Verse of the Year, Part III [pp. 659-661]

Verse of the Year.
Mlsi,c.
The pedant scorns blithe songs with tender words,
And cares for naught but harmonizing chords,
The genius feels the warm tear seek his eye
Because he hears a mother's lullaby.
A trait that strikes one as unusual in
verse, more so than in life probably, is
the type of womanhood praised, the
traits most prized:
Thoughts of your honest eyes and soft dark hair,
Your lips that never say what is not meant.
She cannot compliment her friends above
The truth; she has no smooth society lies
She has not very many friends to love,
But when she loves, she loves until she dies.
She has her faults; she can be proud and strange
And she must have her way, what e'er befall;
And yet I should not like to see her change
I want her what she is, her faults and all.
If I wanted a creature without an opinion,
And never a thought in her cerebral cells,
WVith an amiable smile and an accent Virginian,
I'd probably go to somebody else.
If I wanted some one more solid than such,
Whose critical dictums were far from few,
Who'd tell me my faults - a trifle too much,
There is n't a doubt but I'd come to you.
If I wanted a girl who was always pleased,
Whose glances were sweet as caramels,
Who'd pity me every time I sneezed,
I'd probably go to somebody else:
If I wanted a person of sense and nerve,
Who'd sympathize somewhat as stern parents do,
Not a particle more than I seemed to deserve,
There is n't a doubt but I'd come to you.
Envoy.
My dear, if I wanted one of the belles,
I'd probably go to somebody else:
If I wanted a friend, and the best I knew,
There is n't a doubt but I'd come to you.
Captain Jack Crawford, whom his ad mirers and publishers like to call " The
Poet Scout," has gathered into a thin
volume called ainip Fire Spariks,1 his
Grand Army poems. Like most of the
works of this prolific verse-writer, these
verses are largely in dialect, sentimen tal, and popular. They are the sort of
verses that get into collections of
"pieces'" for elocutionary use. WVe con 1Camp Fire Sparks. By Captain Jack Crawford.
Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co.: I893.
fess to a sense of something all too deliberate, too complacent, in their sentiment to be pleasant; yet, probably the
art of the author is really as simple and
honest as that of most of his fellowcraftsmen who are able better to hide
their art. On the surface the effort of
the verses is to be nothing if not simple, frank, and democratic in feeling;
and democratic they are; but simplicity
and frankness in poetry are oftener the
achievement of high literary culture
than of the mere impulse of sentiment.
The reason probably is that the untrained person who would be a poet is
usually an imitator, whose motive came
from his admiration of more original
poets.
The Olive and t/ze Pilne2 is a collection
of poems about Spain, followed by another group on New England subjects.
It is a second edition, and the author
has published other books. While it is
not verse of remarkable merit, there
is something decidedly fresh and real
about it,-a quality that in a small way
recalls Whittier. Mrs. Lowe is able to
tell a story in verse, which is uncom mon; to describe a scene; to point a
moral; to incorporate healthy, unaf fected feeling into honest rhyme. It is
surprising what homely simplicity fits
into the current of her story or descrip tion without a jar. We quote for illus tration, however, a few stanzas that have
less of this trait than many others in
the book.
The Brokenz Home.
They bore her all the night with faces pale,
Nearer and nearer to the sleeping vale,
Where, in sweet blossoming,
She waved at early Spring,
Cut down before the summer grass was withering.
They followed close upon her, father, mother;
And, slow behind, the sister and the brother:
They spoke not, soft or loud;
They saw her in her shroud,
And looked with awe and dread around upon each
other.
2The Olive and the Pine. By Martha Perry Lowe.
Boston: D. Lothrop & Company, i893.
660
[Dec.