As the reader will have observed, the poetry of Patience Worth is not confined to a single theme, nor to a group of related themes. It covers a range that extends from inanimate things through all the gradations of material life and on into the life of spiritual realms as yet uncharted. It includes poems of sentiment, poems of nature, poems of humanity; but the larger number deal with man in relation to the mysteries of the beyond. All of them evince intellectual power, knowledge of nature and human nature, and skill in construction. With the exception of one or two little jingles, the poems are rhymeless. Patience may not wholly agree with Milton that rhyme “is the invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter and lame metre,” but she seldom uses it, finding in blank verse a medium that suits all her moods, making it at will as light and ethereal as a summer cloud or as solemn and stately as a Wagnerian march. She molds it to every purpose, and puts it to new and strange uses. Who, for example, ever saw a lullaby in blank verse? It is, I believe, quite without precedent in literature, and yet it would not be easy to find a lullaby more daintily beautiful than the one which will be presented later on.

In all of her verse, the iambic measure is dominant, but it is not maintained with monotonous regularity. She appreciates the value of an occasional break in the rhythm, and she understands the uses of the pause. But she declines to be bound by any rules of line measurement. Many of her lines are in accord with the decasyllabic standard of heroic verse, but in no instance is that standard rigidly adhered to: some of the lines contain as many as sixteen syllables, others drop to eight or even six.

It should be explained, however, that the poetry as it comes from the ouija board is not in verse form. There is nothing in the dictation to indicate where a line should begin or where end, nor, of course, is there any punctuation, there being no way by which the marks of punctuation could be denoted. There is usually, however, a perceptible pause at the end of a sentence. The words are taken down as they are spelled on the board, without any attempt, at the time, at versification or punctuation. After the sitting, the matter is punctuated and lined as nearly in accord with the principles of blank verse construction as the abilities of the editor will permit. It is not claimed that the line arrangement of the verses as they are here presented is perfect; but that is a detail of minor importance, and for whatever technical imperfections there may be in this particular, Patience Worth is not responsible. The important thing is that every word is given exactly as it came from the board, without the alteration of a syllable, and without changing the position or even the spelling of a single one.

As a rule, Patience spells the words in accordance with the standards of today, but there are frequent departures from those standards, and many times she has spelled a word two or three different ways in the same composition. For example, she will spell “spin” with one n or two n’s indifferently: she will spell “friend” correctly, and a little later will add an e to it; she will write “boughs” and “bows” in the same composition. On the other hand she invariably spells tongue “tung,” and positively refuses to change it, and this is true also of the word bosom, which she spells “busom.”

There are indications that the poems and the stories are in course of composition at the time they are being produced on the ouija board. Indeed, one can almost imagine the author dictating to an amanuensis in the manner that was necessary before stenography was invented, when every word had to be spelled out in longhand. At times the little table will move with such rapidity that it is very difficult to follow its point with the eye and catch the letter indicated. Then there will be a pause, and the pointer will circle around the board, as if the composer were trying to decide upon a word or a phrase. Occasionally four or five words of a sentence will be given, then suddenly the planchette will dart up to the word “No,” and begin the sentence again with different and, it is to be presumed, more satisfactory words.

Sometimes, though rarely, Patience will begin a composition and suddenly abandon it with an exclamation of displeasure, or else take up a new and entirely different subject. Once she began a prose composition thus:

“I waste my substance on the weaving of web and the storing of pebbles. When shall I build mine house, and when fill the purse? Oh, that my fancy weaved not but web, and desire pricketh not but pebble!”

There was an impatient dash across the board, and then she exclaimed:

“Bah, ’tis bally reasoning! I plucked a gosling for a goose, and found down enough to pad the parson’s saddle skirts!”

At another time she began:

“Rain, art thou the tears wept a thousand years agone, and soaked into the granite walls of dumb and feelingless races? Now——”

There was a long pause and then came this lullaby:

“Thee art o’erfed on pudding,” she added to Mrs. Curran. “This sauce is but a butter-whip.”

And now, having briefly referred to the technique of the poems, and explained the manner in which they are transmitted we will make a more systematic presentation of them. For a beginning, nothing better could be offered than the Spinning Wheel lullaby heretofore referred to.

