Page:The spirit of place, and other essays, Meynell, 1899.djvu/124

adv POEMS Sixth Edition. Feap. 8tx>. 3s. 6d. net. She sings with a very human sincerity, a singular relig- ious intensity rare, illusive, curiously perfumed verse, so simple always, yet so subtle in its simplicity. The Athenceum. In its class I know no nobler or more beautiful sonnet than "Renouncement"; and I have so considered ever since the day I first heard it, when Rossetti (who knew it by heart), repeating it to me, added that it was one of the three finest sonnets ever written by women. Mr. WILLIAM SHARP in The Sonnets of the Century. The last verse of that perfectly heavenly " Letter from a Girl to her Own Old Age," the whole of " San Lorenzo's Mother," and the end of the sonnet, " To a Daisy," are the finest things I have yet seen or felt in modern verse. Mr. RUSKIN. The charm is of the intellect, of the spiritual emotions. Intensely feminine, and yet touched with an abstraction that is not feminine at all ; intensely personal, and still holding an indefinable element of impartiality these strange and beautiful melodies appeal to the imagination with a voice as of unfamiliar things brought near ; melan- choly, with never the echo of a whine, sweet with an almost exultant nobility of sorrow. The Academy. The footfalls of her muse waken not sounds, but silences. We lift a feather from the marsh and say: " This way went a heron." . . . She is penetratingly thoughtful. And profoundly imaginative her poetry always is, even when its emotion is too instant for thought. It is all (in the Roman sense of the word) mere poetry poetry with no allaying verse, vinum merum of song. The Tablet. THE CHILDREN Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. Her manner presents to me the image of one accustomed to walk in holy places and keep the eye of a fresh mind on our tangled world. . . . Her knowledge and her ma- ternal love of children are shown in her ready entry into the childish state and transcript of its germinal ideas. . . only deep love could furnish the intimate knowledge to expound them so. The National Review. To a pretty theme she has applied her prettiest of man- ners. . . she comes certificated by authoritative hand, as trained by maternal sympathy in the unlocking of children's secrets. Prof. J. SULLY. The note of the book is humour humour unstretched and inviolate, clear, simple, shining, and never at fault. . . . Mrs. Meynell makes that most difficult of achieve- ments, habitual toleration of children, seem not only intel- ligible, but within easy reach of the thoughtful. Her book is a fairyland where there is, indeed, a place of rest.