Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
Ac Etiam
BESIDES the women poets represented in the foregoing pages there are several who may conveniently find here the only reference possible in this edition. These are Lady Charlotte Elliot, who published “Medusa, and Other Poems” in 1878. This volume contains verse of high quality in some variety. The poems “Medusa” and “The Son of Metaneira” show unmistakable power in the handling of classical themes and in the command of musical measures. Both poems evidence subtlety of imagination and elevation of feeling delicately expressed in sustained and resonant verse. “Rosebud and Ragweed,” a pathetic story of child life, shows the poet’s power of easy versification in a different form. “Darkness after Dawn,” a London reverie, is an example in a different vein, and shows occasionally, like some others of the poet’s verses, more vigour in thought than in expression. One is reminded in this connection of the lines in Lefroy’s sonnet, “Art that Endures” (vol. vii. “Poets and Poetry, XIXth Century”):
C. Amy Dawson, author of “Sappho,” an epic of much poetical force and strength in blank verse, and “Idylls of Womanhood” (1892); a series of poems in various measures, treating of “A Woman’s Ethics,” “A Woman’s Love,” “Woman’s Wit,” “A Woman’s Vengeance,” “A Woman’s Faith,” and “A Woman’s Sin.” Certainly a high performance. Besides these the late Amy Levy, author of “Xantippe, and Other Verses” (1881), “A Minor Poet, and Other Verses” (1884), “A London Plane-Tree, and Other Verses” (1889), and several works of fiction, of which “Reuben Sachs” (1888) is the most important; Miss Sarson C. J. Ingram, author of “Selina’s Story” (1875), and “Caedmon’s Vision” (1882); Miss Elizabeth Rachel Chapman, author of “The New Purgatory, and Other Poems” (1887); Miss May Probyn, author of “Poems” (1881), “A Ballad of the Road, and Other Poems” (1883), “Once, Twice, Thrice, and Away,” a novel (1878), and other works of fiction; Frances Wynne, author of “Whisper!” (poems) (1890); Alice Furlong, author of “Roses and Rue”; the anonymous author of “Songs of Lucilla”; Lady Margaret Sackville, author of “Hymn to Dionysus”; the authors of “Hand in Hand,” verses by a mother and daughter (Mrs. Kipling and Mrs. Flemming); Lady Egerton, the author of “The Lady of the Scarlet Shoes,” and Miss Elizabeth Gibson, are all worthy of more extended reference than can be given here.
