CURRENT LITERATURE.
Some Verses. By Helen Hay. (Duckworth and Co.)—Miss Hay has an inherited right to produce poetry. Her claim of birth is, moreover, well borne out by her performance. As in the case of so many young writers of the present generation, her verse is chiefly distinguished for its accomplishment. It would not, however, be in the least fair to say that it is nothing but accomplished, for Miss Hay often shows real poetic feeling. Still, the thing that strikes the reader first and most is the really remarkable command of style and language. Miss Hay's handling of the sonnet is, indeed, often quite masterly. She uses her words and phrases with a deliberate art and a perfection of workmanship which Dryden very mistakenly declared Nature "never gives the young." She knows the true value of words, and does not hurl them at our heads and leave us to laboriously compute the total sum. Taken as a whole, then, her volume shows real promise, and we shall look with pleasure for her next essay in poetry. Before we leave Miss Hay's poems we must give ourselves the pleasure of quoting a very striking sonnet called "Evening at Washington":
" The purple stretches of the evening sky Lean to the fair white city waiting here, Flecking with gold the marble's lifted tier, Dawn the blue marsh where crows to Southward fly.
Flanked by dim ramparts, where the tide dreams by, High from the city's heart, a lifted spear. In its straight splendour makes the heavens seem near, Symbol of man-made force that shall not die. To the tall crest we gaze in self-connwnd.
Assured the world's our own and we way dare
To raise our Babel thro' forbidden aides
And hold the skirt of Imowleege in our hand, Great in our moment, spurn the world's despair;
While Heaven looks down through calm unmeasured miles."
The descriptive quatrains are full of delicacy and feeling for "the brightness of Columbian air," and the reflective conclusion shows no little insight, and yet is neither forced nor laboured.
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