The Freeman and Other Poems (1902)

Summary

“Ellen Glasgow's Poems,” Boston Evening Transcript, 10 September 1902, p. 12

Some of the poems contributed by Ellen Glasgow to the Atlantic Monthly and other magazines have been made into a book by Doubleday, Page Sc Co. It is printed at the De Vinne Press, is bound in board covers with paper label, and bears for title The Freeman and Other Poems. Miss Glasgow's work as poet really preceded her labors as novelist, and the poems in this little volume exhibit not a little of the imagination and vigor of thought which have made The Voice of the People and The Battle-Ground distinctive among fiction of its kind. Miss Glasgow's thoughts as expressed in verse dwell frequently and strongly upon ethical problems, upon the relations of man to man, upon human justice, and it is fortunate that she has the facility to turn these subjects into verse which is both genuine poetry and sterling truth. Her satiric powers and a grim humor more than once illumine what would otherwise be dark and disagreeable. In the brief compass of eight lines, she thus characterizes fame:

In life he lived among them and they cast Him stones for bread.

He that was mightiest of them all had not Whereon to lay his head.

In death, where flaming poppies fired the dust, They brought a laurel wreath:

Honour to ashes on the coffin lid! Fame to the skull beneath!

Upon other themes more near to our daily life Miss Glasgow writes with equal force and like temperamental vigor.