MR. BARLOW'S POEM.*

THE collection of applausive extracts from various news- papers, London and provincial, appended to the volume before us, is perhaps a little characteristic of the age. The author has but little choice in the matter, which is of the publisher's arranging; but it is apt to give the critic stay when he reads that From Dawn to Sunset manifests a power of the same rank as Tennyson. Swinburne, and Matthew Arnold, and that its author stands f. ,rward as an inspired teacher of mankind. He is not likely, however, to disagree widely from the calmer esti- mates which credit Mr. Barlow with genuine feeling, graceful diction, and a skilful use of many verse forms, and even with touches of really noble verbal music. We have reason to con- gratulate Mr. Barlow on having, apparently, put off the unpleasant and not very seemly tone of his earlier verse. The present volume is entirely free from anything objection- able in its explicit or implicit morality.

The present poem is a little too plainly written on the lines —we will not say in emulation—of In Memoriam, being inspired by, and dedicated to, the memory of a mother recently 'lost, to whom the poet seems to have been in a rare degree attached. The motive is, no doubt, real and good, and the -fault is perhaps oar own in feeling that the especial tie is not -one which commends itself to the English mind as a subject for this particular form of record. It needs something of the 'continuity which gives a reason to the rhapsodies of a lover, -and the peculiar inspiration of friendship, such as gave birth to the famous poem of Tennyson,—moves, somehow, upon another plane. There is something in In Memoriam which makes it stand apart altogether in our remembrance from all other poems whatsoever, even though that poem itself may have been first called into existence by the suggestion of Shake- speare's famous sonnets. For this kind of heredity runs through the whole history of Poetry. It does not, however, remain less true that Mr. Barlow shows himself skilful in word-music in this poem, as in the former ones, though he has debarred himself, in following his precedent into the choice of practically one metre throughout, from the variety of keys and multiplication of metre for which his critics have so much praised him. Nor do we much care for the rhythm chosen. There, also, in the arrange- ment of his four-line stanza, Mr. Barlow has followed Tennyson even whilst he varies and inverts him, while he adds a certain novelty in his arrangement by a sub-division of his stanzas into parts separately numbered, with a purpose we hardly follow, as the sense does not always appear to require or warrant it. Thus fourteen stanzas go to the making of the first part, and four only to the second. In some cases A Led Mother. By George Barlow, Author of "The Pageant if Lib" sac "trim Dawn to Emmet." Leaden : Sires donneescheia and Go. HIM

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two stanzas are enough to make a whole, as, for instance, in the following :—

" Something it is to know that in the gloom

A love most sweet abides, That when I seek the tomb I then shall grasp at once a band that guides.

That strong and tender aid Waits in advance. Then, though death's surges swell, Where thou art, mother, surely it will be well For me to follow, unafraid."

We quote these as a specimen of the better hope which is to be found in the poem at times, though the prevailing note has more the ring of hopeless despondency which is so strik- ingly evolved out of all the scientific delights and terrors of the time. To know that love abides and waits in advance ought to be—surely must be—the only solution to all the horrible and pressing problems of the rush, and power, and feebleness of life. But in these other lines which follow almost immediately, the poet shows as more of what seems to be the true bent of his own mind—the result of all these trials upon himself.

"Each century somewhat new Is felt and thought of death—the problem strange With newer knowledge seems to change, It changes, as we change our point of view.

And in this age when overmuch is known,

When Science summons from the deep Dim past the centuries that sleep, When Thought is crowned for Ruler, Thought alone, We gaze at Death with saddest eyes, For we can number one by one

The stars, and analyse the sun,—

Death's dateless secret who can yet surprise ?

Moreover, all we know Seems to remove the Lord so far away ;

The ' Father' was so near in Jesus' day ; Knowledge brings doubt, and doubt intenser woe."

It is good to meet with speculative thought embodied in clear and straightforward language, as it is here and throughout the poem ; it is sad to feel, and feel with, the growing depression of thought upon the secret, as much the secret as ever, which underlies and moves the whole of this poem :—

" The saddest century since the news went round That death was sceptreless and Christ was crowned," Mr. Barlow calls this period of oursi—and he can but con-

trast his own conscious want of belief with the firm faith which he attributes to his mother to the end, even when she "gently fell asleep," as the fortunate in that way die. In Tennyson's acceptance of the time as the embodiment of the law of progress, and in some way accordant with the revealed religion which never lost its hold upon the Laureate's mind, Mr. Barlow cannot share. He is one of the many who rebel against the pitiless miracles of science as removing the Lord so far away ; as shedding about the glorious story and meaning of the Resurrection a veil of the dead years which is more than the lapse of time itself would warrant. Happy—happy, indeed—they whose faith can be serenely triumphant over it all, and watch without perplexity and yet with open mind the advance of that Spirit of the Time which weighs to the ground many a heart as earnest and as yearning as Mr. Barlow's would appear to be. Each life, he says, though there we are at issue with him, seemed for- merly of such priceless value compared with the present time.

Now, he says

"How shall the Lord count all his dead ?

Can he relume life's embers once grown cold ?

On every star that lights heaven's boundless sea There may be life. Can God's glance follow all?"

The man with the poet's gifts—and there is no doubt there about Mr. Barlow—who feels the odd thing called " inspira- tion " and wonders whence it cometh, wants his inspirer. His earlier verse Mr. Barlow attributes to his mother's constant presence and sympathy ; and, he says :—

" Yet in this song, the saddest by far

Of all my songs, wilt thou not help me still ? Gift me with nobler notes—a purer will— Thine through the gloom, mine everlasting star !"

The first line here is surely very faulty, unless a misprint, even as in our second quotation the words, "as we change oar point of view," seem to us distinctly too prosaic in expression for poetic form, and both indicative that Mr. Barlow's work- manship is not yet complete, or lacks the jealous and untiring care which made of Tennyson what he was. Bat the yearning is finely expressed, and points to that necessity for some gelding

star which is at the root of all poetic enterprise. It is at the end of his poem, after this appeal, that Mr. Barlow's question- ing spirit most comes out. Is it well, he says, to accept the traditional explanation?— "The dead have never died,—death is a dream. In some green mead our dear ones wait; We have but to pass the meadow-gate, We have but to cross a stream."

Graceful, but is it well P What answer can there be to that, save that it is well to those who can P And that Mr. Barlow's mind has many phases at many times is clear from the last stanza of his introduction,— "Though thou art gone from thine accustomed place, Though sorrow do its deadly best to kill,

God, who divides, can bring us face to face, The Power that wrought our love is with us still."

Mr. Barlow is a sad singer ; but he is amongst those who sing.