The

It is among the dii minores that we discover a large proportion of our choicer verse. glory of these lesser singers, when at their best, outshines all but the brightest effulgence of their superiors. Particularly in their scenic song do we repeatedly meet most glowing passages; and it may not be amiss to here renew our acquaintance with certain of them. The poetry of America does not suffer in the hands of such men as Gallagher on shore, and Sargent on the sea. For instance, the opening of "Miami Woods," by the former author:

"The Autumn time is with us! Its approach
Was heralded, not many days ago,

By hazy skies that veiled the brazen sun,
And sea-like murmurs from the rustling corn,
And low-voiced brooks that wandered drowsily
By purpling clusters of the juicy grape,
Swinging upon the vine. And now, 'tis here,
And what a change hath passed upon the face
Of Nature, where the waving forest spreads,
Then robed in deepest green! All through the
night

The subtle frost hath plied its mystic art;
And in the day the golden sun hath wrought
True wonders; and the winds of morn and even
Have touched with magic breath the changing leaves.
And now, as wanders the dilating eye
Athwart the varied landscape, circling far,
What gorgeousness, what blazonry, what pomp
Of colors, burst upon the ravished sight!
Here, where the maple rears its yellow crest,
A golden glory; yonder, where the oak
Stands monarch of the forest, and the ash
Is girt with flame-like parasite, and broad
The dogwood spreads beneath, a rolling field
Of deepest crimson; and afar, where looms
The gnarled gum, a cloud of bloodiest red."

Again, from the "Falls of a Forest Stream," by another Western poet. Would that the mightier never wrote after a lesser fashion:

"O'er all there broods repose; the breeze Lingers as it goes past;

The squirrel's foot sounds loud among
The leaves by Autumn cast;

And the lonely bird, whose glancing wing
Flits restlessly among

The boughs, stops doubtfully, and checks The sudden burst of song.

"And silently, year after year

Is ushered in and goes,

And time, amid these quiet scenes, No other measure knows

But the wakening and the sleep of birds,
The dawn and shut of day,

And the changes of the forest leaves,
From budding to decay.

"The wilderness is still; the long,

Long sleep of ages gone,

With its unmoving presence fills

These distant shades and lone; And changing dynasties, and thrones Cast down, send hither brief And fainter echoes than the fall

Of Autumn's faded leaf."

Such poets are not rare among us; their song, though wafted to no great distance, come fresh and fragrant as the very forest. But we have promised ourselves to devote this paper to the female poets. Maria Gowen, better known as Maria Brooks, and perhaps better still as Maria dell' Occidente, has been dead about thirty-five years. How many of the present generation are aware that this, their country woman, was pronounced by Southey to be "the most impassioned and imaginative of all poetesses." Mrs. Browning has since put England in a position to dispute the title with us; but the star of our own poetess is burning still. Beautiful throughout her being, in soul, mind, and body, gifted with those high and mysterious powers that so rarely take up their abode in the flesh, Maria Brooks must be remembered as one of the most wonderful of American women. A life of sorrow is too often the price of unusual endowments, and this suffering one paid it in full. At the age of fourteen, she was betrothed to a Boston merchant. We have not the space to give her after history. The reader may learn enough from these four stanzas, direct from her own heart:

"The bard has sung, God never formed a soul Without its own peculiar mate, to meet

Its wandering half, when ripe to crown the whole Bright plan of bliss, most heavenly, most complete.

"But thousand evil things there are that hate To look on happiness; these hurt, impede, And, leagued with time, space, circumstance, and fate,

Keep kindred heart from heart, to pine, and pant, and bleed.

"And as the dove to far Palmyra flying,

From where her native founts of Antioch beam, Weary, exhausted, longing, panting, sighing,

Lights sadly at the desert's bitter stream

"So many a soul, on life's drear desert faring, Love's pure, congenial spring unfound, unquaffed, Suffers, recoils; then, thirsty and despairing

Of what it would, descends, and sips the nearest draught."

Who would know whence comes the truly fearful passion of this author, let him read that strange romance, "Idomen, or the Vale of Yumuri;” then he will be prepared to take up her master-piece, "Zophiel, or the Bride of Seven." We shall not attempt a review of this poem, a marvelous mingling of the human and preterhuman, rich in all the colors of the Orient. Its sweep is all too wide, its passion too subtile, its language too luxurious, for any but the true lover of poetry. The reader can do no better than to study it as an entirety. We glance at the heroine, Egla, a Hebress, and pass on:

"He who beheld her hand forgot her faceYet in that face was all beside forgot; And he who, as she went, beheld her pace

And locks profuse, had said, 'Nay, turn thee not.'

