MRS. WOODS' LYRICS AND BALLADS.*

THE reader of these poems would hardly, perhaps, be able to infer from them that Mrs. Woods possesses the kind of power which was shown in her Village Tragedy, but he would be

sure that she had a good deal of power in her of one sort or another, a great deal of strong feeling, a good dash of bitter- ness, a little scorn, and a great delight in realising to herself those situations in which men have most successfully defied

the attempt of circumstances to bend them to purposes not their own. And why with this bias Mrs. Woods should betray so much poetical resentment as she does that there should be Much in human life which elicits and tests this power of defiance, it is not easy to say. What a ring of passion there is, for instance, in this little poem, "To the Forgotten

Dead :"— " To the forgotten dead,

Come, let us drink in silence ere we part. To every fervent yet resolved heart

That brought its tameless passion and its tears, Renunciation and laborious years, To lay the deep foundations of our race, To rear its stately fabric overhead And light its pinnacles with golden grace.

To the unhonoured dead.

To the forgotten dead, Whose dauntless hands were stretched to grasp the rein Of Fate and hurl into the void again Her thunder-hoofed horses, rushing blind Earthward along the courses of the wind.

Among the stars, along the wind in vain Their souls were scattered and their blood was shed, And nothing, nothing of them doth remain.

To the thrice-perished dead."

-Well, how could the enormous majority of the dead be other-

wise than forgotten, and why should they not be forgotten ? If the vast majority of those who have ever been of some- thing like heroic mould in their endeavour and their steadfast- ness in right-doing, were not forgotten, the men of the present any would have their whole lives taken up in acts of com- memoration. The best reason for commemorating the greater lives of the historic world is not to recompense them by our gratitude for what they ought to have done, and in by far the greatest instances of heroism did do, without any thought of gratitude from posterity,—but to keep before ourselves the ideal to which they have taught us to lift our hearts. Instead of feeling indignant at being forgotten, men Should, we take it, when they have more or less im- perfectly done their duty, be thankful that they are not likely to be misrepresented, as so many of the famous of all ages are doomed to be misrepresented, as greater, better, nobler than they really were. It should, we think, be a very peaceful and restful thought for the mass of men that their lives are known to God alone, and are liable to be even misconceived only by the few to whom they have been known in the limited sphere of their earthly duties. The desire to live in the memory of men is either a poor and weak equivalent for the craving for some life in God, for some eternal sig- nificance, or is a mere accidentally useful stimulus to a sort of exertion which men would be too apt to neglect, if there were not some adventitious goad to it like this desire for fame,—a desire which would be pitiable if it had not been divinely provided as a stimulus to some of the most ennobling of the ideal efforts of the human intellect and imagination.

But Mrs. Woods is none the worse poetically for having a definite feeling like this to express. Her 'best poems are generally those in which she pictures some successful defiance of human strength, like "At the Barricade," or "Young Windebank," and least impressive in such imaginative poems as " Tasso to Leonora" or " Myrtis," where the feeling is not

definite enough and keen enough to stimulate her to her best efforts. There is a simplicity and strength in the following, lor example, which we find as admirable as almost anything in the volume :—

" YOUNG WINDBRANK.

They shot young Windebank just here,

By Merton, where the sun

Strikes on the wa]I. 'Twos in a year

Of blood the deed was done.

• Lyrics and Ballads. By Margaret L. Woods, Author of • A Village Tragedy." London : Richard Bentley and Bons.

At morning from the meadows dim He watched them dig his grave. Was this in truth the end for him, The well-beloved and brave ?

He marched with soldier scarf and sword, Set free to die that day, And free to speak once more the word That marshalled men obey.

Bat silent on the silent band That faced him stern as death, He looked and on the summer land And on the grave beneath.

Then with a sudden smile and proud He waved his plume and cried, The king ! the king !' and laughed aloud, 'The king ! the king !' and died.

Let none affirm he vainly fell, And paid the barren cost Of having loved and served too well A poor cause and a lost.

He in the soul's eternal cause

Went forth as mar ills must— The kings who make the spirit laws And rule us from the dust.

Whose wills unshaken by the breath Of adverse Fate, endure, To give us honour strong as death And loyal love as sure."

And "The Death of Hjorward " has force of the same kind. But the most original poem in the little book is "An Eastern Legend," in which Mrs. Woods has succeeded in conveying the impression of a nature only half-awakened to its own yearnings and its own wants, but conscious of being strangely moved by influences which are not under its own control, though in some secret and mysterious communication with it. A half-awakened nature, conscious of great but as yet only dimly apprehended depths of feeling and experience, a nature in which a profound calm precedes profound emotion, is not easy to conceive. But something in Mrs. Woods' own character has enabled her to conceive it and to delineate it with a singular charm. We shall not quote the poem which to us seems the most impressive in the book, but we are inclined to hope more from it than from any other in this little volume, which is for the most part rather a volume of promise than a volume of performance.