dots-menu
×

Home  »  Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century  »  Dollie Radford (1858–1920)

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Critical and Biographical Essay by Arthur Symons

Dollie Radford (1858–1920)

MRS. ERNEST RADFORDnée Dollie Maitland—was born December 3rd, 1858. She published her first book under the prettily and whimsically modest title, “A Light Load” (1891). A tiny, fragile load it is indeed, but not less exquisite than it is unsubstantial. It is a book of songs, and the songs are full of instinctive music, which soars naturally. They have the choice, unsought felicity of a nature essentially lyrical. Always finished in style, with the distinction which can never be acquired, they have almost an air of impromptu, and one might imagine the writer to be little conscious of the process by which they have come to be so finished. With certain delicate, remote echoes of the poets who have written the most haunting lyrics—of Heine, of Tennyson—they have the originality of a single temperament, of which one feels they are the direct outcome, the spontaneous, sincere expression. And this temperament, emotional as it is, has attained to see life steadily, to accept the hours of joy and of sadness without extravagant outcry. There is a restraint, a sense of measure, in the expression of varying moods, which gives a singular charm to these really passionate and deeply-felt lyrics. In the lines placed by way of dedication at the beginning—lines which any poet might be proud to have written—there is a thrill of profound emotion which comes with all the stronger effect on account of the strenuous quietness with which it is expressed:—

  • “The love within my heart for thee
  • Before the world was had its birth,
  • It is the part God gives to me
  • Of the great wisdom of the earth.”
  • These four lines seem to have something final about them—seem to say concerning the supreme devotion, the sacrament and worship of love, all that needs to be said. Something of the same fineness of appropriate expression occurs again and again, in something the same inevitable way, in many parts of the book. Here are some lines which have not a little of Wordsworth’s “natural magic” of feeling and style—the perfect communion with Nature bringing with it the perfect expression:—

  • “When you are lonely, full of care,
  • Or sad with some new sorrow,
  • And when your tired fancy hides
  • The brightness of the morrow,
  • Ah, turn your footsteps to the woods
  • And meadows, where the rills
  • Are quietly flowing, when the moon
  • And stars shine on the hills.
  • “Upon your brow the great wise trees
  • Will breathe, and something sweet
  • Will reach you from the fragrant grass
  • You press beneath your feet;
  • And some fair spirit of the fields,
  • Peaceful and happy-eyed,
  • Will find a way into your heart,
  • I think, and there abide.”

  • And in the lovely little lyric beginning “Amid a crown of radiant hills” there is the same rare quality, the same sympathetic delicacy of touch. Again, in another order of emotion, take the last stanza of the “Spring Song”; and yet again, the last stanza of “Evening,” the following poem which has something curiously rare and intimate, so subtle a simplicity, and, in the last line, a touch of inexpressible magic:—

  • “Listen and we shall hear the voice
  • Of Evening, her name she told
  • When we stayed our boat by the shore to know
  • What wee flower shone ’neath the willow so,
  • And her hair was radiant gold.
  • “Now veiled in grey with silent step,
  • She walks where shades are deep,
  • And the great trees hear, and the blossoms know,
  • The song she sings, and her music low
  • Is charming them to sleep.
  • “My unseen brother and sister,
  • Who dwell ’neath the roofs we pass,
  • Are you sad and weary with toil and care?
  • My rest is full, I have rest to spare,
  • I whisper it through your grass.”
  • This “Light Load,” this book of songs and snatches, so musical, so finished, so tenderly sincere, so full of contentment in love, of delight in the flowers and birds of spring, has the charm of a gracious unity—the unity, as I have said, of a special temperament. This augurs well for the future of a very genuine poet, whose first book is already so full of exquisite accomplishment. What Mrs. Radford will do it is impossible to foretell, but the hitherto unpublished poem, “Ah, bring it not,” which belongs to a later date than most of the contents of the volume, seems to me to point towards work still more intimately personal, still more strenuously simple and expressive, than even the simplest and most expressive of the poems previously published:—

  • SONG
  • “Ah, bring it not so grudgingly,
  • The gift thou bringest me;
  • Thy kind hands shining from afar
  • Let me in welcome see,
  • And know the treasure that they hold
  • For purest gold.
  • “And, with glad feet that linger not,
  • Come through the summer land,
  • Through the sweet fragrance of the flowers,
  • Swiftly to where I stand,
  • And in the sunlight let me wear
  • Thy token rare.
  • “Fairer for me will be the day,
  • Fair all the days will be,
  • And thy rich gift upon my breast
  • Will make me fair to see,
  • And beautiful, through all the years,
  • In joys and tears.
  • “Ah come, and coming do not ask
  • The answering gift of mine,
  • Thou hast the pride of offering,
  • Taste now the joy divine,
  • And come, content to pass to-day
  • Empty away.”
  • Mrs. Radford has since published “One Way of Love” (1898); “Sea Thrift” (1904); and “Young Gardener’s Kalendar” (1904).