BOOKS.

MR. PLUMPTRE'S RELIGIOUS POEMS.* RELIGIOUS poetry generally tends to the purely lyrical form. It iq not often that genuine poetry of this class will endure the bonds of either the narrative or dramatic mould. If strong and original enough to force an utterance, it is usually strong and original enough to insist on speaking in its own person, and takea at once the form of direct soliloquy. It is not very often that we find the flexible imagination of the narrative or dramatic poet adapted to receive the rushing tide of another's spiritual emotions. The littlest imaginations shrink from these inner penetralia of personal life, and are content to shape the modes of their fellow-creatures' life through their intellect, will, and passions without following it into the inmost depth of all where individual character puts off all its conventional folds beneath the eye of God. Yet no doubt, were not the subject to sacred for drama, there is nothing in human life half so really dramatic as the attitudes of the spirit of man in the Eternal Presence. It. is there first that all the false assumptions of our individuality are', put off, or put ,off so far as the second artificial nature will allow,. and the true personal attitude of the man assumed. If any poet could tell us truly how men pray in perfect solitude, he would tell us more of their essential characters than all those human trage- dies in which they act their premeditated parts will ever betray.

In this volume of polished and often beautiful verse, which, reminds us, alike in its poetical calibre and its tone, of the present Archbishop of Dublin's volume called Justin Martyr, and Other Poems, Mr. Plumptre strikes a line something between purely lyrical religious feeling and that dramatic insight into the spiritual soliloquies of other minds of which we have spoken. What the wolume aims at is rather the .gathering up into an imaginative and semi-dramatic form of the religious life of the specific ages with which the author's studies and his tastes have made him most familiar, than of individual types of spiritual character. The poems are rather efforts to give a living form to his own inter- pretations and criticisms of the Hebrew and early Christian faith, than to create afresh the various spiritual drama of individual minds. They are strictly a scholar's readings of the religion of the times clothed in the rhythm and music of a poetical mind. Sometimes you see the lyrical force of the author's own religious Teeling penetrating the specific form which he has -assigned to himself. Sometimes, on the other hand, his own religious feelings are merged in the depth of his poetic sympathy with his subject. But, on the whole, Mr. Plumptre's poems are most harmonious and successful when he is neither directly lyrical nor directly dramatic, but pours into the imaginative moulds carefully prepared by learning and scholarship the living piety in which all ages alike can sympathize. Thus his first poem, Lazarus, which presents the living questions of to-day in the shape in which they might have presented themselves to inquirers of the first century, is certainly one of the best in the book ; and the second, which delineates in the same way the musings of a Galati= convert and the fierce con- troversy between the Pauline and Judaic School, is inferior to it only because the vitality of our own interest in that controversy is now not by any means at its highest. The poems delineating the spiritual condition of the Jewish ascetics, the Rechabites, in relation to both -the prophets and the gospel, are also fine. But the more strictly dramatic soliloquy in which Rizpah, the con- cubine of Saul, is supposed to pour out her feelings on the murder of her children by the command of David in expiation of the slaughter of the Gibeonites, strikes us as the least successful in the volume. The channel of feeling is scarcely wide enough for the overflow of a Hebrew mother's passionate and desolate grief. The turn of ecstacy given to the latter part of the poem, where Rizpah catches a glimpse of the spiritual meaning of mediatorial sacrifice, reminds us very strongly of the conclusion of Mr. Browning's fine poem on Saul, but has not the bounding passion of its movement, though the occasion in Mr. Plumptre's poem better suggests the theme. But though the least sue- * Lazarus, and Other Poems. By E. H. Plumptre, M.A. London: Strahan.

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cessful, we think, of the longer poems, it has both pathos and strength.

