Page:A Crystal Age - Hudson - 1922.djvu/23

Rh which they play their part has a sinuous grace, a subtlety of emotion that places it in a realm of its own in the world of romance. Not even Meredith's women are so appealing, so utterly beautiful as Hudson's. Here, too, there is a picture of motherhood such as no poet ever before attempted; an analysis of passion that illuminates certain hidden penetralia of the human mind; suggestions of a new music, a new art, tantalizing with the rich possibilities that they offer. And the wonder of it is that this fairyland of gracious beings, this narrative of marvels that could never be, save in the poet's mind, is made absolutely real. It lives and becomes a part of the reader's own life. But after all, the vitality of The Crystal Age, the realism, the humor, the pathos of it, is not to be wondered at. It is a dream, a fairy thing, indeed—but it is a dream of one of the master-writers of the age, a man whose slightest creations are so steeped in the truth and beauty of Nature that his place in the forefront of imaginative literature is assured, and is even now being accorded him.

, August.