PERHAPS. THE truth of this I debate, and doubt The time is coming when I shall know, The time when my current shall cease to flow. My candle of life go out. Some myth blown over the Aryan sea, Perhaps! And yet, perhaps, not so! Perhaps, as my eyes the mists shall fill And to the land where the storms are still My tired feet shall turn to go, In spite of learning on learning piled, In spite of cosmogonies vague and vast, The beautiful arms of my mother's Christ Shall spread, perhaps, to her halting child! JOHN W. BELL. -For The Magazine of Poetry. NOTES. PETERSON. Mr. Peterson contends that "ha Elohim" should not be translated the God, but the Gods: "In the beginning the Gods created the heaven and the earth." "And the Gods said: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." "And the Lord God (Yahveh Elohim, the Lord of the Gods,) said: Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil." The received translation mixes singular and plural in the most curious fashion. IBID. "The Clover Leaf." The light markings on the leaf of the red clover often take the shape of a heart. The author wonders whether he is the first to put this fact into literature, and would like to hear if he is not. IBID. "Lyon." Gen. Nathaniel Lyon was killed at the battle of Wilson's Creek, Missouri, August 10, 1861. He had been educated at West Point, had served in the Mexican war, and was enthusiastically devoted to the cause of the Union. He was not married, and bequeathed $30,000, nearly all his property, to aid the government in the prosecution of the war. His character was essentially heroic. IBID. "Helen; After Troy." Very contradictory are the ancient stories told of Helen, but they all agree as to her being taken back by Menelaus. Perhaps her banishment, or death, might have endangered his title to the kingdom she brought him. Besides, as a daughter of Jupiter, she could not be held to a strict account for her behavior. MACKAY. For that excellent poem by Mr. Mackay, entitled "Clear the Way," see THE MAGAZINE OF POETRY for January, 1890, vol. ii, pp. 116. IBID. "Eolian Music" was written for this magazine. IBID. "Cheer, Boys, Cheer!" has been set to music by Henry Russell. IBID. "The Good Time Coming" has been set to music by Henry Russell. The late George Dawson, of Birmingham, Eng., the eloquent preacher and lecturer, adopted this poem as a hymn to be sung at the religious services of his church, substituting the word "yet" for "boys." FAULKNER. "The Ballet Girl" was published in Lippincott's Magazine for January, 1883. It has been copied by nearly every American newspaper, and has been widely copied in England. It is now going the rounds of the press for the third or fourth time, but without the author's name, being credited to the London Era. Immediately STEVENSON. "Bettina Mazzi." after the battle of Solferino, a detachment of the Italian force passed through a town near the field of the day's victory, and discovered that the enemy's colors, abandoned or forgotten in their panic, were still flying from the old church. The spire had been nearly demolished by the cannonade. In reply to the thoughtless challenge of the leader to "climb up and cut down the flag," after the soldiers had shown their general unwillingness to risk their lives on the tottering structure, a little peasant girl, Bettina Mazzi by name, undertook it successfully. She received a rich reward from the spectators, as well as the only thing she had asked for on attempting her feat, the long ostrich plumes which the leader wore in his military chapeau, and by which her rustic fancy had been greatly struck. BIBLIOGRAPHY. WORKS CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS NUMBER OF "THE MAGAZINE OF POETRY." AUSTIN, ALFRED. The Season: A Satire. New and revised edition (being the third). London: John Camden Hotten, 1869. 16mo, pp. xxv and 80. IBID. The Golden Age: A Satire. London: Chapman and Hall, 1871. 16mo, pp. xi and 126. IBID. Interludes. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1872. 16mo, pp. viii and 108. IBID. The Human Tragedy. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1876. 12mo, pp. 439. IBID. Madonna's Child. Second edition. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1873. 8vo, pp. 80. IBID. Rome or Death! Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1873. 8vo, pp. xi and 184. IBID. The Tower of Babel. A Poetical Drama. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1874. 8vo, pp. 256. IBID. Savonarola. A Tragedy. London: Macmillan and Co., 1881. 12mo, pp xxix and 306. IBID. Soliloquies in Song. London: Macinillan and Co., 1882. 12mo, pp. xii and 158. IBID. At the Gate of the Convent and Other Poems. London: Macmillan and Co., 1885. 12mo, pp. xi and 142. IBID. Prince Lucifer. Second edition. London: Macmillan and Co., 1887. pp. xxi and 193. IBID. Love's Widowhood and Other Poems. London and New York: Macmillan and Co., 1889. 12mo, pp. vi and 142. IBID. Look Seaward, Sentinel. London: W. H. Allen and Co., 8vo, pp. 15. PETERSON, HENRY. Poems. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1863. 12mo, pp. 203. IBID. Poems. Including "The Modern Job." Second series. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1883. 12mo, pp. 227. SMITH, HARRY B. Miscellaneous poems. LATHROP, ROSE HAWTHORNE. Along the Shore. Boston: Ticknor & Co., 1888. 16mo, pp. 104. ROLLSTON, ADELAIDE DAY. Miscellaneous poems. LIPPMANN, JULIE M. Miscellaneous poems. SAVAGE, MINOT J. Poems. Boston: George H. Ellis, 1882. 16mo, pp. 247. IBID. Miscellaneous poems. MACKAY, CHARLES. Selected Poems and Songs. London: Whittaker and Co., 1888. 