Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/611

ALBERT SUTLIFFE. Albert Sutliffe — a native of Meriden, Connecticut, where he was born about the year 1830 — first became known as a poet through the columns of the National Era of Washington City. He wrote for that journal, in its prosperous days, a few poems descriptive of summer and autumn scenes, which were much admired for their delicate word-painting, expressed in melodious rhythm. In 1854 Mr. Sutliffe became a contributor to the Genius of the West, at Cincinnati. He was then teaching a pri- vate school in Kentucky. In 1855 he emigrated to the far West, and now makes his home among the hills of Minnesota, where his mother resides. In 1859 a thin volume, containing such of Mr. Suthffe's poems as he chose to col- lect, was published by James Monroe & Company, Boston. The poems selected for these pages are from that volume, excepting " Beyond the Hills," which is here first pubhshed. It is an exact picture of scenery surrounding his Minnesota home. None of the younger poets of the West have more felicitously described the charac- teristics of our seasons. IVIi'. Sutliffe's muse is inclined to sadness, but sweetly in- clined, and not to the detriment of either its versatility or its power. RETROSPECTION. But half the sky is filled with stars. And half the sky with mist ; No moon to light the waste of snows ; But toward the west Orion glows, And underneath, the east wind blows The clouds where it doth list. The mist creeps swiftly on and on. The stars fade one by one ; Do hopes die thus ? it cannot be ; There goes Orion's sword-belt, see ! And now no light is left to me But memory alone. And can we dream when stars are dead ? I ween it may be so ; We search the old time through and through ; We think of what we used to do ; We light our altar-fires anew; With half the olden glow. Bring out the pictures of the Past, That we may look them o'er; Here passed my childhood, here between These high-browed mountains ; here the green Sloped riverward ; a pleasant scene, Star-lighted now once more. There, crept my childhood on to youth ; Here, was a space for tears ; Then, 'twas one tear that hid the sun. But now it is — ah ! many a one, With floating mists or shadows dun Between me and the spheres. We dreamed the day out till the stars. The stars out till the day ; ( 595 )