I asked the old man to allow me to see some of the poetry he had “made,” and thereby opened up a literary mine. The request touched a tender chord and I was ushered back to a worn desk of antique pattern in the rear of the store. He raised the lid and extracted the treasure. A book had been removed from its binding, and the covers converted into a portfolio. He gently removed about a hundred sheets of paper of various shapes and sizes, covered with closely written matter. Some of the spelling would have shocked the shade of Lindley Murray, and made it glad that he had passed away, and some of it would have made a champion of spelling reform quite happy. It was _vers libre_ of the most malignant type. Rhymes were freely distributed at picturesque random, and while the ideas, rhythm, and meter were quite lame at times, much of the verse was better than some recently published imagist poetry, which contains none of these things. Humor and pathos were intermingled. Sometimes there was much humor where pathos was intended, and often real pathos lurked among the lighter lines.
There are many singers who are never heard. Melodies in impenetrable forests and trills that float on desert air are for those who sing, and not for those who listen. A happy soul may pour forth impassioned song in solitude, for the joy of the singing, and a solitary bard may distil his fancy upon pages that are for him alone.
The verse of Elihu Baxter Brown is its own and only excuse for being. It has solaced the still hours, and if its creator has been its only reader, he has been most appreciative.
A touching lay depicts his elation upon the departure of his wife “in a autobeel” on a long visit to distant relatives, but the joy prevails only during the first six lines. The remaining thirty are devoted to sorrow and “lonely misery as I walketh the street,” and end with “when will she be back I wonder?” He falls into a “reverree” and from under its gentle spell the virile lines, “The brite moon makes a strong impress on me,” and “I’ve named my pet hen after thee,” float into the world. With “eyes full of weep” he reflects that “sometimes she’s cold as all git out,” and further on he wishes that his “loved one was a pie,” so as to facilitate immediate and affectionate assimilation.