A DOME OF MANY-COLOURED GLASS
by Amy Lowell
[American (Massachusetts) poet and critic — 1874-1925.]
[This etext has been transcribed from the 3rd printing (1916),
of the
1912 (original) edition.]
“Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance
of Eternity.”
Shelley, “Adonais”.
LYRICAL POEMS
Before the Altar
Suggested by the Cover of a Volume of Keats’s Poems
Apples of Hesperides
Azure and Gold
Petals
Venetian Glass
Fatigue
A Japanese Wood-Carving
A Little Song
Behind a Wall
A Winter Ride
A Coloured Print by Shokei
Song
The Fool Errant
The Green Bowl
Hora Stellatrix
Fragment
Loon Point
Summer
“To-morrow to Fresh Woods and Pastures New”
The Way
Diya {original title is Greek, Delta-iota-psi-alpha}
Roads
Teatro Bambino. Dublin, N. H.
The Road to Avignon
New York at Night
A Fairy Tale
Crowned
To Elizabeth Ward Perkins
The Promise of the Morning Star
J—K. Huysmans
March Evening
SONNETS
Leisure
On Carpaccio’s Picture: The Dream of St. Ursula
The Matrix
Monadnock in Early Spring
The Little Garden
To an Early Daffodil
Listening
The Lamp of Life
Hero-Worship
In Darkness
Before Dawn
The Poet
At Night
The Fruit Garden Path
Mirage
To a Friend
A Fixed Idea
Dreams
Frankincense and Myrrh
From One Who Stays
Crepuscule du Matin
Aftermath
The End
The Starling
Market Day
Epitaph in a Church-Yard in Charleston, South Carolina
Francis II, King of Naples
Written after reading Trevelyan’s “Garibaldi and the making of Italy”
To John Keats
THE BOSTON ATHENAEUM
VERSES FOR CHILDREN
Sea Shell
Fringed Gentians
The Painted Ceiling
The Crescent Moon
Climbing
The Trout
Wind
The Pleiades
THE END
| Advertisements of books by the same author |
(These are taken from the back of the 1916 printing.)
A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass
By AMY LOWELL New edition, cloth, $1.25
PRESS NOTICES
“These poems arouse interest, and justify it by the result. Miss Lowell is
the sister of President Lowell of Harvard. Her art, however, needs no
reflection from such distinguished influence to make apparent its
distinction. Such verse as this is delightful, has a sort of personal
flavour, a loyalty to the fundamentals of life and nationality. . . . The
child poems are particularly graceful.” — ‘Boston Evening
Transcript’, Boston, Mass.
“Miss Lowell has given expression in exquisite form to many beautiful
thoughts, inspired by a variety of subjects and based on some of the
loftiest ideals. . . .
“The verses are grouped under the captions ‘Lyrical Poems’, ‘Sonnets’, and
‘Verses for Children’. . . .
“It is difficult to say which of these are the most successful. Indeed,
all reveal Miss Lowell’s powers of observation from the view-point of a
lover of nature. Moreover, Miss Lowell writes with a gentle philosophy and
a deep knowledge of humanity. . . .
“The sonnets are especially appealing and touch the heart strings so
tenderly that there comes immediate response in the same spirit. . . .
“That she knows the workings of the juvenile mind is plainly indicated by
her verses written for their reading.” — ‘Boston Sunday Globe’,
Boston, Mass.
“A quite delightful little collection of verses.” — ‘Toronto Globe’,
Toronto, Canada.
“The Lyrics are true to the old definition; they would sing well to the
accompaniment of the strings. We should like to hear “Hora Stellatrix”
rendered by an artist.” — ‘Hartford Courant’, Hartford, Conn.
“Verses that show delicate appreciation of the beautiful, and imaginative
quality. A sonnet entitled ‘Dreams’ is peculiarly full of sympathy and
feeling.” — ‘The Sun’, Baltimore, Md.
—————
By the same author Sword Blades and Poppy Seed Price, $1.25
Opinions of Leading Reviewers
“Against the multitudinous array of daily verse our times produce this
volume utters itself with a range and brilliancy wholly remarkable. I
cannot see that Miss Lowell’s use of unrhymed ‘vers libre’ has been
surpassed in English. Read ‘The Captured Goddess’, ‘Music’, and ‘The
Precinct. Rochester’, a piece of mastercraft in this kind. A wealth of
subtleties and sympathies, gorgeously wrought, full of macabre effects (as
many of the poems are) and brilliantly worked out. The things of splendor
she has made she will hardly outdo in their kind.” — Josephine
Preston Peabody, ‘The Boston Herald’.
“For quaint pictorial exactitude and bizarrerie of color these poems
remind one of Flemish masters and Dutch tulip gardens; again, they are
fine and fantastic, like Venetian glass; and they are all curiously
flooded with the moonlight of dreams. . . . Miss Lowell has a remarkable
gift of what one might call the dramatic-decorative. Her decorative
imagery is intensely dramatic, and her dramatic pictures are in themselves
vivid and fantastic decorations.” — Richard Le Gallienne, ‘New York
Times Book Review’.
“The book as a whole is notable for the organic relation it bears to life
and to art. Miss Lowell can find authentic inspiration equally in the
lapidarian stanzas of Henri de Regnier and in the color effects produced
by the flicking of the tail of the great northern pike. Her work is always
vivid, sincere, poetically energetic. Throughout it run, in the quaint
phrase of an old poet, ‘bright shoots of everlastingnesse’.” —
Ferris Greenslet, in the ‘New Republic’.
“Such poems as ‘A Lady’, ‘Music’, ‘White and Green’, are well-nigh
flawless in their beauty — perfect ‘images’.” — Harriet
Monroe, ‘Poetry’.