Mr. Cawein's new volume has the general characteristics of its predecessors—the cloying imagery and the verbal trickery; but we hear at times a stronger note than he has been wont to sound,—a graver, if a no less passionate, strain. There is still too much of this sort of thing:
"Fly out with flirt and fluting—
As flies a falling-star
From flaming star-beds shooting,
From where the roses are,"
but there are also verses like these:
"Once when the morning on the curling breakers,
Along the foaming sand,
Flashed expectation, by the ocean's acres,
Love took command.
"And so we sailed, Æolian music melting
Around our silken sails;
The bubbled foam our prow of sandal pelting
With rainbow gales."
Mr. Cawein's Muse, in her less exuberant moods, gives promise of excellent things.
One does not expect very much from undergraduate college verse. "Under the Scarlet and Black" is perhaps deserving of a word of mention as the first book of verse that has yet hailed from a Western college, for the collection comes to us from Grinnell, Iowa. The honors of the volume are borne off by Miss Mary Bowen and Miss Bertha Booth (both of this year's class), and, after some hesitation, we select a piece by the former writer—a sonnet "To Emily Dickinson":
"A harp Æolian on a lonely sill
Was placed to feel the subtle wind's soft touch.
Perhaps its strains were burdened overmuch
With Nature's sadness and her discords; still,
Responsive to its master's touchless thrill,
It told the clover's whisper to the breeze,
The wordless plaint of wind-swept winter trees,
With melody unknown to human skill.
So in the quiet of a life apart
From other lives, their passion and their pain,
The hand of Nature touched thy tunéd heart,
And, lo, thou utterest in simple strain
A song too thought-rich for a fettered art,
Yet bearing ever Nature's sad refrain."
Professor Newton M. Hall introduces the volume with a brief sketch of journalism in Iowa College.
We have hardly found anything as good as the above sonnet in "Cap and Gown," although Mr. J. L. Harrison, the editor, has chosen his contents from some forty college papers. Most of his pieces are love lyrics of a somewhat callow sort, written in the exotic verse-forms that seem so easy, yet in which real success is reached only by the masters. The verses to "Eleanor," by Mr. J. H. Boynton, are perhaps as successful as anything in the collection.
"I do not think she loves me yet,
Her glance meets mine direct and free;
Its very sweetness seems to set
A bar between herself and me.
"I never touched her lips with mine,
I dare not dream I ever may;
Still when I come her eyes will shine,
And soften when I go away.
"Some hours I cannot well forget,
Perhaps she may remember too.
I knew I loved her when we met,
She never seemed as others do.
"I loved to watch her flushing cheek,
Her soft hair carelessly astray,
To see her smile, to hear her speak,
And still have loved her every day.
"I do not think she loves me yet,
I dare not think she ever may;
I know I loved her when we met,
And still have loved her every day."
The binding of this volume, with its hydrangea-decorated covers, is original and exquisite enough to call for a special word of praise.
The title-page of "Under King Constantine " gives us no author's name, but we understand the authorship of the book has been acknowledged by Mrs. Spencer Trask. Mrs. Trask has undertaken the hazardous experiment of writing Arthurian idyls, and her little volume comprises three such poems—narratives expanded from hints in Malory. A passage describing the vision of the Grail will show the character of the verse:
"One night at midnight came the ray again,
And with it came a strange expectancy
Of spirit as the light waxed radiant.
The cell was filled with spicy odours sweet,
And on the midnight stillness song was borne
As sweet as heaven's harmony—the words—
The same Sir Launcelot had heard of old—
'Honour and joy be to the Father of Heaven.'
With wide eyes searching his lone cell for cause
He waited: as the ray became more clear
And more effulgent than the mid-day sun,
He trembled with that chill of mortal flesh
Beholding spiritual things. At last—
Now vaguely as though veiled by light, and then
With shining clearness, perfectly—he saw
The sight unspeakable, transcending words."
The purpose of Mrs. Trask's verse is serious and sincere, but the execution is amateurish, and an extremely qualified praise is all that can be given the volume.
Mr. Richard Hovey's "Seaward" is an elegy, in forty-five seven-line stanzas, upon the late Thomas William Parsons. It is elaborate in construction and extremely discursive in treatment. We quote one of the stanzas:
"But who is this that from the mightier shades
Emerges, seeing whose sacred laureate hair
Thou startest forward trembling through the glades,
Advancing upturned palms of filial prayer?
Long hast thou served him; now, of lineament
Not stern but strenuous still, thy pious care
He comes to guerdon. Art though not content?"
One of Mr. Hovey's notes obligingly informs us that the reference of this passage is to Dante. A study of Parsons, reprinted from "The Atlantic Monthly," serves, with the notes, to thicken the booklet into what may be called a volume.
Professor William Hyde Appleton, of Swarthmore College, has made and annotated a collection of translated passages of Greek poetry, naming the volume "Greek Poets in English Verse," and sup-
