Sweetest the strain when in the song
The singer has been lost.
“The Poet and the Poem,”—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, a celebrated American novelist, was born at Andover, Mass., August 13, 1844, and died in 1911. Among her many works are: “Ellen’s Idol,” “Gypsy Stories,” “Men, Women and Ghosts,” “Poetic Studies,” “The Story of Avis,” “Old Maid’s Paradise,” “Sealed Orders,” “Beyond the Gates,” “Songs of the Silent World,” “The Gates Between,” “A Struggle for Immortality,” “The Life of Christ,” “Trixy,” “Walled In,” and her most famous work, “Gates Ajar.”
Flowers are Love’s truest language.
“Sonnet,”—Park Benjamin.
Park Benjamin, a noted American journalist, poet, and lecturer, was born at Demerara, British Guiana, August 14, 1809 and died in New York, September 12, 1864. Among his poetical pieces are: “The Old Sexton,” “Poetry,” “Infatuation,” “The Nautilus,” “To One Beloved,” and “The Contemplation of Nature.”
Among living authors Haggard is unquestionably first. I find two very remarkable qualities in Mr. Haggard’s novels,—a power of imagination in which, for audacity and strength, he is unequalled since the Elizabethan dramatists. Secondly there is the mesmeric influence which he exercises over his readers.
—Walter Besant.
Sir Walter Besant, a distinguished English novelist, was born in Portsmouth, August 14, 1838, and died June 10, 1901. Among his noted works may be mentioned: “The Golden Butterfly,” “Ready Money Mortiboy,” “The Seamy Side,” “Studies in Early French Poetry,” “When George the Third Was King,” “The French Humorists,” “All Sorts and Conditions of Men,” “Dorothy Foster,” “All in a Garden Fair,” “The Ivory Gate,” “The Master Craftsman,” “Beyond the Dreams of Avarice,” “St. Katharine’s by the Tower,” “Armorel of Lyonnesse,” “The Rebel Queen,” etc. The first three works mentioned were written in collaboration with James Rice.
If on a Spring night, I went by
And God were standing there,
What is the prayer that I would cry
To Him? This is the prayer:
O Lord of Courage grave,
O Master of this night of Spring
Make firm in me a heart too brave
To ask Thee anything!