16mo, pp. XXX and 272. IBID. "Voices from the Crowd," "Legends from the Isles," "Egeria," etc.. and miscellaneous poems. KINGSLEY, CHARLES. Poems. Complete collected edition. London and New York: Macmillan & Co., 8vo. BELL, H. T. MACKENZIE. The Keeping of the Vow and Other Verses. London: Elliot Stock, 1879. 12mo. IBID. Verses of Varied Life. London: Elliot Stock, 1882. 12mo. IBID. Old Year Leaves. London: Elliott Stock, 1883. 12mo. IBID. Old Year Leaves. Being Old Verses Revised. New edition. London: J. Fisher Unwin, 1885. 8vo, pp. xxiv and 308. PHELPS, CHARLES HENRY. Miscellaneous poems. JONES, I. EDGAR. Miscellaneous poems. BRISTOL, AUGUSTA COOPER. Poems. Boston: Adams & Co., 1868. 12mo, pp. 190. IBID. Miscellaneous poems. NASON, EMMA HUNTINGTON. White Sails. Boston: D. Lothrop Company, 1888. 8vo, pp. 162. IBID. Miscellaneous poems. 1 BUMSTEAD, EUDORA. Miscellaneous poems. LOVEJOY, GEORGE NEWELL. Miscellaneous poems. LOCKHART, ARTHUR J. The Masque of Minstrels and Other Poems, Chiefly in Verse. By Two Brothers. Bangor: Benjamin A. Burr, Printer, 1887. 12mo, pp. iv and 361. CRAWFORD, MRS. JOHN. Miscellaneous poems. KAYE, JOHN BRAYSHAW. Songs of Lake Geneva and Other Poems. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1882. 12mo, pp. v and 200. COOLIDGE, SUSAN, Verses. Boston: Roberts Bros., 1880. 16mo, pp. 181. IBID. A Few More Verses. Boston: Roberts Bros., 1889, 16mo, pp. 257. THE MAGAZINE OF POETRY. VOL. II. No. 3. TH SIDNEY LANIER. HIS man and poet, who would have wished "that life and song might each express the other's all," was born at Macon, Ga., February 3, 1842, in a house yet standing upon the brow of a hill composing a part of this southern inland town. A Huguenot refugee to England in Queen Elizabeth's time, Jerome Lanier was his earliest known ancestor, whose son Nicholas was in favor with James I and Charles I as musician, painter, and in political service. Another forefather was Sir John Lanier, who commanded a troop of horse at the battle of the Boyne, and fell at Stein Kirk with Douglas. The earliest American ancestor was Thomas Lanier, of Richmond, Va., of about date 1716. Robert S. Lanier, a lawyer, still living in Macon, Ga., was the father of the poet, and his mother was Mary Jane Anderson, of Nottaway County, Va., whose brother, Clifford Anderson, is at present Attorney-General and a distinguished lawyer of Georgia. As a child the poet exhibited a wonderful passion for music, using first the simplest instruments of percussion, such as the negro minstrel's bones, the drum and plantation banjo. Afterwards, when presented by Santa Claus with a one-keyed German flute, he acquired proficiency upon it in a short time, and spent hours of voluntary withdrawal in devotion to persistent practice. He could perform slightly upon every instrument that then became accessible to his boyish ardor, such as the guitar, the piano, the violin and the organ, but the flute had first won his affection, and for many reasons or circumstances it retained his undiminished love. He was well-nigh perfect master of its wonderful effects. As a youth his mind was both brilliant and very thoughtful. The boy attended private schools in Macon, and proceeded to Oglethorpe College, a Presbyterian school near Milledgeville, at the age of fourteen. The president of this institution was the scholarly Talmage, uncle of the now famous pulpit orator. Discontinuing at college, he spent a year as delivery clerk in the Macon post-office, where he delivered letters and studied humorous phases of life as shown more than thirty years ago in middle Georgia "Crackers," whose dialect amused him and fed that vein of exquisite appreciation of humor which was to his philosophical bent as quartz to gold. He graduated in 1860 at the age of eighteen, sharing with a fellow student the first honors of their class. When he was nineteen he engaged at his alma mater as subordinate professor or tutor. At the outbreak of the Civil War he volunteered as a private in the old militia company, the Macon Volunteers, of the Second Georgia Battalion of infantry, the first troops, perhaps, reaching Norfolk, Va., from the South. He refused promotion several times during the war, declining to be separated from his younger brother, whose devotion to him was thus tenderly reciprocated. He was in skirmishes in the campaign beginning with Seven Pines and ending with Malvern Hill. Afterward he and his brother and two chosen comrades were transferred to Milligan's Signal Corps. In this adventurous and romantic service he yet found time for study of language, for music, and for storing impressions of poetic sensibility. His flute accompanied him everywhere, carried in his haversack even if "hard-tack" and soldier forage were displaced. This and a small volume of German poems were privileged, second only to gun and ammunition. In the autumn of 1864 he was sent to the Marine Signal Department at Wilmington, shortly afterward assigned as signal officer to the blockade-runner Annie, and was taken prisoner of war with that vessel about December of the same year. Several months of hardship at the bleak prison of Point Lookout and the long weary tramp at the close of hostilities from Virginia to Georgia developed to poisonous growth the germs of consumption. Peace to him was the beginning of a battle with this relentless disease, a war of about fifteen years of varying fortune, but in which one combatant was always patient and ever heroic. In December, 1867, he married Miss Mary Day, of Macon, Ga., and the young couple went to live |