A Woman's Poems
Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.
THE author has well named this collection of delicate and graceful verses ; for they are thoroughly feminine in thought and expression, in subject and treatment. Many of them are a mother’s poetization of her children’s life and talk ; others are poems of sentiment, in which the faith and fear of a woman’s passion speaks ; others yet are somewhat mystical pictures of the outlying gloom with which the happiest lives love to contrast themselves ; but all are womanly. We like them so well for what they are, that we shall be far from making it a cause of offence in the author that she has not written like a man. It appears to us that the only quality which it is worth while for women to contribute to literature is precisely this feminine quality.
In whatever women write there is apt to be feeling enough, but in what Mrs. Piatt writes there is thought, too; not always the strongest or greatest, and sometimes rather too closely veiled, but thought nevertheless, and uttered in a manner quite her own, which last is a negative virtue so rare that it has almost a positive value nowadays. Almost any of the poems would serve in proof of all this, and we shall quote what we like rather than what is most illustrative of our opinion. Our readers have already, in fact, seen some of these pieces, and will remember a poem called “To-day,”as having all the charm of fine feeling and thought:—
“Ah, real thing of bloom and breath,
I cannot love you while you stay.
Put on the dim, stiil charm of death,
Fade to a phantom, float away,
And let me call you Yesterday ! ”
I cannot love you while you stay.
Put on the dim, stiil charm of death,
Fade to a phantom, float away,
And let me call you Yesterday ! ”
Here is also something quite as characteristic as “ To-day,” in its subtile sadness, and in its dim portrayal of a fear that it would not be tolerable to have shown more sharply : — “HER LAST GIFT.
“ Come here. I know while it was May
My mouth was your most precious rose,
I My eyes your violets, as you say.
Fair words, as old as Love, are those.
My mouth was your most precious rose,
I My eyes your violets, as you say.
Fair words, as old as Love, are those.
“ I gave my flowers while they were sweet,
And sweetly you have kept them, all
Through my slow Summer’s great last heat
Into the lonely mist of Fall.
And sweetly you have kept them, all
Through my slow Summer’s great last heat
Into the lonely mist of Fall.
“ Once more I give them. Put them by,
Back in your memory’s faded years, —
Yet look at them, sometimes ; and try,
Sometimes, to kiss them through your tears.
Back in your memory’s faded years, —
Yet look at them, sometimes ; and try,
Sometimes, to kiss them through your tears.
“I've dimly known, afraid to know,
That you should have new flowers to wear;
Well, buds of rose and violets blow
Before you in the unfolding air.
That you should have new flowers to wear;
Well, buds of rose and violets blow
Before you in the unfolding air.
“ So take from other hands, I pray,
Such gifts of flowers as mine once gave :
I go into the dust, since they
Can only blossom from my grave.”
Such gifts of flowers as mine once gave :
I go into the dust, since they
Can only blossom from my grave.”
Perhaps it is needless to insist upon the womanliness of the sentiment here : all can see how very tender and delicate it is. In this that follows is the very rapture of motherly fondness and reluctance, with some sense finer yet for which there is no word : —
“LAST WORDS.
“ OVER A LITTLE BED AT NIGHT.
“ Good-night, pretty sleepers of mine,—
I never shall see you again :
Ah, never in shadow nor shine ;
Ah, never in dew nor in rain !
I never shall see you again :
Ah, never in shadow nor shine ;
Ah, never in dew nor in rain !
“ In your small dreaming-dresses of white,
With the wild-bloom you gathered to-day
In your quiet shut hands, from the light
And the dark you will wander away.
With the wild-bloom you gathered to-day
In your quiet shut hands, from the light
And the dark you will wander away.
“ Though no graves in the bee-haunted grass,
And no love in the beautiful sky.
Shall take you as yet, you will pass,
With this kiss, through these tear-drops. Good-
by !
And no love in the beautiful sky.
Shall take you as yet, you will pass,
With this kiss, through these tear-drops. Good-
by !
“ With less gold and more gloom in their hair,
When the buds near have faded to flowers,
Three faces may wake here as fair, —
But older than yours are, by hours !
When the buds near have faded to flowers,
Three faces may wake here as fair, —
But older than yours are, by hours !
“ Good night, then, lost darlings of mine,
I never shall see you again :
Ah, never in shadow nor shine ;
Ah, never in dew nor in rain ! ”
I never shall see you again :
Ah, never in shadow nor shine ;
Ah, never in dew nor in rain ! ”
All the poems which sketch in a light dramatic way the life of mother and children are very lovely, and we should not know where to find greater truth of the kind than they show. One of the best among them is “ Questions of the Hour,” which is too long for us to repeat here. Some of them are lit with thought not sadder perhaps than always lies at the heart of absorbing love, but which seems to have too frequent expression ; others are merely simple and charming scenes, and reproductions of childhood’s quaintness. They are, on the whole, we think, the best pieces in the book, — the studies careful, and the meaning natural and unlabored. They are not more womanly, however, than other poems, in which the maternal sentiment does not mingle. Here, for example, is something perfectly feminine, which we hope is also saying it is beautiful : —
“THE FANCY BALL.
“ As Morning you'd have me rise
On that shining world of art;
You forget; I have too much dark in my eyes —
And too much dark in my heart.
On that shining world of art;
You forget; I have too much dark in my eyes —
And too much dark in my heart.
“ " 'Then go as the Night — in June :
Pass, dreamily, by the crowd,
With jewels to mock the stars and the moon,
And shadowy robes like cloud.
Pass, dreamily, by the crowd,
With jewels to mock the stars and the moon,
And shadowy robes like cloud.
“‘Or, as Spring, with a spray in your hair
Of blossoms as yet unblown ;
It will suit you well, for our youth should wear
The bloom in the bud alone.
Of blossoms as yet unblown ;
It will suit you well, for our youth should wear
The bloom in the bud alone.
“ ' Or drift from the outer gloom
With the soft white silence of Snow’ .
I should melt myself with the warm, close room —
Or my own life’s burning. No.
With the soft white silence of Snow’ .
I should melt myself with the warm, close room —
Or my own life’s burning. No.
“ 'Then fly through the glitter and mirth
As a Bird of Paradise ’ :
Nay, the waters I drink have touch’d the earth ;
I breathe no summer of spice.
As a Bird of Paradise ’ :
Nay, the waters I drink have touch’d the earth ;
I breathe no summer of spice.
“ 'Then — ’ Hush : if I go at all,
(It will make them stare and shrink,
It will look so strange at a Fancy Ball,)
I will go as — Myself, I think ! ’’
(It will make them stare and shrink,
It will look so strange at a Fancy Ball,)
I will go as — Myself, I think ! ’’
The longest piece is “The Brother’s Hand,” a story of our own modern life, told with strength and clearness, and turning upon one of many tragical possibilities of the war. It is effectively managed throughout, and it has passages of peculiar beauty and power.
We believe that this is Mrs. Piatt’s first volume, though she has heretofore published a book with her husband, Mr. J. J. Piatt, and she is well known to the readers of magazines and newspapers. We think of no woman poet in America who equals her in authenticity of touch, and none surpasses her in certain subtile graces which we hope have been discerned in the poems we have quoted from her book. To be perfectly honest, we must own that we have given poems which are less than others disfigured by a vagueness that often wavers into obscurity ; and since these are avowedly “A Woman’s Poems,” we need not withhold the fact that they have their affectations ; still, they are true poems, to be valued for their pure, good, natural feeling, and their excellent art.