Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/390

 Irving Browne as a Poet. Seldom have flowed better " rivulets of pearl type through wide meadows of mar gin," than this poetical house exhibits. The title is most apt, for the lyrics group them selves under subdivisions fantastically poetic in their very names, such as : " The Li brary," "The Bedroom," "The Nursery" and "Tower " and " Garret,'' or " Windows that look upon street, or woods, or on church yard." A ramble through these pages exhibits poesy attached to ideas and ideals, as well as to harmonious thoughts and musical lines; also versatility of grave, gay, witty and tender topics. Many are Horatian in mold, and some hint of the style of Juvenal or Pindar, yet modern in tone and treatment. The author shows high imaginative power, even in mere choice of topics and appella tions. In fact, he "Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything."

At the window of the " Home of the Heart," overlooking the sea, on the first page of his volume, the poet hears " The voice of the shell," with a refrain from its depths, first at morning of love, then at noontide of fame, and next at night of rest, closing thus: — "Oh, Love of the morning so dim; Oh, elusive Fame of the noon; Oh. prophecy of the evening hymn. Will my love come back to me soon? But the shell says only rest! Its single whisper is rest."

How Berangeric it all is! And the closing strain of the volume, as the moon is beheld from the tower of the Home of the heart, reads : —

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"And still Luna moves on in God's highway, Heedless alike of fond Endymion's sighs, Of querulous man's lament, of watchdog's bay, And shows nor scorn, nor pity, nor surprise, — So shall she move 'til this trivial world In hopeless ruin and confusion hurled Shattered lies at the awful judgment day."

These few extracts will serve to show the extent of Irving Browne's poetic grasp from the first to the last of his 155 pages. Once, one X-ray turns upon the poet and develops the lawyer in these verses entitled "Two faces seen at the window of a jail." Upon page roí is a " Christening Hymn" that should at once find place in a church hymnal, and could be sung to the good old Puritan tune of " Dundee." The poems collected in the lyric entitled "How a bibliomaniac could bind his books" challenge even the ingenuity in that direction of Tom Hood, and the lyrics sung in "The Nursery " to the little ones, equally challenge the tenderness, in a similar behalf, of the late Eugene Field. Few can read the lyric entitled " Man's Pillow,"— first, on a mother's breast, and lastly in old age when death hovers, — without feeling the perusing eyes to moisten. Upon the whole, the volume is precisely one for the lawyer on his summer vacation to take to the hammock on the seaside piazza, or under the trees, or by the brookside, reading from it at any of these retreats, upon an August or September afternoon, the poem entitled " A Vision of Ships," or "Bob White " and his treetop song, or "The Water Nymph "; and no tourist to the White Mountains or the Catskills could fail of delight at perusing the playful lyric entitled " A Bed in a Country Inn," which smacks of the memories of a lawyer upon circuit.