But shall I not speak for the dumb, and lift up my sight for the blind?
I am kin to the least that inhabits the air, the waters, the clod;
They wist not what bond is between us, they know not the Indwelling God!
For under my hands alone the charactered Past hath He laid,
One moment to scan ere it fall like a scroll into ashes and fade!
Enough have I read to know and declare—my ways He willkeep,
If onward I go, or again in a fold of His garment I sleep!
There is no internal evidence in these strongly phrased and stirring lines that a woman’s hand penned them; their vigor, grasp,
and resonant freedom of measure would do credit to Browning; and here one may pause to observe the adaptability of Miss Thomas’ style to her thought. In certain poems demanding the delicate airy touch, such as, “Dew-Bells,” Titania herself could scarcely speak in lighter phrase, nor could a tenderer, sweeter note be infused into a poem than has been put into the lines: “The soul of the violet haunts me so,” or into the poem incident to the query, “Is it Spring again in Ohio?”—but when the thought demands virility of word and measure Miss Thomas has a vivid energy of style, masculine in its force. One may argue that there is no sex in poetry, that, coming close home for illustration, a woman’s hand might have fashioned the work of Longfellow and Whittier; but what of Lowell, Whitman, and Emerson? These names alone prove sex-evidence in art; nor is any disparagement meant to Longfellow and Whittier that their characteristic notes were of the gentler, sweeter sort. We know they could be sufficiently robust upon occasion, particularly the latter; but, in general, art obeys a temperamental polarity giving evidence of the masculine or feminine mind that produced it. Miss Thomas’ work in the main proves the woman, and the typical
woman, who has lived, suffered, joyed; drank, indeed, the brimming beaker from the foam to the lees; but on her more philosophical and intellectual side, in such poems as “The Voice of the Laws,” or “The Flutes of the Gods” and in many others, she has all a man’s virility. It is partly for this reason that her style is too varied to be identified by a random poem, the temperamental differences in the work are so marked, and the style changes so entirely with them, as to elude classification under one head.