With the immemorial throng—
Foil to the few and the splendid:
All’s done and well done—so ’long!
Yet, as we pass, we will pledge them—
The bold, and the bright, and the strong,
(Ours was never black envy):
All’s done and well done—so ’long!
Miss Thomas is very keen to see what may be termed the subjectively dramatic side of life,—all the subtlety of motive and impulse working out of sight to shape the destiny, she sees with acute divination; but constructively she lacks the dramatic touch. In “A Winter Swallow,” her one definite incursion into this field, it cannot be said that she has done such work as would represent her at her real value either in the literary beauty of the lines, or in the insight displayed in the characterization.
So short a dramatic effort, however, could scarcely do more than indicate the likelihood or unlikelihood of Miss Thomas’ success in a more sustained plot; and while a theme having in itself warmer elements of sympathy would doubtless create for itself a more moving and vital art, there is very little to indicate that the effort would be wisely spent. One is inclined more fully to this opinion by the lack of dramatic impulse in Miss Thomas’ narrative poem turning upon the story of Genevra of the Amieri, she who woke by night from the death-trance to find herself entombed in the powerful vault of
her ancestors, and, being spurned from her father’s and her husband’s doors, as a haunting spirit, took refuge at that of her former lover, to whom, being adjudged by the law as dead, she was reunited.