POETS AND POETRY.
TERPSICHORE.*
Terpsichore is the second book that has been printed by the Golden Cockerel Press, and is a very prettily got-up volume, except for the binding. Nor is the verse unworthy of the cup that brings it, although we had perhaps too little need to wait for the epilogue, " To Master Robert Herrick upon his death," to know whence the poet got a good deal of his inspiration, not in the way of matter, but of form. For Mr. Wade-Eery is well able to observe for himself, as the following bears witness :- " How fair a carpet do the beech-trees make
When Spring goes laughing in among the woods, —Both last year' t leaves, and, when the buds do break, The tender castings of their baby-hoods— "
The present writer has often marvelled that poets have not been more struck with this delightful fact of nature. In the middle of May one may see a road through a beech wood bordered with a double band of those " baby-hoods " which glow almost orange in the sunshine. But Mr. Wade-Gary is not only con- cerned with landscape. The following is the second part of a little love poem :- " Faithful you were, my heart, the day I remember, With my sweet-hearted friends, when I was a boy. O faithful golden heart, you were lost in wonder 18 it soon ? and 0 you trembled for fear of your joy.
O treacherous heart, you hoped for nothing human. Why said you not so / Would I not have known your mistake ?
For love is love, sweet and lovely and common ; But you, desiring infinite joy, did break"
This is not only extremely pleasant metrically, but is singu-
larly direct and passionate.
Mr. Wade-Gary's fault is an over-quaintness, a love for little odd transpositions ; these he does not seek because he has not the wit to fit the words in their ordinary order into his lines, but because he loves the preciousness of effect that can be produced in this way. This unnecessary quaintness is a pity, for it gives to his whole verse a sense of archaeology and, above all, a sense of being minor. Mr. Wade-Gary may be so • Terpsichore. By IL T. Wsde-Gery Waltham Bt. Lawrence. Berke: Tha Golden Cockerel Press. Pa. ed. net.' soaked in the work of seventeenth-century writers that he thinks in the terms of their vocabulary, but to the ordinary reader these little oddities stop the flow of meaning and prevent his quite believing in the passion expressed. But when all exception is taken to it, there is something extremely attractive in Mr. Wade-Gery'a little volume.
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