Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

[102] and closing with that unsurpassed poetic symbol of hopeless remoteness—

As the pearl in the depths of the sea
From the portionless king who would wear it.

In the case of Miss Hutchinson, her exquisite little poem of ‘The Moth-Song’ will be equally unmistakable. When Harriet Prescott Spofford's first youthful story, ‘Sir Rohan's Ghost,’ originally appeared, Lowell selected from it with strong admiration, in the Atlantic Monthly, the song, ‘In a Summer Evening;’ and it still remains the most unequivocal product of her rare but unequal genius. The late Helen Jackson placed the poem called ‘Spinning’ at the head of her volume of ‘Verses,’ not because it was that which touched the greatest depths, but because it seemed to be universally accepted as her fullest, maturest, and most thoughtful product. Aldrich's noble Fredericksburg sonnet, in a somewhat similar way, stands out by itself; it seems to differ in kind rather than degree from the ‘airy rhyme’ of which he is wont to be the ‘enamored architect;’ its texture is so firm, its cadence so grand, that it seems more and more