in this collection reflect the hungers, dreams and unsung melodies of the dumb and defeated multitudes. From the Book of Life (1909) has scarcely as much power and less poetry. Besides his verse, Burton has written several books of essays, a life of Whittier and various volumes on the drama. BLACK SHEEP From their folded mates they wander far, Yet haply they sought but a wider range, And little recked of the country strange And haply a bell with a luring call Midst the cruel rocks, where the deep pitfall Maybe, in spite of their tameless days They're sick at heart for the homely ways And oft at night, when the plains fall dark Meanwhile, “Black sheep! Black sheep!" we cry, And maybe they hear, and wonder why, Oliver Herford Oliver Herford was born in December, 1863, at Manchester, England. He studied art in London and at Julien's in Paris, turned to literature as a pastime and, about 1890, came to the United States, where he has lived ever since. Herford, celebrated as a wit as well as a draughtsman and versifier, is the author of no less than twenty volumes of light verse, prose pasquinades and burlesques. His The Bashful Earthquake (1898), Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten (1904) and This Giddy Globe (1919) show Herford's delicate skill and his versatile dexterity. These volumes, like most of Herford's, are embellished by his own drawings, which are fully as graceful as the accompanying verses. EARTH 1 If this little world to-night Suddenly should fall through space In a hissing, headlong flight, As it falls into the sun, In an instant every trace Of the little crawling things Ants, philosophers, and lice, 1 Reprinted from The Bashful Earthquake by Oliver Herford, Copyright, 1898, by Charles Scribner's Sons, Who can say but at the same Instant from some planet far, A child may watch us and exclaim: THE ELF AND THE DORMOUSE Under a toadstool crept a wee Elf, Under the toadstool, sound asleep, Trembled the wee Elf, frightened and yet To the next shelter-maybe a mile! Tugged till the toadstool toppled in two. Soon he was safe home, dry as could be. "Where is my toadstool? loud he lamented. -And that's how umbrellas first were invented. Richard Hovey was born in 1864 at Normal, Illinois, and graduated from Dartmouth in 1885. After leaving college, he became, in rapid succession, a theologian, an actor, a journalist, a lecturer, a professor of English literature at Barnard, a poet and a dramatist. His first volume, The Laurel: An Ode (1889), betrayed the overmusical influence of Lanier and gave promise of that extraordinary facility which often brought Hovey perilously close to the pit of mere technique. His exuberant virility found its outlet in the series of poems published in collaboration with Bliss Carman-the three volumes of Songs from Vagabondia (1894, 1896, 1900). Here he let himself go completely; nothing remained sober or static. His lines fling themselves across the page; dance with intoxicating abandon; shout with a wild irresponsibility; leap, laugh, carouse and carry off the reader in a gale of high spirits. The famous Stein Song is but an interlude in the midst of a far finer and even more rousing poem that, with its flavor of Whitman, begins: I said in my heart, "I am sick of four walls and a ceiling. I have need of the sky. I have business with the grass. I will up and get me away where the hawk is wheeling, And the slow clouds go by. I will get me away to the waters that glass Hovey's attitude to his art may be expressed in no better way than his own words concerning the poet: "It is not his mission," wrote Hovey in the Dartmouth Magazine, "to write elegant canzonettas for the delectation of the diletianti, but to comfort the sorrowful and hearten the despairing, to champion the oppressed and declare to humanity its inalienable rights, to lay open to the world the heart of man-all its heights and depths, all its glooms and glories, to reveal the beauty in things and breathe into his fellows a love of it." This almost too con scious awareness of the poet's "mission" often marred Hovey's work; in responding to his program, he frequently overstressed his ringing enthusiasm, strained his own muscularity. But his power was as unflagging as his fraternal energy was persuasive. And in certain quieter moods the poet rose to new heights. The work on which he was engaged at the time of his death is significant; Launcelot and Guenevere: A Poem in Five Dramas is magnificent in its restrained vitality. Although the varied lyrics in Songs from Vagabondia are the best known examples of Hovey, a more representative collection of his riper work may be found in Along the Trail (1898). This volume contains " Spring" and the stirring "Comrades" in full as well as the best of his vivid fragments. Hovey died, during his thirty-sixth year, in 1900. AT THE CROSSROADS You to the left and I to the right, But whether we meet or whether we part Here's luck! For we know not where we are going. Whether we win or whether we lose |