O dusk, you brown cocoon,
Release your moth, the moon,
Ah, since that night
When to her window, she came forth as light,
Have I been Beauty’s acolyte;
and there are many other striking lines. In The Visionary a poet steals the pennies on a dead man’s eyes to buy himself bread, and, after his death, the money denied him in life is in turn placed on his sightless eyes. It is irony of the bitterest sort. Late January is an excellent landscape—interpretive rather than descriptive. Scarlet—White is struck at the double standard, and is a strong and powerful utterance. April, Canzonette, Lady of the Titian Hair are exquisite and charming lyrics. Three graceful compositions are The Heart-Cry of the Celtic Maid, Tarantella and Song for a Rose. The Ugly Woman will cause discussion, but it is good art. The trio of Spring Songs and Her Room are well nigh perfect. Mary’s Quest is very tender, as is also the Twilight Lullaby. The Leopard, Fantasy of Dusk and Dawn, The Forest of the Sky are wonderfully imaginative, and were written in Chicago,—in the grime and barrenness of Halsted Street. There is a poignant thing of five lines, a mother who is going blind over the death of a son. Her despair is hopeless and tragic—she makes a true and awful picture of realism in her grief. Heroes treats of the nameless heroes, daily met and overlooked. The love poems are sincere as all love poems must be. In Foreboding the note of sadness is emphatic—almost dominant; but there is more than mere sadness in it; it is not a minor note. It is tragedy, really, that speaks in such poetry:
Her cold and rigid hands
Will be as iron bands
Around her lover’s heart;
and