MISS SMEDLEY'S NEW POEMS.*

THIS volume contains much very beautiful verse, and something more than beautiful verse, some very delicate rendering of the truest beauty and pathos of human life. The first of the two dramatic poems here given contains,—not, perhaps, the most beautiful poetry in the volume, for the lyrics in the second are more perfect in their way than anything else in it,—but much the most of art and of dramatic life. " Blind Love " is founded on the same idea as Wilkie Collins's very disagreeable novel, Poor Miss Finch, only in this case it is the hero, not the heroine, who is blind, and the fatal mistake of the restored sight, which is to distinguish at the first instant the true object of the 4 blind love' of the previous years, is made by him, and not by her. The brilliant earthly beauty is singled out by the couched eyes, instead of the paler but deeper spiritual loveliness of her who has so long given her heart's love, and the impression on the hero's imagination caused by that first use of the restored eyesight remains after the mistake is corrected. The eager waywardness of selfish genius prevails over the claims of gratitude and fidelity, and Raymond gives his love to her who most kindled and piqued his fancy, instead of to her who had thrown her whole heart and life into her devotion to him. The object of the play is to paint the blindness of love in many senses,—the blindness of that first love of Raymond's, which was apparently killed by physical vision, —the blindness of that better and most trusting love of Hope's which never saw the danger to which the new world opened by her lover's vision might expose her own heart,—and lastly, the moral blindness of the mutual passion which leads Raymond and Avice astray. All these are painted with sweetness and subtlety, though Miss Smedley seems to us to make her chief male char- acters in this play somewhat too harsh, as though roughness and strength were allied. The blind man's grumbling old father is painted—up to the last Act—with features needlessly re- pulsive ; and the impetuous selfishness of Raymond himself con- veys something of the feeling of rude excess, both while he is plotting to break the engagement with Hope, and afterwards when he is coldly resenting the disobedience of his wife's passion-

ate mood. To say nothing of the perfectly incredible rapidity with which Raymond's genius gratifies his ambition—which has something outre about it,—the idealism of the play seems, oddly enough, to go less beyond reality where it is dealing with the highest, than where it touches the least admirable characters. Hope is beautiful from beginning to end, but Darner Grey, Raymond, and Avice, especially the two former, jar on us beyond what the dramatic situation requires, except here and there where they seem to be mellowed by the influence of Hope's gentleness. The scene in which Raymond tries to tell his change of heart to Hope, and is foiled by the simple trust and fidelity of her love for him, seems to us full of the truest beauty and force:—

"Hope. I was a child

When first you made me love you. Looking back The time before that far beginning seems Like a vague dream before a lovely day, For I began to live then. You should know

Better than I, the manner and the growth—

It is myself, I cannot speak of it.

Oh, you were jesting when you doubted me ; There's not a word of love you ever spoke, Not a kind look, nay, not a turn of the voice

Dropping to tenderness, which stays not here [touching her heart.

Recalled a thousand times, making sweet fire Tinder the common talk, which no man sees, To feed the happy fulness of my life.

Sure you would mock me if I told you all, If I could show you (as I could) the leaf On yonder maple which the sun just kissed When somewhere in last Tune you said you loved me ; Or the soft inch of moss which pressed my foot When you compelled that answer from my lips Which had so long been ringing in my heart. Nay, but for shame I could tell deeper things, Yet have I told too much.

Rgymond (aside). Must I hear this?

My punishment is greater than my fault.

[Aloud, taking Hope's hands. Hear me !

Hope. Alas, your grasp is bard ! It hurts!

I never wronged you by a thought.

Raymond (drops her hands and turns away). 0 peace ! Do not look at me so—tell me—be sure

You speak bare truth—if you could know me guilty, Worthless, a wretch for common speech to spurn And priests to preach of, would you give me up ? Speak, would you?

Hope. By this anguish in your voice

You are not jesting. Dear, if you have erred,

* Two Dramatic Poems. By Menella Bute Smedley. London • Macmillan. Some passion struck you—men play do the wrongs

Which women dream of, being tempted less; But all are sinners in the sight of God.

You are so noble, that you charge your soul With passages and moments which escape The common record. Tell, or tell me not, The pang which shakes your conscience, I am sure It touches not my love.

Raymond. 0 ignorance

To which the blackest secret in the abyss Of miserable nature seems a cloud Melting against the daylight ! Words so sweet Which make the heart so bitter ! Irony Cutting the sharper that it means to heal I Hate me! You must, you shall!

Hope (with her hands on his arm). I claim my right

In this new grief—being yours it must be mine. Was it not always so, my Raymond? Think That the familiar darkness holds you still Where, trust me, you would miss the faithful voice And unforsaking clasp. Are they less yours Because your night is inward? 0, I am bold To count myself for something ! Call to mind That precious sorrow of the Past, which drew Such comfort from my love, that I was glad Once for a selfish moment, when I felt That I was all your world. Chide me for that! I am your servant now, and you my world, But that's no change.

Raymond. It is impossible !

Hope. No confidence can wound like this withholding. If for my sake you hide a pain, remember Ere it can prick your heart it pierces mine. Nay, if you will not trust Imo, I must fear You love me less. [Weeps.

Raymond (aside). It burns me here—to death ! I cannot utter it."

Darner Grey's description of Hope on her death-bed, when his son, her former lover, summoned to take leave of her, shrinks back from the meeting, asking bow he _shall find her, is something more than beautiful :—

" Raymond. Lead and I follow—yet a word—I fear I may take flight upon the threshold. Tell use That I may know how to constrain myself.

