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in brief and pointed description, or pure narrative; they lack originality and force-their matter was not worth the saying; thus:

Her eyes are like unfathomable lakes

When brightly o'er them morning radiance breaks;
And yet the mariner had best beware,
For many hearts lie shipwrecked there,-

is fairly characteristic of much of his work. On the other hand, as good a note as this is here and there struck:

"Last night a mighty poet passed away;

'Who now will sing our songs?' Men cried

at morn.

'Faint hearts fear not! Somewhere, though far away,

At that same hour another bard was born.'" Summer Haven Songs is a collection so various in subject, style and merit, that it is not easy to characterize them. Many are pointless, many commonplace, but there is a thread of sincerity, spontaneity, and a not unpleasing quaintness and not uninteresting thoughtfulness, that runs, appearing and disappearing, through them. There is altogether too much in the book for the grains of excellence it contains; and yet this very verbosity conveys a suggestion of fullness and, as we have said, spontaneity, that is somewhat refreshing, by way of a change. Amid the medley of love songs, descriptions, reflections, conceits, we must select a sample somewhat at random.

Some Old Considerations.

The Puritan lies in his tomb:

A grand fellow was he in his day, But now he's so bothered for room He'd hardly have space to pray, Should he rise on his knees.

Not a foot from him down below,

Great Sachem Paupmunock lies,
With his kettle of corn and his bow,----
And both he might use could he rise
And sit at his ease.

Right over the two is my bed,
Delightfully propped on the great;
And here at my ease overhead

I rest on two Pillars of State,-
And sleep very well.

If they muttered a word underground,
'Twould come, I dare say, to my ears;
But I've heard not the slightest sound,-
And they've slept there two hundred years-
So the records tell.

I muse as I think of them there,

And sometimes I laugh to myself,

As I say,

"What a fine old pair,-
But how easily laid on the shelf,
When we youngsters came!"

The Sachem sang in his throat,
The Puritan twanged through his nose;
We sing a more lively note

Of the ruby red and the rose,—
In the end 'tis the same.

We too shall hobble away

From the merry folk and the fire,"Goodbye" to the singers shall say, And pass from the lute and the lyre,

From the folk and the flame.

Professor Raymond, author of a critical book upon poetry, recently reviewed in the OVERLAND, has passed from theory to practice with A Life in Song. This is the mental autobiography of an imaginary poet, told in successive poems, grouped into seven periods or "ages,"-"Dreaming," "Daring," "Doubting," "Seeking," "Loving," "Serving," and "Watching." In "notes" between, in the character of narrator, commenting on the poet, the author speaks of him as a great genius, and the poems as wonderful and deeply treasured by their readers; which is ill-judged, as the poems themselves do not keep up the illusion. They are somewhat dull and ineffective verses, of about such quality throughout as the following:

Believe me in humanity it is,

In charities and kindly courtesies,

In eyes that sparkle, or in cheeks that blush
With love and hope and faith, which make

them flush,

That all the bloom and fruitage of the earth Attain their consummation and their worth.

You ask me why I love my love,

Ah! Think not love needs proving;
She sways me like the breeze above
That keeps the tree-tops moving.

In her fair face I find a bloom

Life could not know without it,
Which like a rose that sheds perfume,
Makes sweet the world about it.

Before we pass on to a group of still more obscure singers, we will note several volumes of selected verse. We have received July, August,' September,' October, and November1 of Oscar Fay Adams's series, "Through the Year with the Poets." These arepretty and interesting collections, and the plan makes a very good companion to that of Longfellow's "Poems of Places." There is a little monotony in the succession of poem after poem on the 1July-August.-September-October.-November. Edited by Oscar Fay Adams. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. 1886.

same general subject, many of them of not more than fair merit-for the editor has been liberal in selection; and to come, as one turns the pages, upon Tennyson's

