Chapter 5
"These volumes are an anthology wrought by a master hand and endowed with perennial vitality.... This writer is the most distinguished master of lyric utterance in the new world ... and he has contributed much to the scanty stock of American literary fame. Fashions in poetry come and go, and minor lights twinkle fitfully as they pass in tumultuous review. But these volumes are of the things that are eternal in poetic expression.... They embody the hopes and impulses of universal humanity."--_The Philadelphia North-American._
"Mr. Rice has been hailed by too many critics as the poet of his country, if not of his generation, not to create a demand for a full edition of his works."--_The Hartford (Conn.) Courant._
"This gathering of his forces stamps Mr. Rice as one of the world's true poets, remarkable alike for strength, versatility and beauty of expression."--_The Chicago Herald (Ethel M. Colton)._
"It is with no undue repetition that we speak of the very great range and very great variety of Mr. Rice's subject, inspiration, and mode of expression.... The passage of his spirit is truly from deep to deep."--_Margaret S. Anderson (The Louisville Evening Post)._
"It is good to find such sincere and beautiful work as is in these two volumes.... Here is a writer with no wish to purchase fame at the price of eccentricity of either form or subject."--_The Independent._
"Mr. Rice's style is that of the masters.... Yet it is one that is distinctively American.... He will live with our great poets."--_Louisville Herald (J. J. Cole)._
"Mr. Rice is an American by birth, but he is not merely an American poet. Over existence and the whole world his vision extends. He is a poet of human life and his range is uncircumscribed."--_The Baltimore Evening News._
"Viewing Mr. Rice's plays as a whole, I should say that his prime virtue is fecundity or affluence, the power to conceive and combine events resourcefully, and an abundance of pointed phrases which recalls and half restores the great Elisabethans. His aptitude for structure is great."--_The Nation (O. W. Firkins)._
"Mr. Rice has fairly won his singing robes and has a right to be ranked with the first of living poets. One must read the volumes to get an idea of their cosmopolitan breadth and fresh abiding charm.... The dramas, taken as a whole, represent the most important work of the kind that has been done by any living writer.... This work belongs to that great world where the mightiest spiritual and intellectual forces are forever contending; to that deeper life which calls for the rarest gifts of poetic expression."--_The Book News Monthly (Albert S. Henry)._
_12mo. 2 vols. Price $4.00_
The following volumes are now included in the author's "Collected Plays and Poems," and are not obtainable elsewhere:
At the World's Heart
"This book justifies the more than transatlantic reputation of its author."--_The Sheffield (England) Daily Telegraph._
Porzia: A Play
"It matters little that we hesitate between ranking Mr. Rice highest as dramatist or lyrist; what matters is that he has the faculty divine beyond any living poet of America; his inspiration is true, and his poetry is the real thing."--_The London Bookman._
Far Quests
"It shows a wide range of thought and sympathy, and real skill in workmanship, while occasionally it rises to heights of simplicity and truth, that suggest such inspiration as should mean lasting fame."--_The Daily Telegraph (London)._
The Immortal Lure: Four Plays
"It is great art--with great vitality."--_James Lane Allen._
"Different from Paola and Francesca, but excelling it--or any of Stephen Phillips's work--in a vivid presentment of a supreme moment in the lives of the characters."--_The New York Times._
Many Gods
"These poems are flashingly, glowingly full of the East.... What I am sure of in Mr. Rice is that here we have an American poet whom we may claim as ours."--_William Dean Howells, in The North American Review._
Nirvana Days
"Mr. Rice has the technical cunning that makes up almost the entire equipment of many poets nowadays, but human nature is more to him always ... and he has the feeling and imaginative sympathy without which all poetry is but an empty and vain thing."--_The London Bookman._
A Night in Avignon: A Play
"It is as vivid as a page from Browning. Mr. Rice has the dramatic pulse."--_James Huneker._
Yolanda of Cyprus: A Play
"It has real life and drama, not merely beautiful words, and so differs from the great mass of poetic plays."--_Prof. Gilbert Murray._
David: A Play
"It is safe to say that were Mr. Rice an Englishman or a Frenchman, his reputation as his country's most distinguished poetic dramatist would have been assured by a more universal sign of recognition."--_The Baltimore News._
Charles Di Tocca: A Play
"It is the most powerful, vital, and truly tragical drama written by an American for some years. There is genuine pathos, mighty yet never repellent passion, great sincerity and penetration, and great elevation and beauty of language."--_The Chicago Post._
Song-Surf
"Mr. Rice's work betrays wide sympathies with nature and life, and a welcome originality of sentiment and metrical harmony."--_Sydney Lee._
TRAILS SUNWARD
By CALE YOUNG RICE
"Cale Young Rice has written some of the finest poetry of the last decade, and is the author of the very best poetic dramas ever written by an American.... He is one of the few supreme lyrists ... and one of the few remaining lovers of beauty ... who write it. One of the very few writers of _vers libre_ who know just what they are doing."--_The Los Angles Times._
"Another book by Cale Young Rice ... one of the few poetic geniuses this country has produced.... In its sixty or more poems may be found the hall mark of individuality that denotes preeminence and signalizes independence."--_The Philadelphia North American._
"Mr. Rice attempts and succeeds in deepening the note of his singing ... keeping its brilliant technique, its intricate verse formation, but seeking all the while for words to interpret the profound things of life. The music of his lines is more perfect than ever, his rhythms fresh and varied."--_Littell's Living Age._
