The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics Part 34

_Katie._--About one-third of Timrod's graceful poem which bears this t.i.tle. This is one of the few cases where I have ventured to make omissions.

_Thalatta._--Regarding this poem, Thomas Wentworth Higginson says, in "The New World and the New Book:" "Who knows but that, when all else of American literature has vanished in forgetfulness, some single little masterpiece like this may remain to show the high-water mark, not merely of a single poet, but of a nation and a generation?" The author of "Thalatta" was a Dartmouth graduate, a teacher, and a disciple of Emerson.

_The Fall of the Leaf._--Th.o.r.eau's prose is known universally; his verse has not won as yet the recognition it deserves. It has little lyrical quality, but for unconventionality, charming turns of phrase, and the intimate knowledge of Nature it reveals, it is almost alone in American poetry.

_The Rhodora._--"The Rhodora" has a conciseness and unity too rare in Emerson's poetry, which, beautiful in details, is strangely uneven. We sigh as we think what an unrivalled lyric poet Emerson would have been had he been sustained at the heights he was capable of reaching. No one surpa.s.ses Emerson at his best; he is almost a great poet.

_The Chambered Nautilus._--Many think this Holmes's finest poem. It is taken from "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," 1858.

_Thought._--Helen Jackson is, perhaps, the most gifted of American women poets. Emily d.i.c.kinson is more imaginative, but her utter scorn of form in composition makes her work, unique as it is, less satisfying. Mrs.

Jackson was a favorite with Emerson, and he is said to have liked best among her poems this sonnet, "Thought."

_On a Bust of Dante._--Parsons, one of the best of American poets, is one of the most neglected. Stedman is inclined to think "On a Bust of Dante" the finest of American lyrics (see "The Nature of Poetry," 254).

_The Port of Skips._--In a recent review of American Literature in the London _Athaeneum_ occurs this sentence: "In point of power, workmans.h.i.+p, and feeling, among all poems written by Americans, we are inclined to give first place to the 'Port of s.h.i.+ps,' of Joaquin Miller."

_Evening Song._--No poem of Lanier is more free from his characteristic faults. One regrets that so much of his work, highly imaginative as it is, is marred by over-elaboration and artificiality.

_A Woman's Thought._--The striking reality and directness of this lyric, its immense emotional undercurrent, and its abrupt, almost gasping metre, admirably suited to the impa.s.sioned mood of the speaker,--these are a few of the qualities that combine to make "A Woman's Thought" one of the most remarkable poems in the book.

_The White Jessamine._--One of the most charming of Father Tabb's lyrics. The verse of this poet is uneven in merit. He is too p.r.o.ne to merely fanciful conceits. But at his best Tabb is imaginative, as, for example, in the lines where he says of Angelo that he--

"From the sterile womb of stone, Raised children unto G.o.d."

Always artistic, Tabb's verse usually suggests workmans.h.i.+p; it is more thoughtful than spontaneous. His religious poetry presents, in the main, a rather striking similarity to the work of George Herbert.

_The Battle-field._--Miss d.i.c.kinson has much of the witchcraft and subtlety of William Blake. Many verses of the shy recluse, whom Mr.

Higginson so happily has introduced to the world, are not only daring and unconventional, but recklessly defiant of form. But, as her editor has well said, "When a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence." Emily d.i.c.kinson had more than a message, more than the charm of unexpectedness, more than the gift of phrase,--she had (and of how many Americans can this be said?) an intense imagination.

_Fertility._--This selection appears in the collected poems of Maurice Thompson (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1892), under the t.i.tle of "A Prelude."

_Sesostris._--Of this poem Mr. Stoddard has the high praise that in imaginative quality it is unequalled in nineteenth century literature, unless by Leigh Hunt's sonnet on the Nile. The same critic does not scruple to declare of Mr. Mifflin that he has a "glorious imagination,"

and to prophesy for him a distinguished future. Seldom indeed has a first book of verse won such instant and universal appreciation as Mr.

Mifflin's volume of sonnets, just issued as the "American Treasury" goes to press.