Placed on a banquet couch beside the king,

'Mid many a sparkling guest, no eye forbore; But like their darts, the warrior princes fling, Such looks as seem'd to pierce, and scan her o'er and o'er;

Nor met alone the glare of lip and eye-

Charms, but not rare; the gazer, stern and cool, Who sought but faults, nor fault or spot could spy; In every limb, joint, vein, the maid was beautiful, Save that her lip, like some bud-bursting flower,

Just scorned the bounds of symmetry, perchance, But by its rashness gained an added power,

Heightening perfection to luxuriance.

But that was only when she smiled, and when
Dissolved the intense expression of her eye;
And had her spirit-love first seen her then,
He had not doubted her mortality."

Passion is ever varying with this writer, and each change brings unexpected charm. The thought is always high and pure, and the diction forcible. Mrs. Brooks lived for a considerable time in Cuba, and there wrote perhaps the better part of her poetry. There, too, she was destined to die. Her farewell to this land of "dark-eyed daughters" comes to us with peculiar tenderness:

"Alas! I fear my native snows

A clime too cold, a heart too warmAlternate chills, alternate glows,

Too fiercely threat my flower-like form.

"The orange tree has fruits and flowers;
The grendilla, in its bloom,
Hangs o'er its high, luxuriant bowers,
Like fringes from a Tyrian loom.
"When the white coffee blossoms swell,

The fair moon full, the evening long,

I love to hear the warbling bell,
And sunburnt peasant's wayward song.
"Drive gently on, dark muleteer,

And the light seguidilla frame,
Fain would I listen still to hear

At every close thy mistress' name.
"Adieu, fair isle! The waving palm

Is penciled on the purest sky;
Warm sleeps the bay, the air is balm,

And, soothed to langour, scarce a sigh
"Escapes for those I love so well,

For those I've loved and left so long;
On me their fondest musings dwell,

To them alone my sighs belong.
"On, on, my bark! Blow, southern breeze!
No longer would I lingering stay;
'Twere better far to die with these

Than live in pleasure far away."

More familiar to American readers are the writings of Elizabeth Oakes-Smith. "The Sinless Child" and "The Acorn" have given this author a popularity that her other poems, though as perfect in their way, could not have secured. Passion is not the first element one meets as one reads her little volume of verse. We the rather seek such words as hight, purity, the command of an exalted self, with which to picture the impression received. There is certainly power; but the fire that leaped along the lines of Maria Brooks is here a calm, tempered light, never dazzling, but always beautiful. It is the halo that surrounds the philosopher, the true thinker, trusting not only to the mind, but to the soul, to lead the way to truth. Inlellectual as she is, the motto of Mrs. Smith is, "Instinct before intellect." This theory underlies the sweetness of "The Sinless Child," and we find it constantly recurring in all the varied writings of this pattern authoress. Poems, essays, novels, all reveal the same strong reliance upon the inner sense to perceive the true and the beautiful.

"The Infinite speaks in our silent hearts,

And draws our being to Himself, as deep Calleth unto deep. He, who all thought imparts, Demands the pledge, the bond of soul to keep; But reason, wandering from its fount afar, And stooping downward, breaks the subtile chain That binds it to itself, like star to star,

And sun to sun, upward to God again.

Doubt, once confirmed, tolls the dead spirit's knell,
And man is but a clod of earth, to die
Like the poor beast that in his shambles fell-
More miserable doom than that to lie

In trembling torture, like believing ghosts,
Who, though divorced from good, bow to the Lord
of Hosts."

The same voice is again heard in the sonnet, "Mental Solitude." Various as are the vehicles

in which the genius of this author is carried to the world, we find none more suitable than the sonnet. The sonnet is, naturally, less used than those forms of verse where the writer is free from the restraint it imposes.

Genius, however, has been pleased to lock it choicest treasures in the sonnet, from Dante down. May be it will, one day, again be fashionable to read it. We shall not speak so much of Mrs. Smith's familiar poems, preferring to ask the reader's attention to those somewhat neglected. None

can fail to recognize the music of the upper air in the sonnet of the "Wayfarers:"

"Earth careth for her own. The fox lies down
In her warm bosom, and it asks no more.
The bird, content, broods in its lowly nest,
Or, its fine essence stirred, with wing outflown,
Circles in airy rounds to Heaven's own door,

And folds again its plume upon her breast.
Ye, too, for whom her palaces arise,

Whose Tyrian vestments sweep the kindred ground, Whose golden chalice Ivy - Bacchus dies, She, kindly mother, liveth in your eyes,

And no strange anguish may your lives astound.

But ye, O pale, lone watchers for the true,

She knoweth not. In her ye have not found Place for your stricken heads, wet with the midnight dew."

