JAMES NEWTON MATTHEWS.

OUR

UR Poet of the Prairies and the accepted master of verse in the Mississippi Valley lives in southern Illinois, a mile from the typical old time town of Mason. On his own farm, in an idyllic spot smothered in orchards, balmy with the breath of wind-whipped pines, stands his home. Here he lives with a fair, gentle wife and two bright boys. Into this cove of quiet comes troops of friends every season for rest and comradeship. Here gather men and women of national fame to share the medicinal calm of his serene spirit. Here he was born, here for thirty-six years he has lived, and here he will die. He is the physician for the whole country side. The healer, helper, guide and friend of all. He is beloved by everyone for his sympathy and skill. These plain people know little of his far-reaching fame, and wonder why strangers come so far to his door. They sometimes ask if the city folk come to him to be treated.

Matthews' poetry is the joint product of his personality and his surroundings. No one else could write it. He could write it nowhere else. His retiring but fearless soul looks out from eyes eloquent and deep as the wells of Gaza. Of medium stature and slight build he wears ever that nameless charm called magnetism. His tenderness impels him to lift a road-weary child into his cart and carry the lad for miles just for love of it. His manly simplicity draws his friends from far and holds them forever. He gathers similes on the shores of life as a child finds shells on the beach. He has treasures of trope and figure but Fancy the falcon sits ever on the wrist of Fact and flies never beyond the tinkle of his silver bell. His choice language ever adorns his chaste thought. He scorns to hang the patched and seamy stable smock of dialect on a noble sentiment, but folds the classic drapery of speech about his thought, as flows the cinctured tunic round the languorous poses of a white-limbed odalisque. He loves Nature in her gentle moods, his eye marks where the tides of spring's new life chafe o'er coral reefs of spice buds into surf of dogwood bloom. His poems are steeped to the lips in summer like poppies in a sea of corn. is an unflagging student, a graduate of the University of Illinois, and has not yet reached the meridian of his powers. His book Tempe Vale, and Other Poems," had a fine sale, and able critics say it has the actual poetic stuff.

He

A year ago Mr. Matthews' neighbors gave a festival in his honor. Thousands assembled at his home, hundreds of marching children strewed garlands in the way. Noted guests from afar were there; clerics, lawyers, merchants, statesmen, literati attended. It was a spontaneous geyser outflow of the friendship of the west. Amid it all the

SHE steers the stars through Heaven's azure deep; She lifts the leaden eyelids of the morn;

On distant hills she winds the hunter's horn, And wakes the lonely shepherd from his sleep; She scales the dizzy ledge where torrents leap,

And hangs the bloom upon the bristling thorn;
She sits for hours in solitudes forlorn,
With downcast eyes, where hapless lovers weep.
When Spring comes up the vale in Winter's trace,
She plucks the blossom from the bud's embrace;
She binds the golden girdle round the bee,
And lends the lily's lustre to the pea;
She curves the swallow's wing, and guides its
flight,

And tips the dewy meads with twinkling light.
She rides, she revels on the rushing storm,

She suns her pinions on the rainbow's rim-
She laves in mountain pools her snowy limb,
As sweetly chaste as Dian and as warm;
In summer fields she bares her blushing arm,
And sings among the reapers. By the dim
Light of autumnal moons, her tresses swim
On gales Lethean, with assuasive charm.
Into the chamber of the alchemist

She peers, or, through some half-closed lattice,

sees

Her lover by the wanton night wind kissed.
Anon, she walks the dim Hesperides,
Or, mingling with the spirits of the mist,
Dances at will along the darkling seas.

A LEGEND BEAUTIFUL. 'TWAS thus the Dervish spake: "Upon our right, There stands, unseen, an angel with a pen, Who notes down each good deed of ours, and then Seals it with kisses in the Master's sight. Upon our left a sister-angel sweet

Keeps daily record of each evil act, But, great with love, folds not the mournful sheet Till deepest midnight, when, if conscienceracked,

We lift to Allah our repentant hands,

She smiles and blots the record where she stands;
But if we seek not pardon for our sin,
She seals it with a tear, and hands it in."

A NOCTURNE.

ALL things that we can hear or see,
To-night, seem happy. Every tree

Is palpitant with voice and wing,

And vibrant with the breathing spring.
The very grass is tremulous
With music, floating up to us,

So softly, spiritu❜lly clear,

We seem to feel it-not to hear.

The moonlight's luster leaking through

The bending blossoms, pearled with dew,
Is so delicious, so divine,

We quaff its splendor like a wine.
Only the faintest wind is curled
About the pale, enamored world,

And drowsy perfumes slip and drip From every pansy's pouting lip. Starlight, and melody and dreams! The lover's and the poet's themes,

The same that once entranced and won
The listening maids of Babylon-
That charm'd the ear, and caught the smiles
Of Beauty in the Grecian Isles,-

That lulled in old Italian dells
The Roman lads and damosels.

On such enchanting nights as these,
Our spirits, for a moment, seize

The ravishment of life that runs
Exuberant, thro' stars and suns;
And as we catch the whirl and whir,
The planetary pulse and stir,

We break the seals of sense, and scan The majesty of God and man.

THE CRIME.

HERE lived the slayer, and there the slain,
With barely an acre of ground between;
'Twas night! they stood in the wind and rain,
And quarrelled,-next morning a ghastly stain
Of blood on the meadow-grass was seen.
And one was dead, and one had fled,

And all night long the mourners wept;
The widow wailed in the dusk by the dead,
And the wife of the slayer shook with dread,
And the north-wind over the chimney swept.
And these were farmers, and these were friends,
Friends, I say, till that night in the Fall;
Too proud was the one to make amends
For a foolish wrong, and the bloody ends
Of passion followed, with grief and gall.

