Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/173

 XII

MRS. STODDARD'S POEMS

N this highly characteristic book of Mrs. Stoddard's verse we have the poetic harvest of a woman's lifetime. Such a volume, coming from one whose other work long since made its impression, has a significance which sets it apart from the books of verse issued at successive intervals by even a justly favorite poet. If not a disclosure, it is at least a confirmation, of the author's personality. Readers of Mrs. Stoddard's novels and shorter tales have been aware of the tense individuality which marks them. Her poetry is the more direct expression of the same woman, speaking with her own voice, and face to face, instead of behind the masks of her personages. If, like a holographic will, it were incumbent to prove it entirely the writing of the devisor's hand, it would stand the test. Here is plainly the author of Two Men, The Morgesons, and Temple House. But to read her verse is to get a new key to her prose. The often evasive thought and circumstance of her fiction become interpreted, like the Old World inscriptions read by the aid of some bilingual tablet.

All in all, these are the poems of a reticent but most [159]