Verse of the Year [pp. 429-436]

Verse of the Year.
lish lady, who has written little except
for the publishers of these books, and is
quite unknown in this country. Her
verses have a light, frank touch, a refinement and suggestive fancy that brings a
sense of attractive personality; sometimes they are unusually pretty. Those
who have read them will wait with some
interest to see if she does not some day
become better known.
Here is one "song:"
As we sit in the midst of the time which is Today,
We hear the pipers piping and the children at their
play;
And the merry youths and maidens as they dance
are singing gay.
And we listen to their song, till we sighing turn
away;
Then we look, smiling — sighing -in each other's
eyes and say,
"There is never Now a song like the songs of Yes terday."
So we listen, sitting Still, with a smile and with a
sigh.
Is the piping getting fainter? Are the children gone
"abye "?
Are the singers growing weary, for the voices fail
and die?
Or is our hearing failing? Are we failing, you and I?
And we look with a smile in each other's eyes and
cry,
' There is never Now a song like the songs of By and-bye.
and Mechanic Art,2 are Californian in
authorship, and the two poems bound
together in the second named volume
are Californian in subject,-the oneowing its inspiration to the building of the
Charleston here, the other to the Mechanics' Institute of this Coast. The
two volumes are mere slips of books,
neatly printed, and read in an easy half
hour. They are altogether different in
topic,- Cleopatra, a study of human
passion, while the two other poems are
tributes to the history of industrial
achievement; but the verse in both alike
is fluent and readable, never falling below a certain measure of dignity and
poetic elevation. It has an agreeable
air of being written with real interest in
the subject, instead of merely for the
sake of writing a poem. A stanza addressed to Mechanic Art will illustrate.
With furious speed thy wheeled Cyclopes haste
O'er tracks of steel upon their lightning course;
Mountains bow down, and blooms the arid waste,
And cities rise through thy resistless force.
Giants, thy slaves! and by their heated breath
Are wrought the marvels of this century grand.
Thy skill supplies the arsenals of death,
While new Armadas speed at thy command;
And yet through thee shall war and discord cease,
Thy wreath no laurel, but the bough of peace.
1Cleopatra. By Julia Clinton Jones. San Francisco
The Bancroft Company: i8go.
Cleopatra,l and 7he Story of the Ship 2 The Story of The Ship, and Mechanic Art. Ibid
436
[October,