his youth's ideal
He raises o'er the tide;
Across the deep he fain would bear it
And reach the thither side,
1890.]
101'