We prefer, however, to take our specimens of Mr. Plumptre's poems from the first, called Lazarus, which is engaged with a circle of thoughts more clearly within our own horizon than those on the " Galatian Convert," on " Barabbas," and the others. Mr. Plinnptre introduces the poem with a picture of a ship landing at Marseilles, among the passengers of which is a young Christian from Smyrna, bent on finding out the abode of the aged Lazarus. The defect of the poem is in the motive for this mission. Ostensibly the youth needs assurance that after a terrible relapse into sin he may still be pardoned and received back into God's love. But then the whole and true drift of the poem is, to show that Lazarus by his short experience of death and return to life has gained no knowledge of what are called the secrets of the other world, but only new knowledge of himself. As this must have been well known to the Apostle John, by whom he is sent, there is a slight inconclusiveness in sending his penitent in search of Lazarus simply on the ground of his temporary life in death. The poet wanted to write down his concep- tion of the experience-of Lazarus, and to make it tell on the doubts and perplexities of the world concerning the judgment of sin,—but he has somewhat failed in the preparation of an adequate artistic occasion Wr the poem. In the poem Mr. Plumptre identifies Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, with the "rich young man" who asked our Lord what he lacked, beyond obeying the commandments, to gain eternal life, and who turned away sorrowing because he had great possessions; and in the notes he has with much ingenuity, and at least as much evidence as the fragmentary accounts admit, supported this view. This gives a more fixed outline to the conception of Lazarus, and the picture is carefully filled in. It is a true and poetic insight which makes Mr. Plumptre attribute to Lazarus no fresh experience behind the veil, except a deeper knowledge of him- self :—

" And then the Rabbis gathered, some who came Because they loved me, some in pride of state, To show that they too knew me, and they spake Of all my many virtues : What a life Cut off before its time ! In ten years' space He might have been, of all our Sanhedrim, Held most in honour !' Then, with 'bated breath, 'But after all, what is, perhaps, is best.

He had his weakness, half inclined to own That half-mad Nazarene. Those sisters there Have made no secret of it. Rumour tells They had Him to their house. Well, well, perchance, This warning blow may bring them back to us.'

So spake they, but they knew not all the while I heard them in Gehenna. In mine ears Their praise was hateful, and that ' half-inclined ' Came floating to me as the knell of doom, The witness of my guilt. But 'half-inclined !'

Oh! had that half been whole I had not been In that thick darkness, wailing evermore.

How long I lay I knew not, for the lost

Count not their time by days, and months, and years,

But one long dreary everlasting Now Is ever with them. Every thought of sin Becomes a drear abyss of boundless woe, And every act, a moment's sudden heat, Expands into an non.

And the same teaching is still better expressed at a later point in the poem :—

"And to dream,

As some have dreamt, of agony of sense, The burning flame, and thick-ribbed ice in turn, As having power to purify and cleanse, As greater terrors than the accusing thoughts, The voice that speaks in thunder, and the wrath Eternal of the All-knowing and All-good,- This is to take the shadow for the truth, And live in outward symbols. Golden throne, Bright gates of pearl, and walls of amethyst, The pure clear river, and the mystic: tree, — These are but tokens of the inward bliss, The vision of our God, to pure hearts given As life, and peace, and joy. And so the woe, Which makes the doom of evil, is to see That face averted. We who shut love out, Shall be shut out from love. We see in Him That light eternal, that consuming Fire. And still the question meets us as of old, 'What child of man can face that ceaseless flame, And dwell with burnings everlastingly?' And evermore, as once from Prophet's lips, The strange bold answer reaches unto us, 'He who the truth bath spoke; right hath done, Who, fearing God, has conquered self and sin, He need not fear the fire.' It burns and burns, Consuming what is worthless, cleansing still The pare bright gold, tho treasure of our God."

Mr. Plumptre says in his note that this expresses a view raised above the conflicting views of Dr. Pusey and Mr. Maurice. We can accept his view heartily, but we do not see in what it differs from that of Mr. Maurice. Ho conceives indeed that the idea of endless duration is involved in the word "eternal,"—but as he apparently denies the hopelessness of any moral state, and vehemently maintains that it is always and essentially God's will to fight with the evil in every man,—the eternal punishment of such as do at last yield to God becomes little more than the eternal shame and self-reproach with which they look back on the evil spot after it has been purged away from their wills. This is probably true, but it is neither the hopeless "everlasting bell" of Dr. Pusey, nor a higher unity that contains it.

