EDITH MATILDA THOMAS

(1854-)

HE poetical work of Edith Matilda Thomas is chiefly remarkable for its sustained literary quality. While it is never lacking in spontaneity, it always shows conscientious workmanship, and strict fidelity to a high ideal of the requirements of Its subject-matter evidences a thoughtful, sensitive, and ofttimes passionate spirit in the author, governed however by that spirit of asceticism which is the distinguishing mark of the true artist. Miss Thomas's self-restraint is commensurate with her inspiration.

verse.

She was born in 1854 in Chatham, Ohio; was educated at the Normal Institute at Geneva, in the same State. While she was yet a girl, she began writing for the magazines. In 1885 she published a volume of verse entitled 'A New-Year's Masque,' and in the following year a volume of prose with the title The Round Year.' Her prose is no less excellent than her verse, being always strong, simple, and direct.

EDITH M. THOMAS

The Round Year' is a kind of continuous essay on the various aspects of the seasons. The author's love of nature is not that bred in the town, through long deprivation of its refreshment. She has the intimate acquaintance with it which does not deal in generalities, but lingers with discerning affection over the beauties of certain flowers and wayside bushes, of elusive changes in the sky, of the impalpable essences of natural things felt rather than seen even with the inner eye.

This friendly love for the outside world informs many of her most beautiful poems. The volumes entitled 'Lyrics and Sonnets,' 'A Winter Swallow,' 'Fair Shadow Land,' 'A New-Year's Masque,' contain not a few of these poems of the sky and earth. In one of them, 'Half Sight and Whole Sight,' she expresses the spirit in which she herself looks upon the God-made world:

"Thou beholdest, indeed, some mystical intimate beckoning

Out of the flower's honeyed heart, that passeth our reckoning;
Yet when hast thou seen, or shalt see,

With the eye of yon hovering bee?»

Miss Thomas's poems of love and life are more remote in their spirit than her poems of nature; yet in a time of feverish erotic verse their apparent coldness is welcome. She has drunk too deep, it may be, at the fountain-head of Greek poetry to share the modern extravagance of thought and feeling. Her poems on classical subjects show no small degree of comprehension of the Greek spirit. She makes use oftenest of the sonnet and lyric forms in her poetry, handling them with delicate skill. The sense of her verse is never sacrificed to its music; and in her preservation of the fine balance between the two elements, she gives clearest evidence of the genuineness of her poetical gifts.

SYRINX

From A New-Year's Masque, and Other Poems. Copyright 1884, by Edith M. Thomas. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers

OME forth, too timid spirit of the reed!

COM

Leave thy plashed coverts and elusions shy,
And find delight at large in grove and mead.
No ambushed harm, no wanton's peering eye,
The shepherd's uncouth god thou needst not fear,—
Pan has not passed this way for many a year.

'Tis but the vagrant wind that makes thee start,
The pleasure-loving south, the freshening west;
The willow's woven veil they softly part,

To fan the lily on the stream's warm breast:
No ruder stir, no footstep pressing near,–
Pan has not passed this way for many a year.

Whether he lies in some mossed wood, asleep,
And heeds not how the acorns drop around,
Or in some shelly cavern near the deep,

Lulled by its pulses of eternal sound,

He wakes not, answers not, our sylvan cheer,-
Pan has been gone this many a silent year.

Else we had seen him, through the mists of morn,
To upland pasture lead his bleating charge;

There is no shag upon the stunted thorn,

No hoof-print on the river's silver marge;
Nor broken branch of pine, nor ivied spear,-
Pan has not passed that way for many a year.

O tremulous elf, reach me a hollow pipe,

The best and smoothest of thy mellow store!

Now I may blow till Time be hoary ripe,

And listening streams forsake the paths they wore:
Pan loved the sound, but now will never hear,—
Pan has not trimmed a reed this many a year!

And so, come freely forth, and through the sedge
Lift up a dimpled, warm, Arcadian face,
As on that day when fear thy feet did fledge,

And thou didst safely win the breathless race.—
I am deceived: nor Pan nor thou art here,-
Pan has been gone this many a silent year.

LETHE

From Fair Shadow Land.' Copyright 1893, by Edith M. Thomas. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers

EMEMBRANCE followed him into the skies.

R They met. Awhile mute Sorrow held him thrall.

Then broke he forth in spirit words and sighs:-
"Great was my sin, but at my contrite call

Came pardon and the hope of Paradise;

If this be Heaven, thy blessing on me fall!”
She looked. Peace filled her unremembering eyes;
She knew him not-she had forgotten all.

SUNSET

From A Winter Swallow: With Other Verse. Copyright 1896, by Charles

Scribner's Sons

HAT pageants have I seen, what plenitude

WHA

Of pomp, what hosts in Tyrian rich array,
Crowding the mystic outgate of the day:

What silent hosts, pursuing or pursued,

And all their track with wealthy wreckage strewed!

What seas that roll in waves of gold and gray,

What flowers, what flame, what gems in blent display,What wide-spread pinions of the phoenix brood!

Give me a window opening on the west,

And the full splendor of the setting sun.

There let me stand and gaze, and think no more

If I be poor, or old, or all unblest;

And when my sands of life are quite outrun,

May my soul follow through the day's wide door!

CYBELE AND HER CHILDREN

From Fair Shadow Land.' Copyright 1893, by Edith M. Thomas. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers

HE Mother has eternal youth;

THE

Yet in the fading of the year,

For sake of what must fade, in ruth

She wears a crown of oak-leaves sear.

By whistling woods, by naked rocks,

That long have lost the summer heat,

She calls the wild, unfolded flocks,

And points them to their shelter meet.

In her deep bosom sink they all;

The hunter and the prey are there;

No ravin-cry, no hunger-call:

These do not fear, and those forbear.

The winding serpent watches not;

Unwatched, the field-mouse trembles not;

Weak hyla, quiet in his grot,

So rests, nor changes line or spot.

For food the Mother gives them sleep,

Against the cold she gives them sleep,
To cheat their foes she gives them sleep,
For safety gives them death-like sleep.

The Mother has eternal youth,

And therefrom, in the wakening year
Their life revives; and they, in sooth,

Forget their mystic bondage drear.

THE GRASSHOPPER

From A New-Year's Masque, and Other Poems.

Copyright 1884, by Edith

M. Thomas. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers

HUTTLE of the sunburnt grass,

SH

Fifer in the dun cuirass,

Fifing shrilly in the morn,

Shrilly still at eve unworn;

Now to rear, now in the van,

Gayest of the elfin clan:

Though I watch their rustling flight,

I can never guess aright

Where their lodging-places are:

'Mid some daisy's golden star,
Or beneath a roofing leaf,
Or in fringes of a sheaf,
Tenanted as soon as bound!
Loud thy reveille doth sound.
When the earth is laid asleep,
And her dreams are passing deep,

On mid-August afternoons;

And through all the harvest moons,

Nights brimmed up with honeyed peace,

Thy gainsaying doth not cease.

When the frost comes thou art dead:

We along the stubble tread,

On blue, frozen morns, and note

No least murmur is afloat;

Wondrous still our fields are then,

Fifer of the elfin men.

WINTER SLEEP

From A Winter Swallow. Copyright 1896, by Charles Scribner's Sons

XXV-929

I

KNOW it must be winter (though I sleep) —

I know it must be winter, for I dream

I dip my bare feet in the running stream,

And flowers are many and the grass grows deep.

I know I must be old (how age deceives!)
I know I must be old, for, all unseen,

My heart grows young, as autumn fields grow green When late rains patter on the falling sheaves.