The Cloak of Dreams 'twixt me and earth
Wavers its filmy fire:
I dream in dusk apart,
Hearing a strange bird sing,
And the Cloak of Dreams blows over my heart,
Blinding and sheltering!
Altogether a very promising first volume.
Perhaps the most impressive feature of Afternoons in April is joy—joy in color, joy in sound. Grace Hazard Conkling is not of those who savor grief as they smell a flower. All her winds are boon. Her ship goes sailing down her dream rich with fragrance of myrrh and spikenard, and light of beryls, emeralds, rubies, opals. Now and then we have snatches of the great song.
I knew her first through her poems, Golden-Throated Pastoral Horn and To A Scarlet Tanager. She deals with the classic tradition. Pan trips through her pages; Proserpina, nymphs and dryads are all about us. It is not surprising, therefore, to come upon such expressions as "I would fain," "I pray you," and other outworn patterns, with here and there too reminiscent a phrase, too pat a rhyme. But there is no sentinel! Almost every novel or book of poems I have read for years has had its sentinel, sentinel eye, sentinel star. Trees have "stood forth like sentinels." I read Afternoons in April with fascinated dread, congratulating
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