The Younger American PoetsRittenhouse, Jessie Belle
History
The Younger American Poets
Rittenhouse, Jessie Belle
American poetry -- History and criticism; Poets, American
Hesperus, bringing together
All that the morning star scattered,—
Sheep to be folded in twilight,
Children for mothers to fondle,—
Me, too, will bring to the dearest,
Tenderest breast in all Lesbos.
The fragment, “I loved thee, Athis, in the long ago,” has been
expanded by Mr. Carman into a poem of reminiscent mood, the long,
slow-moving pentameter enhancing the effect of pensive meditation
which the lines convey. Many of the fragments are of a blither note,
having the variety which distinguishes the original.
Mr. Carman has exercised a fine restraint in his treatment of the
fragments. They are not over-ripe in diction, nor over-elaborated, and
while there is a certain atmosphere of insubstantiality about many of
them, as could scarcely fail to result from the attempt to restore, by
imagination alone, what had existence but in tradition, they justify
themselves as artistic poetry, which is the only consideration of
moment.
[1] From Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics. Copyright, 1903, by
L. C. Page & Co.
IV
LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY
SOME critic has said of Miss Guiney’s work, that to come suddenly upon
it among other volumes of modern poetry is like coming upon a Greek
temple in an American woodland; and the comparison is an apt one,
though the temple should scarcely be Greek, for while the feeling and
structure of the work are classic in atmosphere, they are not warm
enough, sensuous enough, to be Greek. It would, indeed, be hard to say
with what race classicism Miss Guiney’s work is tinctured. Rather say
that she is a classic by temperament and has drawn to herself, as by
chemical affinity, such things as are rare and choice in the world of
books and life, and has fused them in the alembic of her own nature,
until the resultant blend is something new and strange, having a racy
tang and a flavor all its own, and yet with a hint of all the elements
that went to its compounding.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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