Verse demands, as a rule, serious, if not exalted, themes. It is strange how ambitious they sometimes are. I knew a young man who had never been especially fond of poetry and had never attempted to write it, until, one day, he had an imperative desire to test his powers in that line. And what was the modest subject that the tyro chose? A history of the earth from its birth "amidst the crash of worlds," through the countless centuries until, cold and dry, it affords no sustenance to life, and becomes a vast desert like the moon. The poem came to an abrupt end after "monsters huge" had appeared upon the scene, and, to my knowledge, was never resumed.
Among the many who have advertised their bigotry or their ignorance by publishing original compositions, for which it would be hard to find any suitable descriptive term, are two women, one of whom is well known. They are Julia A. Moore, self-styled "The Sweet Singer of Michigan," whose works are included by Dr. Crothers in The Hundred Worst Books, and a Mrs. L., a native of Rhode Island, but "by adoption a westerner," as she explains in her introduction. If it were a question of which had the less poetic merit it would be hard indeed to decide between them, but as to the sincerity of the one and the pomposity of the other, there can be no doubt. The Sweet Singer plays upon the strings of her own heart in a way that makes your eyes grow dim. She has moments of modesty, too, about her work that are very gratifying. But Mrs. L. is cold and egotistical; lifted so high above the ordinary plane of life, in her estimation, that no arrows of criticism can possibly reach her. The introduction to her book Mariamne, Queen of the Jews, and Other Poems, is concise and statistical. One can see that she has perfect self-confidence in her abilities.
"The authoress is a native of Rhode Island, but by adoption a westerner.
"Graduated from the Female College, Oxford, Ohio, when under the control of the Rev. John Walter Scott, D.D.
"Married and lived thirteen wedded years in Covington, Kentucky. Then, urged by her only brother, Levi L., a lawyer residing at M., Illinois, she removed (1870) to that city. Here she engaged in arduous and unremitting study, laboring to deserve the esteem of the gifted and cultured people with whom she had cast her lot. With the same laudable ambition that moves the man of business to be identified as successful in his life career, the writer, whose only wealth is the acquisition of knowledge and the cultivation of an inherited gift, comes before the public in a pursuit that has ever proved the animating ally of education and good breeding and the strong cordon of social refinement."
Her first poem, Mariamne, Queen of the Jews, has a footnote which contains this interesting, if rather incomprehensible, sentence:
"The reader must take the production with its stamp of originality, which is the plainer synonym of afflatus or inspiration."
Undoubtedly she successfully diagnosed the case.
Two passages from this remarkable poem, which is her most ambitious effort, will bear quoting:
"The swooping winds across the spicery snare,
The aromatic smells of redolent wood,
Camphor, cinnamon, cassia, are incense there,
And the tall aloe soaring into the flood
Of pearlaceous moonlight stimulates the air
Which scarcely soughs, so heavy with vesper scents;
The calamus growing by the pond, did spare
A spicey breath, with sweet sebaceous drents
Of nard, and Jiled's balsamic tree, balm sweet,
Were all which filled this estival retreat."