"Sweet after showers, ambrosial air,"

or Emerson's

"Burly, dozing humble-bee,"

gives an immediate sense of reaching a higher atmosphere. Each reader will probably miss some poems he would have liked to see included, and find a good many he would have rejected. That, however, is a trouble common to all anthologies. It seems a pity, when there is so much good Californian poetry, not to have increased the variety of the book by more poetry of the Californian months. Miss Coolbrith's, "A Song of the Sumn.er Wind"-"Balmily, balmily, summer wind, Sigh through the mountain passes—” and "In Time of Falling Leaves" (or, as it is here called, "October”)—

"The summer rose is dead;

The sad leaves, withered,

Strew ankle-deep the pathway to our tread,”— are the only ones we find. The selections are not kept rigidly to descriptions of the month, a number that are merely considered apropos of it finding their way in. Thus Mrs. Hemans's " Willow Song," Emerson's "The Humble-Bee," mentioned above, Mrs. Dorr's "The Doves at Mendon," Mrs. MulockCraik's "The Path through the Corn," Tennyson's "The Blackbird" and "The Grasshopper," and a number of others as slightly connected with the subject, are in the volume for July. The series contains several poems written expressly for it, by Louise Chandler Moulton, George P. Lathrop, Helen Gray Cone, Mrs. Alice W. Rollins, F. D. Sherman, Samuel Longfellow, Samuel Minturn Peck, Edith M. Thomas, Mrs. H. P. Spofford, and others, less known.

We have also Poems of Sorrow and Comfort,' a reissue of a book of selected poems published in 1866, which was itself an enlarged edition of a previous issue. Its full title is "Poems of Religious Sorrow, Comfort, Counsel, and Aspiration," and this describes its contents more correctly than does the briefer title upon the cover. Its spirit is still farther explained by the motto upon the title-page:

""Tis life whereof our nerves are scant,
Oh, life, not death, for which we pant;
More life, and fuller, that I want."

"I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."

and by the prefatory stanza:

1 Poems of Sorrow and Comfort. Selected by Francis James Child. Boston and New York; Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach

"Pray for the health of all that are diseased, Confession unto all that are convicted, And patience unto all that are displeased, And comfort unto all that are afflicted, And mercy unto all that have offended, And grace to all, that all may be amended." The breadth of selection may be inferred from mention of a few of the poems included: Tennyson's "The Two Voices," and a number of selections from "In Memoriam;" Blanco White's sonnet on Night; Milton's sonnet "On his Blindness," and "At a Solemn Music"; Mrs. Browning's " A Valediction,' ""He Giveth his Beloved Sleep," and others; Wordsworth's Ode to Duty; Clough's "Qua Cursum Ventus" (with title changed to "Friends Parted by Opinion"); Luther's Ein' Feste Burg, and King Robert's Veni Sancte Spiritus, (with translations); Chaucer's "Flee from the Press," (modernized). In the case of the last-mentioned it would have been well to give the original form opposite the modernized version, as is done in the case of the translations; readers are as likely to understand early English as German, Latin, or Italian. The collection is throughout a very good one, with no tendency to the sentimental.

Poems, by James Vila Blake, The Vision of Gold,3 and Heart's Own, contain more unskilled verses than the other volumes we have noticed. The first-mentioned has snatches of good thought, melody, and happy phrase, and some pretty translations, and is good in tone and feeling. The best thing we find in it compact enough to quote is this quintrain:

Think of thy lot in life as one great whole; Then wouldst thou change it? Nay, not for thy soul;

Some one sweet thing thou hast, some sacred bliss, Some friend, child, love, thought, hope, too sweet to miss.

