But ne’er hath proven so!
Old year, I love thee well,
And bid thee farewell with a sigh.
One who reads these poems with thoughtfulness must be impressed by a number of attributes which make them notable, and, in some respects, wholly unique. First of all is the absence of conventionality, coupled with skill in construction, in phrasing, in the compounding of words, in the application to old words of new or unusual but always logical meanings, in the maintenance of rhythm without monotony. Next is the absolute purity, with the sometimes archaic quality, of the English. It is the language of Shakespeare, of Marlowe, of Fletcher, of Jonson and Drayton, except that it presents Saxon words or Saxon prefixes which had already passed out of literary use in their time, while on the other hand it avoids nearly all the words derived directly from other languages that were habitually used by those great writers. There is rarely a word that is not of Anglo-Saxon or Norman birth. Nor are there any long words. All of these compositions are in words of one, two and three syllables, very seldom one of four—no “multitudinous seas incarnadine.” Among the hundreds of words of Patience Worth’s in this chapter there are only two of four syllables and less than fifty of three syllables. Fully 95 per cent of her works are in words of one and two syllables. In what other writing, ancient or modern, the Bible excepted, can this simplicity be found?
But the most impressive attribute of these poems is the weirdness of them, an intangible quality that defies definition or location, but which envelops and permeates all of them. One may look in vain through the works of the poets for anything with which to compare them. They are alike in the essential features of all poetry, and yet they are unalike. There is something in them that is not in other poetry. In the profusion of their metaphor there is an etherealness that more closely resembles Shelley, perhaps, than any other poet; but the beauty of Shelley’s poems is almost wholly in their diction: there is in him no profundity of thought. In these poems there is both beauty and depth—and something else.
THE PROSE
“Word meeteth word, and at touch o’ me, doth
spell to thee.”—Patience Worth.
Strictly speaking, there is no prose in the compositions of Patience Worth. That which I have here classified as prose, lacks none of the essential elements of poetry, except a continuity of rhythm. The rhythm is there, the iambic measure which she favors being fairly constant, but it is broken by sentences and groups of sentences that are not metrical, and while it would not be difficult to arrange most of this matter in verse form, I am inclined to think that to the majority it will read smoother and with greater ease as prose. Nevertheless, as will be seen, it is poetry. The diction is wholly of that order, and it is filled with strikingly vivid and agreeable imagery. There is, however, this distinction: most of the matter here classed as prose is dramatic in form and treatment, and each composition tells a story—a story with a definite and well-constructed plot, dealing with real and strongly individualized people, and mingling humor and pathos with much effectiveness. They bring at once a smile to the face and a tear to the eye. They differ, too, from the poetry, in that they have little or no apparent spiritual significance. They are stories, beautiful stories, unlike anything to be found in the literature of any country or any time, but, except in the shadowy figure of “The Stranger,” they do not rise above the things of earth. That is not to say, however, that they are not spiritual in the intellectual or emotional sense of the word, as distinguished from the soul relation.
At the end of an evening a year and a half after Patience began her work, she said: “Thy hearth is bright. I fain would knit beside its glow and spinn a wordy tale betimes.”