M JOHN VANCE CHENEY. R. CHENEY was born December 29, 1848, and what advantage consists in being born right he took at the start; seizing a double inheritance of emotional poetic faculty from his father, Simeon Pease Cheney, writer of the peculiar " Bird Music" in current numbers of the Century Magazine, and the instinct of common sense with a tendency to meditation from his mother. The blood is composite in the three antecedent generations, gathering Yankee, German, Swiss, Scotch, English and a Celtic strain. It is well enough to add, anthropometry having somewhat to do with a man's intellectual accomplishment, that Mr. Cheney's measurements are ample and, despite severe working habits and in former years bad health, he is still a formidable blending of rubber and steel. His mother's sister Miss Janet Vance, took an early interest in the boy, and, being a woman of exceptional and in many respects extraordinary powers, her influence was wise and stimulative, resembling the nurturing Emerson received from his gifted aunt. The lad's environment was not less fortunate than his ancestry. The landscapes of the Genesee Valley, New York, are justly celebrated for their fine, quiet beauty, and in one of the most reposeful of them still endures the old Vance homestead, to-day a family possession. Amid these "moreland greens" and the Dorset (Vermont) hills, whither the family returned soon after the child's birth, he was reared, obtaining his earliest tuition at the district school, and his farther education at Burr and Burton Seminary in Manchester, Vt., and at Temple Hill Academy, Geneseo, N. Y., graduating, valedictorian, at the age of seventeen. Of that institution he was soon chosen assistant principal. His teaching at an end, he had not the money to go to college, and, choosing the alternative of a lawoffice, he entered one at Woodstock, Vt., where he remained three years, and followed them with another year's legal instruction in Haverhill, Mass., when he was admitted to the bar of Massachusetts. He then went to the city of New York, and, after a term of preparation, was also admitted to the bar of New York. He forthwith began practice in that city. In a solitary way he had been singing at his work during these years; and it was probably quite as much this passion as any professional ambition that directed his steps to the great city. At this time Dr. J. G. Holland, who was conducting Scribner's Magazine, saw some of the young man's verses, was pleased with them and encouraged him to publish a few short poems in that periodical. This, as Mr. Cheney expresses it, was the commencement of his literary life. Il health now forced him to the Pacific Coast, where he has since lived, the practice 64 of his profession never having been resumed. His published work, exclusive of magazine writing, consists of three volumes. "The Old Doctor" (1881); "Thistle-Drift" (1887); Wood Blooms" (1888). Excepting a few essays, "The Old Doctor" is the only prose Mr. Cheney has written. Indeed, prose is a form of expression which he has deferred to later days; but his papers on Hawthorne, Browning, Arnold, Beethoven and poetry and music in general are preferred by many of his friends. He holds the true touchstones by which to recognize quality, and his essays are always characterized by candor, achromatic seeing and discriminative appreciation. His severe standards and firm tenets are carried over temperamentally into his poetry;— an art which he regards with a seriousness, approaching reverence, knowing its laws of which there is no wilful infraction in either of his two volumes. While Mr. Cheney is without the exaggeration of idiosyncrasy and the complete self-submission which are characteristics of genius, he possesses other of its marks as surprise and spontaneity. His verses are not of the kind to be had for the trouble of going after them. They are far enough from the flippant classification, for instance, of "a cameo." Cameos are whittled out. Mr. Cheney's stanzas come. He is an industrious man, faithful by day at his librarian's desk in the Free Library of San Francisco, and at night in his own study or perhaps assisting with his delightful improvisations the musical evenings occasionally given by his wife. He was married in 1876, to Miss Perkins, handsome and brilliant, just returned from six years in Europe, a graduate of the Royal Conservatory of Stuttgart. His estimate of her taste is such that he never publishes lines from which her approval is withheld. C. J. W. WHAT THE MUSE IS LIKE. LIKE the love-bringing wind when it goes To the deep-crimson heart of the rose, Like the beauty that, languishing, lies In the arms of the day when he dies, Like mist at the morning's feet, Distant music, transcendently sweet,-Like these is the muse, but warier far, And hers the uncertainest lovers that are. It laugh or sigh low in the summer's ear, The flocked hours winging, feather unto feather, stream Not only, but her silences profound, Surprised by softer footfall of our dream. THE STRONG. DOST deem him weak who owns his strength is tried? Nay, we may safest lean on him that grieves: The pine has immemorially sighed, The enduring poplars are the trembling leaves. To feel, and bow the head, is not to fear, To cheat with jest-that is the coward's art. Beware the laugh that battles back the tear, He's false to all that's traitor to his heart. He of great deeds does grope amid the throng Like him whose steps toward Dagon's temple bore; There's ever something sad about the strongA look, a moan, like that on ocean's shore. THE BLACK DAWN. THERE was crying by night, and the winds were loud, Worn women were working a burial shroud: "She is gone," they said; "ay," they said, "she is gone!" And the night winds moaned, and the hours went on. But the morrow dawned clear, and the world shone bright, No trace was there left of the dreadful night: "Nay!" cried the lover, "the sun is long gone! How the night winds sigh! Do the hours move on?" THE SKILFUL LISTENER. THE skilful listener, methinks, may hear WHITHER? WHITHER leads this pathway, little one?Good sir, I think it runs just on and on. Whither leads this pathway, maiden fair?— That path to town, sir; to the village square. Whither leads this pathway, father old?— Where but to yonder marbles white and cold! The light's white as ever, sow and believe; Clearer dew did not glisten round Adam and Eve, Never bluer heavens nor greener sod Since the round world rolled from the hand of God: There's a sun to go down, to come up again, There are new moons to fill when the old moons wane. THE WAY OF LIFE. THE warrior frowned and pressed his temples gray; "Enough," he cried, "away with love-away!" A boy from play by fondest kiss beguiled, "Mother, I'll love thee ever!" spake the child. A maiden gazed into the night sky wide, "OI will love him when he comes!" she sighed. The three moved on along the way of life: A fair face lured the soldier from his strife, Upon a tomb was carved the sweet child's name, The lover to the maiden never came. HE THAT HEARS THE VOICE. The rolling psalm as they rejoice, He does not doubt; he seeth clear, To him sorrow is sweet as mirth, Through veil of darkness wasted thin, GREAT IS TO-DAY. OUT on a world that's gone to weed! The great tall corn is still strong in his seed; Plant her breast with laughter, put song in your toil, The heart is still young in the mother soil: There's sunshine and bird-song, and red and white clover, And love lives yet, world under and over. Is wisdom dead since Plato's no more, His brother is stirring in the good mother-womb: The world's not all wisdom, nor poems, nor flowers, But each day has the same good twenty-four hours, The same light, the same night. For your Jacobs, no tears; They see the Rachels at the end of the years: There's waving of wheat, and the tall strong corn, And his heart blood is water that sitteth forlorn. THE OLD FARM BARN. THE maples look down with bright eyes in their leaves, The clear drops drip from the swallow-built eaves, mill, The pond is all dimples from shore to shore, And the miller smiles back from his place in the door; Slow mists from the mountains come drifting down, The houses show fainter afar in the town, The gust sweeps up, dies away again, The oxen chew slowly, with sleepy eyes, |