In it we can see the mother of, perhaps, the Puritan days, seated at the spinning wheel while she sings to the child which is supposed to lie in the cradle by her side. One can view through the open door the old-fashioned flower garden bathed in sunlight, can hear the song of the bird and the hum of the bee, and through it all the sound of the wheel. But!—it is the song of a childless woman to an imaginary babe: Patience has declared herself a spinster.

Who would say that rhyme or measured lines would add anything to this unique song? It is filled with the images which are the essentials of true poetry, and it has the rhythm which sets the imagery to music and gives it vitality. “The tendrill tipped with sungilt,” “the sunny morn doth hum with lovelilt,” “thy dimpled hand doth flutter like a petal cast adrift upon the breeze”—these are figures that a Shelley would not wish to disown. There is a lightness and delicacy, too, that would seem to be contrary to our notions of the adaptiveness of blank verse. But these are technical features. It is the pathos of the song, the expression of the mother-yearning instinctive in every woman, which gives it value to the heart.

And yet there is a pleasure expressed in this song, the pleasure of imagination, which makes the mind’s pictures living realities. In the poem which follows Patience expresses the feelings of the dreamer who is rudely awakened from this delightful pastime by the realist who sees but what his eyes behold:

In previous chapters I have spoken of the wit and humor of Patience Worth. In only one instance has she put humor into verse, and that I have already quoted; but at times her poetry has an airy playfulness of form that gives the effect of humor, even though the theme and the intent may be serious. Here is an example:

There is a vivacity in this odd conceit that in itself brings a smile, which is likely to broaden at the irony in the suggestion of the wind cutting itself on the crusted gilt of a king’s mantle. Equally spirited in movement, but vastly different in character, is the one which follows:

The second line of this will at once recall Shakespeare’s “primrose path of dalliance,” and it is one of the rare instances in which Patience may be said to have borrowed a metaphor; but in the line which follows, “and wishing golden dust to fancied value,” she puts the figure to better use than he in whom it originated. Beyond this line there is nothing specially remarkable in this poem, and it is given mainly to show the versatility of the composer, and as another example of her ability to present vivid and striking pictures.

Reference has been made to the love of nature and the knowledge of nature betrayed in these poems. Even in those of the most spiritual character nature is drawn upon for illustrations and symbols, and the lines are lavishly strewn with material metaphor and similes that open up the gates of understanding. This picture of winter, for example, brings out the landscape it describes with the vividness and reality of a stereoscope, and yet it is something more than a picture:

And here is another picture of winter, painted with a larger brush and heavier pigment, but expressing the same thought, that life doth ever follow death:

How different this from Thomson’s pessimistic,

This poem seemed to present unusual difficulties to Patience. The words came slowly and haltingly, and the indications of composition were more marked than in any other of her poems. The third line was first dictated “Like weary workmen overdone,” and then changed to “weary toilers,” and the eighteenth line was given: “On the shore-wavelet’s breast,” and afterwards altered to read “the shorewave’s crest.”

Possibly it was because the poet has not the same zest in painting pictures of winter that she has in depicting scenes of kindlier seasons, in which she is in accord with nearly all poets, and, for that matter, with nearly all people. Her pen, if one may use the word, is speediest and surest when she presents the beautiful, whether it be the material or the spiritual. She expresses this feeling herself with beauty of phrase and rhythm in this verse, which may be entitled “The Voice of Spring.”

Or, passing on to autumn, consider this apostrophe to a fallen leaf:

Autumn, too, is the theme of this:

She does not confine herself to the Seasons in her tributes to the divisions of time. There are many poems which have the day for their subject, all expressive of delight in every aspect of the changing hours. There is a pÆan to the day in this:

The close observer will notice in all of these poems that there is nothing hackneyed. The themes, the thoughts, the images, the phrasing, are almost if not altogether unique. The verse which follows is, I am inclined to believe, absolutely so:

Almost equally weird is this “Birth of a Song”:

That, however, is but a pretty play of fancy upon things within our ken, however shadowy and evanescent she may make them by her touch. But in the poem which follows she touches on the border of a land we know not:

“’Tis but a drip o’ loving,” she said when she had finished this.

