One more satellite hurried away too soon! High hints at least, of the young meteor finding its way through space. Here was another of those, with a vast fund of wishing in her brain, and the briefest of hours in which to set them roaming. Brevities that whirl through the mind as you read those cinquains of Adelaide Crapsey, like white birds through the dark woodlands of the night. Cameos or castles, what is size? Is it not the same if they are of one perfection of feeling? Such a little book of Adelaide Crapsey, surely like cameos cut on shell, so clear in outline, so rich in form, so brave in indications, so much of singing, so much of poetry, of courage.

Isn't the evidence sufficient here of first rate poetic gifts, sensibility of an exceptional order? Contrast in so many ways with that perhaps more radiant and certainly more whimsical girl, with her rarest of flavours, she with her "whip of diamond, riding to meet the Earl"! I think geniuses like Keats or Shelley would have said "how do you do, poet?" to Adelaide Crapsey and her verse, lamenting also that she flew over the rainbowed edge of the dusk too soon, like the very moth over the garden wall, early in the evening. It is sure that had this poet been allowed her full quota of days, she would have left some handsome folios bright enough for any one caring for verse at its purest. Pity there was not time for another book at least, of her verses, to verify the great distinction conferred. She might have walked still more largely away with the wreaths of recognition. Not time for more books, instead of so much eternity at her bedside. She would surely have sent more words singing to their high places and have impressed the abundant output of the day with its superficiality by her seriousness. There is no trifling in these poetic things of hers. Trivial might some say who hanker after giantesque composition. Fragile are they only in the sense of size, only in this way are they small.

Those who know the difficulties of writing poetic composition are aware of the task involved in creating such packed brevities. Emily Dickinson knew this power. "H. D." is another woman who understands the beauty of compactness. Superb sense of economy, of terseness the art calls for, excessive pruning and clipping. Singular that these three artists, so gifted in brevity were women. There is little, after all, in existence that warrants lengthy dissertation. Life itself is epigrammatic and brief enough. No volumes needed by way of explanation. The fascinating enigma diverts and perplexes everyone alike. The simple understand it best, or at least they seem to do so. Segregation, aloofness, spiritual imprisonment, which is another name for introspection, the looking out from bars of the caged house, all this discovers something through penetration. Walking with life is most natural, grazing its warm shoulder. There is little room for inquiry if one have the real feeling of life itself. Poetry is that which gleans most by keeping nearest to life. Books and firesides avail but little. Secretaries for the baggage of erudition do not enhance poetic values, they encumber them. Poetry is not declamation, it is not propaganda, it is breathing natural breaths. There is nothing mechanical about poetry excepting the affectation of forms. Poetry is the world's, it is everybody's. You count poetry by its essence, and no amount of studied effect, or bulging erudition will create that which is necessary, that which makes poetry what it is. The one essential is power to sing, and the intelligence to get it down with degrees of mastery or naturalness, which is one and the same thing.

Real singing is unusual as real singers are rare. Adelaide Crapsey shows that she was a real singer, essentially poet, excellent among those of our time. She impresses her uncommon qualities upon you, in the cinquains of hers, with genuinely incisive force. She has so much of definiteness, so much of technical beauty, economy, all very valuable assets for a true poet. She had never been touched with the mania for journalistic profusion. She cared too much for language to ride it. She cared too much for words to want to whip them into slavery. She was outside of them, looking on, as it might be, through crystal, at their freshness. She did not take them for granted. They were new to her and she wanted the proper familiarity. She worked upon a spiritual geometric all her own. She did not run to the dictionary for eccentricities, she did not hunt words out of countenance. They were natural to her. She wanted most their simple beauty, and she succeeded. She had dignity, a rare gift in these times. She raises herself above the many by her fine feeling for the precision. That is her artistry, the word, the thing of beauty and the joy forever with her.