The finest poem in this volume—the gem of the book—is Mr. Plumptre's striking translation of the triumphal ode of Deborah. It is so faithful and almost literal as to be not unworthy of a place in the Bible itself. Rhymed though it is, it has all the stateliness and musical rhythm of our inimitable version without its occasional obscurity—the rugged exultation of victory together with the exaltation of a faith which God himself has justified. We cannot refrain from giving the latter part of this fine translation :—

" They fought, those kings of the nations, the chiefs of the Canaanites' land,

Where the torrent-streams of Megiddo roll down by Taanach's strand ; But not for them was the glory of victors dividing the spoil, No heaped-up treasure of silver paid them for their blood and their toil, A mightier army than theirs was fighting unseen on our side, The stars as they moved in their courses made war upon Sisera's pride : The white-foaming waters of Mahon swept them away in its might, Mahon, the onward =thing, swoln with the storm of the night ; Struggling, and plunging, and whirling, maddened with fear and dismay, The horse and his rider went down ; the proud river swept them away.

Curse ye the people of Meroz,'—the word from the Prophet's lips came, Whose voice as an angel of God's, was mighty to praise and to blame ; Yea, with a bitter curse curse them, the crave; the faint-hearted crew, They came not forth in that hour to the help of God's chosen and true, They left them to straggle alone, the mighty and strong to pursue.' But blessed, thrice blessed is Jael ; from the tents of that stranger-band, The name of the wife of Heber shall Bound through the breadth of the land.

He came, hot and parched to her door, the fever of battle was strong ; He asked her for water to drink, for the way was weary and long; With kind words she welcomed him in, and the milk cool and freshening she poured, In her costliest vessel she brought it. as a hand-maid waits on her lord. Weary and faint he slumbered. She put forth her hand to the nail, With the workman's hammer she smote it (not then did her woman's

heart quail)—

She smote him there as he lay, through brow and through temples it went, Stricken and bleeding, the carcase of Sisera lay in her tent : One struggle, one cry ; it was over ; the hero, the Canaanites' pride, At her feet lay lifeless and pale ; he bowed, he fell down, and he died.

Far off in the palace of Jabin, with looks proud, eager, amazed, Forth from her latticed window the mother of Sisera gazed.

'Why lingers the conqueror's chariot ? Why hear I not, borne on the wind, The clang of the strong iron wheels, and the tramp of the army behind?' Oh ! dream not of failure,' they answered, her maidens, swift to divine (Yea, like answer she made to herself), the glory of conquest is thine, Surely they conquer once more. In triumph they bring back their prey, The maidens of Israel shall yield to the might of their captors to-day ; And for Sisera's neck, as be rides in his glory home from the fight, The costliest robes of their priests, with mingled hues glorious and bright, Broidered by fair maidens' fingers, on both sides radiant alike, Meet for the necks of the heroes whose right hands have known how to strike.'

So lot them boast in their folly ; so let them dream in their pride ; So perish thy foes, 0 Jehovah ! dying as Sisera died ; But the people that.love Thee, Thy chosen, the heroes who walk in Thy

Let them shine evermore as the sun when he rides through the heavens in his might."

We have secn many attempts to render the Song of Deborah,— but none nearly so successful as this. It seems to rise and sink and swell again upon the wind with the wild beauty of a genuine song of deliverance. It is borne up on the wing of a power greater than that of man, and combines the passion of a war song with the rapture of a psalm. Mr. Plumptre's volume is almost throughout polished, meditative, and harmonious, but in this translation of one of the grandest of Hebrew poems he has rendered a great service to English and to Hebrew literature.