MRS. ARCHER OLIVE'S POEMS.*

LONG before the publication of Paul Ferroll, the IX. Poems by "V." attracted an admiration of which only the elder reviewers of the present day can remember their fathers and mothers talking with eager interest. Mr. Gladstone him- self has spoken of those IX. Poems as forming "a small book which has the life and soul of a great book ;" and though the present reviewer could not undertake to pick out from this volume the IX. Poems published under the name of "V.,"—we think they should have been indicated by an asterisk,—there are two or three of them, such as "The Grave," "Youth took one summer day his lyre," and " The Queen's Ball," which he can well remember to have heard in his youth read and discussed by the senior members of the family, as works of undoubted genius. Whether they be works of undoubted genius or not, we could hardly now say with any con- fidence, though they are certainly works of a somewhat remarkable intensity of feeling and expression. We are disposed to think that in the present day they derive at least as much interest from the fact that they were the pro- duction of the authoress of Paul Ferrol', as from the fact that they have a real intensity of their own. Though several of Mrs. Archer Olive's poems undoubtedly succeed in giving forth that passion of the heart, that "lyrical cry," as Matthew Arnold happily called it, which is the note of all true lyrics, we doubt whether it so far pervades this volume, or even any nine poems in it, as would have been necessary in order to gain for the author at the present time the reputation which the IX. Poems by "V." did actually gain some forty odd years ago, when the number of published verses marked by a certain power and vividness was not a tenth-part as large as now. There are single verses and lines of unquestionable passion and sim- plicity in the poems before us which undoubtedly indicate the genuinely poetic temperament of the writer, and one or two whole poems of sustained vividness ; but, for the most part, we should say that nothing in this volume comes up to the conception and execution of Paul Ferroll in fire and con- centration, though most of the poems give indications of the chief characteristic of that remarkable book, we mean the capacity for suggesting the pent-up fire of a still active volcano, though not one in visible eruption, underneath the apparently tranquil surface of calm and self-possessed purpose. Take, for example, the following vivid little poem, which seems to us as near perfect in execution as anything in the little book :— "WRITTEN IN HEALTH.

Forbid, oh Fate ! forbid that I Should linger long before I die 1

• Poems. By "V." (Mrs. Archer Olive). Including the IX. Poem. Nest. Edition. London Longman. 1890.

Ah, let me not sad day by day Upon a dying bed decay, And learn to strain my lonely ear To catch a footstep drawing near, And oft my fainting eyelid raise, To see the friend who still delays.

Let me not hear the world pass by, In all its splendour, love, and pride; While I have nothing but to die, Whate'er my fellow-men betide.

Nor let me come by sad degrees To feel each nobler feeling freeze ;

And lose my love, my hope, my strength,—

All, save the baser part of man,— Concentring every wish, at length, To die as slowly as I can.

Oh no ! I wish, I hope, I pray A better ending to my day.

I fain would mount some headlong steed, And gallop o'er the cliff at speed ; Fall down a thousand fathoms there, And leave my life mid-way in air.

I fain would meet in victory A winged ball aim'd full at me ; Shout, as it came, my wild war-cry, And, ere the sound was ended, die.

I'd drink a deep delicious wine, With hasty poison mix'd therein, And with the sweetness on my breath, Die, are I felt that it was death.

I'd die in battle, love, or glee, With spirit wild, and body free, With all my wit, my soul, my heart, Burning away in every part, That so more meetly I might fly Into mine immortality ; Like comets when their race is run, That end by rushing on the sun."

That gives the quick pulse of life in "V.'s" verse, the pulse of suppressed life, the eagerness to live altogether, and not merely a hall-alive life, as completely as any poem in the book; and the scorn and dread with which she speaks of

"Concentring every wish, at length, To die as slowly as I can,"

i3 of the very essence of her most poetical mood. Pau/ Ferroll is an embodiment of that eager desire, that vehement resolve, in its most unscrupulous form, the form in which it led the hero to murder, and gave him that hot consciousness of a concealed and guilty heart as the consequence of murder. Perhaps it is this tendency,—which necessarily resulted from the grave and deliberate sin of a cultivated and wakeful mind,—to keep. every nerve thrilling beneath the reserve of a calm demeanour, which gave Mrs. Clive the interest she evidently felt in delineating the hidden life of self-willed but also self-limited guilt, a guilt that would go "thus far, but no farther," We see it again in the poem called "I watched the Heavens," where Mrs. Clive gave us her concep- tion of hell. We take two of the most remarkable verses, the second of which seems to us to show Mrs. Olive's intensity of

feeling at its best :—

" And there—oh Heav'n ! oh Hear'n !—that fearful sight !

