POETS AND POETRY.

SIR CECIL SPRING RICE'S POEMS.•

NOBODY who came into contact with Sir Cecil Spring Rice ever failed to fall under the spell of an extraordinarily engaging personality. His charm was of a sort that could, not be described to a stranger ; to those who did not know him the attraction that he exercised must have seemed mysterious. Had he not put the best powers of his mind, to practical work, he would probably have been an exceedingly good poet. As it is, his poems are like his personality and please us by some charm which is not quite analysable. They are strangely different from the work of most men of action. Here and there we get the Newbolt-Kipling strain, which is usually the mark of such work, but those efforts are invariably unsuccessful pieces of verse. He is at his best when he writes in the Persian manner, and makes use of his extraordinary insight into the Persian mind. Some people are inclined to think that Persian literature is merely a scented., gold-powdered scroll, although even the voluptuous Omar expressed the metaphysical aspect of Persian thought as often as the sensual, though hardly better than has here and there Sir Cecil Spring Rice. The reader must not be put off by the two weak lines with which :le following sonnet begins

Come let us reason, though my voice is weak ;

My voice is weak as thy decree is strong.

At last the cup is full. Too long, too long Have I endured in silence : I will speak.

Is this thy Right, on thine own work to wreak

The vengeance due thine own almighty wrong ?

Does good to good and bad to bad belong, Or is this world of thine the monstrous freak Of madness drunk with its omnipotence Peace, peace, poor soul ; and would you hope to stir

That heart with human pity ? How and whence ?

The answer still is silence. Should He use Reason and words when He his slaves accuse Is Law and Judge and Executioner I "

An aspect of mystical asceticism is expressed in another poem in which the Creator speaks to His creature. Like most of the poems in the collection, it has no title :— " I gave you joy without compare, With joy I filled your very soul ; I gave you all any wealth to share, My wealth of love entire and whole.

I gave you all my joy to share, And yet a gift remained for you,

A thousand times more rich and rare—

I gave you all my sorrow too.

I gave you grief beyond compare, For you I filled the bitter cup ; With hope deceived and fierce despair : You took it ; and you drank it up.

Now one in joy, in sorrow one, I am your master and your friend, And what we have to-day begun, A million ages shall not end."

The work of the amateur writer is not to be hastily despised. It is often doubly valuable both for its intrinsic beauty and RS giving us an expression of thoughts usually dumb, but it is curious that the layman should generally turn to verse to find expression. Verse is, of course, among other things, a device for " slowing-up " the reader and, for altering the relative values

of matter and manner. In reading a prose passage, any quick reader must often be conscious of having taken in the same without having very much idea of exactly how the writer expressed himself. Is not this to some extent the sort of

reading the amateur wants ? He has something valuable to • Poems. By Sir Cecil Arthur Spring Rice. London: Longman.. Us. Gd. end say, but cannot spend a seven years' apprenticeship in learning the best way to say it. On the other hand, of course we demand, as Mr. Sturge Moore has pointed out, a kind of architecture from a prose-writer. The solid stones of his thought must be built up into some sort of edifice—a novel, an essay, a dialogue, or a story. This is a heavy per contra consideration. There are only a few poems in this book which are absolutely bad, but, on the other hand, there is probably none which, like the one we first quoted, is not marked by some flaw, but surely the following little note is quite perfectly expressed :— " (It ia told of the founder of one of the Sufi sects in Western Asia that, hearing of the great beauty of a certain lady, he sought her in marriage and promised her parents to build a beautiful house for her. The request was granted and the house built. The bride was brought into it veiled, according to custom. When the veil was removed, the bridegroom saw before him, not the bride, but the angel Azrael. He fell at the angel's feet, crying, 'Have mercy ' And the angel answered, 'I am Mercy.'"