e as she can be known only in the
Southern West. I named Keats with no purpose of likening this young
poet to him, but since he is named it is impossible not to recognize
that they are of the same Hellenic race; full of like rapture in sky
and field and stream, and of a like sensitive reluctance from whatever
chills the joy of sense in youth, in love, in melancholy. I know Mr.
Cawein has faults, and very probably he knows it, too; his delight in
color sometimes plunges him into mere paint; his wish to follow a
subtle thought or emotion sometimes lures him into empty dusks; his
devotion to nature sometimes contents him with solitudes bereft of the
human interest by which alone the landscape lives. But he is, to my
thinking, a most genuine poet, and one of these few Americans, who,
even in their over-refinement, could never be mistaken for Europeans;
who perhaps by reason of it are only the more American."--WILLIAM
DEAN HOWELLS in _Literature_.

"From the poetry of our day I select that of Madison Cawein as an
example of conspicuous merit. Many American readers have enjoyed Mr.
Cawein's productions.... But the appreciation of his poetry has never
been as great as its merits would indicate. His poems are rather _too
good_ to be caught up on the babbling tongue and cast forth into mere
popularity. They are caviare to the general; and yet they have in them
the best elements of popular favor.

"Cawein is a classicist. He will have it that poems, however humble
the theme, however tender the sentiment, shall wear a tasteful Attic
dress. I do not intimate that Mr. Cawein's mind has been too much
saturated with the classical spirit or that his native instincts have
been supplanted with Greek exotics and flowers out of the renaissance,
but rather that his own mental constitution is of a classical as well
as a romantic mould.

"The themes of Cawein's poetry are generally taken from the world of
romance. If there be any modern bard who can recreate a mediaeval
castle and give to its inhabitants the sentiments which were theirs in
the twelfth century, Cawein is the poet who can. He takes delight in
the East. He is the Omar Khayyam of the Ohio Valley. He is as much of
a Mohammedan as a Christian. He knows the son of Abdallah better than
he knows Cromwell; and has more sympathy with a Khalif than with a
Colonel. He dwells in the romantic regions of life; but the romance is
real. The hope is a true hope. The dream is a true dream. Th