then, however, the mist lifts for the fraction of a second before a small part of the mirror of our minds, and a poem is born. Then we realize that the color of the dying leaf is one and the same with the tint of the setting sun, that the rippling laughter of a child is not only akin to, but is the ripple of the fountain. The soft syllable of a mother's lullaby and the notes that fall like blossoms from the flute-player's lips are but different cadences of the self-same voice of God. The reason why an apt figure of speech thrills us so strangely is because the poet, by means of this figure of speech, stretches an invisible thread of gold between our hearts and the heart of God. Every poem that does this, however imperfectly, is to me a true poem and a great poet."
In the author's school days he was taught that poetry was truth, beauty, and music—and facing these various requirements comes Amy Lowell with a brand of poetry that has caused more comment of attack and defense, praising and condemning criticism, than that meted out to any American poet of recent years.
Amy Lowell is regarded as the chief American propagandist of our so called vers libre. It was with the publication of her first book, "A Dome of Many Coloured Glass," that there was born the forerunner of our free verse poems, and from which many maddening verse makers were to fashion even madder verses. When this first free verse poem was written "Imagism" was an unheard of word and vers libre had yet to become a factor of dispute for the orthodox and the new school of poets.
And one of the most important figures in our poetry