The secret of contentment this. The Vision of Gold is more ambitious, and rhymes on, page after page, with a good deal of fluency and lavishness in poetic phraseology, so that purple, and gold, and tender blue, and soft, lush grasses, and crimson light, and sunset's visionings, and the fair, white feet of love, and the sunset's gray-blue flame, and milk-white clouds, and like frescoing, give the pages a sort of prettily colored effect, as one runs the eye superficially over them; but if he tries to read in good earnest, he finds the poetry thin and dull. It is capable of such a passage as this,

2 Poems. By James Vila Blake. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co. 1886.

3 The Vision of Gold, and Other Poems. By Lilian Rozell Messenger. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach.

Hearts's Own. Verses by Edwin R. Champlin. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co. 1886.

And a tearlet clove

Her calm she had won for the aching breast,
And nothing more smote her perfect rest,
For life went away with love;

but this is a fairer average stanza :

The rosy feet of spring stepped light, Where winter slept still, solemn and white, And clouds of downy bloom were seen Trailing their rosy and pearly sheen, Tangled in trees, plum, cherry, and peach, On bending boughs in a young child's reach. Heart's Own prejudices the reader strongly by prefacing: "Most of the pieces in this book have not been published; those which have been will doubtless be readily recognized by most readers." It need scarcely be said that there is nothing in the book that "most readers" have ever heard of; and it might be conjectured that the author intended the assertion for a modest suggestion that he expected few readers outside his circle of familiars, did he not go on to say, "My aim in bringing these together, has been to present a representative collection of my later verse." A sonnet addressed "To D. G. R.," and beginning

"Rossetti! I who know thee not, but may

Some day when I can trace to thine abode," helps also to fix the class of literati to which he belongs, whose unwarrantable incursions upon the privacy of well-known writers form so grievous a penalty of greatness. The verses on which the author appears to place so high a value, are neither good nor very bad: occasionally a stanza is quite fair. Thus:

A Victor's Message.

O living men and dying!
The way to conquer death
Is not by weak defying,
Nor cowardly complying,

But by a joyful breath,
With all life's colors flying!

An exact meaning in this is not clear, looked for closely, but it has a pleasant, spirited sound.

In Thoughts from the Visions of the Night is a mere pamphlet slip, containing a poem of meditations on death, which has some very strong pictures, and lines. The Perpetual Fire' is also in paper covers, but makes four pamphlet numbers of about one hundred and thirty pages in all. It is a very singular series of poems, which read like the work of a slightly unbalanced religious enthusiast. Poetry, he says, has lost faith in its own inspiration, and consequently no more great poems are written. It is all dilettant. If a man would first have a great and unselfish motive, and then trust himself to the 1 The Perpetual Fire. Published by W. E. Davenport, No. 11 Garden Place, Brooklyn, New York. 1886.

inspiring Spirit, a great poem would be written. He is now going to do this. And he proceeds, through the one hundred and thirty pages, to do so, with, apparently, great single-mindedness and good faith. The motive from first to last is an earnest appeal to the people about him in New York City to care no more for ambition and gold,but for righteousness and mercy. Labor-troubles, the miseries of the slums, politics, creeds-all these he touches on only to penetrate through all superficials to the simple, constantly repeated demand that men should do justice, and love mercy, and live in the Spirit. There is not much poetry about it, but there is a quality that really arrests the attention somewhat There is a simple and straightforward egotism in everything, which is scarcely offensive. "As the only evidence of honesty of purpose, the author and publisher of this work proposes to send to the address of anyone who is an earnest lover of the Truth a copy of this or or any other number of this book." "Let no man care about his reputation now; this is not the time.... Righteousness of action and purity of heart, these are the necessities of life.... It is wrong to consider whether good poetry can be written without a moral purpose. Since the foundation of the world was it never known that such a thing could be. It is a sin to deny the sufficiency of the spirit of God to sustain and exalt a living literature, which shall have divine authority and be again his 'Word.'" 'Wordsworth was a prophet equally with Jeremiah.... Keats, too was a sacred man; so was Emerson, and so was Carlyle .... Artistic, or, more properly, intellectual verse which is an accomplishment of ingenuity and skill and study is forever different from true poetry.... He who would be the servant of its inspiration hears a voice which the apostle heard of old, saying: "When thou art brought before judges thou shalt not consider thy words: for in that hour it shall be given thee what thou shalt speak.'

