Cloth of Gold, and other Poems. By Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
(Routledge.)—Mr. Aldrich's name is beginning to be known on this side of the Atlantic. He may be said to belong to the school of Mr. Long- was permitted to gain her. But whatever the young lady's moral or fellow, though he has not the same delicacy of taste, nor the same finish intellectual worth, she must be allowed to have no little charm about which is conspicuous, at least in Longfellow's poems of the best period. her. Mrs. Forester, indeed, draws her female characters with much skill. Milly, the fair widow, whom Sir Guy so passionately admires, is an especially excellent sketch. She is just the type of the women who fascinate men's hearts without being able to hold them. Marcelline, too, the faithful little French bonne, whose faithfulness is not beyond the fascination of his work takes him away from his duties of charity, how reach of temptation from a few gold coins, is a pleasing little sketch. he steels his heart against the miseries of a time of pestilence, when all The men are less real, the young Viscount excepted, and he is one of "Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book" is, perhaps, the most attractive poem in this volume. It is one of the versions of a well-known legend, and tells how a certain monk devoted himself to the adorning of a manu- script which should glorify the Holy Word with its beauty, how the his brethren are giving up their lives to the work, how he is awakened from his selfish dream by finding the head of St. John, which was to be his masterpiece, grow into the likeness of a grin- ning fiend beneath his hand ; how he then goes forth among the people, and coming home, stricken with the sickness himself, to die, finds his work finished with the skill of no human hand. Here is a char- acteristic passage, which describes how Jerome conceives his design from the rapt contemplation of one marvellous work :—
"To those dim alcoves, far withdrawn,
He turned with measured steps and slow, Trimming his lantern as he went; And there, among the shadows, bent Above one ponderous folio, With whose miraculous text were bleat Seraphic faces: Angels, crowned With rings of melting amethyst; Mute, patient Martyrs, cruelly bound To blazing faggots; here and there, Some bold, serene Evangelist, Or Mary in her sunny hair;
And here and there from out the words
A brilliant tropic bird took flight; And through the margins many a vine Went wandering,—roses, red and white, Tulip, wind-flower, and columbine Blossomed. To his believing mind These things were real, and the wind, Blown through the mullioned window, took Scent from the lilies in the book."
"Judith" is the most ambitious poem in the book, but not the most pleasing. It is, we conceive, an almost fatal mistake to interpolate into the narrative the idea of the stern Hebrew matron falling in love with the Assyrian chief, and being almost turned from her purpose by softer thoughts. There is something artificial about Mr. Aldrich's verse, and his subjects seem sought for rather than suggested by any particular c are that he feels for treating them. And it is in dealing with the out- side rather than the meaning of things that he excels. But here he is certainly very skilful. Let the reader judge from this "Fragment," as he calls it :—
DRESSING THE Bares.—A FRAGMENT. SO, after bath, the slave-girls brought The broidered raiment for her wear, The misty izar from Mosul, The pearls and opals for her hair, The slippers for her supple feet, (Two radiant crescent moons they were,) And lavender, and spikenard sweet, And attars, nedd, and richest musk. When they had finished dressing her, (The eye of morn, the heart's desire ;) Like one pale star against the dusk, A single diamond on her brow
Trembled with its imprisoned fire!"
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