It is to be regretted that Adelaide Crapsey had no more time for the miniature microscopic equations, the little thing seen large, the large thing seen vividly. She might have spent more hours with them and less with her so persistent guest, this second self at her side; ironic presence, when she most would have strode with the brighter companion, her first and natural choice. Her contribution is conspicuous among us for its balance and its intellectualism tempered with fine emotions. She had so much to settle for herself, so much bargaining for the little escapes in which to register herself consistently, so much of consultation for her body's sake, that her mind flew the dark spaces about her bed with consistent feverishness.

Reckoning is not the genius of life. It is the painful, residual element of reflection. One must give, one must pay. It is not inspiring to beg for breath, yet this has come to many a fine artist, many a fine soul whose genius was far more of the ability for living, with so little of the ability for dying. You cannot think along with clarity, with the doom of dark recognition nudging your shoulder every instant. There must be somehow apertures of peace for production. Adelaide Crapsey's chief visitant was doom. She saw the days vanishing, and the inevitable years lengthening over her. No wonder she could write brevities, she whose existence was brevity itself. The very flicker of the lamp was among the last events. What, then, was the fluttering of the moth but a monstrous intimation. If her work was chilled with severity, it was because she herself was covered with the cool branches of decision. Nature was cold with her, hence there is the ring of ice in these little pieces of hers. They are veiled with the grey of many a sunless morning.

Here you have the intensity once more of Adelaide Crapsey. It haunts you like the something on the dark stairway as you pass, just as when, on the roadway in the dead of night, the twig grazing one's cheek would seem like the springing panther at one's throat. Dramatic vividness is certainly her chief distinction. No playfulness here, but a stout reckoning with austere beauty. The wish to record the element at its best that played so fierce a rÔle in her life. She writes her own death hymn, lays her own shroud out, spaces her own epilogue as if to give the engraver, who sets white words on white stone, the clue, stones the years stare on, leaving the sunlight to streak the old pathos there, and then settles herself to the long way of lying, to the sure sleep that glassed her keen eyes, shutting them down too soon on a world that held so much poetry for her.

The titles of her cinquains, such as "November night", "The guarded wound", "The warning", "Fate defied", and the final touch of inevitability in "The Lonely Death", so full of the intensity of last moments, intimate the resolute presence of the grey companion of the covering mists. It must be said hurriedly that Adelaide Crapsey was not all doom. By no means. The longer pieces in her tiny book attest to her feeling for riches, and the lyrical wonders of the hour. Her fervour is the artist's fervour, the longing, coming really to passion, to hold and fix forever the shapes that were loveliest to her. That is the poet's existence, that is the poet's labour, and his last distress. No one wants to give in to a commonplace world when the light that falls on it is lovelier than the place it falls on. If you cannot transpose the object, transport it, however simply, however ornately, then of what use is poetry? It is transport!

Adelaide Crapsey was efficient in her knowledge of what poetry is, as she was certainly proficient as workman. She was lapidary more than painter or sculptor. It was a beautiful cutting away, and a sweeping aside of the rifts and flaws. That is to say, she wanted that. She wanted the white light of the perfect gem, and she could not have been content with just matrix, with here and there embedded chips. She was a washer of gold, and spared no labours for the bright nuggets she might get, and the percentage of her panning was high. But the cloud hung on the mountain she clomb, and her way was dimmed.

There could be no more of resolute finality in this chill epilogue. There is the cold of a thousand years shuddering out of this scene, it is the passing, the last of this delicate and gifted poet, Adelaide Crapsey. If she has written more than her book prints, these must surely be of her best. She took the shape of that which she made so visible, so cold, so beautiful. With her white wings she has skirted the edge of the dusk with an incredible calm. No whimpering here. Too much artistry for that; too much of eye to let heart rule. The gifts of Adelaide Crapsey were high ones, and that she left so little of song is regrettable, even though she left us a legacy of some of the best singing of the day. It is enough to call her poet, for she was among the first of this hour and time. She had no affectations, no fashionable theories and ambitions. She simply wrote excellent verse. That is her beautiful gift to us.