"Wherefore I preach; not Grecian art nor wit Not human knowledge, nor the terms of sense, But Goodness, Truth, and Righteousness on Earth."

He prefaces to a rather ordinary, but earnest, boyish poem, composed in an exalted mood of mind, which renders its memory sacred to him, an assertion of his private conviction that he may "claim for the state of mind in which it was composed the solemn dignity of a designation which the oldest of the Hebrew Prophets applied to its operations only when under the influence of a power not its own." He closes his work with a "Hymn of the Author's Life," in which he says, But I was chosen even from a youth,

And taught by thee in a peculiar way.

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Shall do its work, and bare the child Distress, Until men know the calm and dreadful OneWhose name at first was only Righteousness. There is not wanting a certain dignity and a touch of the impressive in this; and there is at least a good deal of psychological interest in the whole series of verses. To examine the somewhat uncouthly issued pamphlet numbers, in which the poet takes himself and his work so seriously, together with the daintily bound productions of culture, the froth of light, modern, imitative verse, the cruder Western efforts,-gives a curious sense of the extent and variety of the intellectual forces that, working on the less powerful order of minds in our country, find expression in this heterogenous mass of "minor verse."

Holiday and Children's Books.

MISS IRENE E. JEROME, a young artist who two years ago came into notice with a series of studies called "One Year's Sketch Book," has also published, earlier this year, The Message of the Bluebird', and now, Nature's Hallelujah'. Both these books con

The Message of the Bluebird. Told to me to Tell to Others. By Irene E. Jerome. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co. 2 Nature's Hallelujah. By Irene E. Jerome. Engraved and Printed under Direction of George T. Andrew. Boston: Lee & Shepard 1887.

sist of studies of New England landscapes, flowers, and birds, interspersed with illustrative poetry and scraps of devotional sentences. The Message of the Bluebird is issued in paper and in cloth binding, both ornamental of their kind. It consists of some half-dozen thick card pages, each containing a charming study of a singing bird, usually associated with a bit of landscape, or tree or flower; and lettered ornamentally, Christmas card fashion, with scraps of verse and Scripture texts expressive of joy and exultation. The poses and expression of the little birds are admirable, and do translate the accompanying sentiments quite impressively; the abandon and ecstacy of a bird in mid-torrent of song is well reproduced. The bits of landscape and flower study are also true and lifelike and quite expressive. Nature's Hallelujah is more elaborate, and a very handsome gift-book, with gilded covers and nearly fifty large plates, with studies of New England spring and early summer-April, May, and June. These studies are all good, and some of them very good. The interspersing of texts and devotional sentences, with the pictures, is a device that savors too much of Christmas cards and of merely decorative, instead of really illustrative, purpose, for the highest order of book-making; but the devotional intent runs through the whole plan of the book. A still farther lapse in the same direction from higher standards of art is in the violets with children's faces singing from a book, and the flight of autumn leaves, each bearing a little picture. The selections of poetry are appropriate and good; such as H. H.'s,

"Golden and snowy and red the flowers,
Golden, snowy, and red in vain.
Robins call robins through sad showers,

The white dove's feet are wet with rain."

or Longfellow's,

Blow, winds! and waft through all the rooms The snowflakes of the cherry blooms.

or Miss Coolbrith's,

'Sing loud, O bird in the tree,

O bird, sing loud in the sky;

And honey-bees, blacken the clover bed;
There are none of you glad as I.

For oh, but the world is fair, is fair,

And oh, but the world is sweet!

I will out in the gold of the blossoming mold,
And sit at the master's feet.

