Lotos - Flowers, Gathered in Sun and Shadow. By Mrs. Chambers Ketchum.
(D. Appleton and Co., New York.)—It is very rarely that we find among short poems on homely subjects, songs of the affections, memories of the past, so much true, tender, and unaffected pathos and gentle thought as we find in Mrs. Chambers Ketchum's verses. Too often the epithet "simple" is merely polite for "silly," but in the present instance it may be used in its best meaning; these poems are simple, with the simplicity of high thought and of pure form. Some of them have the indefinable charm of keen sympathy, so that they seem to put one's owe thought, one's own grief into words, and so to become friends, and abide by one. The writer has plainly conceived a strong affection for England, and a profound reverence for some of our great men during her residence in this coun- try; and she gives very musical expression to those feelings in the poem called "Agathos." We are hard to please in hymns, but Mrs. Chambers Ketchum pleases us by her hymn, "The Touching of Josue," and one, in a less manageable, and therefore, to our mind, lose appro. 'vista measure for a hymn, called, " Miserere Nei." Her "Christmas Carol for a Child" is quite beautiful, worthy to take its place beside that matchless poem for baby lips, "Gentle Jesus," which is still, we hope, learned in English nurseries, as it used to be when the world was over so much younger, simpler, and more truthful than it is now.
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