It was Mr. Howells,--ever as generous in discovering new native talent as he is unflinching in reproof of the effeteness of European taste,--who first drew attention to the originality and beauty of Mr. Cawein's poetry. The Kentucky poet had, at that time, published but one tentative volume, the _Blooms of the Berry_, of 1887. This was followed, in 1888, by _The Triumph of Music_, and since then hardly a year has passed without a slender sheaf of verse from Mr. Cawein's garden. Among these (if a single volume is to be indicated), the quality which distinguishes him from all other poets,--the Kentucky flavour, if we may call it so,--is perhaps to be most agreeably detected in _Intimations of the Beautiful_. But it is time that I should leave the American lyrist to make his own appeal to English ears, with but one additional word of explanation, namely, that in this selection Mr. Cawein's narrative poems on mediæval themes, and in general his cosmopolitan writings, have been neglected in favour of such lyrics as would present him most vividly in his own native landscape, no visitor in spirit to Europe, but at home in that bright and exuberant West--
Where, in the hazy morning, runs The stony branch that pools and drips, Where red-haws and the wild-rose hips Are strewn like pebbles; where the sun's Own gold seems captured by the weeds; To see, through scintillating seeds, The hunters steal with glimmering guns. To stand within the dewy ring Where pale death smites the bone-set blooms, And everlasting's flowers, and plumes Of mint, with aromatic wing! And hear the creek,--whose sobbing seems A wild man murmuring in his dreams,-- And insect violins that sing!
So sweet a voice, so consonant with the music of the singers of past times, heard in a place so fresh and strange, will surely not pass without its welcome from the lovers of genuine poetry.
_There is a poetry that speaks Through common things: the grasshopper, That in the hot weeds creaks and creaks, Says all of summer to my ear: And in the cricket's cry I hear The fireside speak, and feel the frost Work mysteries of silver near On country casements, while, deep lost In snow, the gatepost seems a sheeted ghost.
And other things give rare delight: Those guttural harps the green-frogs tune, Those minstrels of the falling night, That hail the sickle of the moon From grassy pools that glass her lune: Or,--all of August in its loud Dry cry,--the locust's call at noon, That tells of heat and never a cloud To veil the pitiless sun as with a shroud.