SONGS OF TWO WORLDS.*

Tars volume is a real advance on its predecessor of the same name, and contains at least one poem of great originality, as well as many of much tenderness, sweetness, and beauty. We do not refer to the graceful little poem, suggested apparently by Mr. Mill's Auto- biography, called "The Touchstone," though there is subtlety as well as delicacy in the way in which an argument on utility as the rule of life is made flexible to the movements of the heart, and im- bued with feeling as well as spiritual questioning. Nor do we refer to the beautiful lines to Henry Vaughan, with which the volume opens, lines saturated with the spirit of the exquisite poet to whom they are inscribed. For both these poems have more of an echo in them than consists with strict originality, the former an echo of the rhythm and movement of Tennyson's "Two Voices," though the stream of the thought runs in quite a different channel, the latter an echo of the quaint and fanciful but spiritual poet to whom it is addressed. The poem which marks the volume as that of a man who has a poetic initiative of his own, as well as a considerable power of expression for the commoner moods and feelings, is the very striking one on "The Organ Boy," which we have read again and again with fresh pleasure on every reading. It is to our minds a little poem of which even a first-rate poet might be proud. The very graphic picture of the little Italian boy, with which it opens, Bo soon passing into a reverie on the past history of the wonderful nation from which these picturesque little immigrants come to us, of the old Romans, we mean, with their cruel amusements, their stately and humane polity, and the universal rule which fell to pieces so completely ; then, the rapid transition to the Italy of to-day, rich in monuments and memories, rich in • Songs of Two Worlds. (Second Seder.) By a New Writer. London : Henry S. Sing and Co. beauty, and at last becoming rich in freedom,—the beautiful dream as to the possibility of the relative positions of England and Italy being reversed once more, and of English boys of great lineage, Howards or Guelphs, going back to Rome with a toy engine or a toy spinning-jenny, to be spoken of once more by Roman pity as "non Angli, sed Angeli ;" again, the poetical disquisition on the enervating effects of too much devotion to Art, the stately passage on the destinies of England, and the graceful description of the childish crowd flocking about the Italian organ-boy, and enjoying his music at the close,—make altogether as exquisite a little poem of ten pages as we have read for many is day. Here is the opening :- "Groat brown eyes,

Thick plumes of hair, Old corduroys The worse for wear.

A buttoned jacket, And peeping out An ape's grave poll,

Or a guinea-pig's snout.

A sun-kissed face, And a dimpled mouth, With the white flashing teeth And soft smile of the South.

A young back bent, Not with age or care, But the load of poor music 'Tis fated to bear.

But a common-place picture To common-place eyes,

Yet full of a charm

Which the thinker will prize.

They were stern cold rulers, Those Romans of old, Scorning art and letters For conquest and gold ; Yet leavening mankind, In mind and in tongue, With the laws that they made And the songs that they sung.

Sitting rose-crowned, With pleasure-choked breath, As the nude young limbs crimsoned, Then stiffened in death.

Piling up monuments Greater than praise, Thoughts and deeds that shall live To the latest of days.

Adding province to province, And sea to sea, Till the idol fell down

And the world rose up free."

That is true poetry, at once vivid and meditative, and the whole of the poem is equally terse and bright. If it is possible to describe Venice in four very short lines, these are they : The marvellous town With the salt-flowing street, Where colour burns deepest, And music most sweet."

Again, the passage on the destinies of England may be fairly, we think, compared with Matthew Arnold's famous Titan, with- out any discredit to the newer and, we suppose, younger poet, yet also without any of that sense of echo of which we are aware in the two beautiful little poems to which we have formerly referred. Our readers may have so far forgotten the statuesque passage wo are now referring to in Mr. Arnold's lines on Heine as to be grate- ful for a reminder :—

"I chide with thee not, that thy sharp

Upbraidings often assail'd England, my country ; for we, Tronblous and sad, for her sons, Long since deep in our hearts Echo the blame of her foes.

We, too, sigh that she flags !

We, too, say that she now, Scarce comprehending the voice Of her greatest, golden-moutli'd sons Of a former age any more, Stupidly travels her round Of mechanic business, and lets Slow die out of her life Glory, and genius, and joy So thou arraign'st her, her foe.

So we arraign her, her sons.

Yes, we arraign her! but she The weary Titan! with deaf

Ears, and labour-dimm'd eyes,

Regarding neither to right Nor left, goes passively by, Staggering on to her goal, Bearing on shoulders immense, Atlantan, the load, Well-nigh not to be borne, Of the too vast orb of her fate."

That is more finely chiselled and more majestic doubtless than the passage we are about to quote, but there is a ring, a "lyrical cry," to use Mr. Arnold's own phrase, in the following lines waich we miss from the rhythm and language of the elder poet :—

"Shall we too be led

By that mirage of Art Which saps the true strength Of the national heart?

