Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/176

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS

In the poem hereafter given, she speaks of nameless plants, "perfect in their hues,"

There are a few objective, and even dramatic, lyrics in the middle of the volume—of which are "On the Campagna," and the little pieces, full of sensuous melody and color, "A Midsummer Night" and "Mercedes." These three, and "The Queen Deposed," have rightly been culled by the anthologists, and show that Mrs. Stoddard's lyrical quality, much less dominant than her husband's—who was a lyrist from his youth—is at times spontaneous and compulsive "On the Campagna," the lines on the tomb of Cecilia Metella, is the most imaginative of the group—wrought in an unrhymed measure, with a stately inscriptional effect, and as an objective study displaying the skill and simple power that Matthew Arnold strove for and twice or thrice attained. As to lighter strains, in a vein affected by Owen Meredith, such as "A Few Idle Words" and "Vers de Société," it cannot be said that Mrs. Stoddard is fortunate. Her temperament is too grave and deep, too genuinely moved, for the work of a kind that market writers turn off deftly.

Where her power lies is, first, as has been intimated, in her fusion of the spirit of nature—her familiar wherever she has walked—with her own strength of [162]