Caressing as a lute,
As dulcet clean and haunting sweet
As summer winds that finger wheat.
Or a wandering singer's flute.
but
Michael hath a trumpet, And it is wondrous vast; The universe reverberates Beneath its awful blast
A sweet, pure appreciation of a child's affection and comradeship breathes from the verses of "Lad o' My Love," the best treatment of a theme of this kind that the poet's work affords. Another phase of love is interpreted in "Thus Much I Love You," which is introduced by these effective lines:
Thus much I love you, dear: If I were cast upon some sea-girt isle, Wind-spiraled, breaker-ringed, and wild, The flushed horizons and the sea-shell's hue Would paint for me the rosy face of you. The memory of your pulsing voice, your smile. Would make a homeland of that alien isle.
There is a delicacy and purity of fancy in this poem which give it the quality of the pure love lyric, of which class of verse one feels that there is too little in Mr. Barnett's volume. But he has escaped, probably in this very way, the peril that so easily besets the average young poet. There is not found in his work the perfervid passion that so often characterizes the moods of the youthful singer. He is, in fact, never sentimental, though nearly all of his verse is tinged with sentiment.
An example of profound and distinctly spiritual sentiment is shown in the poem "Whoso," which is a six-stanza presentation of the powers of good and evil as these forces manifest themselves in the lives of men. It suggests strongly the philosophy which has moulded the poet's life, particularly as this guiding power is revealed in these fine words:
Whoso inures his will to discipline, He arms his mind against the sternest strife; Whose welcomes the Kingly Guest within. He breathes the airs of everlasting life.
