The Vale of Tempe


            By MADISON CAWEIN

                        Price, 1.50
       Sent on receipt of price by the publishers

E. P. DUTTON  CO., New York

I N calling attention to THa VALE OF TFM-FR, we do so with
      the assurance that it is a volume of classic: quality and on
      a level with some of the highest work of the nineteenth cen-
      tury.  It has been commended in a very high quarter of
cultivated taste and judgment, and has been emphasized in the
reviews as of more than ordinary interest. We might point to indi-
vidual poems of unquestionable beauty, but our purpose will be
better served and our readers' confidence perhaps better secured
if we quote the ripe critical opinion of the Evening Post, where the
discoverable faults are as plainly pointed out as the generally high
and exceptional quality of the work is plainly acknowledged.
    THE VALE OF FEMPE," says the Pst, " is a volume which,
along with some crudities and weakness, has both the old glamour
of poesy and an individual tang, so to say, that is uncommon in our
contemporary verse. Mr. Cawein draws his inspiration in equal
draughts frdm the lentucky landscape and from the world of pagan
poetry, and in at least two of the aptitudes of the poet he stands
pretty much by himself. His turn for vivid, imaginative phrase is
of the first orde r, whether he is dealing with lurid grotesque, as its
the striking phrase, ' gaunt as huddle terror,' or with the beautiful,
as in his fine couplet-
            Invisible crystals of aerial ring
            Against the wind I hear the bluebird fling.'
His command of the technique of tone color is also exceptional. Ile
is a master of tone, whether in the difficult key of 'v ' as in this
description of ' Oaks in Spring' (a quotation from the poem), or hi
the initiative pedal-tones of this: (a quotation from the poem, 'Wind
and Cloud '). In poetry like Mr. Cawein's, for the moost part so
limpid and musical in tone, small discords are specially noticeable."
Here the critic points to some " minordefects " and proceeds: " All
this, however, is by the way. Mr. Cawein is a 'true poet,' both in
his art and in his inspiration. The concluding strophes of his fine
ode, ' In Solitary Places,'will serve to show his safety in the Siege
Ferilous of the poetic hall."