RECENT VERSE.*

MR. HEWLETT in The Agonists has taken "three barbarous old tales" and presented them as parts of a philosophical trilogy. "You take, as a starting-point," he says, "the three essential qualities of God to be Power, Love, and Knowledge, and admit the essential qualities of Man to be the more excellent as they more nearly approach those of God; and you have in each of these plays an example of the failure of a typical personage, God or man, for lack of one or other quality." His subject is the failure of God to blend with man. The story of Minos shows, in his view, man gifted with knowledge, but failing from lack of power. This seems to us a forced interpretation for which Mr. Hewlett's drama gives no warrant. The tale of Ariadne in Naxos shows a God with power over men, but unable to win their love, and the tale of Hippolytus shows love without knowledge—again, we think, a slightly fantastic moral. But though we may quarrel with the details the motif is clear, and Mr. Hewlett has elaborated it with considerable power and beauty. The versification is based on no regular metrical system, but framed to suit each mood of the drama. It • (1) The Agonists .4 Trilogy of God and Han. By Maurice Hewlett. London: Macmillan and Co. [42. 65. net.]—(2) Mary and the Bramble and The Sale of St. Thomas. By Lascelles Abercrombie. Byton, Dynock, Glos. Published by the author. [Is. ld. each.]—(3) Mariamne. By T. Sturge Moore. London Duckworth and Co. 12s. net.]—(4) Heflin and the Defence of Venice. By John Presland. London: Chatto and Windus. [58. net.]—(5) The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold. By John Jay Chapman. New York : Moffat, Yard and Co.—(6) Poem of Men and Hours. By John Drinkwater. London : D. Nutt. [Is. 6d. net.)—(7) Songs of a Factory Girl. By Ethel Comic. London : Headley Bros. [1s. net.]—(8) Some Verses. By Nina Herbert. Portsmouth : Griffin and Co.—(9) The Link City. By Wilfred Rowland Childe. Oxford .Blackwell. [Is. net.]—(10) Poems. By X. Tourclain. London : Truslove a,ud Hanson. [3s. 6d. net.]-7—(D) The Porch of Paradise. By Anna Bunston. London : Herbert and Daniel. [30. Qd. net]—(12,) Sonnets of South Africa. Edited by E. H. Crouch. London A. C. Pifleld. [2a. net].

sminete. By "Lucille." London : Elkin Mathews. 122. 65. net.]

a bold experiment but we are bound to say that it is not un- successful Poetry, in his own phrase, has borrowed from prose without ceasing to be poetry. The three plays have throughout a high level of dramatic interest, and they have moments of great tragic beauty. Such, for example, is the struggle of Ariadne and Dionysus in the second play, and what we might call the Artemis motif in the third. It is not a book of sporadic beauties, for its most remarkable quality is its unity of interest and effect. The chorus has many passages of lyrical charm, such as the lyric to Artemis in the first play and the concluding songs of the second and third ; but it is the great story which moves us most deeply—the stress of dramatic and logical sequence, so that we have no time

to notice the art of it all. This is a high tribute to Mr.

Hewlett's technical skill. At its best the irregular verse has a sharp freshness which the more orthodox metres could scarcely give. Take these lines on Artemis, spoken by Hippolytus :—

"White shone her shoulder in the still woodland,

White her knee under green kirtle ; Peering she stood, astart like a bird To flutter of leaves. Swift then a smile Bayed like a morning flush upon her, Sunned her serious gaze and met me, Worshipping there with beating heart.

I saw the blue beam of her wide eyes, Her carven throat and still raiment ;

Whispered her name, as now I do,

Lifted hands, made my thanksgiving : '0 thou miracle, spirit of pure breath, God be thanked for the glory he made in thee !' I loved a Goddess. Never since then this world ' Held a woman for me."

Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie is a poet of many experiments, who has scarcely found his true strength. Of the two poems before us we like Mary and the Bramble least. It is full

of fine images and cunning phrases, but the workmanship is too mannered and curious, and it has the effect of a clever imitation rather than an original creative impulse. In The

Sale of St. Thomas there is less vertu and more vitality. It

tells how, when the Apostles divided the world among them, India fell to Thomas. Being a fearful man he conjures up the terrors of the task, and has persuaded himself that it was his duty to stay at home when Christ appears and sells him to the shipmaster, so that he goes to India as a slave. There is throughout an immense imaginative vigour which revels in the strange and the grotesque, and yet when it pleases can fashion lines of airy delicacy. The poem shows a great strengthening and broadening of Mr. Abercrombie's remark- able talent. The moral has an artistic as well as an ethical significance.

"Thou must not therefore stoop thy spirit's sight To pore only within the candle-gleam Of conscious wit and reasonable brain ; But search into the sacred darkness lying Outside thy knowledge of thyself, the vast Measureless fate, full of the power of stars, The outer noiseless heavens of thy souL" Mr. Sturge Moore's play, Mariamne, has a merit rare in the modern poetical drama : it aims solely at dramatic effect, and

has no care for incidental beauties. It is admirably constructed, and has that unity of appeal which, whether or not it may fit it for the stage, gives to the reader the feeling of looking on at life. The character of Mariamne is subtly conceived, and the scenes at the judgment-hall and in the prison before death rise to a high pitch of drama.