No

In her dramas we believe Mrs. Smith to be at her hight. The student cannot but rejoice in them. The writer does not recall one "pretty" line in these writings; and when it is remembered that the author is a woman, the statement assumes somewhat of importance. sparkle, no shimmer, no butterfly grace or spinning of cobwebs, but sober visions from the depths of thought. The poet looks in the face of her fellow creatures, and puts the one question, "What does it all mean?" She is ever searching, and the results of her inquiry are embodied in language worthy of the subject. Her peculiar cast of mind is strikingly exhibited in the little poem entitled "Presages:"

"There are who from their cradle bear
The impress of a grief.

Deep, mystic eyes, and forehead fair,
And looks that ask relief;
The shadows of a coming doom,
Of sorrow, and of strife,

Where Fates conflicting round the loom,
Wove the sad web of life.

"And others come, the gladsome ones, All shadowless and gay,

Like sweet surprise of April suns,
Or music gone astray;
Arrested, half in doubt we turn
To catch another sight,

So strangely rare it is to learn
A presage of delight."

The reader may have read the "Ministering Spirits;" if so, he is asked to read it again:

"White-winged angels meet the child
On the vestibule of life,

And they offer to his lips

All that cup of mingled strife;
Mingled drops of smiles and tears,
Human hopes, and human fears,
Joy and sorrow, love and woe,
Which the future heart must know.
"Sad the smile the spirits wear,

Sad the fanning of their wings,
As in their exceeding love

Each a cup of promise brings;
In the coming strife and care,
They have promised to be there;
Bowed by weariness or grief,
They will minister relief.
"Lady, could the infant look

In that deep and bitter cup,
All its hidden perils know,

Would it quaff life's waters up?
Lady, yes, for in the vase,

Upward beams an angel face;

Deep and anguished though the sigh,
There is comfort lurking nigh-

Times of joy, and times of woe,

Each an angel presence know."

The poems of Mrs. Smith are addressed mainly to humanity, but Nature now and then receives a worthy tribute. A poem of Nature is selected for the closing quotation. The human element will intrude; and, after all, becomes, perhaps, the prominent feature:

"THE FIRST LEAF OF AUTUMN.

"I see thee fall, thou quivering leaf, of faint and yellow hue,

The first to feel the Autumn winds, that, blighting, o'er thee blew.

Slow-parted from the rocking branch, I see thee floating by,

To brave, all desolate and lone, the bleak autumnal sky.

"Alas! the first, the yellow leaf-how sadly falls it there,

To rustle on the crispèd grass, with every chilly air! It tells of those that soon must drop all withered from the tree,

And it hath waked a sadder chord in deathless memory.

"Thou eddying leaf, away, away, there's sorrow in thy hue;

Thou soundst the knell of sunny hours, of birds, and

liquid dew,

And thou dost tell how from the heart the blooms of hope decay

How each one lingers, loath to part, till all are swept

away."

A charming singer is Sarah Helen Whitman. She is filled with sweet sounds, and pours them

forth as naturally as the bird. She has not the harmony of either of her sisters-in-song before mentioned; but she has their melody, and more. Not that she is over light- she is, on the other hand, thoughtful, though we may not say profound. She could write the "Ballads of the Fairies," and she could also write the "Hours of Life." She is a student, a genuine lover of her art; and what she touches she does not leave until it is finished. Whether her theme be lofty or low, the words follow one another like the strokes of a bell in the interpretation of her thought. She is a lyrist. Her instrument is the lyre, but she can also wake the grander voices of the organ. The arbutus itself is not more delicate than her description of it:

t

"There's a flower that grows by the greenwood tree, In its desolate beauty, more dear to me Than all that bask in the noontide beam,

Through the long, bright summer, by forest and stream.

Like a pure hope, nursed beneath Sorrow's wing,
Its timid buds from the cold moss spring,
Their delicate hues like the pink sea-shell,
Or the shaded blush of the hyacinth's bell,
Their breath more sweet than the faint perfume
That breathes from the bridal orange-bloom.

It is not found by the garden wall,

It wreathes no brow in the festal hall,

But it dwells in the depths of the shadowy wood,
And shines, like a star, in the solitude.
Never did numbers its name prolong,
Ne'er hath it floated on wings of song,
Bard and minstrel have passed it by,
And left it, in silence and shade, to die-
But with joy to its cradle the wild-bees come,
And praise its beauty with drowsy hum,
And children love, in the season of Spring,
To watch for its earliest blossoming."

Mrs. Whitman is always happy in her poems of Nature, endowing them usually with a human interest.

"No foliage droops o'er the woodpath now,
No dark vines swinging from bough to bough;
But a trembling shadow of silvery green
Falls through the young leaf's tender screen,
Like the hue that borders the snowdrop's bell,
Or lines the lid of an Indian shell.
And a fairy light, like the firefly's glow,
Flickers and fades on the grass below."

