THE SYLVAN CABIN
EDWARD SMYTH JONES
THE SYLVAN CABIN
A CENTENARY ODE ON
THE BIRTH OF LINCOLN
AND OTHER VERSE
BY
EDWARD SMYTH JONES
WITH INTRODUCTION BY
WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
BOSTON
SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY
1911
Copyright, 1911
Sherman, French & Company
TO
THE HON. ARTHUR P. STONE
Justice of the Third District Court
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Edward Smyth Jones
Boston, Mass.
INTRODUCTION
A poet that comes through a unique experience,as so many poets have, and very recentlyas the author of this volume has, arrives throughhis personality rather than his work at a precipitatesort of fame that may serve his talents wellor serve them ill. To know that a man was sentto jail as the consequence of a passionate desireto go to college, and that that desire involved thetramping of dusty and hungry miles, adds to theinterest to the man that cannot fail in some significantway to set a glamor upon the poet. Poetryis made out of experience—the experience ofdreams, of action, of desires and hopes baffledon the inexplicable sea of circumstance; in theselatter the dream is as the spirit, and the manwhose art becomes an expression of all he hasrealized in living, his experiences become somethingmore than art, they are the subtle renderingreality that is truth.
In these poems of Mr. Jones' it is that whichgives them a unique value because they are in adeeply essential manner the rendering of a humandocument, as all poems must be, of an individualwho speaks universally. I emphasize this qualityfirst because art registers its worth by the vitalityof its substance. If the substance be vital, thenits embodiment is artistically successful to thedegree in which the maker has felt his experiences.These poems, then, will come to manyreaders with a freshness, with the appeal for acertain sympathy that will compel attention.The opening poem which celebrates the centenaryof Lincoln's birth, with its fine imaginativesweep, is as good as any poem I have seen whichthat occasion called forth. In it is poetry thatought to assure Mr. Jones' future if circumstancespermit him to cultivate an art for whichnature has so obviously endowed him. "TheSylvan Cabin" in spirit may be sai