SUMMER SONGS AND POEMS.*

"AFTER a certain period," says Thomas Warton, "in: every country and in every language, men grow weary of the natural, and search after the singular." The truth of the saying seems to be specially evident in our day, when the subjects chosen for verse and the method of treatment too often show a straining after singularity, a distorted vision, and feebleness of poetic power. These versemen—for we do not care to call them poets— are not fools ; it would be charitable to wish they were, so un- mercifully do they treat the language, so fantastic, and not un- frequently sensual, is their imagery, so unwholesome is their representation of passion, so contemptible are their aspirations, so wanting are they generally in manliness of thought and sim- plicity of diction. That writers of this class, endowed though some of them may be with considerable, but perverted power, will permanently emasculate English poetry, we do not believe. This folly of the time, like the more innocent folly of Cowley's day, is but a passing fashion, the work of jaded intellects, appealing, as sensational fiction appeals, to jaded appetites.

Mr. Swinburne, in the early days of his career, catered to the taste we have been deploring, and thereby encouraged the ex- travagancies of smaller men. The spirit, for example, that per- vades his Dolores has again and again inflamed the unnatural fancies of poetasters, whose verbiage and hollowness of sound are more conspicuous than the splendid music of their master. Summer Songs, and other Poems, are chiefly remarkable as exhibiting the defects of the erotic versifiers who, in turning Nature upside down, defy sense, morality, and grammar. In the love expressed by great poets, there has some- times been too much of sexual passion, but the morbid sensuality which gloats over a woman's form and features, as if her flesh, and not the divinity that encircles her, were the sole object of attraction, is a product of our day. In this respect, Mr. Hewitt sins less than some verse-makers of his school, probably because his power is less, for in a long, maundering poem, called " Gitana," which contains quite as

* Summer Songs and Poems. By J. A Hewitt. London; Remington and Co. 1882.

much nonsense as rhyme, he tries his best, or worst, to follow in their wake. The poet is about to part for ever from his " temptress," but before doing so, while lying together, with the great sea at their feet, he describes his past passion, con- fessing that it holds him captive still, and that while knowing the woman to be false, her eyes of fire burn him "soul and body through," so that he is forced to do what he would not do,—

" Love, woo and wear thy lips with mine, Caress thee as I have caressed, Cling to and fold thee, as a vine, And sow with kisses.

"I, too, would come upon yon here, And all unseen your arms entwine, Then to my shoulder press thine ear, And sideway pluck those lips of thine,

To touch with mine.

Or leaning over as you sat,

Your neat head lapped upon my knees, Bend, till my mouth inverted gat Thy rose-lips' honey to the lees, Sweeter than bees'."

The position seems a difficult one, and Mr. Hewitt is, we believe, the first poet that ever plucked a woman's lips ; but he achieves. greater wonders still. Not only does passion fuse his " soli& soul and purpose," while either the passion or the purpose, or both together, flash forth like molten snow "to fold her in its.

flow," but, to quote his own words,—

" I wove a song, you wound the tune, Of loves that last—it was the mood Which caught the colour of the noon, And shot the world's weal rosy hued— We dreamed love could."

The song, it may be remarked, is better than might have been expected, from this prelude. It is not original in thought, but

it is more musical in expression than the larger portion of Mi.. Hewitt's verses,— "Life is not life if love in life be vain, Lova is not love if love in life can die,"

is a couplet to be read with pleasure, which is more than can be said of any three consecutive stanzas out of the one hundred and seventy-five which form this poem.

Enough of " Gitana,' and of the fault characteristic of a school; of poets that led us to mention it. Other faults equally signifi- cant may be noted, namely, a disregard of common-sense and a striking confusion of similes and metaphors. Good-sense, says a living Professor of English Literature, is more essential to prose than poetry, "inasmuch as prose is destitute of that metrical rhythm and variegated embellishment with which verse can often conceal or disguise poverty or incorrectness of thought." A more unfortunate, we had almost said a more ignorant, remark was never made by a man of letters. Wherever "variegated embellishment" conceals poverty of thought, there, be sure, you will find no poetry ; and the same remark holds good when a verse-maker considers himself superior to the ordinary rules of composition, deems that all is well, if only he_can "rhyme and rattle."

