New Books of Verse
Again a few of the love songs are so strongly individualized as to become typical, and a high lyric beauty exalts their simple measures. Among the best are Siege, Thought of You, A Girl's Love Song, and this Changed:
These are the woods where my heart held fast
Shadow-green silence and lonely grace;
Now they are only a way you passed,
Leaving an empty place;
These are my sea-birds that circled wide,
Bearing my thoughts from the dust of things—
Only the wish to be by your side
Lifts on their lagging wings;
This is my world that was once so sweet,
All of itself in the morning dew,
Now it is only a road for your feet,
A sheltering-place for you!
The grace of Miss Widderner's touch is shown also in some of the lighter poems, and her dramatic intuition of character in An Old Portrait. Two or three poems are lovely in their feeling for the mysterious evanescence of life; we hear the very flutter of wings in Wind-litany and this Cloak of Dreams:
They bade me follow fleet
To my brothers' work and play.
But the Cloak of Dreams blew over my feet,
Tangling them from the way:
They bade me watch the skies
For a signal—dark or light,
But the Cloak of Dreams blew over my eyes.
Shutting them fast from sight:
I have nor pain nor mirth,
Suffering nor desire—
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