10 OCTOBER 1874, Page 24

Original Poems. By " Olive." Edited by R. Jasper More. (Simp-

kin, Marshall. and Co.)—These verses are more meritorious than the ordinary run of "poems" published by request, or for a bazaar—the original intention, in this case—but the editor ought to have done his work more carefully, and excluded a poem in which " Olive " laments for a friend of her youth, who "lies low in a far foreign grave," in New Zealand, surrounded by the following natural phenomena:— " Where the low-utter'd growl of the tiger's red throat Replies to the boom of the bittern's harsh note; And the foot of the Indian stealthily creeps

O'er the grave where the dust of our dear playmate sleeps."

This is hard on the Maori, who do, and on the tigers, who do not, inhabit New Zealand. These are, however, the only positively absurd lines in the little volume, which contains many that are pleasing.