Tho sensuous glamour, The dreamland of grace, Which rot the strong manhood They fail to replace; Which at once are the glory, The ruin, the shame, Of the beautiful lands And ripe souls whence they came ?

Oh, my England ! oh, Mother Of Freemen ! oh, sweet, Sad toiler majestic, With labour-worn feet! Brave worker, girt round, Inexpugnable, free, With tumultuous sound And salt spume of the sea, Fenced off from tho clamour Of alien mankind By the surf on the rock, And the shriek of the wind, Tho' the hot Gaul shall envy, The cold German flout thee, Thy far children scorn thee, Still thou shalt be great, Still march on uncaring, Thy perils unsharing, Alone, and yet daring Thy infinite fate.

Yet over remembering The rrocepts of gold, That were written in part For the great ones of old— 'Lot other hands fashion The marvels of art; To thee fate has given A loftier part.

To rule the wide peoples ; To bind them to thee' By the sole bond of loving, That bindeth the free. To hold thy own place, Neither lawless nor slave ; Not driven by the despot, Nor tricked by tho knave."

We are not sure that we rightly understand the author's doctrine as to the enervating influence of Art. If it only be that nations which show more genius for beautifying than for ruling the world occupy a place of less privilege in the purposes of God, and especially that a nation which, Laving once shown a predominant genius for the latter work, a genius for organisation, government, righteous rule, ceases to display that genius, and displays instead one for inter- preting the secrets of natural and artistic beauty, is exchanging a higher for a lower function in human life, we should agree with our "new writer." But if he means that there is anything intrinsically enervating in the study of the beautiful, anything which should render it highly improbable, for instance, that a nation displaying great artistic faculty should yet one day rise into a genius of great strength and massiveness, we do not follow him. We admit that relatively the artistic genius is lower than the genius of government, and that regress is implied in the transformation by which the genius of Rome was softened into the genius of Italy. But we do not see any sufficient reason to suppose that a greatly increased delight in the "glamour of Art" would diminish the energy of England or the nobility of her position in the world, or indeed be inconsistent with a real progress in her strenuousness and clearness of aim. Is not a great deal of the enervating doctrine about England's non-intervention and about peace at any price, quite as much due to bad taste as bad ethics ? Might not a severer standard of beauty do something at least for our political ethics, as well as for our political tact ?

But we must not lead our readers to suppose that this very beautiful poem, though far the finest in the volume, is at all alone in its power to fascinate them. There are several slighter things of a good deal of power and beauty. The invective on the "stock- jobbers' madams," who dash in such splendour through the Park, is hardly quite reasonable, as, indeed, the author himself in his -concluding verses very candidly admits. But it has plenty of vigour, and one very perfect touch of oratorical fire :—

"Bat with you, vile spawn of deceit, What need to be chary of ire ? Get down, I say, on your useless feet, And cleanse them with honest mire.

Down with yon, time, ere your coaches be made, The central block of a new barricade." •

That exhortation to " cleanse " their feet "with honest mire" is worthy almost of Demosthenes. We will conclude with a very characteristic little poem. The author takes as his motto, with reference, we imagine, chiefly to the religious poems in the volume, the Greek phrase, "One form under many names," but if we were to try and find the "one form under many names" of the poetic feeling which runs most visibly through the lyrical pieces of this book, we should take the following as embodying it :— " THE HIDDEN' SELF.

"I know not if a keener smart

Can come to finer souls than his Who hears men praise him, mind or heart, For something higher than he is.

Who fain would say, Behold me, friends, That which I am, not what you deem, A thing of low and narrow ends, Sordid, not golden as I seem.

See here the hidden blot of shame, The weak thought that you take for strong, The brain too dull to merit fame, The faint and imitative song.

But dares not, lest discovery foul Not his name only, but degrade Heights closed but to the soaring soul, Names which scorn trembles to invade; And doth his inner self conceal From all men in his own despite, Hiding what he would fain reveal, And a most innocent hypocrite."

That keen feeling of the pinchbeck alloy that mingles with his own like all human gold, that honestly modest fear that in con- fessing it for himself he might so far expose the base metal even in the highest poets as to diminish the reverence with which we read them, the pain which the half-dissembling costs him, and the sense that this conscious imperfection at the heart of poetry is due to a law not really affecting a modest and immature, more profoundly than a great and powerful, poetic tongue, is characteristic at once of the self-knowledge, the re- flectiveness, the modesty, the hopeful melancholy, and the gift for antithetical expression which we find throughout these unassuming poems. We earnestly hope that the third series, of which the author holds out some promise, may be as much of an advance on the second as the second is on the first, and if so, that his poetic publica- tions will not end there, but that he will attempt something of more solid and lasting mould.