And go with the hour.
Like birds from the cote to the gales,
Abrupt—O hark!
A fleet of bells set sails,
And go to the dark.
Sudden the cold airs swing.
Alone, aloud,
A verse of bells takes wing
And flies with the cloud.
Mrs. Meynell was one of a group of contemporary Catholic poets of whom, it may be, Aline Kilmer is the most widely known and read in America. Of the others of that group I should like especially to mention two whose new books of verse have just appeared—Sister M. Madeleva, a nun in the congregation of the Holy Cross at Holy Rosary Academy, California, and Wilfred Rowland Childe, who is English. Sister M. Madeleva’s collection called Knights Errant contains verse highly spiritual in type, clear and strong in emotional expression, and admirable for the manner in which the author has adhered to subjects and thoughts strictly within the limits of her clearly defined experience. Mysticism is natural to these Catholic singers, and will be found strongly in Mr. Childe’s The Gothic Rose, a book of poems quite Gothic in spirit, sometimes wistful, sometimes marked with melancholy and obviously the outgrowth of a loving adoration. Although such poems as “The Dirge for Westminster” and “The Virgin of Flanders” are the body of The Gothic Rose, there is a range including an Oxford poem (“Idylle Oxonienne”), one or two classical subjects, such as “Daphne,” and the modern verse of “The Austrian River.”