eate was smothered in the
poignant ripple of his personal sorrow. Had it not been, and had his
pen continued to write, one cannot help wondering how much closer he
would have come to the modern note in poetry. That he already felt a
tendency to progress from the old metres to freer forms is constantly
apparent; and this tendency, combined with his unconsciously
scrupulous realism, might well have brought him near to the present. I
should like to close this little paper to his memory with one of his
lyrics which throws over rhyme altogether, and strictly formal metre,
also, though the fetters are still there. It is the stab of grief
which comes through to haunt you, the bare simplicity and the woe.
Objective it certainly is not, as the modernists maintain they are.
Yet the personal note will always be modern, for it has no age. This
lyric belongs to you and me to-day, not in the pages of a forgotten
book, on the shelves of a dusty library. I would that some of our
_vers libre_ practitioners could equal it:

I took from its glass a flower,
To lay on her grave with dull, accusing tears;
But the heart of the flower fell out as I handled the rose,
And my heart is shattered and soon will wither away.

I watch the changing shadows,
And the patch of windy sunshine upon the hill,
And the long blue woods; and a grief no tongue can tell
Breaks at my eyes in drops of bitter rain.

I hear her baby wagon,
And the little wheels go over my heart:
Oh! when will the light of the darkened house return?
Oh! when will she come who made the hills so fair?

I sit by the parlor window,
When twilight deepens and winds grow cold without;
But the blessed feet no more come up the walk,
And my little girl and I cry softly together.

[Illustration]

_New Poetry and the Lingering Line_

I have one grave objection to the "new poetry"--I cannot remember it.
Some, to be sure, would say that is no objection at all, but I am not
of the number. It would hardly become me, in fact, since I have, in a
minor pipe, committed "new poetry" myself on various and sundry
occasions, or what I presume it to be, particularly when I didn't have
time to write in rhyme or even metre. The new poets may object all
they like, but it _is_ easier to put your thought (when you happen to
have one) into rhythm than into rhyme and