XX

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

The third and closing period of Sill's work was all too short. It began with his return from California to Ohio, in 1883, and ended with his most regrettable death, in 1887. It was a period of rapid maturing, both in thought and craftsmanship. He did not enter new fields. He had no new message, but he gave the old message without uncertainty or wavering or confusion. Now that it came clear and plain the message was perceived to be Emersonian, Arnoldian, if you please, Tennysonian, perhaps. At any rate all three strains were in the music. But it was sung by a new voice, a voice that gained steadily in flexibility, in timbre, and in tone. Now for the first time the singer learned to use its full range. For the first time he ventured into humor and delicate irony and graceful raillery. To this period belong "Momentous Words," "The Agile Sonneteer," "The Poet's Political Economy," and "A Subtlety," all tinged with irony, to be sure, but all lighted with genuine humor. As he went on he touched the life-long themes more firmly and more confidently. His message was always ethical work, fear not, trust God, hope evermore and believe; but it gained in grace and persuasiveness. There remained an undertone of wistfulness, but it was merged in confident faith, so that "A Second Thought," which seems to have been the last poem faces the future with a front as brave as Browning's "Prospice."

he wrote

Most of his poems were not published in book form

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

xxi

until after his death, but two volumes appeared in his lifetime. "The Hermitage and Other Poems" was published by Leypoldt and Holt in 1868, and "The Venus of Milo and Other Poems" was privately printed at Berkeley, California, in 1883. Following his death there were published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company" Poems" in 1887, "The Hermitage and Later Poems" in 1889, and "Hermione and Other Poems" in 1900. In 1900 there also appeared under the imprint of Houghton, Mifflin and Company a volume of prose selections taken chiefly from his contributions to the "Atlantic," and entitled "The Prose of Edward Rowland Sill." No life of Sill has yet been published, though the Memorial Volume privately printed at Berkeley, California, contains an account of his life, accompanied by a number of his letters.

UNDERGRADUATE AND

EARLY POEMS

THE POLAR SEA

AT the North, far away,
Rolls a great sea for aye,
Silently, awfully.

Round it on every hand
Ice-towers majestic stand,
Guarding this silent sea
Grimly, invincibly.

Never there man hath been,
Who hath come back again,

Telling to ears of men

What is this sea within.

Under the starlight,

Rippling the moonlight,

Drinking the sunlight,

Desolate, never heard nor seen,
Beating forever it hath been.

From our life far away

Roll the dark waves, for aye,

2

THE POLAR SEA

Of an Eternity,

Silently, awfully.

Round it on every hand

Death's icy barriers stand,

Guarding this silent sea
Grimly, invincibly.

Never there man hath been

Who could return again,

Telling to mortal ken

What is within the sea
Of that Eternity.

Terrible is our life.

In its whole blood-written history

Only a feverish strife;

In its beginning, a mystery-
In its wild ending, an agony.

Terrible is our death

Black-hanging cloud over Life's setting sun,
Darkness of night when the daylight is done.
In the shadow of that cloud,

Deep within that darkness' shroud,
Rolls the ever-throbbing sea;