Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922Lovecraft, H. P. (Howard Phillips)
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Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922
Lovecraft, H. P. (Howard Phillips)
Essays; Literature -- History and criticism; Periodicals
"Thoughts," a courtly offering from the quill of James Laurence Crowley,
winds up the poetical part of the magazine; this month a very ample
part. In rhyme and metre this sentimental gem is quite satisfactory.
The only prose in this issue is Mr. Samples' well-written editorial on
"The Passing Year." Herein we find some really excellent passages,
savouring somewhat of the oratorical in style.
* * * * *
=The Silver Clarion= for February is of ample size and ample merit.
Opening the issue is an excellent poem in heroic couplets by Mrs. Stella
L. Tully of Mountmellick, Ireland, a new member of the United. Mrs.
Tully, whose best work is in a lyric and religious vein, is one endowed
with hereditary or family genius; as the Association no doubt
appreciated when reading the poetry of her gifted sister, Mrs. S. Lilian
McMullen of Newton Centre, in the preceding issue of THE UNITED AMATEUR.
The present piece by Mrs. Tully, "The Greatest of These is Love," is
based upon a Biblical text, and sets forth its ideas very effectively,
despite a few passages whose stiff construction betrays a slight
inexperience in the traditions of heroic verse.
"The Two Crosses," by Capt. Theodore Gottlieb, is also in heroics, and
graphically compares the most holy symbols of today and of nineteen
hundred years ago.
More of the religious atmosphere is furnished by John Milton Samples'
trochaic composition entitled "The Millennium"--from whose title, by the
way, one of the necessary n's is missing. In this pleasing picture of
an impossible age we note but three things requiring critical attention.
(1) The term "super-race" in stanza 5, is too technically philosophical
to be really poetic. (2) The rhyme of =victory= and =eternally= is not
very desirable, because both the rhyming syllables bear only a secondary
accent. (3) There is something grotesque and unconsciously comic in the
prophecy "Then the lamb shall kiss the lion." Such grotesqueness is not
to be found in the original words of Mr. Samples' predecessor and source
of inspiration, the well-known prophet Isaiah. (Vide Isaiah, xi: 6-7.)
"Nature Worship," by Arthur Goodenough, is one of the most meritorious
poems in the issue, despite some dubious grammar in the first stanza,
and an internal rhyme in the final stanza which has no counterpart in
the lines preceding. The first named error consists of a disagreement in
number betwixt subject and verb: "faith and form and ... mazes which ...
perplexes, dazes."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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