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(_Rising, with anguish._)
Did Laura come to me out of the night-- Come as the first voice breaking beyond death To one despairing?
And was I lifted up to Heaven's dawn?
And then ...
(_Reels._)
G.o.d! am I falling...? shall I ever...?
Down this...? ... My friend stay with me!
No, go ... and take them with you--Sancia--all!...
I have slain the Spring forever!
The green of the whole fair world!... O Laura! Laura!
(_Sinks down on the couch and buries his face in his arms. LELLO goes sorrowfully out._)
THE END.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
PORZIA
By
CALE YOUNG RICE
"It presents a last phase of the Renaissance with great effect." _Sir Sidney Lee._
"'Porzia' is a very romantic and beautiful thing. After a third reading I enjoy and admire it still more." _Gilbert Murray._
"There are certain lyrical qualities in the dramas of Cale Young Rice and certain dramatic qualities in many of his finest lyrics that make it very difficult for the critic to resolve whether he is highest as singer or dramatist. 'Porzia' is a poetic play in which these two gifts blend with subtle and powerful effectiveness. It is not written in stereotyped heroic verse, but in sensitive metrical lines that vary in beat and measure with the strength, the tenderness, the anguish, bitterness and pa.s.sion of love or hate they have to express. The bizarre and poignant central incident on which the action of 'Porzia' turns is such as would have appealed irresistibly to the imagination and dramatic instincts of the great Elizabethan dramatists, and Mr. Rice has developed it with a force and imaginative beauty that they alone could have equaled and with a restraint and delicacy of touch which makes pitiful and beautiful a story they would have clothed in horror.... He turns what might have been a tragic close to something that is loftier and more moving.... It matters little that we hesitate between ranking Mr. Rice highest as dramatist or lyrist; what matters is that he has the faculty divine beyond any living poet of America; his inspiration is true, and his poetry is the real thing." _The London Bookman._
"'Porzia' has the swift human movement which Mr. Rice puts into his dramas, and technique of a very high order.... The dramatic form is the most difficult to sustain harmoniously and this Mr. Rice always achieves." _The Baltimore News._
"To the making of 'Porzia' Mr. Rice has summoned all the resources of his dramatic skill. On the constructive side it is particularly strong.... The opening scene is certainly one of the happiest Mr. Rice has written, while the climaxing third act is a brilliant piece of character study.... The play is rich in poetry;... in it Mr. Rice has scored another success ... in a field where work of permanent value is rarely achieved." _Albert S. Henry (The Book News Monthly)._
"Mr. Rice apes neither the high-flown style of the Elizabethans, nor the turgid and cryptic style of Browning.... 'Porzia' should attract the praise of all who wish to see real literature written in this country again." _The Covington (Ky.) Post._
"The complete mastery of technique, the dignity and dramatic force of the characters, the beauty of the language and clear directness of the style together with the vivid imagination needed to portray so strikingly the renaissance spirit and atmosphere, make the work one that should last." _The Springfield (Ma.s.s.) Homestead._
"It is not unjust to say that Cale Young Rice holds in America the position that Stephen Phillips holds in England." _The Scotsman (Edinburgh)._
"Had no other poetic drama than this been written in America, there would be hope for the future of poetry on the stage." _John G. Neihardt (The Minneapolis Journal)._
FAR QUESTS
CALE YOUNG RICE
"The countrymen of Cale Young Rice apparently regard him as the equal of the great American poets of the past. _Far Quests_ is good unquestionably. It shows a wide range of thought, and sympathy, and real skill in workmans.h.i.+p, while occasionally it rises to heights of simplicity and truth, that suggest such inspiration as should mean lasting fame."--_The Daily Telegraph (London)._
"Mr. Rice's lyrics are deeply impressive. A large number are complete and full-blooded works of art."--_Prof. Wm. Lyon Phelps (Yale University)._
"_Far Quests_ contains much beautiful work--the work of a real poet in imagination and achievement."--_Prof. J. W. Mackail (Oxford University)._
"Mr. Rice is determined to get away from local or national limitations and be at whatever cost universal.... These poems are always animated by a force and freshness of feeling rare in work of such high virtuosity."--_The Scotsman (Edinburgh)._
"Mr. Cale Young Rice is acknowledged by his countrymen to be one of their great poets. There is great charm in his nature songs (of this volume) and in his songs of the East. Mr. Rice writes with great simplicity and beauty."--_The Sphere (London)._
"Mr. Rice's forte is poetic drama. Yet in the act of saying this the critic is confronted by such poems as _The Mystic_.... These are the poems of a thinker, a man of large horizons, an optimist profoundly impressed with the pathos of man's quest for happiness in all lands."--_The Chicago Record-Herald._
"Mr. Rice's latest volume shows no diminuition of poetic power.
Fecundity is a mark of the genuine poet, and a glance through these pages will demonstrate how rich Mr. Rice is in vitality and variety of thought.... There is too, the unmistakable quality of style. It is spontaneous, flexible, and strong with the strength of simplicity--a style of rare distinction."--_Albert S. Henry, (The Book News Monthly, Philadelphia)._
THE IMMORTAL LURE
CALE YOUNG RICE
It is great art--with great vitality. _James Lane Allen._
In the midst of the Spring rush there arrives one book for which all else is pushed aside.... We have been educated to the belief that a man must be long dead before he can be enrolled with the great ones. Let us forget this cruel teaching.... This volume contains four poetic dramas all different in setting, and all so beautiful that we cannot choose one more perfect than another.... Too extravagant praise cannot be given Mr.
Rice. _The San Francisco Call._
Four brief dramas, different from Paola & Francesca, but excelling it--or any other of Mr. Phillips's work, it is safe to say--in a vivid presentment of a supreme moment in the lives of the characters.... They form excellent examples of the range of Mr. Rice's genius in this field.
_The New York Times Review._
Mr. Rice is quite the most ambitious, and most distinguished of contemporary poetic dramatists in America. _The Boston Transcript (W.
S. Braithwaite.)_
The vigor and originality of Mr. Rice's work never outweigh that first qualification, beauty.... No American writer has so enriched the body of our poetic literature in the past few years. _The New Orleans Picayune._
Mr. Rice is beyond doubt the most distinguished poetic dramatist America has yet produced. _The Detroit Free Press._
