POrrflv.—Burley Bells, by Constance Mary Obbard (Kegan Paul, Trench, and

Co.), is a poem constructed, we suppose, after the model of "Maud." It is a pity that Miss Obbard did not furnish her readers with an "argument," for really on reaching the end of the volume we do not feel sure what is supposed to have happened. In the "in- troduction "a youth tells us how he had asked for the hand of Dorothy Deane from her father, "a goodly man, but proud "—(why should not a goodly man be proud ?),—and had been refused'; how he had left home, and has now returned, after wandering for five years. He hears that Dorothy is to be married to Claud, son of the squire ; but the news does not seem quite certain. Then come in the "bells," and ring, so to speak, a number of peals, which are intended, we may suppose, to represent the changes of mood through which the lover passes. The music of these is nothing very fine ; witness the following :— " 0 river, river, full of grief am I, My heart is heavy with an aching dread, And all the livelong day I can but sigh, For sunshine, joy, and peace have long since fled.

Her heart is cold, she'll never love me more,

Her heart is cold to me, but warm for him; My heart is dead, 'tie withered to the core.

With weight of unshed tears my eyes are dim.

What is my life without her fairy form ? What is my hope without her loving smile ? Now with another she will breast the storm, Or happily his hours of peace beguile.

For me there'll never be another maid,

He took her from me, she was glad to go— But memories and love can never fade—

May she be happy I—Perhaps 'tis better so."

But these might, at least, make the story a little plainer. Burley Bells is not happily conceived, for it suggests a comparison which it cannot bear, and it is indifferently executed. —Thoughts and Remembrance. Verses by Emily Leith. (D. Bryce and Son, Glasgow.)—Miss Leith knows something of her craft. What she says, she says well, though it is not anything very deep or very new. Her chief fault, we should say, is a somewhat indiscriminate use of ornament. Here are two stanzas out of a poem about Nausicaa, pretty enough, but quite unlike the Nausicaa of Homer, a very downright maiden who thought that the hero would have made a very good husband, but certainly was no dreamer :— "Where are thy thoughts? thou heedest not the gleam Of golden daylight lingering in the west, And mute for thee the musio of the sire lm, With Lotus lilies sailing on its breast, While dropping blooms by apple blossoms shed Scatter their snow unnoticed on thy head.

Thou hearest not the peals of laughter low, Beneath the tremulous branches of the lime, Nor see'st the ball thy white-armed maidens throw To measured cadence of a rhythmic rhyme. No passing sight can charm thy far-off eyes, Since thou hest Love, and Love has memories!"

If Miss Leith can put a little more restraint on her style, use the epitheton omens less freely, and rigidly refuse to write unless she has something to say, she has powers both of expression and of versifi- cation which may help her to do something really good and durable. Here is as good a speoimen of her work as we can find :—

" Br AND BY.

Farewell, bright dawns and perfame-laden airs. Faint with the breath of roses newly blown, Warm, slumbrous noons when sleep our haunting cares, Long Summer days and nights, too swiftly flown. With sighs and sad regrets we saw you go ; Why did you leave us, who had loved you so ?

'Heath sapphire skies, by starry hedgerows sweet, Laced with pearled threads of gossamer, we went; Will Summer blooms beneath our wandering feet, And Summer in our hearts, on love intent. I will return,' you said, • when roses blow,' That time you saki `Good-bye,' a year ago.

But I alone have seen them bloom and die, While you have passed beyond the shadows here Into the light. I'll follow by and by. Meantime I wait, and hold the roses dear, And Summer snored for the love! bear, Until we meet again, some day, somewhere."

—Clouds and Sunlight. By Duncan Macgregor. (Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co.)—Mr. Macgregor is apt to use words which strike us as, at the least, unusual. " Allayment " and " dotive " (however convenient as a rhyme to "motive"), and " hourling chickbirds " (which we suppose to mean little birds that have been hatched an hoar), are specimens; but we see nothing else that is noticeable in his verse, which is commonly trite and commonplace in thought and expression.—Bits from Brazil, by John Cameron Grant (Longmans), has some painting of scenery, rather too muoh in the catalogue style, but not without interest. Such lines as

"God-feeding Cacao plants, Sweet Limes, and Oranges, and Soursops, Great Sapotees, and fruitful Passion-vines," come dangerously near to being prose. As to the meaning of the epithet "God-feeding," we are absolutely in the dark. Mr. Grant includes in his volume "England, 1885," a patriotic poem of very pronounced significance. It is crude and, we cannot but think, considered, but now and then there is power in it. Take these lines) for instance :— "And I—I am only a ruing, not of Party, or Placemen, or Bribes,

And I speak in the might df my mission, with authority—not as the Scribes—

Nor with that of the young Politician who travels by Steamer and Train

And studies the World from his Guide Book to retail to his C.ients again—

A Poet can see and consider, a Poet can speak for the truth, And look to the mind of the matte • though the foolish may sneer at his youth, Not many have wandered so widely, so mixed with the dealings of men. That the heart takes the thought of the Greybeard ere the years to their twenty add ten."

—Poems. By Owen Christian. (Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co.)— Mr. Christian can express himself with vigour on occasion, as in "The Devil's Sermon," which, by the way, contains too much truth to be spoken by such a preacher. The sentimental verse we do not much admire. But what does he mean when he says that "there is nothing in literature much more pitiful or pathetic than the story of Alexander Smith" ? It is certainly not true that "he died for- gotten at the age of thirty-seven." He was made secretary of the University of Edinburgh, as good a place for a poet as can be well imagined, poets not being easily suited with places, and was anything but forgotten. That he died at thirty-seven is much to be lamented, for it prevented the fall performance of his promise ; but his career was, on the whole, a success.—The posthumous Poems of the late Thomas George Youngman (Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co.) may be passed over with a brief recognition of the truth and tenderness of feeling which they show. By far the best of these pieces, we think, is "Youth and Age," a fine setting forth of the losses and gains of life.—We have received also Conan Lady Bride, and other Poems, by the Author of " Mainoe," &c. (Pickering) ; Songs and Sonnets, by Maurice M. Egan ; Carmine, by Cond6 Benoist Fallen (Kagan Paul, Trench, and Co.) ; and three volumes of devotional verse,— A Christmas Faggot, by Alfred Gurney, M.A. (Began Paul, Trench, and Co.); Spirit Footprints, by Mr. John Foster (James Nisbet) ; and Songs of Spiritual Thought, by George Rawson (Religions Tract Society).