"Cale Young Rice's work is always simple and sincere ... but that does not prevent him from voicing his song with passion and virility. Nearly all his poems have elevation of thought and feeling, with beauty of imagery and music."--_The New York Times._
"Whether the forms of this book are lyrical, narrative, or dramatic, there is an excellence of workmanship that denotes the master hand.... And while the range of ideas is broad, the treatment of each is distinguished by a strength and beauty remarkably fine."--_The Continent (Chicago)._
"Mr. Rice proves the fine argument of his preface ... for this book has in it form and beauty and a full reflection of the externals as well as the soul of the America he loves."--_The Philadelphia Public Ledger._
"The work of this poet always demands and receives unstinted admiration.... His is not the poetic fashion of the moment, but of all poetic time."--_The Chicago Herald._
"In 'Trails Sunward,' Mr. Rice demonstrates as heretofore the possibility of attaining poetic growth and originality even in the Twentieth Century, without extremism.... Sanity linked with vitality and breadth in art make for permanence, and one can but feel that Mr. Rice builds for more than a day."--_The Louisville Courier Journal._
"I rarely use the term 'sublimity,' yet in touches of 'The Foreseers,' particularly in its cavern-set opening, I should say that Mr. Rice had scaled that eminence."--_O. W. Firkins (The Nation)._
_12mo. 150 pages. Price $1.50_
EARTH AND NEW EARTH
By CALE YOUNG RICE
"America has today no poet who answers so well the multiplex tests of poetry as does Cale Young Rice."--_New York Sun._
"Glancing through the reviews quoted at the end of 'Earth and New Earth' we note that we have said some very enthusiastic things in praise of the poetry of Cale Young Rice, and yet there is not an adjective we would withdraw. On the contrary each new volume only confirms the expectation of the better work this writer was to produce."--_The San Francisco Chronicle._
"This is a volume of verse rich in dramatic quality and beauty of conception.... Every poem is quotable and the collection must appeal to all who can appreciate the highest forms of modern verse."--_The Bookseller (New York)._
"Any one familiar with 'Cloister Lays,' 'The Mystic,' etc., does not need to be told that they rank with the very best poetry. And Mr. Rice's dramas are not equaled by any other American author's.... And when those who are loyal to poetic traditions cherished through the whole history of our language contemplate the anemia and artificiality of contemporaries, they can but assert that Mr. Rice has the grasp and sweep, the rhythm, imagery and pulsating sympathy, which in wondering admiration are ascribed to genius."--_The Los Angeles Times._
"This latest collection shows no diminution in Mr. Rice's versatility or power of expression. Its poems are serious, keen, distinctively free and vitally spiritual in thought."--_The Continent (Chicago)._
"Mr. Rice is concerned with thoughts that are more than timely; they represent a large vision of the world events now transpiring ... and his affirmation of the spiritual in such an hour establishes him in the immemorial office of the poet-prophet.... The volume is a worthy addition to the large amount of his work."--_Anna L. Hopper in The Louisville Courier-Journal._
"Cale Young Rice is the greatest living American poet."--_D. F. Hannigan, Lit. Ed. The Rochester Post-Express._
"The indefinable spirit of swift imaginative suggestion is never lacking. The problems of fate are still big with mystery and propounded with tense elemental dramatism."--_The Philadelphia North-American._
"The work of Cale Young Rice emerges clearly as the most distinguished offering of this country to the combined arts of poetry and the drama. 'Earth and New Earth' strikes a ringing new note of the earth which shall be after the War."--_The Memphis Commercial-Appeal._
_12mo. 158 pages. $1.50_
TURN ABOUT TALES
(PROSE)
By CALE YOUNG RICE and ALICE HEGAN RICE
"This volume of stories should hold its own with any collection likely to be published this year."--_New York Post (The Literary Review)._
"American writers have been distinctive as narrators of the short story, but few, if any, volumes of such stories have recently been published in this country equal to 'Turn About Tales.'"--_D. F. Hannigan (The Rochester Post-Express)._
"The gamut of the volume runs from spiritualism to the depths. It contains something of almost anything one happens to want. Better yet, it contains something new."--_The Boston Transcript._
"Mr. Rice has written well--so well as to justify prediction that he will, if he elect to do so, achieve greater distinction as a short story writer than as a poet. His 'Lowry,' 'Francella' and 'Aaron Harwood,' to cite a few of the stories, meet the test of artistic stories.... Each leaves an impression that will impel re-reading."--_Galveston News._
"Both writers portray, in their best vein, a consummate though distinctive skill in analyzing and delineating human emotions and experience."--_Buffalo Commercial._
"Those who have read Mr. Rice's poetry will find his dramatic genius manifest in these stories."--_The Watchman, N. Y._
"Mrs. Rice's humor and pathos combine well with Mr. Rice's mastery of diction and deep human understanding."--_Milwaukee Journal._
"Each story is notable for beauty of technique ... each has its definite appeal."--_Louisville Evening Post (Margaret S. Anderson)._
"Each of the stories is of such finished workmanship as to make reading of it an unadulterated pleasure."--_Baltimore Sun._
"The book is one of the best of the kind in this year's American fiction."--_The Spectator (Portland, Ore.)_
"Mr. Rice has grappled with the constructive problems of his time, so one finds them without surprise in this newly adopted vehicle.... Three of his stories have a realism as relentless as Chekov's ... and it goes without saying that his stories are technically admirable."--_Louisville Courier-Journal._
"Mr. Rice so lives through his characters that, as Whitman says, he 'Is that man' of whom he writes."--_Pittsburg Sun._
"The same dramatic power and beauty that mark Mr. Rice's lyrics will be found in these prose stories."--_Cincinnati Times-Star._
"One seldom finds a book of short stories so satisfying throughout."--_Minneapolis Journal._
_Price $1.90_