MISS SMEDLEY'S POEMS.*

Miss SMEDLEY'S poems contain much that is thoughtful and beautiful, and one play, turning on the life of modern drawing-room

society, which, as far as we can judge, would make a very effective piece for such a stage as time Prince of Wales's, besides displaying a far higher poetical and artistic standard than the dramas which are written not to read, but to act. We heartily wish that Miss Marie Wilton would at least read Miss Smedley's Lady Grace' with a view to see whether she could not put on the stage what seems to us a drama of modern life cast in the same general mould as Mr. Robertson's which have gained so much success for her management, but yet attempting something much higher than a mere picture of time imperfect ethics of modern drawing-rooms, and reaching in some instances a really high level of poetical expression. It is possible indeed that a manager might condemn Miss Smedley's play for its want of any conventional comedy, —for the absence of true humour which in Mr. Robertson's excellent picture of the pseudo working-man ' in caste used to carry the house by storm. And we admit that there is but little of this attractive kind to managers in the play, though the very skilful five o'clock tea' scene comes near it, and shows a capacity for delicate irony in the author which, if a little extended, would, we think, make the play a very telling one, even to the experienced eye of such a manager as Miss Marie Wilton. What we, however, value this drama for, is not so much its skilful construction, though that seems to us considerable, as the power it shows to treat the conventional life of the day with a really poetic, and not merely a rhetorical art. We are apt to think that had Shakespeare lived in our day, he must have scorned time modern drama, must have thought the minute artificialities of our cultivated life too constrained a medium for his free and buoyant imagination to use in the delineation of human nature. And doubtless he would have felt the chains if he had not broken them. It is questionable whether human nature is capable of any large and true delineation in circumstances so carefully adapted to suppress a good deal of it, and beat out the rest, like very thin gold-beater's skin, over so very large a surface of trait and incident as our modern drawing-room life. however this may be, it is certain that public taste has a very natural desire to sec life painted under conditions which seem to modern eyes true and probable, and yet that those conditions are exceedingly hampering, and leave room for comparatively little free play of character and sentiment. We do not pretend that Miss Smedley has produced a very vigorous or masculine play. But it is scrupulously true, and real ; and it is full of a delicate flavour of poetry which makes the most of what life there is in it. Instead of being just ideal enough to give a meretricious glitter to the conventional moralities of the hour, which is the case with the sentiment of most of our theatrical attempts at delineating modern life, there is a real poetical heart thrown into time meditation of the phenomena of modern society which tells the reader at once that the play is not written for stage effect, but because the imagination of the author had been occupied with the theme.

Take, for instance, this criticism of the heroine (Lady Grace) on one of the mere men of the world she meets. It is as original as it is true, and entirely different from the conventional criticism you

expect :— "LADY GRACE.

As you will ; but, Rosa, How much are you familiar with this man?

"Ross.

"Familiar' Not at all. I dance with him, Bow in the street, talk, listen, and forget

Before I sleep. Ho takes it all for homage. Men ever count their birds before they are shot. And stare when some light skyward waft of wings Shows them unscathed.

"LADY GRACE.

"I like him not; he talks

As vaguely as a schoolgirl.

"Rosa.

"Is that all?

You spoke with such a shudder in your eyes I thought you had some crime to charge him with.

"LAY GRACE.

"Is it no crime • To drop your days like nutshells, having swallowed All that was good in them ? They should be seeds Which only fall to grow. Is it no crime Merely to he a man that you may show The slightness and the poverty of life?

When life in a man's band is snob a sword To cleave the dark assailants of our souls ; Such a slow vroaving of collected flowers Into a deathless garland ; such a clasp Between this world and that which lies beyond.

Making both one? " ROSA.

"Oh, never talk to me Of other worlds ! I know I should not like them So well as this. I love to wear the flowers Which others pluck for me ; and as for swords, I love the uniform, but not the sword It gets in your way in dancing."

