"He gazed and gazed, and deeper still
The soft attachment grew,
And nearer to the charmful maid
His loving soul him drew."
And again, (p. 172;)
"Only pray I thee, whom first saint
In America God chose,
Grant that countless maids may rival
In my land thee, heavenly Rose!"
In a little translation entitled The Fisher's Wife we find a verse which will illustrate the desire we now express that the writer had husbanded his poetical ability, and allowed it to find expression in a lesser number of poems more carefully worded. He might then have given us a volume of some merit. We quote:
"'O horror and woe! now breaks my poor heart!
Out must I to gain relief!'
She cries, and rushes from out the house,
The mother in fear and grief.
"And silently drifts a corse to the shore
Strewn with trees and sedge and tan;
There lies he all naked on the black sand:
'O merciful God! my man!'"
With so many evidences of the author's acquaintance with the classic poets upon these pages, we are surprised to meet with such words as "bluey," "bleaky," "browny," and the like; together with elisions, as "'T" for "it," to begin a line; "need'd" for "needed;" and such unwarrantable extensions as giving three syllables to words like "Christian," "solely," etc. We feel so much pleased, however, with his modest introduction to the volume that we will allow him to speak here for himself: "That the book is very imperfect, I am fully convinced of; that it be but taken by another as a spur to elicit a more perfect one in illustration of a similar theme, is my earnest desire. The many and almost unceasing demands of a higher order have allowed me to bestow only a few 'tempora subseciva' on a work to which I would have gladly devoted day and night. As such it can hardly be anything else than deficient in many respects. Yet if I be the cause of giving to but one person the pleasure of a moment in perusing these pages, and still more, if one be thence inspired to send a whisper of love to the saintly beings carolled in them, I shall consider myself happy, and my labors more than sufficiently repaid."
The Two Roads,
Gabriel,
Martha,
Bread Of Forgiveness,
Flowers From Heaven,
Fragments Of Correspondence. P. O. Shea, Publisher, New York.
This is a series of beautiful stories, from the French, on the beatitudes. They are well translated, and published in good style.