The North Shore Watch, and other Poems. By George Edward
Wood- berry. (Houghton and Co., Boston, U.S.A.)—Mr. Woodberry has an ear for music, but too frequently the music is not wholly his own, being caught from earlier composers. The poem that gives its name to this modest-looking little volume is an elegy on the death of a friend with whom, in communion with Nature, the poet had lived his youth. The feeling of the stanzas is good, and so is the execution ; but in spite of much Celicacy of thought and felicity of diction, the poem is an exercise in verse, not an in- spiration ; with no lack of poetic craft, cr of the imagery in which poets of the aerial order delight, there is the want of vivid imagi- nation. Clouds and storms, sea and sky, showers and sunshine, the glow of summer and winter's dtsa'ation, share in the poet's moods of joy and sorrow ; but the imp; ession left on the mind is vague and unsubstantial. There foll3ws a long poem in adequate blank verse called " Agathon," whom Eros seeks out in order to fill him " with pure thought and awe of things divine." The reader will be at once reminded of " Comus," to which great poem the form of " Agathon " is obviously due. If Mr. Woodberry is a young poet, this is a fault which may be forgiven, and in that case there is a hope of something more distinctly original from his pen in the years to come. There are indications here, we think, of a more genuinely poetical gift than is to be found in " The North Shore Watch." The volume contains a few sonnets, one of which, written at Gibraltar, is worth quoting as the tribute of an American to England's greatness :— " England, I stand on thy imperial ground, Not all a stranger ; as thy bugles blow, I feel within my blood old battles flow— The blood whose ancient founts in thee are found. Stillsurging dark against the Christian bound Wide Islam presses; well its peoples know Thy heights that watch them wandering below ; I think how Luoknow beard their gathering sound.
I turn and meet the cruel, turbaned face. England, 'tie sweet to be so muoh thy son I I feel the conqueror in my blood and race Last night Trafalgar awed me, and today Gibraltar wakened ; hark, thy evening gun Startles the desert over Africa."
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