Mr. Sturge Moore has come very near the true classic simplicity in the grave and reticent power of his play. —Mr. Presland's

Manin and the Defence of Venice is also the work of a man who aims at drama first and eschews irrelevant purple patches. It is an accomplished play, well constructed, and moving always on the dignified levels of tragedy. But the author lacks Mr. Moore's essential poetry. He is too often pedestrian and uninspired, so that we find rather dramatized history than

historic drama.—Mr. John Jay Chapman's Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold suffers from the fact that it is scarcely

ever poetry. It is a play on the Greek model, with choruses of Waves and Clouds and" Father Hudson" to fill the part of an immortal. It is all good sense and doubtless accurate history, but never at any moment does the thought seem to cross the line which separates the poetic from the prosaic.

Of the five volumes of lyrics on our list Mr. John Drink- water's Poem of Men and Hours is the most remarkable both for its accomplishment and its promise. Mr. Drinkwater is a

master of the " occasional " poem—we use the term with all respect. The common occasions, the trite subject, are used by him with real skill and originality. The sonnet is a good test of a poet's craft in this respect, and Mr. Drinkwater writes admirable sonnets with an odd new music of his own. In this slim book there is scarcely a jejune thought or a harsh line, and sometimes, as in the fine "A Prayer" and "The Lady Laura," we find a beautiful and rare conception wedded to haunting music. In the business of the lyric, too, Mr. Drink- water shows himself a master. "A Harvest Thanksgiving" and "Late Summer" are delightful things, where a musical simplicity is attained by a careful but not too obvious art. Miss Ethel Carnie's Songs of a Factory Girl have the charm of complete sincerity. Her range is limited to one or two lyrical forms, and her philosophy of life is that of a brave optimism which is always ready to see the light in the dark. She is a close observer, whose realism is incapable of any sustained depression ; it is always struggling to break into poetry. Poems like "The Mother" and "A Tired Mother" are singularly attractive from the quality of courageous and faithful tenderness. She is capable, too, of handling a more abstract subject by means of imaginative metaphor, and often she attains, as in "Possession," to an acute and arresting thought. Miss Carnie's work has its crudities, but it is full of the true stuff of poetry. Mrs. Herbert's Some Verses is also 3.n instance of a true talent not yet fully formed. Like Miss Carnie, she is always sincere and spontaneous, and her philosophy of life is much the same. We like best the fine "Supplication," which is nearly perfect both in form and content. With Mr. Wilfred Childe's The Little City we return to a highly literary and self-conscious type of work. The "little cities" of Europe dominate his fancy, and very charmingly he sings of them in verse which recalls William Morris, Mr. Yeats, and very frequently Mr. Halloo. It is all highly accomplished, and often, as in the "Foreword," "The Splendid Road," "The Chained Crusader," and "The Song of a Secret Lady," very pretty and delicate and fanciful. Mr. Childe has great skill of verse and a true sense of beauty : his task is to find a form of expression less imitative and, shall we say, less "precious," and in " Dream-Cotswold" he seems to be on the way to attain it. Mr. Jourdain's poems consist mainly of admirable translations from the Greek and the French—so good that they have almost the merit of originals. The other pieces, even when not definitely translations, have generally the air of adaptations. He has caught the spirit of the Greek anthology—its dignity and homeliness combined—and such a poem as " Seleucus of Lesbos" is a most skilful echo. The purpose of Miss Anna Bunston's The Porch of Paradise is defined in the preface. " It is at least possible that there are stunted souls who can- not converse fully with the Divine Father till they have had ampler draughts from the breasts of natural joy. . . . The joys of the Porch of Paradise are chiefly . . . joys such as we haltingly pursue upon the present earth." It is a beautiful fantasia, in which scene follows scene of natural joy in its purest and highest form. The verse is rich and stately, and there is a remarkable intellectual quality in the descriptions, a kind of mathematical orderliness and reason. Miss Bunston, too, has the art of that sudden fancy which at once delights and startles. For example :—

" all the fairy blooms That grow where shepherds tread, and make the floor Of Earth more lovely to the hosts of Heav'n Than are the starry skies to us who pray."

And the very breath

Of sloping grassy hills that lie and bask

Like great green lizards in the sun ; of far, Immaculate, and footless fields of snow Where nothing moves but shadows of the clouds."

Our only criticism is that the book fails where all mysticism in art fails : it is not too vague, but too concrete. Mysticism must always tell too much ; it must always condescend upon details and like the last chapters of Revelation tell the number of the gates and pearls.

We have left to the end two little volumes of sonnets. Mr. Crouch's anthology, Sonnets Of South Africa, suffers like all collections drawn from a narrow field ; there is a good dealof second-rate work in it. The sonnet is not the form we should have expected to see very rapidly naturalized in a new country. Those by Mr. W. C. Scully, Mr. Haynes Bell, and " Synod " seem to us the best, and it is interesting to read Thomas Pringle's experiments of nearly a century ego. We welcome the slim volume which contains " Lucilla's " twenty- four sonnets. The type is simple—a picture, a metaphor, and a moral—but few modern poems so completely fulfil their pur- pose. These thought-laden images, soberly and quietly drawn, have a compelling force beyond most of the work of our day. It is hard to select when the whole is already a selection, but we should name "Loss and Compensation," "Heat without Shadow," and " Sea-Shores " as in this specific type among the three finest of recent sonnets.