Page:The Dial vol. 15 (July 1 - December 16, 1893).djvu/55

 1893.] Mr. Cawein's new volume has the general characteristics of its predecessors—the cloying imagery and the verbal trickery; but we hear at times a stronger note than he has been wont to sound,—a graver, if a no less passionate, strain. There is still too much of this sort of thing:

but there are also verses like these:

Mr. Cawein's Muse, in her less exuberant moods, gives promise of excellent things.

One does not expect very much from undergraduate college verse. "Under the Scarlet and Black" is perhaps deserving of a word of mention as the first book of verse that has yet hailed from a Western college, for the collection comes to us from Grinnell, Iowa. The honors of the volume are borne off by Miss Mary Bowen and Miss Bertha Booth (both of this year's class), and, after some hesitation, we select a piece by the former writer—a sonnet "To Emily Dickinson":

Professor Newton M. Hall introduces the volume with a brief sketch of journalism in Iowa College.

We have hardly found anything as good as the above sonnet in "Cap and Gown," although Mr. J. L. Harrison, the editor, has chosen his contents from some forty college papers. Most of his pieces are love lyrics of a somewhat callow sort, written in the exotic verse-forms that seem so easy, yet in which real success is reached only by the masters. The verses to "Eleanor," by Mr. J. H. Boynton, are perhaps as successful as anything in the collection.

The binding of this volume, with its hydrangea-decorated covers, is original and exquisite enough to call for a special word of praise.

The title-page of "Under King Constantine " gives us no author's name, but we understand the authorship of the book has been acknowledged by Mrs. Spencer Trask. Mrs. Trask has undertaken the hazardous experiment of writing Arthurian idyls, and her little volume comprises three such poems—narratives expanded from hints in Malory. A passage describing the vision of the Grail will show the character of the verse:

The purpose of Mrs. Trask's verse is serious and sincere, but the execution is amateurish, and an extremely qualified praise is all that can be given the volume.

Mr. Richard Hovey's "Seaward" is an elegy, in forty-five seven-line stanzas, upon the late Thomas William Parsons. It is elaborate in construction and extremely discursive in treatment. We quote one of the stanzas:

One of Mr. Hovey's notes obligingly informs us that the reference of this passage is to Dante. A study of Parsons, reprinted from "The Atlantic Monthly," serves, with the notes, to thicken the booklet into what may be called a volume.

Professor William Hyde Appleton, of Swarthmore College, has made and annotated a collection of translated passages of Greek poetry, naming the volume "Greek Poets in English Verse," and sup-