But best of all is that quatrain in which he exonerates Providence:
What! doubt the Master Workman’s hand Because my fleshly ills increase? No; for there still remains one chance That I am not His Masterpiece.
If a cleverer bit of humor than that has been put into four lines, I have not seen it, nor a more delightful epitome than this of the inconsistent moralizing of youth:
Yet what have I to do with sweets Like Love, or Wine, or Fame’s dear curse? For I can do without all things Except—except the universe.
Mr. Torrence’s quatrains penetrate into the nebulous dreams of youth, or rather, interpret them, since _The House of a Hundred Lights_ was reared in that charméd air, and carry one through the realm of rainbows to the land of the gray light, to which every pilgrim comes anon. Love receives its toll, the costliest and most precious as youth fares on; and Mr. Torrence proves himself a poet in his picture of this tribute-giving at the road-house of Love. Not only the visioning, but the lucidity of the words, and their soft consonance, prove him sensitive to the values of cadence and simplicity:
Last night I heard a wanton girl Call softly down unto her lover, Or call at least unto the shade Of Cypress where she knew he’d hover.
Said she, “Come forth, my Perfect One; The old bugs sleep and take their ease; We shall have honey overmuch Without the buzzing of the bees.”
Ah, Foolish Ones, I heard your vows And whispers underneath the tree. Her father is more wakeful than She ever dreamed, for I—was he.
I saw them kissing in the shade And knew the sum of all my lore: God gave them Youth, God gave them Love, And even God can give no more.
But much more delicate is this quatrain which follows the last, and traces the unfolding of a young girl’s nature in the years that shape the dream. It is a bit of genuine artistry:
At first, she loved nought else but flowers, And then—she only loved the Rose; And then—herself alone; and then— She knew not what, but now—she knows.
This is a deftly fashioned lyric, rather than a stanza conjoined to others, though, for that matter, the thread of conjunction in the poem is slight; almost any of the quatrains might be detached without loss of value save in atmosphere, as they are arranged with a certain logical view and grow a bit more serious as they progress. We spoke, for instance, of the path of youth leading to the grayer light, and incidentally that Youth acquaints himself with pain as a wayfellow: