Our literature is not rich in women poets of the highest genius, but there are many who have sung true songs. Maria Lowell was permitted to give us a few notes only of her chaste singing. The Cary sisters, Mrs. Cook, Mrs. Greenough, and Helen Hunt Jackson, and many who now enliven our magazines, have done genuine work; but one often looks in vain for the power that distinguished Miss Larcom. Considering the range of the versification, the music of the lines, the strength of phrase and beauty of metaphor, and lofty moral intensity of her poetry, it is not claiming too much to say that it exhibits a genius as versatile and as rich in its utterance as that of any of her female contemporaries, and considering the impression that she has made upon the people, at their firesides and in their worship, she holds a place, equal to any, in their hearts.
Her poems have been recognized in many collections in our land and in England. Mr. Longfellow in his “Poems of Places” has remembered her. She is honored in Emerson’s “Parnassus;” one of her hymns is included in Dr. Martineau’s “Hymns of the Spirit;” she has been given a place, by Mr. Garrett Horder, in “A Treasury of Sacred Song from American Sources;” by Mr. Higginson, in “American Sonnets;” by Mr. Richard Grant White, in “The Poetry of the Rebellion;” and by Mr. W. M. Rossetti, in his “English Selections from Popular Poets.”
The following letter to Dr. John Hunter of Glasgow shows that she enjoyed this recognition of her work:--
DEAR SIR,--A friend gave me your “Hymns of Faith and Life,” in the winter, telling me she had found one or two of mine in it. On looking it over, I find five, not all of which are credited to me, though all are included in the Household Edition of my poems, published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. I thought you would like to know the authorship, and therefore write.
Of course I am gratified to know that my hymns were taken on their own merit apparently, and I am glad if anything I have written is a natural expression of sincere worship for other hearts and voices than my own.
The two following letters illustrate how Dr. Holmes and Mr. Longfellow appreciated Miss Larcom’s work.
MY DEAR MISS LARCOM,--I have been reading your poems at all the spare moments I could find this evening. Many of them I read carefully--every page I tasted. My wife and daughter were sitting opposite to me, and I had to shade my eyes with my hand that they should not see the tears shining in them--this over and over again. The poems are eminently wholesome, sweet, natural. Their perfume is as characteristic of the soil they spring from as that of the sweet fern or the bayberry.