University of Virginia Library

The title-poem of Mrs. Wharton's Artemis to Actaeon takes a very different but equally modern view of the same goddess [as Mr. Hewlett's]. Her Artemis slays Actaeon not in anger, but in grace, recognising in him who dared to look upon her a soul too great for the little uses of the world, worthy of that immortality which is death. Now, there are two ways of handling mythological material: one may simply retell the old stories vividly, for the sheer beauty that is in them; or one may seek out some latent meaning, some new idea whereof the myth will form a fitting incarnation. The trouble with these present examples of the second method is that they do violence to the spirit of the myth. The vigorous and original mentality which has done so much for Mrs. Wharton as a novelist stands somewhat in her light as a poet. It is not that a poem can be too intellectual, but that it must not be more intellectual than emotional; and Mrs. Wharton's thought sometimes absorbs her feeling and leaves her language dry.

Compare with this the opening of Mr. Stephen Phillips's "Christ in Hades": This is the magic; the other is only well written; thought, not felt. But the most of Mrs. Wharton's book is far better. It is a delight to follow the steady and sonorous lines of her blank verse and to note how thoroughly she has assimilated the craftsmanship of her models. Tennyson and Mr. Phillips have given her style, Browning has taught her monologue and Rossetti sonnet-form; yet there is not an imitative line in her book. She has made her learning her own; and there is far more personality in her poems than in Mr. Hewlett's. "Margaret of Cortona" is perhaps the best of them. In her girlhood a man took Margaret out of the slums, made her a woman and wise. He dying, she took the veil, and in time became a saint; and the poem is her confession. Mrs. Wharton is at her best in the dramatic monologue, both because of her power of characterisation and because blank verse is her readiest medium. Rhyme often troubles her; and some of her sonnets, though well versified, are abstract and confused in expression. She was not born a poet; but this volume shows well how high in poetry a thoroughly cultured prose artist may attain. It is a noble and worthy piece of work, of which at least no living poet need be ashamed.