emerald, pearl and gold; he is drowned in a sea of musk, aloes, tiger-lilies, spice, soft music, orchids, attar-breathing dusks. There is no real air in these verses; it is Nature as conceived by a poet reading the Arabian Nights in a hot-house. In company with Stoddard and Taylor, he dwelt in a literary Orientalism (Stoddard's Book of the East followed fast upon Taylor's Poems of the Orient)—and Aldrich's Cloth of Gold was suffused with similar vanilla-flavored adjectives and patchouli-scented participles" (to quote Holmes), laboring hard to create an exotic atmosphere by a wearisome profusion of lotus blossoms, sandalwood, spikenard, blown roses, diaphanous gauzes, etc. The second phase of Aldrich's art is more human in appeal as it is surer in artistry. He learned to sharpen his images, to fashion his smallest lyrics with a remarkable finesse. "In the little steel engravings that are the best expressions of his peculiar talent," writes Percy H. Boynton, "there is a fine simplicity; but it is the simplicity of an accomplished woman of the world rather than of a village maid." Although Aldrich bitterly resented the charge that he was a maker of tiny perfections, a carver of cherry-stones, these poems of his which have the best chance of permanence are some of the epigrams, the short lyrics and a few of the sonnets, passionless in tone but exquisite in design. The best of Aldrich's diffuse poetry has been collected in an inclusive Household Edition, published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company. He died in 1907. MEMORY My mind lets go a thousand things, And on the last blue noon in May- Two petals from that wild-rose tree. "ENAMORED ARCHITECT OF AIRY RHYME" Enamored architect of airy rhyme, Build as thou wilt, heed not what each man says. Good souls, but innocent of dreamers' ways, Will come, and marvel why thou wastest time; Others, beholding how thy turrets climb "Twixt theirs and heaven, will hate thee all thy days; And heaven-sent dreams, let art be all in all; TWO QUATRAINS MAPLE LEAVES October turned my maple's leaves to gold; The most are gone now; here and there one lingers: Soon these will slip from out the twigs' weak hold, Like coins between a dying miser's fingers. PESSIMIST AND OPTIMIST This one sits shivering in Fortune's smile, John Hay John Hay was born at Salem, Indiana, in 1838, graduated from Brown University in 1858 and was admitted to the Illinois bar a few years later. At nineteen, when he went back to Warsaw, the little Mississippi town where he had lived as a boy, he dreamed only of being a poet—a poet, it must be added, of the pleasantly conventional, transition type. But the Civil War was to disturb his mild fantasies. He became private secretary to Lincoln, then major and assistant adjutantgeneral under General Gilmore, then secretary of the Legation at Paris, chargé d'affaires at Vienna and secretary of legation at Madrid. His few vivid Pike County Ballads came more as a happy accident than as a deliberate creative effort. When Hay returned from Spain in 1870, bringing with him his Castilian Days, he still had visions of becoming an orthodox lyric poet. But he found everyone reading Bret Harte's short stories and the new expression of the rude West. (See Preface.) He speculated upon the possibility of doing something similar, translating the characters into poetry. The result was the six racy ballads in a vein utterly different from everything Hay wrote before or after. The poet-politician seems to have regarded this series somewhat in the nature of light, extempore verse, belonging to a far lower plane than his serious publications; he talked about them reluctantly, he even hoped that they would be forgotten. It is difficult to say whether this regret grew because Hay, loving the refinements of culture, at heart hated any suggestion of vulgarity, or because of a basic lack of courage-Hay having published his novel of labor unrest in the early 80's (The Breadwinners) anonymously. The fact remains, his rhymes of Pike County have survived all his more classical lines. They served for a time as a fresh influence, they remain a creative accomplishment. Hay was in politics all the later part of his life, ranking as one of the most brilliant Secretaries of State the country has ever had. He died in 1905. JIM BLUDSO, OF THE PRAIRIE BELLE Wall, no! I can't tell whar he lives, Whar have you been for the last three year He war'n't no saint,-them engineers And this was all the religion he had: To mind the pilot's bell; And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire, A thousand times he swore, An An He He All boats has their day on the Mississip, An The Movastar was a better boat, ( But the Belle she wouldn't be passed. The fire bust out as she clar'd the bar, And quick as a flash she turned and made For that willer-bank on the right. Thar was runnin' and cussin', but Jim yelled out, Over all the infernal roar, "I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank Till the last galoot's ashore." Through the hot, black breath of the burnin' boat Jim Bludso's voice was heard, And they all had trust in his cussedness, And knowed he would keep his word. |