PORTRY.—Poems. By Charles B arpur. (G. Robertson, Melbourne, Sydney, and

Adelaide.)—Mr. Harpur was a native of New South Wales, and spent all his life in the Australian Colonies, chiefly engaged in farming, an occupation which he seems to have followed with but indifferent success. "The greatest part of his mature life," says the writer of the preface prefixed to the poems, "was passed in the soli- tudes of the bush." The most noteworthy passages bear the mark of this training. "The Creek of the Four Graves" is, perhaps, his best effort. It is characteristic and original, while much of the volume is an echo, not very clear or powerful, of the verse of others ; and its most striking lines describe an Australian forest by night :— " The circling forest trees, Their foremost boles carved from a crowded mass Ls as sisihle by the watch-fire's bladed gleams, That Ian far out in the umbrageous dark Beyond the broad red ring of constant light ; And even the shaded mountains darkly seen, Their bluff brows looming throruch the stirless air, Looked in their stillness solemnly asleep : Meanwhile the cloudless eastern heaven had grown More lumil ons, and now the moon arose Above the hill, when to ! that giant cone, E-evrhile so dark, seemed inwardly aglow With her instilled irradiance, while the trees

That fringed its outline, their huge Aatttres dwarfed

By distance into brambies and yet all Clearly defined against her ample orb, Out of its very disc appeared to swell In shadowy relief, as they had been All eculptnred from its surface as she rose. Then her full light in silvery sequence still emending forth from ridgy slope to slope

Chased mass by mass the broken darkness down

Into the dense-brushed valleys."

—Cid Spool:sits' Pass, Ma/cotnes Katie, and other Poems. By Isabella Valancy Crawford. (Bain and Son, Toronto.)—Here is a volume that comes from a country as yet unfertile of literature. If the harvest is as good as the first-fruits, it will be well, for Miss Crawford writes with a power of expression quite unusual among aspirants to poetic fame. The first poem is written in the dialect which we commonly asso- ciate with the Western States, and tells in a vigorous fashion (though not without a curious, and we should think, inappropriate sprinkling of ornate literary English), the story of a stampede of cattle in a

pass of the Rocky Mountains. " Malcolm's Katie" is a love-story, spoiled in a way by an immoderate use of rhetoric (witness "Alfred's" speech on pp. 66-7, such a tirade as surely never was delivered over a camping-fire in the woods), hut still powerful. Miss Crawford's blank verse is indeed of no ordinary kind. Here is a passage which seems to us finely expressed, and which has, besides, the great merit of freshness :— "I heard him tell How the first field upon his farm was ploughed. He and his brother Reuben, stalwart lads, Yok'd themselves, side by side, to the new plough ; Their weaker father, in the grey of life (Rat rather the wan age of poverty Than many winters), in large gnarl'd hands The plunging handles held ; with mighty strains They drew the ripping beak through knotted sod, Thi o' tortuous lane' of blacken'd, smoking stumps ; And past great flaming brush heaps, sending out Fierce summers, beating on their swollen brows. 0, such a battle! had we heard of serfs Driven to like hot conflict with the soil, Armies had marcled and navies swiftly Baird

To burst their gyres. But here's the little point—

The polished di'mond pivot on which spins

The whml of Difference—they °WWu the rugged soil,

And fought for love—dear love of wealth and pow'r, And honest ease and fair esteem of men."

The passage descriptive of forest scenety in Part II. of the same poem is also noteworthy. There are other poems, also, which might be mentioned, did space permit ; on the whole, this volume seems full of promise.—Poems and Fragments. By Charles James. (Alex. Gardner, Paisley.)—Fragmentary poems published, we are told, for fhe most part without final revision for the press, might commonly pass without critical notice, but there is so much merit in these verses that we cannot but express our regret at the untoward cir- cumstance—the author's feeble health—that has hindered their full development. Mr. James owes much to other thinkers, most of all to Shakespeare and Wordsworth. As he puts it in his little poem on " Books" " Many there are, but two I chiefly love, Rim who has pictured all our mortal round With wondrous art,—I scorn to name him more,— And him who dwelt in peace by Itydal's lake."

Sometimes the obligation to these two is such that the poem had better have been left unpublished, as, for instance, in the "Shell." Elsewhere the spirit of the master has been caught in a way that can call forth nothing but praise. Here, for instance, in a fragmentary series of poems entitled "In a Village Churchyard" (all of them worthy of notice), are some lines which it is no flattery to describe as genuinely Shakespearian :— "How are they slipp'd out of our memory ! And like the tearful dew have ta'en the air, That did so stand in our uncounsell'd grief, That all the rounded future of our way Seemed narrow d to their loss; their memory's flower, Nipt by the cold air of forgetfulness, Math dwindl'd in the shadow of Love's sun; Their place is taken like an empty chair That hath no choice of office ; and their names, That ma le such constant music in our ears.

Now fall with strange disturbance on our sense, Like far-off sounds heard in a waking diem."

And here, again, are others, not so strongly characterised, but of no small power :— " No more, sure-seated on her fort-cis-isle, She bids her sons be spoilers of the earth ; No more, in sullen and unresting mood, She bends her threat'ning eye athwart the seas Seeking new lands to conquer and despoil ; No more her hardy sons with eager hearts S seep through the clamorous turmoil of the waves, Breasting the mountainous surges of green sea

To bear new crowns to scatter at her feet.

To-day she sits disburden'd of her arms, Her helm cast by, and holding in her hand A slender wand for fellow of her lance.

Meek Peace bath now the counsel of her ear And with such loving words doth woo her on •

That, all enamour'd of her gentle mate,

Shs doth refuse tbe hot caress of War Whose sterner mood did once delight her sold ; And, 'stead of =aches, sieges, seas of blood,

Ste bath the milder season of sweet sleep.

Soft thoughts, quiet conscience, and the peaceful days Whose gentler pleasures follow in her train."

The rhymed verses at the end of the volume are much inferior,—not, we should say, because rhyme is harder to write than blank verse, but because it requires a peculiar effort from which the condition of physical weakness is, we should say, peculiarly averse.— The Valley of Idleness, and other Poems. By J. A. Coupland. (E. W. Allen.)— Th omson and Spenser are Mr. Coupland's models, and he imitates them with skill, tolerable, indeed, when we look upon his poems as literary exercises, but not sufficient to give them an intrinsic interest' He must learn to do work for his own hand, and indeed he is, we should say, not without some at least of the necessary gifts. We may be permitted also to counsel a little more discretion, both in the choice and in the treatment of his subjects. There are passages of the first poems which might have been omitted with advantage, while the story of Venus and Mars is a distinct blot on the volume. Homer thought it suitable for the pleasure-loving Phmacians ; but that is no reason why it should be inflicted on decent English readers of to-day. Of poems dealing with subjects of actual life, the most vigorous, perhaps, is that on "Thomas Carlyle," though

we cannot profess to agree in our author's estimate of that thinker. Is it possible to speak truly of him thus P :—

" Seer-like be looked into the deep beyond

This earth, our grave ; and his prophetic eye Beheld a beacon bidding not despond The toiling pilgrim of Eternity ;

Far off he taw a glorious, golden goal,

A restful haven for the travailing goal.

He read in Nature's book, discerning there The impress of her Maker, all was sign And symbol of a Pre ence everywhere. The outward image of the Thought Divine; With reverence, too foreign to this age, He pondered over life's my.terions page."