That charge against a mere man of the world that he 'talks as vaguely as a schoolgirl' has real genius in it. Of course, it does not mean to deny that he is familiar with a great variety of social signs and omens which to a schoolgirl could mean either nothing at all or else error. But it does express very finely that complete emptiness of specific purpose which gives rise, in the schoolgirl, to the proverbial giggle, in the man of the world to that experienced vacancy of which Shakespeare gives us so fine an illustration in Polonins,—that aimless generality which knows so much of conventions and of classes that it misses the truth of every individual life of the slightest worth, only because it is mot amenable to the idle classifying craft. Of this type Sir George Sandys is a fine specimen, and under the treatment of a good actor would make a stronger impression than is common with theatrical men of the world,' simply because Miss Smedley with her delicate poetical feeling has caught an aroma from the character which it was beyond the conventional insight to obtain. In the same way, and for the same reason, Rosa Wilmot would, under good hands, create a very fine effect. She is fast, pert, bold, insincere, all but spoiled with mere trifling, and though just such a woman as would become really bad if she had been outlawed by society, and a woman who indulges a half-contemptuous desire to outdo others in shaving the very edge of what it will permit, yet is redeemed by that very element in her which is most bold, what we might almost call most brassy. She can be false and tricky, but more in levity than earnest. It is her genuine contempt for herself and the sort of life she lives which represents the wish for something better,—though, taken alone, it is not sufficient to do anything in the way of redeeming her. She defines herself, not without a flash of poetry, in the second scene :—

" LADY Gmtcs.

"Ill not deceive you ; I am a beggar for your love. Give alms Of its untested plenty, only alms ; You must not squander ; you must save for claims Stronger than mine ; but I may quench my thirst, Yet leave the source untouched.

"Rosa. "The source?

"Lam Glum

"Your heart.

It lies so deep you have not looked at it.

A master hand shall find it.

"Rosa.

Or find out

That there is no such thing. I had a heart And a doll at five years old. I played with them Till I out-grow such trifles. Who can tell Under what dust of broken toys they lie? Let no man dig them out; I should not know them."

The fast girl of the day is certainly given with a touch of higher than ordinary power in Rosa Wilmot. The chief defect of the play is that the man who calls out the better side of her is a mere walking-stick,—a name, and no more. The very clever scenes between Rosa and Sir George Sandys should have had a contrast in some scene of real power between Rosa and Fitzerse. There remain the two principal characters, Lady Grace Aumerle herself and the hero of the play, who is, we think, many shades too romantic for his profession and his success in it. We do not mean at all that such a shrewd attorney as Cranston is asserted to be might not well have had the lofty views of life and the loftier views of love here shown ; but Miss Smedley was bound to have reconciled carefully the outward with the inward reality, and have let us seen a little of the keen man of business, for which she had plenty of opportunity. As it is, in a different sense from Sir George Sandy; we may say of him that he has the fault of vagueness. Still, though there is a want of force in Cranston, there is the breath of true poetry in the picture both of him and Lady Grace. Take this specimen in the scene where she complains to him of the shallowness of her niece and the hollowness of her nephew :—

"LADY GRACE.

I went by your advice, held down my heart

And spako not with my tongue, and they were tamer.

I might have spread my hand with nobler food And caught them in the meshes of a hope ; But I sprang out too soon and startled them, And they are fled! " CRANSTON.

"Ay, but they will return. There is no power like patience.

"LADY GRACE.

"If you wait While a root grows; but if the earth be blank, What profit that you water it with tears ? You may die watching it!

" CRANSTON.

"I pray you, pardon!

You are, I know not bow, of southern mould ; You look for souls that can express their dreams, For soil that blossoms, for a wind that warms ; We are not so, God has not made us so, Our earth is full of iron, not of wine,

Stern summers and grey 11001113. But you shall find

• Heroes who are ashamed of noble words ; Ay, boys who cannot spell the name of • hero,' But are what the name covers.

"LADY GRACE.

"In my heart

I cannot think so. When our land was great Her 130/313 had great desires ; they were not content With food and clothing ; from no stumbling chance Sprang their achievements, but by natural growth Out of the habit of their daily hope,

Ay, and their daily scorn! We women now Have all the aspiration and disdain; We are told we Cannot read our masters' souls, And must not know their lives; we must turn away Our decent looks, and leave them to their will, And to their masks and shifts and meannesses ; When the need comes, these crawlers shall arise And do the work of heroes. Why, do you think The men who made our England what she is Told lies to their mothers ?"

