Of the eight remaining stanzas several are equally lacking in anything that may be grasped, and while there is a certain art in imaging the elusive fancies which the weavers bring, there should be some more definite fancy or ideal to embody, rather than the mere intent to make beautiful lines. This is, perhaps, an extreme instance of the over-elaboration of the first volume, though it distinguishes the long poem which gives its name to the collection, and appears in many of the lyrics.
Miss Peabody is an inventive metrist, and her sense of rhythm is highly developed, or
rather it is innately correct, being manifest with equal grace in the first collection; witness the music of these stanzas from “Spinning in April”:
Moon in heaven’s garden, among the clouds that wander,
Crescent moon so young to see, above the April ways,
Whiten, bloom not yet, not, yet, within the twilight yonder;
All my spinning is not done, for all the loitering days.
Oh, my heart has two wild wings that ever would be flying!