Before the feller comes out with a new one; His stuff ain't wuth a pinch of raspberry tea. I'll stick to an old spreckled hen with feathers. JAMES BERRY BENSEL. AMES BERRY BENSEL was born in New JAMES York City, August 2, 1855. His parents moved to Lynn, Mass., when he was eight years old, and his early education was obtained in the public and private schools of that city. Upon leaving school he entered a store in Boston, remaining there about a year. After that, on the death of his father, he was clerk for an uncle in Lynn, and later was a clerk in the State Aid Mercantile Commissioner's department, Boston. life always appeared irksome to him. His literary tastes began to develop, and he occupied a part of his time in giving readings in a number of cities and towns in New England. He afterwards began to publish his writings, mostly poems, his first prose work of any importance, a serial story, entitled "King Cophetua's Wife," appearing in the Overland Monthly in 1882. His early poems appeared in the Transcript, Pilot, Cottage Hearth, and other Boston papers and magazines. Scrib ner's Magazine published his "Forgotten" about 1875. His mother was Harriet M. Bensel, of whom "Margery Deane" wrote, "Physical pain she knew to that degree that half her days were days of agony, yet she always smiled. Sorrows of every kind touched her, yet her voice never lost its cheery ring. Burdens she carried that the bravest man might well shrink from. Though well and widely connected, her sphere was very limited; yet every hour of her life she was a heroine." It was of such a mother that her son wrote his poems, She and I." and "My Ghost." Speaking of Mr. Bensel's poetry, his friend Oscar Fay Adams wrote at the time of his death, February 2, 1886, Mr. Bensel has died with his work uncompleted. In a little more than a week after his first volume of poems was published, "In the King's Garden and Other Poems," and before he could learn of its favorable reception from all lovers of literary excellence, he was beyond the reach of either praise or blame. He has left behind him only a broken fragment of what he might have done had he been spared to work out the promptings of his genius and the tendencies of which he gave such marked indications. Mr. Bensel was a poet; he had earned that distinction and no critic would dare question his possession of an artistic poetic temperament capable of producing work that would live in American letters. He had, too, the limitations of a poetic nature the love of recognition, a hunger for fame, and, perhaps, an undue querulousness toward those who did not accord him the full measure of credit which he felt his work deserved. All his work has been produced under the most unfavorable circumstances and the most depressing influences. Such being the case we cannot wonder at the pervasive melancholy and sombre seriousness of many of his productions. His life was a re-iteration of the old story of the battle of the true artist with an unsympathetic world. He did not live to gain the triumph which is always sure to come, and the recognition that lingers but is finally given with gladness." H. P. C. MY GHOST. ABOUT this little room of mine She waits not for the sunlight fine But comes when shadows 'round me stride, I wonder at her face divine, My path from hers, my saintly guide. ENVOY. Friends-all our hearts by pain are tried, A CHILD'S FACE. THE Sorrowful face of a little child, Ah! how many centuries' burdens fill What tempests of passion have spent themselves On strange, sad lives that have gone before, The settled grief and care-worn look, O child, I would-could I have my will- Its nervous and trembling pallid lips, O the saddened face of that little child! It haunts me all the day, And I would that God might take to-night That little child away. TWO. He loved two women; one whose soul was clean As any lily growing on its stalk; And one with glowing eyes and sensuous mien, Who fired him with her beauty and her talk. The pure one loved him to the day he died, But when he died his dearest friend she wed. The wanton from the wild world drew aside, And no man saw her face till she was dead. QUESTIONINGS. WHERE waits the woman I shall one day claim high, A fact, a conscious truth, and no mere name. And where is the content my soul has said Should one day come to it? And when and how, And why and what? Who plants the seedling fine Whose blossom I shall hold when I am dead? O foolish questions! O unwise unrest! AND I said, "She is dead, I could not brook And the thin white hands that had wrought so much, Now nerveless to kisses or fevered touch. Lay light on her Heaven-closed mouth that day. I felt, with a wonder too deep for speech, She could tell what only the angels teach. A message that reached to my inmost soul. Why weep you to-day who have wept before That the road was rough I must journey o'er? Why mourn that my lips can answer you not When anguish and sorrow are both forgot? Behold, all my life I have longed for rest,Yea, e'en when I held you upon my breast. And now that I lie in a breathless sleep, Instead of rejoicing you sigh and weep. My dearest, I know that you would not breakIf you could - my slumber and have me wake. For though life was full of the things that bless, I have never till now known happiness." Then I dried my tears, and with lifted head I left my mother, my beautiful dead. IN THE RAIN. THE black clouds roll across the sun, Their shadows darken all the grass: The songs the sweet birds sang are done, And on wide wings the minstrels pass. There comes a sudden sheet of rain The white road turns a muddy brown. And then the clouds roll slowly back, The sun again shines fierce and hot, The cows come down the sodden track And munch the wet grass in the lot. The flowers their moistened faces raise, The wet leaves in the sunbeams gleam, The birds, refreshed, resume their lays, The children paddle in the stream. How like to life such days as this! The brightness and the storm of tears; So much to gain, so much to miss, The sudden overflow of fears. Yet though the song is hushed awhile, We know 'twill break forth by-and-by, We know behind the clouds the smile Of radiant glory still doth lie. Oh, let the sudden storm beat low We shall forget the sheeted rain And all that looks so dark and drear, Just as we have forgot the pain That seemed so hard to us last year. SYMPATHY. IN sorrow once there came to me |