What shall I see ?

Grey. 0, nothing terrible.

Dying is not so different from living.

For fairness, pallor; and for speaking, sighing ; And for the careless shining of young eyes Washed bright by easy tears, a faint far glory Reflected from the place at which they gaze, To which they go."

Again, how fine is the line in which Hope expresses the sense of pain which the approach of death brings her

I am beyond your sorrows and my own."

Nor is the play deficient in fine lines of a different species of beauty, the beauty of wisdom, as distinguished from that of feeling ; as when one of the characters says :-

" To weariness Comes never rest,—it comes but to content Which lies and contemplates the thing that is, Needing no dreams."

The delicacy of the conception and execution of the heroine's character is unmistakable. It is not often given even to poets to paint fair saints' so as to touch our hearts, but in this Miss Smedley has succeeded,—succeeded much better, we may say, than, in the somewhat straggling dramatic piece which follows her little play, she succeeds in painting a saint who is not fair. We cannot say we greatly admire " Four Scenes from a Life," as a whole, though there are very fine touches in it, and fragments which here and there recall " the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still." No one who knew the late Frederick Maurice will read this piece without frequently being reminded of him in Miss Smedley's verse. The following, for instance, might have been written either of the late Mr. Robertson or of Mr. Maurice, but applies more strikingly to the latter:

"Markham. Well I know The world hath dreamers, and they have their place In the world's work ; to keep alive the light Which others walk by. If he's one of these— Seaford. 0 ! spare your If '—he labours like the sea

Without a pause—what looks afar like Rest Is but the softer toil which moulds and smooths After uprooting. He hath made a name ; The People know him. If a whirlwind drops One of these trenchant 'Whys' which pierce the depths And reach the shallows, so that lip to lip Tosses amazing words, and all the world Grows intimate with unsolved mysteries And fights for things unknown, and builds its towers To guard no vineyard, but a wilderness (Our civilised religion hath such broils), At such a season, men will ask each other ' But what said Cyril?' and the answer given Be more conclusive than a victory ; In truth, a seed of Peace, which being watered, Becomes a mighty shelter.

Markham. You surprise me !

I ever deemed his argument too fine For common fingers ; silver threads that slip Without a knot.

Seaford. Nay, but the greatest men Lay hands on all. They feed us, like the skies, With light for rich and poor, unjust and just."

But it was by no means a dramatic idea to introduce fragments of the debate of a " Church Congress " into a poem, nor can we think that Miss Smedley has succeeded even in vindicating the relevancy of her hero's fine words to discussions of that nature. The fault of this second dramatic poem, which is in no sense a play, is its want of vigour even as a sketch of a single character. Miss Smedley undertakes to exhibit the mind of her hero in its conflict with doubt, but she really only shows us a mind putting doubt forcibly aside. That may be occasionally a right thing to do, but it is not the attitude in which the structure of a spiritual nature can be shown. Nor is it enough to say—though it be a fine and true saying in itself—what Miss Smedley makes Cyril say, that the real difficulty of faith lies not in making intellectual assump- tions without evidence, since those men who reject the Christian faith make such assumptions probably in considerably greater numbers than Christian believers themselves, but in genuinely believing these assumptions when you have made them :— " Cyril. Faith is the only obstacle to faith,

The barrier is the threshold—we believe not Because if we believe—we must believe !

Nothing but this, although the names be legion; And, this refusal over, we may frame For our uneasy hearts a thousand faiths All without evidence ; like one who draws A magic circle round him and is safe In fancy, girt by threatening images And pressure of strange phantoms, while he thinks If once he cross the ring he perishes ; But let him cross it, lo, the blinding smoke Melts from his eyes, the wide earth welcomes him, He goes among the glorious distances And feels the breezes and the lights of heaven 'Only not that,' (so said he) ' only not The music of my childhood '—but it comes,

God grant it comes not late, and there is peace."

This is no doubt true. You can act on assumptions which you don't believe, for you do so in every game of chance. It is quite true that even without believing the principle on which he acts, every intellectual man acts on an assumption of some theoretic prin- ciple almost every hour of his life, or could not act at all. But then acting on a conjecture and acting on a faith is a very different thing ; and you cannot turn even a good conjecture into a faith by any force of moral volition. A faith commands you, not you it. And though it is far happier for a man to act on a genuine belief than on one of many possible conjectures, he must see a light which others do not always see, before even the first wish of his conscience and heart can become more than a heartfelt wish—a faith. The greatest beauty by far in this second dramatic piece is to be found in the two or three songs it contains. Take this, for instance, which strikes us as very lovely :—

" Film after film the Distance lies Away from our pursuing eyes,

Till, having sweetly pondered through Each lovely change of light and hue, They rest upon the final blue.

Fold after fold the bud receives Summer's soft fire among its leaves; The message reaches one by one,

They thrill, they heave with life began—

The Rose lies open to the sun !

So pierces Life, while hour by hour, The slow heart opens like a flower, So spreads the long expanse of Love For eyes which lingering as they move Pause not until they pass above."

The author of that is a true poet, however limited may be her range,—and there are other little songs here of equal, and some might say of greater, beauty. But Miss Smedley's success is chiefly with delicate conceptions and fine tints. Her men are a little too masculine, a little too volitional. They jar and rather over- power us with their energy, whether it be energy for good, or energy for ill.