Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/616
Mrs. Baker's gracefully issued verses are more trepid—I almost wrote tepid—than the hot and assertive glorification of most newcomers. Hers is a gentle gracefulness, a light timidity that succeeds most when it is least emphasized. The keynote of the volume is sounded by her titular inscription:
"The flame of my life burns low
Under the cluttered days,
Like a fire of leaves.
But always a little blue, sweet-smelling smoke
Goes up to God."
And the last poem in the book, swelling the strain of a rose-water mysticism, returns, after a series of not too modulations, to the insistently minor theme:
"I am the pearl of the earth,
The soul of the grime,
I am the delicate, visible mirth
Of the sorrow and slime.
I am the light in the sinner,
The wings in the clod,
I am the beautiful breath of The Brute
Praising God."
Mr. O'Neil's volume is lighter though not sweeter. In fact the book, instead of being named after its uncharacteristic and imitative title-poem, should have taken its title from the italicized fly-leaf poem, On the Light Reeds. Lightness is this poet's charm, his appeal and—unless he changes his points of contact—his limitation. Already there are evidences in this volume that this youth of twenty depends too much on his delicacy; he is sometimes too conscious of a naivete that may easily develop into preciosity on the one hand or mere prettiness on the other. This, from one of the most winsome of Mr. O'Neil's verses, illustrates the tendency:
"Can you feel the haunt in the air?
I am afraid my roses are growing wan;