Readings:--'A Quest,' 'The House of Death.' Sonnets: 'The New Day,' 'One Dread,' 'Afar,' 'Love's Empty House,' 'The Cup of Death,' 'Before the Shrine,' 'As in Vision,' 'Though We Were Dust,' 'Were but My Spirit Loosed Upon the Air,' 'The New Year Dawns,' 'Aspiration,' 'The Secret of Arcady,' 'Her Picture.' (The first two selections and first three sonnets are in 'Swallow Flights.' New edition of poems of 1877 with additional poems; the four following are in 'The Garden of Dreams'; and the four last sonnets and the other poems in 'At the Wind's Will.' Boston: Little, Brown & Co. $1.25 each. For general review of work see, also, 'The Poetry of Louise Chandler Moulton.' Contemporary Writer Series in Poet-lore. Vol. IV. New Series. Opening Number, 1900, pp. 114-125.)
Query for Discussion.--Is Mrs. Moulton too narrowly restricted to emotional themes and emotional means of expression for bounteous poetic cheer, or is the perfect alliance of her emotional range and workmanship the very source of her lyric excellence.
3. Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
Readings:--'Unsung,' 'Nameless Pain,' 'Quits,' 'Andromeda,' 'Baby Bell,' 'An Untimely Thought,' 'Bagatelle,' 'Palabras Carinosas,' 'On an Intaglio of Head of Minerva.' Sonnets: 'Books and Seasons,' 'The Poets,' 'On Reading William Watson's "The Purple East."' (In Poetical Works. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $2.00.)
Queries for Discussion.--Does Mr. Aldrich escape the usual penalty for laying emphasis on delicacy of finish so that the result is satisfying in its happy precision? Or does he seem cold and elaborately superficial? Does he, so to speak, carve cherry-stones oftener than he engraves cameos?
4. Louise Imogen Guiney.
Readings:--'Peter Rugg,' 'Open Time,' 'The Still of the Year,' 'Hylas,' 'The Kings,' Alexandrina, I, x, and xiii. 'The Martyr's Idyl,' 'Sanctuary,' 'Arboricide,' 'To the Outbound Republic,' 'The Perfect Hour,' 'Deo Optimo Maximo,' 'Borderlands.' (From 'A Roadside Harp' are selected the first five poems and the Alexandrina, from 'The Martyr's Idyl and Shorter Poems' the others. $1.00 each. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.)
Queries for Discussion.--Is Miss Guiney's scholasticism too dominant in her work? Does she lack human warmth? Or are her restraint and good taste the index of deeper feeling? Does her cultured thought and chaste concentrated power of expression lift her above the ranks of the minor poets?
5. Richard Hovey.<
Readings:--'Spring,' an Ode, 'The Wander-lovers.' 'Taliesin,' Second, Third, Movements. Sonnets: 'Love in the Winds,' 'After Business Hours,' Act V from 'The Marriage of Guenevere.' ('Spring' first published in Poet-lore, is included in 'Along the Trail' ($1.25), which also contains the sonnets here selected. 'Taliesin' also originally published in Poet-lore, Vol. VIII, old series, January, February, and June, 1896, pp. 1-14, 63-78, 292-306, is recently published in 1 vol. uniform with 'The Marriage of Guenevere' ($1.50). 'The Wander-lovers' appears in 'Vagabondia.' Boston: Small, Maynard & Co. A general review of Hovey's work will be the second of the 'Contemporary Writer Series' in next Poet-lore.)