JULIA S. DINSMORE
Reading edition
Miss Julia Stockton Dinsmore ("F.V."), poet, was born in Louisiana about 1833, but most of her long life of nearly eighty years has been spent in Kentucky. For many years Miss Dinsmore published an occasional poem in the newspapers of her home town, Petersburg, Kentucky, but, in 1910, when she was seventy-seven years of age, the New York firm of Doubleday, Page and Company discovered Miss Dinsmore to be a poet of much grace and charm, and they at once issued the first collection of her work, entitled "Verses and Sonnets." This little volume contains more than eighty exquisite lyrics, which have been favorably reviewed by the literary journals of the country. Love Among the Roses, Noon in a Blue Grass Pasture, Far 'Mid the Snows, That's for Remembrance, and several of the sonnets are very fine. Miss Dinsmore is a great lover of Nature, as her poems reveal, and she is often in the saddle. A most remarkable woman she surely is, having won the plaudits of her people when most women of her years have their eyes turned toward the far country. Another volume of her verse may be published shortly.
Bibliography. Current Literature (June, 1910); The Nation (July 14, 1910).
LOVE AMONG THE ROSES[19]
[From Verses and Sonnets (New York, 1910)]
"What, dear—what dear?" How sweet and clear The redbird's eager voice I hear; Perched on the honeysuckle trellis near He sits elate, Red as the cardinal whose name he bears, And tossing high the gay cockade he wears Calls to his mate, "What, dear—what, dear?" She stirs upon her nest, And through her ruddy breast The tremor of her happy thoughts repressed Seems rising like a sigh of bliss untold, There where the searching sunbeams' stealthy gold Slips past the thorns and her retreat discloses, Hid in the shadow of June's sweetest roses. Her russet, rustic home, Round as inverted dome Built by themselves and planned, Within whose tiny scope, As though to them the hollow of God's hand, They gladly trust their all with faith and hope. "What, dear—what, dear?" Are all the words I hear, The rest is said, or sung In some sweet, unknown tongue. Whose music, only, charms my alien ear; But bird, my heart can guess All that its tones express Of love and cheer, and fear and tenderness. It says, "Does the day seem long— The scented and sunny day Because you must sit apart? Are you lonesome, my own sweetheart? You know you can hear my song And you know I'm alert and strong And a match for the wickedest jay That ever could do us wrong. As I sit on the snowball spray Or this trellis not far away, And look at you on the nest, And think of those beautiful speckled shells In whose orbs the birds of the future rest, My heart with such pride and pleasure swells As never could be expressed. "But, dear—but, dear!"— Now I seem to hear A change in the notes so proud and clear— "But, dear—but, dear! Do you feel no fear When day is gone and the night is here? When the cold, white moon looks down on you, And your feathers are damp with the chilly dew, And I am silent, and all is still, Save the sleepless insects, sad and shrill, And the screeching owl, and the prowling cat, And the howling dog—when the gruesome bat Flits past the nest in his circling flight Do you feel afraid in the lonely night?" "Courage! my own, when daylight dawns You shall hear again in the cheerful morns My madrigal among the thorns, Whose rugged guardianship incloses Our link of love among the roses."