Then a gibbet loomed in the dusky sky,

And a blue-eyed orphan pierced the night With desolate sobs, and a mother's cry Outrang the blast, as it whistled by, In its wild, unbridled flight.

They laid the slayer not far from the slain,
In the village church-yard, under the hill,
And the meadows of death were dearth of grain,
And the winds blew over the unplowed plain,
For the hands of the husbandmen were still.

I passed by the crumbling huts, to-day,
And birds were out, and the land was green;
Two women withered, and bent, and gray,
Sat, each in the shade of her own doorway,
And children played on the ground between.

THE BURDEN OF BABYLON.

O BABYLON, O Babylon,

The Lord hath made His purpose known; His anger, like a seething sea, Swells at thy gate, And Sodom's fate

Alas, proud city, is reserved for thee.

O Babylon, O Babylon,

Soon, soon, thy glory shall be gone; Beneath thy Godless roofs shall run E'en the warm blood

Of motherhood,

And none escape His vengeance-nay, not one!

O Babylon, O Babylon,

Never again as years go on,

Shall shepherds fold their flocks by thee; Nor Arab pitch

His tent, nor hitch His camel by thy cool pomegranate tree.

O Babylon, O Babylon, The winds shall o'er thy ruins moan; Within thy desolated halls,

Shall flit the owl,

And wild beasts prowl,

And dancing satyrs hold their carnivals.

DAY AND NIGHT. I

WHEN drowsy Day draws round his downy bed The Tyrian tapestries of gold and red,

And, weary of his flight,

Puts out the palace light,

'Tis night!

steed.

-Way Down in Spice Valley.

SOLITUDE.

'Way down in Spice Valley, Old Time falls asleep,

HARRISON S. MORRIS.

ARRISON S. MORRIS was born in Philadel

That the birds cannot wake him, with melodies blithe,

And the long valley-grasses grow over his scythe,— And Summer kneels down in her long golden gown, On a carpet of green, where the skies never frown, 'Way down in Spice Valley.

FLY.

-Ibid.

to years of manhood, gave evidence of that strong poetic sense which has since been a large factor in his life. The Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which did so much to enlarge American ideas, affected Mr. Morris' imagination powerfully, and in the descriptive letters which he contributed to the press at that time may be noted the beginnings of the pictorial power afterwards so finely developed in his verse. Mr. Morris' verse, at first fragmentary, soon attracted attention; it had in it that vital breath of Nature and the testimony of keen delight in her outward manifestations which must ever find an echo in the hearts of humanity; and when in 1883, in conjunction with a literary friend, he published a slender volume with the title: "A Duet in Lyrics," the quality of his verse was felt to be fine in both thought and execution. In common with some of the loftiest of recent poets, Mr. Morris has fallen under the spell of Keats, but though he has absorbed the spirit of that master through the years of loving study which he has given to him, he has retained a strong individuality; his note is distinctly his own, and the felicities of expression with which the reader of his poetry is continually struck are found upon analysis to be the outcome of a wholly original inspiration.

The symbolism of Nature appeals strongly to Mr. Morris, and its expression is frequently recurrent in his work, which, though inspired by something deeper and better than a mere desire for metrical correctness, shows a high degree of outward polish and the carefullest craftsmanship. This external finish is especially noticeable in the old French forms into which, in his lighter moods, he has occasionally wandered.

Mr. Morris is identified with all that is best in the intellectual life of Philadelphia. He is a member of that literary coterie which is gradually restoring to the city its lost prestige, and to none more than to him may the friends of a true culture look with an abiding confidence. F. H. W.

WINTER'S SECRETS.

WINTER, thou and I are boon;
With the wind and frozen moon,

And the thaw and forest drip,

I hold secret fellowship!

When the trees stand bleak arow

Summer skeletons-I go

Down their broken arches singing

Songs of snow and tempest wringing;

Or I stand upon a rise

Underneath the hushéd skies,

So to feel the meaning clear
Of thy voiceless atmosphere.
Is thy message of a birth
Bubbling at the rim of earth-
Held like beaded glass by thee
That it mantle steadily?
Mayhap, Winter, it is thou
Makest roses bud and blow;
Makest leafage and all shades
In the ancient chestnut glades;
Makest laughter on our lips
And the dew at crocus tips,
Mayhap spring and summer go
Like the glacier streams which flow
Down the ice to osier green
Forth from thee that art unseen-
Yet art like a god who gives
Letting none know where he lives.

Of old each earthly thing of price
Clustered was in Paradise,
Whence the green flowed o'er the earth
Like a vernal billow-birth;
And the tender, rounded fruits
Rolled away from leafy shoots;
So, engirt with bastioned snows,
Verdure out of Winter flows;
So in Winter's spirit lie
Potencies of sun and sky.

MATER AUCTUMNA.

WHAT of thy sorrows, mother! Are not these

Fruition of thy reign:

Thy lusty garners, heaped about thy knees,

Of corn and russet grain;

Thy fatted flocks at nibble in the leas;

Thy creaking harvest wain?

What of thy sorrows that the blowing trees

Interpret into pain?

What memory hovers in thy matron eyes
And touches out the tears?

What thought of music in the warméd skies;
And hope of sweet, young years,

That grew to youth in leafy panoplies,
And laughed at later fears —
Then withered in the valleys, echo-wise,
And slept on Autumn biers?

I hear thy sorrow, mother! In the breeze It sings an under-psalm;

Deep-toned, it murmurs in the melodies That bubble by the dam;