-Half a dozen of the illustrated poems that have been issued in preceding years as gift books, in various forms.-Home, Sweet Home3, Abide With

3 Home Sweet Home. By John Howard Payne. Designs by Miss L. B. Humphrey. Boston: Lee & Shepard. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

Me', Nearer my God to Thee, Rock of Ages", illustrated by Miss. L. B. Humphrey, My Faith Looks up to thee, by Lisbeth B. Comins, and Curfew must not Ring to-night, by F. T. Merrill and E. H. Garret, whose designs are of a much higher order than those in the other books-are now reproduced in miniature, in cloth bindings, gilded or colored.The Prang Christmas and New Year issues this year, seem to us to show a falling off in cards, and an increase of attention to "novelties," "satin artprints," "mounts," banners, sachets, calendars, &c. Some of these novelties betray a curiously grotesque taste in the public (for the publishers undoubtedly know their public in issuing these things), such as imitations of shells, and of crackers; "mounts" in the shapes of a Yule log, a rustic fence, a castle window, a pansy, a dust-pan, a mandolin, a Japanese lantern-and these of rich mate. rial and sometimes very prettily painted! The designs used in the "art-prints" and the cards, are to a great extent the same; but some of the best ones are reserved for the prints. It seems curious that there should be demand for these pretty, but aimless and expensive toys. The new designs do not run as much to flowers as formerly. Children. and other figure studies seem now favorites; and some of these are very pretty. There are also some good landscapes, one series by W. H. Gibson. The only noticeable ones among the flower pictures are some artistic chrysanthemums by Mrs. W. T Fisher.

ONE of the prettiest of books for little children is Bye-O-Baby Ballads :" eight "ballads," such as the "Ballad of the Bye-O-Baby," "Ballad of the Lost Shoe," "Ballad of a Sugar Cooky," "Ballad of the Silver Moon," with a "Song of Good-Morning," and "Song of Good-Night;" all illustrated and decorated with full page pictures and marginal jottings, in beautiful reproductions from water colors -not the old-fashioned, crude water colors, but the rich and yet bright tones with which the children of this decorative age are to be trained to aesthetic discrimination. The "ballads" are also pretty though they do not betray the hand of a real master of children's verse; and if they occasionally halt a little in the versification, the defect is only technical-in spirit they are very sympathetic with child life. Some of the best stanzas are in the first "ballad:"

Abide with me. By Henry Francis Lyte. Designs by Miss L. B. Humphrey. Boston: Lee & Shepard. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

Nearer, my God, to Thee. By Sarah Flower Adams. Designs by Miss L. B. Humphrey. Boston: Lee & Shepard. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

Rock of Ages. By Augustus Toplady. Designs by Miss L. B. Humphrey. Boston: Lee & Shepard. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

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In through the dreamland gate. -His One Fault, which adds one more to the number of J. T. Trowbridge's pleasant stories for boys, has already been published as a serial in St. Nicholas. The ". one fault" was heedlessness, and the number of successive scrapes into which it brought a well-meaning lad are both entertaining and instructive- -Helping Himself is a boy's story in the same line of subject that Mr. Trowbridge habitually chooses; but nothing could bring out more ividly the difference between good and bad-or if so strong a word as bad is unjust, let us say cheap and inferior-writing for young people, than the reading of such a book as this immediately after "His One Fault." There is no harm at all in it, and its morals are all of the best. It is merely a story of a country minister's son who went to the

4 My Faith Looks Up to Thee. By Ray Palmer. De signs by Lisbeth B. Comins. Boston: Lee & Shepard For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

5Curfew must not Ring To-night. By Rose Hartwick Thorpe. Illustrations by F. T. Merrill and E. H. Garrett. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1887. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

Bye-O-Baby Ballads. By Charles Stuart Pratt. Water colors and Decoration by F. Childe Hassam. Boston: D. Lathrop & Co.

7 His One Fault. By J. F. Trowbridge. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1887: For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

Helping Himself. By Horatio Alger, Jr. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates.

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