Unaltered aisles that wait and wait forever,
O woods that gleam and stir in liquid gold,
What of your little lover who departed
Before the year grew old?
In addition to the winsome color and musical qualities of her earlier lyrical verse, we discover a refined spiritual quality in such a sonnet as The First Christmas, and a noble spiritualization of romantic love in her sonnet At Noon, beginning:—
Thou art my Tower in the sun at noon.
Katherine Hale’s long poem The White Comrade (1916) discloses notable gifts in blank verse and the power to make a dramatic picture that enthralls the mystical or religious imagination. Her rare gifts of delicate fancy, elfin enchantment from Nature and simple Orphean music, reminding us of Bliss Carman’s light lyrism, is finely exemplified in her spiritualized lyric I Used to Wear a Gown of Green, in which beauty and pathos are tenderly commingled:—
I used to wear a gown of green
And sing a song to May,
When apple blossoms starred the stream