Page:Famous Single Poems (1924).djvu/243

 No one to-day would consider this especially shocking; but it shows that, whatever the deficiencies educational and otherwise of this rustic Wisconsin girl, lack of imagination of a certain sort was not one of them.

Not all the poems in the book were concerned with the tender passion. That special source of inspiration failed at page ninety-five, and the concluding sixty pages are devoted to “Miscellaneous Poems.” They are for the most part quite frankly juvenile—indeed, Mrs. Wilcox’s verse never outgrew a certain immaturity—moralizing upon “Courage,” “Progress,” “Regret,” “Creation,” and other well-worn topics of similar character; and it is with one of these, entitled “Solitude,” that the present article is concerned.

Mrs. Wilcox has herself told in detail the circumstances of its composition. On the forenoon of a February day in 1883 she boarded the train for Madison, having been honored with an invitation to attend the governor’s inaugural ball that evening, and being in consequence in a flutter of excitement. She had in her bag a pretty white dress, made especially for the occasion, and was very happy; but as she took her seat in the coach, she saw a young woman clad in black and shaking with sobs, sitting across the aisle. It was, as Mrs. Wilcox characteristically puts it, “the bride of a year, the widow of a