Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/700

 EMMA ALICE BROWNE. Emma Alice Browne was bom in Cecil, Maryland, on the twenty-fifth of December, 1840. Her father, who was a member of the Maryland Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, died when she was five years of age. She inherits her poetical gift from him. Miss Browne is a blood relative (on her father's side) of Felicia Hemans, and can be said to have been born a rhymester, as she created poems before she could commit them to paper, dictating them to a playmate who had the start of the poetess in the chirographic art. Miss Browne has contributed to various periodicals ; among others, to the Louisville Journal, Bloomington (Illinois) Pantograph, Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia, New York Ledger, GraharrCs Magazine, and the Methodist Protestant, published at Baltimore. The gifted editor of the latter publication. Rev. E. Y. Reece, was the first editor who encouraged her talent for poetry. Miss Browne is not afraid of out- of-door exercise. She is an excellent shot, passionately fond of rambles in the deep woods and near laughing waters. She lives an impulsive, robust life, and is remarked by all as a girl " with no nonsense about her," such as " wasting the midnight oil," and fretting her round, dimpled face into wrinkles on account of some " congenial spirit." Her early home was on the Susquehanna River, at the head of tide-water, a wild and romantic region, full of beauty and the inspiration of poetry and daring. "Who shall say that the bold features of massive rocks, towering forests and rushing waters, may not have fostered her genius and had much to do in the creation of her best pro- ductions ? Miss Browne has for some time resided at Bloomington, Illinois, and is about taking up her abode in St. Louis, Missouri. Her poetry is simple and unaffected, as the specimens given will show. ALONE. There is a sound in all the land Of the wind and the falling rain. And a wild sea breaking on dead white sand With a desolate cry of pain. As if its mighty and terrible heart Were heaved with a human pain ! I stand alone, with the wind and rain, As many a poet hath stood, Soul-lit with the beautiful inner-light, And a sense of a higher good, But feeling, because of the world, as if My life were written in blood ; And my soul keeps sobbing a sorrowful song. Like a brook in an autumn wood. ( 684)