Nearly every English poet has a tribute to the Skylark, but I doubt if there are many more exquisite than this:

One naturally thinks of Shelley’s “Skylark” when reading this, and there are some passages in that celebrated poem that show a similarity of metaphor, such as this:

And there is something of the same thought in the lines of Edmund Burke:

But Patience nowhere belittles earthly joys that are not evil in themselves; nor does she teach that all earthly passions are inherently wrong: for earthly love is the theme of many of her verses.

Her expressions of scorn are sometimes powerful in their vehemence. This, on “War,” for example:

Such outbreaks as this are rare in her poetry, but in her conversation she occasionally gives expression to anger or scorn or contempt, though, as stated, she seldom dignifies such emotions in verse. Love, as I have said, is her favorite theme in numbers, the love of God first and far foremost, and after that brother love and mother love. To the love of man for woman, or woman for man, there is seldom a reference in her poems, although it is the theme of some of her dramatic works. There is an exquisite expression of mother love in the spinning wheel lullaby already given, but for rapturous glorification of infancy, it would be difficult to surpass this, which does not reveal its purport until the last line:

In brief, the babe concentrates within itself all the beauties and all the wonders of nature. Its eyes, “two lingering stars who tarried lest the dark should sorrow,” and in its face “the glow of sun flush veiled by gossamer cloud,” “rose petals” and the “lily’s satin cheek”; its voice the dove’s coo. “From all His gifts He pilfered that which made it His”—the divine essence—“to add His fullest offering of love.” This is the idealism of true poetry, and what mother looking at her own firstborn will say that it is overdrawn?

So much for mother-love. Of her lines on brotherhood I have already given example. In only a few verses, as I have said, does Patience speak of love between man and woman. The poem which follows is perhaps the most eloquent of these:

Next to such love as this comes friendship, and she has put an estimate of the value of a friend in these words:

Love of God, and God’s love for us, and the certainty of life after death as a consequence of that love, are the themes of Patience’s finest poetry, consideration of which is reserved for succeeding chapters. Yet a taste of this devotional poetry will not be amiss at this point in the presentation of her works, as an indication of the character of that which is to come.

But she has given another form of poem which should be presented before this brief review of her more material verse is concluded, and it is a form one would hardly expect from such a source. I refer to the “poem of occasion.” A few days before Christmas, Mrs. Curran remarked as she sat at the board: “I wonder if Patience wouldn’t give us a Christmas poem.” And without a moment’s hesitation she did. Here it is:

The following week, without request, she gave this New Year’s poem, remarkable for the novelty of its treatment of a much worn theme:

One who reads these poems with thoughtfulness must be impressed by a number of attributes which make them notable, and, in some respects, wholly unique. First of all is the absence of conventionality, coupled with skill in construction, in phrasing, in the compounding of words, in the application to old words of new or unusual but always logical meanings, in the maintenance of rhythm without monotony. Next is the absolute purity, with the sometimes archaic quality, of the English. It is the language of Shakespeare, of Marlowe, of Fletcher, of Jonson and Drayton, except that it presents Saxon words or Saxon prefixes which had already passed out of literary use in their time, while on the other hand it avoids nearly all the words derived directly from other languages that were habitually used by those great writers. There is rarely a word that is not of Anglo-Saxon or Norman birth. Nor are there any long words. All of these compositions are in words of one, two and three syllables, very seldom one of four—no “multitudinous seas incarnadine.” Among the hundreds of words of Patience Worth’s in this chapter there are only two of four syllables and less than fifty of three syllables. Fully 95 per cent of her works are in words of one and two syllables. In what other writing, ancient or modern, the Bible excepted, can this simplicity be found?

But the most impressive attribute of these poems is the weirdness of them, an intangible quality that defies definition or location, but which envelops and permeates all of them. One may look in vain through the works of the poets for anything with which to compare them. They are alike in the essential features of all poetry, and yet they are unalike. There is something in them that is not in other poetry. In the profusion of their metaphor there is an etherealness that more closely resembles Shelley, perhaps, than any other poet; but the beauty of Shelley’s poems is almost wholly in their diction: there is in him no profundity of thought. In these poems there is both beauty and depth—and something else.