Though of the Christian faith, there is yet an
almost pagan yearning manifest in her work, which she indubitably
drew from her Indian ancestry. That is, she was in constant contact
with nature, and saw herself, her every thought and feeling,
reflected in the mysterious world around her.
This sense of harmony is indeed the prime motive of her poetry,
and therein we discern a brightness, a gleam, however fleeting,
of mystic light--
"The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration and the poet's dream."
A suggestion of her attitude and sense of inter-penetration lurks
in this stanza:
"There's a spirit on the river, there's a ghost upon the shore,
And they sing of love and loving through the starlight evermore,
As they steal amid the silence and the shadows of the shore."
And in the following verses this "correspondence" is more
distinctly drawn:
"O! soft responsive voices of the night
I join your minstrelsy,
And call across the fading silver light
As something calls to me;
I may not all your meaning understand,
But I have touched your soul in Shadow Land."
"Sweetness and light" met in Miss Johnson's nature, but free from
sentimentality; and even a carping critic will find little to cavil
at in her productions.
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