In an Introduction, which commences with a wail of despair, so familiar that it has become common-place, Mr. Hewitt sings, in the second stanza, that his "blood had frozen motion," and also that,—

And wearying, draw thy sweet, small head Down to my lap and toss thy hair. And whisper what may not be said, And kiss down from thine ear to where The throat is bare."

The next stanza, in which the poet tastes "the new-milk sweet- ness " of his lady's lip, cannot be quoted; then follows an inventory of her charms, consisting of a finely pencilled brow, sweeping, bronzed temples, a dainty head, eyes whose glory "may not be overmatched nor told," a delicately curved nose and melting mouth, and " cheeks that the black-thonged lashes lace." He asks, too, though it seems an unnecessary question,. where the spot was in which first they knew of love,—

" When love and lip together grew, As the vast ocean to the shore, Or tidal bore ?"

The elaborate account of this first meeting, when,— " Spirit unto spirit slid Through lip and lid,"

is secure from quotation, but two stanzas farther on may be given without offence. The writer is still recalling past delights :—

"As the sea-beat's travail and sorrows On the sea-board, seemed the smart Of the blood-wave on the furrows And reefs of a broken heart:'

This may be "variegated embellishment," but it is certainly not sense, any more than it is grammar to say that the sun has " plentied " the earth, in order that the writer may add the amazing couplet :—

"By the merciless winter's nntented Puuition consigned to dearth."

The writer has a rather pretty song of" The Rose," but we con- chicle that the last line of the following stanza is due to the exigencies of rhyme :—

"I care not for that or this Ores', I am fairest of all in all ;

I am loved by men as a mistress, And kissed by maids as thrall."

The same reason may account for the writer confessing, in words that resemble neither prose nor poetry,—

" There gnaws

Within my bosom, deep within the cone, The weevil-cark of love, unloved, unknown."

The use of metaphor is One of the privileges of the poet, but he ehould use it correctly ; and the orator who saw in his mind's

eye the vessel of the State floating on the brink of a volcano was not more absurd than Mr. Hewitt, when he writes of Scandal's dunghills flapping their wanton wings. The want of the imagination that sees into the life of things leads the writer to adopt outrageous expressions. If great thoughts are absent, it cannot be denied that we have in their place what an old

writer would have called "a mighty pother of words?' There is a piece called" After Parting," in which a bad woman is frankly told how very bad she is. The poem is an amazing production,

but we must content ourselves with quoting a stanza or two :—

"Row thou west moulded who can tell, So brave and bright in blade and hilt ? Perchance from human dregs that fell Into the crucible of Hell, By Devils gilt."

And the end is foretold, when she will descend,—

" Hell deep in gulphs of sin and shame, A mangled Pariah, tangiest), tame, Waiting the end.

Thy end of blasphemous remorse,— A balling, brine-dipped, burning rod ; No hope consoling thee thy course; Thy latest life-breath hissing hoarse Curses on God."

We owe, perhaps, some excuse to our readers for quoting passages like these, but the disease. of which they are typical is so common among the poetasters of our time, that Mr. Hewitt may at least say that his portentous imagery, his carelessness of construction, his unwholesome allusions, the utter hopeless- ness which leads him to pore "on a;waning ember" in the first page of his volume, may be all met with elsewhere. It is as strange

as it is true. Mr. Hewitt is right in saying that his spirit "no more, like the raven, shall range over destitute seas." He belongs to a brotherhood in song. He sings of wild desires, of fathom- less regrets, of solitary shores strewn with the hopes of the past, of delicious miseries and a blighting heritage of woe, of tasting the heaven of a woman's white skin ; of much that is 4' wan," much that is "jaded," and much that it is impossible to utter with a decent respect for sense or grammar. Singing thus,

he does not stand alone, as every one who is forced to read much recent poetry knows. We quit Mr. Hewitt with the hope that he will live to do better things, and be ashamed of his Summer Songs. He has at times an ear for rhythm, witness a "Serenade," on p. 140; and if he be a young man, his imitative power may be turned to better account. But he must begin a wholly new life in verse, before he will be able to produce poetry worthy of the name.