SOME LESSER POETS OF THE MID-CENTURY

From 1830 to 1860 there was produced in America a surprising amount of verse. The most of it Time has proved valueless, but from it have been winnowed a few real lyrics that seem to have taken a permanent place in the American anthology. The work of John G. Saxe, a native of Vermont, a graduate of Middlebury, and a lawyer of note, has gone with the greater part of the poetic mass, and some of it undeservedly, for without doubt he was the best producer of 'society verse' of the Praed, Locker-Lamson type that America has produced, surpassing even Holmes. Nevertheless, it must be confessed that his clever and dainty improvisations are now but seldom read. Of an utterly different type was the work of Thomas W. Parsons, who so narrowly escaped being a great poet that one wonders at times just what element it was that he lacked. He spent a large part of his life abroad in England and in Italy, and few Americans ever have lived more completely in the higher realms of art than he. He translated Dante, and the immortal lyricOn a Bust of Dante,' as perfect a thing as there is in English, first appeared in book form in his version of the Inferno in 1843. Only in a few rare stanzas does he reach the heights. One wonders as he reads his collections and his collections were few and brief-how one who could do such exquisite work could also produce verses so ordinary. Thomas Dunn English, a Philadelphian, and a graduate of the University of Pennsyl vania, was as voluminous as Parsons was sparing of product. Among his books are twenty dramas and seven volumes of verse, but he is remembered only for his single song, 'Ben Bolt,' 'a parlor ballad' which was perhaps the most popular bit of sentiment of its era. For a time the Cary sisters, Alice and Phobe, natives of Ohio, whose poetic abilities were discovered by Whittier, were supposed to be producers of permanent material. They moved to New York City, and for a time their home was a delightful literary center to which all poets sooner or later gravitated, but they and their work are now forgotten save for Phoebe's immortal hymn which already is recognized as a classic. The greatest genius of the whole period, undoubtedly, was Stephen Collins Foster, a native of Pittsburgh, and for years a man of business there and in Cincinnati. He discovered his musical gifts almost by accident, began to write music, composing the words to accompany it, won almost instant recognition, removed to New York City, and spent there the last years of his life. In his list of songs, one hundred and twenty in number, are many which are now known by heart by all in America and in England as well. Despite the great sales of his work, he himself received little, and it was in misery and destitution that he spent his last days. Lucy Larcom was another poet of real ability discovered by Whittier. She had worked in the Lowell, Massachusetts, mills, had written for the Lowell Offering, the magazine edited by the mill operatives, and then, breaking from this work, had taught school, at one time as far west as Illinois. She threw herself into the anti-slavery cause, and all her life was in the forefront of philanthropic work of every kind. Her poems, sweet and womanly, often touched with the tearfulness of their day, are not read as once they were and she bids fair to be forgotten like Alice Cary and so many other Female Poets of America.' Guy H. McMaster is remembered only because of his single stirring lyric which is generally known by the title The Old Continentals.'