Blue - Bird Notes : Poems. By Ira Billman. (Funk and Wagnalls,
New York.)—In some introductory verses, Mr Billman tells us that one day he sat in his study, "aimless and dreary, in doubt of his power, whilst a feeling of pain akin to remorse haunted his breast o'er time spent in vain" in the cultivation of the Muses. Just then the song of a blue-bird rang out from a neighbouring tree, and though it was not very melodious, it startled into song a bird of richer and fuller notes. Thereupon Mr. Billman dubbed his doggerel Blue-Bird Notes, and laid the flattering unction to his soul that others might "weave his music in their song." We are reluctant ourselves to cherish such a thought, for the volume is brimful of pretentious twaddle, ex- pressed in great swelling words of vanity. It is both a delusion and a snare for the author to imagine that, to quote some lines' of his own once more, his are the- " Fluent lips, that drop rich pearls In wisdom's storied urn."
Although it is quite possible, in spite of the lack of these pages, that he may belong to those who have-
., &turd the minds of classic worlds Where midnight tapers barn."
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