Man, what a fiend, when turned to ill, art thou!

What aspects human eyes and thoughts to blight, Tortured and torturer, met my glances now !

For both uprose before me—both, too, wore Man's form, and yet a human form no more ; But shap'd by inner thoughts, till they were grown Things that the mortal eye ne'er looked upon. One fasten'd to a stake was writhing there, With hell's own aspect on his form and face, And round, th' inflictors stood, on whom Despair Was written with another, but an equal trace.

Where are the burning words that paint the pains By spirits on their fellow-spirits wrought ? Things which earth's tyrant racks and dungeon chains But shadow forth, as speech interprets thought.

Not human pain was there, for that can slay, And from the man divide the suffering clay ; But pangs that press'd on naked mind their smart, And lived with life in each immortal part ;

Such as inflame on earth the torturer's wi.//

The eager will which leaves his power behind ; The will, the power, in hell are present still,

And that wherewith, whereon, they work is Mind."

"The Queen's Ball" is perhaps Mrs. Olive's most popular poem. It was one specially mentioned by Mr. Gladstone in the hearty praise he gave to IX. Poems by" V.," and here again the theme is the contrast between the visible and the invisible life, between the external and conventional manner, and the hiddeU beating of the heart. The subject is a sentence in a friend's letter, that "150 dead people were invited to the Ball last Friday." Mrs. Clive supposes that these invited guests

were all made conscious of the invitation, and that a few at least elected to go, and to see how they were remembered on earth. Of course the greater number find themselves already forgotten and replaced, while there is one, a son, who finds his mother's heart still full of him. Most of the ghosts discover how little necessary they were to the world's delight,—nay, how unwelcome in many cases would be their return to earth. There is a hall-and-half saving clause for the

man of genius, in which Mrs. Clive, not without a certain cynicism, represents his spirit as so greedy of praise that it is comforted in death by hearing one of his mots recalled by

the living:— " A ghost went gliding round, who'd been The guest of guests in such a scene;

Without his wit, the feast was cross'd,

Without his pen, the scene was lost; He came to earth, to weep their lot, Who wanted him, and found him not.

But, where were they? Did none recall His presence, needful once to all ?

New wits were ris'n—new words were said,—

And his like him were of the dead.

Yet genius is a deathless light, That still burns on through thickest night; It fires a steady lamp, whose rays Descend through time like stars through space; Though twice a thousand years be fled, We still repeat what .sop said.

Thus he, sad ghost ! slow circling there, By many an all-unconscious ear, Caught at the last the dearest name, His own,—the hold he had on Fame.

Poor —,' the speaker said, his mot, The witty soul! was—so and so.'

He heard,—he drank the praise they gave, And went the easier to his grave."

But when Mrs. Clive attempted a purely imaginative subject, like "The Valley of Morlas," she completely failed. She could

paint subdued or restrained passion with a master-hand, but she could not make the past live again ; nor, indeed, was the con- ception of the poem,—the attempt to thread together the various scenes which had been enacted in the same lonely and beautiful spot, as witnessed by an imaginary "Genius of the place,"— a good one. The longest poem in the volume is not one that any one would wish to read a second time. Mrs. Clive, as a poet, must be regarded rather as having displayed the sort of insight into true passion which rendered her most impressive tale unique and tragic, than as having gained a durable place amongst the minor poets of England. She had a true poetic life in her, but it would be too much to speak of her as a true poet. She would rank higher as a poet than Fanny Butler or Henry Kirke White ; but that is only saying that she had written some things which may be long remembered. Pro- bably she might claim a poetic rank equal to that of the late Lord Houghton,—who could write true poetry now and then, but was hardly to be called a true poet.