When harsh necessity imprisons him in the city he sighs:
I think the sight of fields and shady lanes
Would ease my heart of pains.
But what contradictions poets have ever found in their experiences! The ministrants of joy but wring the cry of pain from the yearning heart. Lovely May is harder to endure, in exile, than gloomy December. The city’s discordant cries may be endured, bringing neither grief nor joy, while a bird’s carol may be exquisite torture:
The woodlark’s tender warbling lay,
Which flows with melting art,
Is but a trembling song of love
That serves to break my heart.
Musing on whatever scene, the poet’s thoughts are tinged with that sadness which to every sensitive nature has a sweetness in it:
The sun went down in beauty,
While I stood musing alone,
Stood watching the rushing river
And heard its restless moan;
Longings, vague, intenable,
So far from speech apart,
Like the endless rush of the river,
Went surging through my heart.
With no less sadness or beauty, and with that philosophy towards which poetry ever has a bias, our poet of dreams thus reflects, on watching the ephemera that dart with glimmering wings in keen delight where the breezes fling the sweets of May:
Creatures of gauze and velvet wings,
With a day of gleams and flowers,
Who knows—in the light of eternal things—
Your life is less than ours?
Weary at last, it is ours, like you,
When our brief day is done,
Folding our hands, to say adieu,
And pass with the setting sun.
One must say of George Marion McClellan: “Here is a finely touched spirit that responds deeply to the mystery and charm of mountains and starry skies, and that charm and mystery he is capable of expressing in stanzas of lyric beauty.” Every page of his book will confirm for the reader the estimate he may have formed from the quotations already given. Without rifling it of its choicest treasures I will put before the reader a few entire poems which I am sure will give increased delight on repeated readings: