And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is, And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud. -Ibid. INDIFFERENCE. Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov'd might secretly be indifferent to him. -Recorders Ages Hence. OPEN ROAD. Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune, Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticism, Strong and content I travel the open road. -Song of the Open Road. WISDOM. Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof, Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul. -Ibid. LIFE. The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like, Or as small as we like, or both great and small. -Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. MAN. A man is a summons and challenge. --Song of the Answerer. POETRY. All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems, The words of true poems do not merely please, The true poets are not followers of beauty but the august masters of beauty; The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers, The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science. -Ibid. LABOR. After all not to create only, or found only, But to bring perhaps from afar what is already founded, To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free, To fill the gross the torpid bulk with vital religious fire, Not to repel or destroy so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate, To obey as well as command, to follow more than to lead, These also are the lessons of our New World; While how little the New after all, how much the Old, Old World! Each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of the past and present, and the true word of immortality; No one can acquire for another - not one, The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him, The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him, The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him, The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him, The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to himit cannot fail, The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress not to the audience, And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or the indication of his own. -A Song of the Rolling Earth. SHORE. Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways. -As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life. Blow again trumpeter! and for thy theme, Take now the enclosing theme of all, the solvent and the setting, Love, that is pulse of all, the sustenance and the pang, The heart of man and woman all for love, No other theme but love-knitting, enclosing, alldiffusing love. O how the immortal phantoms crowd around me! I see the vast alembic ever working, I see and know the flames that heat the world, The glow, the blush, the beating hearts of lovers, So blissful happy some, and some so silent, dark, and nigh to death; Love, that is all the earth to lovers-love, that mocks time and space, Love, that is day and night-love, that is sun and moon and stars, Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume, No other words but words of love, no other thought but love. -The Mystic Trumpeter. LIFE AND DEATH. The two old, simple problems ever intertwined, -Sands at Seventy direction has been the destiny of many artists. Fame, sought earnestly, but in vain, upon some highway of thought, has sprung laughing from a hidden bypath and beguiled the searcher into other walks. Too frequently, perhaps, such unexpected success has contented its winner, yet often the more solid architecture, built along these other paths, has failed to replace the old-time castles in Spain, and the reputation won in unchosen fields has never quenched the earlier ambition. Such is the truth concerning Anna Katharine Green, the subject of this sketch. Born in Brooklyn, N. Y., under the very shadow of Plymouth Church, the literary instinct manifested itself in the girl at a tender age. After the removal of the family to Buffalo, N. Y., when she was a mere child, she would walk the streets alone and recite to herself stories and verses of her own contriving. These scattering essays of childhood soon developed into a definite ambition, and that ambition became the purpose of her life. She knew that she was a poet, and burned to convince the world of it. The girl wrote many verses, but pub. lished few, if any. Three years were passed at Ripley Female College, Poultney, Vt. Some time after her matriculation at Ripley Miss Green published her first work. It was not a poem but a novel, the germ of which had been in her mind since her eleventh year. "The Leavenworth Case" won instant and widespread attention, and the youthful authoress suddenly found herself famed for a kind of work very different from that toward which she was drawn so strongly. The incessant demands upon her pen which followed this early success left little time for poetic leisure, and her thoughts were almost wholly excluded from the mental atmosphere in which poesy thrives. Except in a limited circle the young authoress became known only as a prose-writer. Yet, before she printed her first tale, Anna Katharine Green had justified her controlling ambition by writing all the verse which now forms the two small volumes of her published poetry. It waited till her work in prose had made her famous to seek the higher fame for which its author yearned. The first volume of Miss Green's verse, "The Defense of the Bride, and other Poems," was published in 1882. The second, a drama entitled "Risifi's Daughter," appeared five years later. None who read these productions, or even the selections from them which accompany this notice will deny for a moment that her patient hope was justifiable. The poetry of Anna Katharine Green combines strength, directness and dramatic interest, with 9966 tender pathos, in a wholesome atmosphere of artistic truth. Never overburdened with imagery, her lines are graced by striking simile and delicate fancy. We are not annoyed by affected juggling with words, or by straining after strange effects in rhythm. Yet Miss Green is happy in her rhythmic changes, which always swing in unison with the motive of the moment. Miss Green's genius is objective rather than subjective. She especially delights in legendary themes of a bold and striking nature. Such pieces as "The Defense of the Bride," The Tower of Bouverie," A Tragedy of Sedan," "The Confession of the King's Musketeer," and "The Barricade" are examples of this, in which the author's dramatic art and skill in narration are at their best. The first two vie with each other in interest and power, and stand equally at the head of this part of the poet's work. The easily flowing measures of "The Defense of the Bride" are in striking contrast to the brief, bold lines of "Bouverie "; but there is in both a spirit and vividness that place them high among productions of this sort. Few women deal with such themes in so masculine a way, yet few men can impart the delicate trace of womanliness that is not their least charm. On the other hand Miss Green vies with herself in the thoughtful, tender sentiment that breathes in every stanza of " Premonition," "Shadows," "At the Piano," and "Separated." In "Risifi's Daughter" the author has adapted her story-telling talents to the requirements of dramatic form in blank verse with remarkable success. The narrative itself is powerful, and Miss Green has succeeded admirably in making her characters develop it clearly by what they do and say. This without sacrificing the truly poetic movement of her lines. The richness of Miss Green's poetry for purposes of quotation is remarkable. Her stanzas breathe the breath of life; and, perhaps all the more surely because slowly, they will occupy a worthy place among the writings of American poets. The first sojourn of Miss Green's family in Buffalo was only for a few years, the home for most of her life being Brooklyn, where all her literary work was done until she went to the former city to establish a home of her own. Miss Green was married on November 25, 1884, to Mr. Charles Rohlfs, a gentleman, who, beginning life on the stage under the old stock-company regime, and afterward acting as leading support to such eminent tragedians as Edwin Booth and Lawrence Barrett, quit the stage, and the dramatic future which seemed to lie before him, to devote himself to the congenial home-life which the nomadic life of the profession at the present time almost precludes. At their pleasant home in Buffalo, brightened by two charming little ones, Mr. and Mrs. Rohlfs enjoy the warm friendships which two years of life in that city have formed. A. G. B. |