The description is continued with like exquisiteness of thought and diction; but the poem is not finished without these lines that fasten it to the heart:

"Yet sad would the spring-time of Nature seem
To the soul that wanders 'mid life's dark dream,
Its glory a meteor that sweeps the sky,
A blossom that floats on the storm-wind by,

If it woke no thought of that starry clime
That lies on the desolate shores of Time,
If it nurtured no delicate flowers to blow
On the hills where the palm and the amaranth grow."
With all our author's cheerfulness, the melan-
choly that will overlie the life of the sweetest
singer has settled upon her own. The struggle
to free herself from this shadow gave birth to
her finest poem, "Hours of Life." Mrs. Whit-
man is not only gifted, but learned, and in this
voyage of the soul from darkness into light,
erudition is admirably mated with poetic skill.
The following few lines may prove acceptable,
though they convey but an imperfect idea of
the complete poem:

"In the long noon-tide of my sorrow
I questioned of the eternal morrow;
I gazed in sullen awe

Far through the illimitable gloom
Down, deepening like the swift maelstrom,
The doubting soul to draw
Into eternal solitudes,

Where unrelenting silence broods
Around the throne of Law.

"I questioned the dim chronicles Of ages gone before,

I listened for the triumph songs

That rang from shore to shore Where the heroes and the conquerers wrought The mighty deeds of yore, Where the foot-prints of the martyrs Had bathed the earth in gore, And the war-horns of the warriors

Were heard from shore to shore."

The search is continued in the legendary haunts of many a land; when "wearied with man's discordant creed," the poet turns to Nature:

"A holy light began to stream

Athwart the cloud-rifts, like a dream

Of heaven; and lo! a pale, sweet face,
Of mournful grandeur and imperial grace-
A face whose mystic sadness seemed to borrow
Immortal beauty from that mortal sorrow-
Looked on me, and a voice of solemn cheer
Uttered its sweet evangels on my ear.

"Royally the lilies grow

On the grassy leas, Basking in the sun and dew Swinging in the breeze.

"Doth the wild fowl need a chart

Through the illimitable air? Heaven lies folded in my heart;

Seek the truth that slumbers thereThou art Truth's eternal heir. "Let the shadows come and go, Let the stormy north wind blow, Death's dark valley cannot bind thee In its dread abode;

There are many of our female poets of whom we should speak; but anything like a complete review of this division of our subject would carry us far beyond the line allotted.

The South has furnished her quota of women illustrious in prose and verse. Susan Archer Talley, Amelia B. Welby, Catherine Anne Warfield, Anna Peyre Dinnies, L. Virginia French, Rosa Vestner Johnson-all these are bright names. Miss Talley, a true descendant of the Huguenots, with a nature free as the winds and waters that were the playmates of her childhood, is a writer of decided character and merit. In one particular, she stands alone. Early in life she lost her hearing; and yet the music of her verse is such as satisfies the most sensitive ear. Shut out from the world, she turned within herself, and created a world of her own. Literature and the arts became daily sustenance; and her

works thereafter attest a richness of intellectual and spiritual growth that is its own reward. "Ennerslie" is a poem, come from what source it may; but, from one hindered by so vital an infirmity as that of Miss Talley, it is indeed a triumph. Not only in the weirdness of the story, but in the harmony of its numbers, it rivals the creations of that master-artist, Edgar

A. Poe. Two stanzas will suffice for illustration:

"Yet in that tower is a room

From whose fretted oaken dome
Weird faces peer athwart the gloom,
Mockingly-mockingly!

And there, beside the taper's gleam,
That maketh darkness darker seem,
As one that waketh in a dream,
Sits the lord of Ennerslie.

"Sitteth in his carvèd chair

From his forehead, pale and fair, Falleth down the raven hair, '

Heavily-heavily;

There is no color in his cheek,
His lip is pale-he doth not speak—
And rarely doth his footstep break
The stillness of grim Ennerslie."

The critics are divided concerning the claim of Mrs. Welby. Poe declares that "she has nearly all the imagination of Maria dell' Occidente, with a more refined taste; and nearly all the passion of Mrs. Norton, with a nicer ear, and, what is surprising, equal art. Very few American poets are at all comparable with her, in the true poetic sense." This we believe to be the one extreme, and as far from the truth as the converse opinion that she is a happy compound of music and fancy. There was nothing in the life of this joyful woman to call up the passion that suffering awoke in the darkened heart of Mrs. Norton; neither could her nature have been as sensitive at the beginning. Passion and imagination do not strike us as characteristics of Mrs. Welby's poetry; but in native grace, spontaneous thought, and simplicity of diction, she stands on a level with the best of our authoresses. Her "Musings" is, in our estimation, not only an excellent exhibition of the author's peculiarity of genius, but a master production of its kind. Having read this poem, the reader is at once satisfied that the writer might accomplish much in other directions. The first two and last two stanzas must suffice for our quotation:

"I wandered out one summer night,
'Twas when my years were few,
The wind was singing in the light,
And I was singing, too.

The sunshine lay upon the hill,
The shadow in the vale,