Have you, for me that love you, thought or word?
Do I, with bud or bough, pass by your way;
With any breath of brier or note of bird?
If this I knew, though you be quick or dead,
All my sad life would I go comforted.
A Handful of Lavender shows the tendency of most young poets to affect the sonnet, a tendency laudable enough if one be a natural sonneteer. Miss Reese has many finely conceived and well-executed sonnets, but few that are unforgettably fine, as are many of her lyrics. That she recognizes wherein her surest power lies is obvious from the fact that, whereas A Handful of Lavender contains some thirty-two sonnets, A Quiet Road contains but twelve. Those of nature predominated in the former, nature for its own sake; but in the latter there is far less accent upon nature and more upon life.
They show in technique, also, Miss Reese’s firmer, surer touch and greater clarity. There are certain sonnets in A Handful of Lavender, such as “A Song of Separation,” and “Renunciation,” warmer in feeling than the later ones
and equal to them in manner; but in general the mechanism is much more apparent—one does occasionally see the wires, which is never the case in the later work.
“The Look of the Hedge,” or these lines called “Recompense,” will illustrate the ease and lucidity of her sonnets in A Quiet Road:
Sometimes, yea, often, I forget, forget;