Page:Poet Lore, volume 4, 1892.djvu/605

 Such a noise and din arose in the hall that for a time not a word could be understood. This lasted several minutes; and strange as it may seem, persons whose profession led them to frequent public speech-making—the divines, legislators, and professors—showed the greatest impatience in calling for the experiment; whereas people who seldom tried to deliver a lecture in public — such as artists, architects, soldiers, etc.—evidenced an especial willingness to listen to my friend’s rhapsodical discourse. Nothing was left for him but to satisfy both.

Translated from the Bohemian by Josef Jiří Král.

of the poetry of the present era in America might fitly be called gig poetry, so suggestive is it of those respectable members of the community whom Carlyle refers to as having kept gigs. Yet amid this thronging gigmanity of the poetic world, there is an ever-increasing class by which the standard of excellence gradually is being raised.

What, for example, could be more spontaneously lovely than the songs of that fair little lady from the South, Danske Dandridge?