PRISON POET.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 840, 11 June 1910, Page 14

PRISON POET.

WHOSE, WRITINGS SECURE HIS FREEDOM. RELEASED ON BIRTHDAY. John Carter is tho assumed name of a young poet who was released from prison recently at New York. Ho had been sentenced to ten years' penal servitude, for stealing £5, ' and had been confined in Minnesota penitentiary. Though lie says he is only 25,' lie looks 40. It is known that his father was ill an English sanatorium, and that ho is of • really good family, but beyond this nothing is known, though it is stated that his mother is an English schoolmistress. His life-story, so far as it is known, is just as one might expect'. Sent out from England to turn his hand to what trade ho could, ho was successively employed on farnis oil both sides of the frontier, but the rough life of Western townships and tho hectoring manners of his temporary "bosses" did, not suit his dreamy nature, and ho ran away from his last post in 1905,, hiding in a truck on n Canadian Northern Railway train, from Winnipeg to St. Paul. On being discovered ho was thrown off tho, car, and wandered without food until, driven by starvation,' ho entered a railway station and stole .£5. Tlic station being also a residence, Carter was committed for trial on a chargo of burglary ill tho first degree, and was given tho lowest sentence—viz., ten. years' .imprisonment.

Once in gaol Carter began to. ' write verse "to kill time and oaso my .unhappy thoughts." His work soon found its way into tho weekly organ of the Minnesota Gaol, the "Mirror," and Carter then began to receive letters, first from local papers, then from magazines of national repute, asking him for contributions. The "Century," "Harper's," and "Collier's" all published his poetry , this year. Highly gifted though lie certainly is, Carter can hardly bo described as "another Keats," if wo aro to judge of his work by. what has been quoted all over America as his best speciineh, tho last stanza from "Lux in<Tenebris," published in "Harper's Weekly," which runs as follows. . But tho lamp's alight and the clear, proud ■ song , Shall reach to the-throno of God erq long. The night must pass and a strange newdawn '. Burst-.upon field and copse and lawn. For out of the warp of shame and tears J weave the joy of the coming years. Several editors i wrote to the' Minnesota State Prison. Board asking for Jfr. Carter's release, not because lie was a poet, but because tho sentence of ten years for robbery without violence seemed unjust. Letters,were also received from an Englishwoman, a schoolmistress, who.said she .was Carter's mother. Jndgo John AVillis, of St. Paul, also interested himself in the case, and when released Carter stayed for a few days at this judge's home as his honoured-guest. Newspapers, magazines, variety houses, and orchestras are deluging him with offers of' employment. • He says ho prefers music to poetry, and pieans to devote himself to the former. The New York correspondent of the "Horning Leader" quotes a verso from his "COll Sordini" (with muted strings), which the editor of the "Century" lias published. It reads curiously like a polished echo of ono of Oscar Wilde's earlier poems:— . There is but silence; yet in thought I heard ' The desperate. chords of that wild Polonaise. . The sixth of Chopin's wizardry, but . blurred,. As o'er a battlefield. a mournful haze Blots out the dying from the dead man's gaze. Why, all tho pageantry of war was there, Cannon and standard, ruined hearth ablaze, ' The muffled roll of death-drum, trumpet blare, . And. lonely women, mute in measureless : despair. .Carter has'not beeu,pardoned, but his ten-year sentence has been commuted. He was .released on his birthday. His family are said to be well-known people and well-born, hut. he absolutely declined to identify himself. "It is easy to scribble when. you are in prison," ho says; "you have no time for meditation unless yon are ill or in gaol. My poetry is of no value, but I have a gift for music, and most orchestras would bo glad to havo me. "Yes, I'm a convict; I know, and I'm sorry I broke the law. My mother over in England knows all about .it. It. was her letter to Chief Justice Start that was the first step towards my liberation." Carter says he was a bank clerk in Bridport in 1903, but'he refuses to disclose his real name.