'Earnest' and 'thoughtful' have been the only adjectives to spare. Earnest and thoughtful! What verses, if otherwise, would deserve a
notice? Was there no more to say for poems overflowing with beauty, serene and calm, yet instinct with the fire of a proud, passionate
nature? . . . But neither keen eye nor sympathetic h(art makes a poet. ... A lyrical and dramatic power is needed, together with that sway over language which welds a fancy immutably into its own sentences. This last the author has in the highest degree: every word strikes home; every line is clear, distinct as if cut in stone ; the pen in her hands becomes so like the sculptor's chisel that one questions
if poetry be the fittest exponent of her genius. Her logical power is entirely beyond question, but the dramatic element is entirely wanting. ' ' "A Last Dream," the dream of an arctic hero—Kane—is characterized as a "wonderful poem, which climbs with strong and stately steps to the last line."
"The 'Hymn to the Sea' is full of felicitous phrasing, also rich in picturesque effects. That this Hymn loses no jot of its regal resonance in the presence of its subject, but interprets and is interpreted best there, is its highest praise. It is certainly the finest single piece among the poems, though 'Camille' (first published in the Atlantic, vol. i.) affects us more, from its warmer humanity and the better developed power it exhibits. There is no fault to be found with 'Camille.' It is the work of an artist. Its pathos is unsurpassed. . . . The keynote of this poem is struck most clearly in the fourth stanza: —
"'To swell some vast refrain beyond the sun,
The very weed breathed music from its sod:
And night and day, in ceaseless antiphon,
Rolled off throiigh windless arches in the broad
Abyss. Thou saw'st I too
Would in my place have blent accord as true,
And justified this great enshrining, God?
"The three chief faults of these poems are obscurity, lack of euphony, and defect of artistic polish." However, "there are no words woven to conceal the absence of thought: on the other hand, the line teems with more significance than it can express. . . . We ought in justice to say that the artist's soul is keenly represented, especially in the 'Five Sonnets Relating to Beauty,' most worthily so entitled. In these the love of beauty is a passion. ... In beauty is found the reconciliation of pain and joy, the riddle of the earth, the secret of the sea."
Referring to the sonnets entitled "Night" as "the heart of the book": "All through the preceding pages has run the golden cord on which the.se gay, many-colored beads are strung—a pure, high, and profound religious love. . . . A truth, never so keenly felt as at the present day, revolves in all its phrases here — the necessity of joy in faith, the quintessence of the text, 'Rejoice evermore.'"
Higher attainments in verse were looked for by Miss Whitney's friends, but, so far as the world knows, she had sung her last note. Her genius called her in another direction. A heap of wet sand in the greenhouse responded to a thought in her brain to which she at once sought to give visible form. The success of this attempt at modelling was so gratifying that she resolved to devote herself thenceforth to sculpture. For a long time, in the absence of teachers, she was self-taught.. Working at home in a studio in the garden, she made portrait busts of her father and mother and of several friends. Her first ideal work was a statue in marble of Lady Godiva of Coventry, a beautiful figure. Her next creation—during the period of the Civil War— was a symbolical work, "Africa," a colossal statue of a woman who has been sleeping for ages, and is now half-awakened by the tramp of armies, the roar of artillery, and the din of battle. In her look of startled wonder and hope, as with her right hand she shades her eyes from the too powerful light, is foreshadowed the deliverance of a race held in bondage, the illumination of a dark continent. Exhibited both in Boston and in New York, "it received," says Mrs. Livermore, "some intelligent and some extravagant praise, as did the Godiva, and also much criticism, which its author welcomed."
Not long after the production of a third statue, the "Lotos Eater," she carried out a long-cherished plan of going abroad. With her friend Miss Manning, devoted to another
