in place with Karshish, Cleon, Lippo, and Andrea, now that the fantastic story of Childe Roland’s desperate loyalty is given closer companionship among the varied experiences narrated in the “Dramatic Romances”?  While as for the mention of the Norbert of “In a Balcony”—­which was originally included as but one item along with the other contents of “Men and Women”—­that miniature drama, although it stands by itself now, is still near enough at hand in the revised order to account for the allusion.  These are all trifles—­mere sins against literal accuracy.  But the discrepancy in the title occasioned by the absence of women is of more importance.  It is of especial interest, in calling attention to the fact that the creator of Pompilia, Balaustion, and the heroine of the “Inn Album”—­all central figures, whence radiate the life and spiritual energy of the work they ennoble—­had, at this period, created no typical figures of women in any degree corresponding to those of his men.

Charlotte Porter
Helen A. Clarke

“Transcendentalism:  A poem in twelve books”

1855

Stop playing, poet!  May a brother speak? 
’Tis you speak, that’s your error.  Song’s our art: 
Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts
Instead of draping them in sights and sounds. 
—­True thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up! 
But why such long prolusion and display,
Such turning and adjustment of the harp,
And taking it upon your breast, at length,
Only to speak dry words across its strings? 
Stark-naked thought is in request enough:  10
Speak prose and hollo it till Europe hears! 
The six-foot Swiss tube, braced about with bark,
Which helps the hunter’s voice from Alp to Alp—­
Exchange our harp for that—­who hinders you?

But here’s your fault; grown men want thought, you think;
Thought’s what they mean by verse, and seek in verse. 
Boys seek for images and melody,
Men must have reason—­so, you aim at men.

Quite otherwise!  Objects throng our youth,’tis true;
We see and hear and do not wonder much:  20
If you could tell us what they mean, indeed! 
As German Boehme never cared for plants
Until it happed, a-walking in the fields,
He noticed all at once that plants could speak,
Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with him. 
That day the daisy had an eye indeed—­
Colloquized with the cowslip on such themes! 
We find them extant yet in Jacob’s prose. 
But by the time youth slips a stage or two
While reading prose in that tough book he wrote 30
(Collating and emendating the same
And settling on the sense most to our mind)
We shut the clasps and find life’s summer past. 
Then, who helps more, pray, to repair our loss—­
Another Boehme with a tougher book