The lowliest the loftiest sustains.
A silence, by no breath of utterance stirred—
Virginity in motherhood—remains,
Clear, midst a cloud of all-pervading sin,
The voice of Love’s unutterable word.
[JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE.]
In this age of rondeaus and other feats in rhyme, it is pleasant to meet with a little book that abhors all verse tricks of the fin-de-siècle poets, and judiciously follows the old masters. Such a little book peeps at me from a corner in my library, marked in capitals, “Poems Worth Reading.” It was given to me years ago by its author, and as a remembrance, a few lines from the poem that appealed most to my intellect in those days, was written on its fly-leaf. It was its author’s first book, and was put forth with that shrinking modesty that has heralded all meritorious work. Of preface, that relic of egotism, there was none.