There is the man there, but not the solicitor; and we confess we should have liked to see some trace of the many-counselled, shrewd, old head on young shoulders, which is attributed to Cranston, but not delineated, as well as of the generous heart and speculative mind which captivate Lady Grace. Lady Grace herself, though slight and shadowy, is perfectly real, and would have made a very fine character for Miss Kate Terry, as would the dashing Rosa Wilmot for her sister, Miss Ellen Terry. It is a pity that while we see on the English stage plenty of plays as true as this to the conventional outside of our modern life, we cannot see any with the same delicate and ennobling spirit of poetry in them to raise the mere accuracy into true realism.

Of the minor poems in this little volume we have not much to say. They have a little disappointed us as compared with the very beautiful contributions of "B.," who is, we believe, admitted to be Miss Smedley, to the exquisite Poems for a Child. Miss Smedley never writes without thoughtfulness, feeling, and grace,—(though her rhythm strikes us as sometimes very defective,)—and there is not a poem in the little book which is not something more than pleasing. Miss Smedley had versified,—(we suppose, as it is marked as an " early " poem, it was written long before the Poet Laureate's version appeared a year or two ago in Good Words),—the story of the sacrifice which Mr. Tennyson gave us the other day,—the mother who, to save her child from being sacrificed to Odin,—(in order to stay the plague, the king's dearest treasure is demanded of him by the god,)—extorts from her husband the admission that she is dearer to him than the child, and dies in its place. We think we rather prefer Miss Smedley's version to the Poet Laureate's, but for this once that is not saying very much,—only too little. She has several other little poems of much higher calibre than that. But the only one which strikes us as equal, in its own different way, to the drama, and as written with the true lyric magic in it, is the following ;—all the others, though often sweet and always thoughtful, leave little mark upon the memory. This does something more, rings in it:–..

"THE FUTURE.

A figure wanders through my dreams And wears a veil upon its face, Still bending to my breast it seems, Yet ever tarns from my embrace. And sometimes, passing from my sight, It lifts the veil as its departs, And eyes flash out with such a light

As never dawned on waking hearts.

"There is no need of sound or speech Or toiling through the troubled years, The rapture of that smile can teach More than a century of tears.

And this I know, if it could move Out of my dreams into my days, One service of unbroken love Should fill and crown my life with praise.

"Love with no doubts and no demands, But generous as a southern June,— Vast brotherhood of hearts and hands, Choir of a world in perfect tune— No shallow sunset-films to gild, Far summits which we dare not climb, But ceaseless charms of hope fulfilled, Making a miracle of time.

"How sure, bow calm, the picture seems ! How near it comes, beheld, possessed ! It is not only in my dreams I feel that touch upon my breast.

It thrills me through the barren day, It holds me in the heart of strife, No phantom-grasp that melts away, It seems—it is—the touch of Lifol .We look into the heart of flowers And wonder whence their bloom can rise ; The secret hope of human hours Is hidden deeper from our eyes.

In helpless tracts of wind and rain The work goes on without a sound ; And while you weep your weak ' In. vain,' The flower is growing underground.

"We know the lesson ; but a cry, Bitter and vast, is in our ears ; One life of fruitless misery Shakos all our wisdom into tears.

Thronged by the clamorous griefs that say,

'Behold what is, forgot what seems,'

I can but answer, ' Welladay ;

There is that figure in my dreams.'"

That has the delicate subtlety of truth in it, hitting with exquisite feeling the exact line between the certainty that the ideal within is not of our making,—has a reality far beyond us,—and that other sad certainty that there is so much of the real outside, which is also not of our making, and yet of a very different pattern indeed from the real-ideal within. In most of Miss Smedley's other lyrics in this little book, the tendency to mere idealism is too marked, as, for instance, in "hero Harold," which has, however, many very fine verses. The poet who studies an ideal subject should give it new reality by the new lights and shades he throws for us upon it. Mies Smedley does this in the poem we have just extracted, but too often she wanders away into vague but beautiful sentiment. She herself gives us the standard by which to try her own least successful pains.