Page:Oregon Literature by Horner.djvu/78

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56
OREGON LITERATURE.

well-named Grand Ronde valley. Before marriage she was Miss Ella Rhodes, and her old schoolmates well remember her, and are glad that her literary productions are brightening thousands of homes throughout the land and that her fame is growing.



BLANCHE FEARING.

All peoples have had their blind bards who gave the world some message that was withheld from those "who having eyes yet see not;" and we say this is a Homer who inspired the soldiery of the world, or an Ossian who made Scottish legends more precious, or a Milton who "undertook what no man ought to have undertaken, and did with it what no other man could have done"—described heaven. It would be presumptuous to claim that we have had either of these, but we have had a blind poetess who like a comet swept suddenly across our orbit. Her name was Lilian Blanche Fearing. No one knew whence she came or whither she went; but sometime in the quiet city of Roseburg she learned of a sleeping infant and left these lines which may be found in her book entitled "The Sleeping World":


LET HIM SLEEP.

Oh, do not wake the little one,

With flowing curl upon his face,