Last year, last year, there in the sun But now; ah, now; yea, now 'tis plain! My neighbor's bushes blow, blow, blow, Ye cannot mock me, blossoms sweet; KEATS. FLUTING and singing, with young locks aflow, This lad, forsooth, down the long years should pass, With scent of blooms, with daffodils arow, Lighting their candles in the April grass. Ah, 'tis not thus he comes to us, but sweet With youth and sorrows! When we speak his name, Lo, the old house in the old foreign street, His broken voice lamenting that his fame Did sing. Deep in the Roman dust he lies. AUGUST. No wind, no bird. The river flames like brass. Drifts the noon's single cloud, white, glaring, still. IN EDGAR FAWCETT. N these days the career of the man of letters is, as a rule, not conspicuously romantic. It is by no means of necessity lacking in episode, in heroisms, in breathless perils and escapes; but these are for the most part of the nature of psychological experiences, and lose the name of action. They may, in truth, be abundantly picturesque; but (though the public seems to think otherwise) they do not greatly concern the public, except in so far as they are revealed by their outcome in poem or novel. If I preface these brief comments on Mr. Fawcett's work by a word or two of a more personal complexion, I would not have it appear that I intend a biographical sketch. From that admirable "Handbook of American Authors," we learn that Mr. Fawcett was born in 1847, in New York. This latter point we might be inclined to infer from the way in which Mr. Fawcett knows his New York,-from within outwards. He was a writer from childhood, but little of his 'prentice work has been let live to vex his maturity. His education was under private tutors till the age of fourteen, when he entered a New York public school. At twenty he received his degree from Columbia College. The path of letters is a path of few primroses; but his feet were set to pursue it. Mr. Fawcett's father was an English gentleman, who, coming to America in early youth, had devoted a powerful and richly cultured intellect to the achievement of material success. His tastes and talents, however, prepared him to sympathize with the ambitions of his son, when he found the latter inexorably indifferent to the charm of a business life. Making New York life his field of fiction, Mr. Fawcett was not slow to win that popular success which is so gratifying to one's banker. His novels are pictures of New York life, vivid, and conscientiously wrought. They furnish us with an enduring series of portraits, some of which, by reason of their fidelity and biting clearness of outline, have appeared less attractive to many of Mr. Fawcett's fellowcitizens than to us at a distance whose "withers are unwrung." Mr. Fawcett's prose seems to me, at times, slightly artificial, but it is brilliant and effective, and most happy in the employment of unexpected epithets. Yet I have a grudge, shared by many of his sincerest admirers, against Mr. Fawcett's prose. Its production is withdrawing precious time and energy from his verse, and his fame as a novelist is temporarily overshadowing his true distinction as a poet. The following list of his works will endorse me: Poems:- Fan tasy and Passion" (1878); "Song and Story" ('84); Romance and Revery" ('86). Humorous Verse: -"The Buntling Ball" ('85); "The New King Arthur" ('85). Fiction:-"Rutherford" ('84); "The Adventures of a Widow" ('84); A Hopeless Case" ('81); "A Gentleman of Leisure" ('82); "An Ambitious Woman" ('84); “Tinkling Cymbals" (84); "Social Silhouettes" ('85); "The Confessions of Claud" ('87); "The House at High Bridge" ('87); “"Douglas Duane" ('87); “Olivia Delaplaine" ('88); "A Man's Will" ('88); "Divided Lives" ('89); "Miriam Balestier" ('89); "A Demoralizing Marriage" ('89). I have expressed my belief that Mr. Fawcett's truer distinction is as a poet. As a novelist he shows, I think, very great talent; in his verse there is that quality transcending talent, the individual and incommunicable quality of genius. I shall never forget the enthusiasm with which I first read "Fantasy and Passion." In "Song and Story," in Romance and Revery," the development is on the same lines more or less clearly laid down in "Fantasy and Passion." There is, on the whole, somewhat less sweetness, but we find richer thought, a more affluent imagination, a more assured and resonant rhythm. His utterance is unique and insistent. It is such as to impress itself upon later verse. The same quality is perceptible in a number of fine sonnets. There is verse in other veins in Mr. Fawcett's volumes, some of it of no less beauty, but, to my mind, of far less significance. The narrative poems,"Alan Eliot," "The Magic Flower," and othersare striking tales told with all the adornments of imagination, taste, and skilled workmanship. They have a wide appeal; but I think it is not in them that Mr. Fawcett's genius finds its most adequate embodiment. Rather, it seems to me, the touch of the master, potent and lasting in its influence, is revealed in such lines as found in "Maidenhair." C. G. D. R. TO AN ORIOLE. How falls it, oriole, thou hast come to fly Or did some orange tulip, flaked with black, Yearning toward Heaven until its wish was heard, MOSS. STRANGE tapestry, by Nature spun On viewless looms, aloof from sun, And spread through lonely nooks and grots Where shadows reign and leafy rest,— O moss, of all your dwelling-spots, In which one are you loveliest? Is it when near grim roots that coil Or is it when your lot is cast Nay, loveliest are you when time weaves And woodbines break in fragrant foam, And children laugh-and you can hear The beatings of the heart of Home! RARITY. IN dreams I found a wondrous land, A WHITE CAMELLIA. IMPERIAL bloom, whose every curve we see Like the one earthly flower that has no soul, |