FLOTSAM AND JETSAM..*

Mu. DoMErr's shorter poems resemble his long and striking New Zealand poem in this, that they are always graphic, often brilliant, and generally full of force. What, with one or two exceptions, they want, is the subduing lyrical feeling which warms and modu- lates and breathes through the whole, so that the whole poem seems possessed by the same spirit and the embodiment of the same finely-tempered mood. As a rule, the poems, though glittering with prismatic colour, strike one as the product rather of intellectual insight, than of those emotions which manage so to pitch the note, that from the outset we are aware at once in what zone of feeling we are moving. The poems are not, as a rule, sad or joyous, pathetic or exultant, wistful or thankful. The key-note is not given by feeling, but by thought. They paint nature with sharp, brilliant touches, but hardly indicate in what mood these luminous glimpses were gained, or whether, when gained, the vision was a vision only of the mind, or a passion of the soul as well. Take, for instance, these brilliant pictures of Swiss scenery, which are evidently intended to inspire the mood of bold endeavour, as distinguished from that * Flotsam and Jetsam; Rhymes 001 and New. By Alfred Domett, Author of !'Eanolf and Amohia." Loudon Smith, Elder, and Co. 1877.

mood of semi-voluptuous delight in which the beauty of Italy in apt to lap the soul. We extract them from the lines written on the Stelvio, the writer telling us that he refused to yield to the fascination of Italian loveliness till he had first tasted the hardier joy of the mountaineer's daring and achievement :—

" From grand regrets, Circean charms

Of soul or sense, we turn our faces, And seek thy hardier sister's arms— An Amazon's embraces The golden lakes like glittering pages Around the royal Righi sleeping ; The Faulhorn's band of hoary sages Their stern cold vigil keeping ; The Gemini's granite battlements Hung darkly from the depth of heaven ; And maddening down the mountain rents, White torrents headlong driven!

The glacier's sea of huddling cones, Its tossing tumult traneed in wonder ; And 'mid mysterious tempest-tones, The lauwine's sliding thunder.

O joy ! to seek bright cliffs—far-spied O'er morning mist-glooms—silvery-gleaming Through sun-lit fleece-bars, each beside Its shadow, slowly steaming !

By Lauterbrun ; np llleyringen ; Between the flanking walls to wander And airy turrets of the glen Of fiercely groaning Kander !

To thread the green white-speckled vales. Beneath some rampart so high-towering- Across the clouds its summit sails!—

Then watch black pines low-cowering; Or crowding upward, where they pause, Close-phalanxed storming some great fastness; Or strew their slain huge trunks like straws Upon the mountain's vastness !

While Earth and Sky against us fight, A savage scowling combination, To struggle up each giant height In weary exultation !

To climb the skies on mountain sides, An ocean-waste of peaks commanding; And drink the gale the eagle rides, Breast, heart, and soul expanding !- This first ;—and then aside we fling Stern toilsome resolution's armour; And rush where all thy Syrens sing, Thou everlasting charmer !"

You could not easily find a brighter succession of sharply-outlined sketches than these, but the pictures might be pictures floating on the surface of a mountain lake, so little is there in them of the tone of eager and arduous struggle which we gather from the context that the poet meant them to embody. They are pictures on the retina, or rather,—for that is not true,—pictures conceived by the intellectual imagination, with plenty of wonder in themand plenty of awe, and not a little delight in the images of power flashing before it, but none of the ascetic rapture of self-discipline and upward striving for which the opening prepares us. It is the same with the few lines on- prayer, which are written, as it were, from a bird's-eye view of the state of mind and heart to which they refer, instead of from the centre of that state, and thus become rather a hesitating apology, than a lyrical vindication of prayer;— "Well, pray !—though in good sooth, to pray

Is to doubt God, who's injured P—Nay, To some strong souls opprest with clay, Staggering along their clouded way, It seems a stimulant and stay ; And where's the wit can surely say

What bounds the muse-be—what the may?"

It is the same with the brilliant lines on St. Paul's Cathedral, —which would, by the way, better have been connected with St. Peter's at Rome, if it had not been intended to be a defence of dome-crowned Cathedrals against Gothic Cathedrals from a point of view of intellectual breadth and scientific catholicity whir's would have seemed grotesque in relation to St. Peter's ;—they at full of thought and grasp and happy metaphor, but they do not quite succeed in conveying that sense of unity in vastness, of a triumphant firmament of grandeur overarching a multitude of minor victories of knowledge, will, and feeling, which Mr. Domett evidently means the poem to represent to us, and which, intel- lectually and imaginatively, it does paint for us, but does not rhythmically imbue us with. For our own parts, we differ in toto from the idea of the poem. The pointed Gothic Cathedral seems to us to express, after the highest possible fashion, the mood of worship, while the domed Cathedrals of the basilican type rather at- - tempt, we suppose, to express the divine unity, majesty, and law. Now if the Church is to embody not the converging wants and hopes and prayers of men, but the perfect completeness, harmony, and re- lative subordination, of the various parts included in the scope of the divine thought, then indeed it may be modelled on the dome- like plan which seems to Mr. Domett so much the grander. But after all, what we need in a church is rather to help the weak human spirit, than to give it an image of the One and the Absolute —one, too, which cannot possibly be also an image of Infinity, but must, by the very necessity of the case, bar out the vault of heaven, and make us feel the vainness of the attempt to embody in the temple any type of God. But putting aside the question as to which is the highest type of a Cathedral, whether it should embody and therefore stimulate the religious emotions and wants of the worshippers, or rather mould for us some image of the per- fect knowledge and complete harmony of the divine purposes, what we want to point out is that Mr. Domett in the very striking and original poem to which we refer, does not, to our mind, succeed at all in so tuning his rhythm as to make the metre of the poem insinuate the burden which would best suit its teaching. The poem is too long to extract as a whole, and we fear that by taking a portion only we may not do full justice to its brilliant workmanship ; but we will take the first five stanzas, —by no means the finest, but containing, as it were, the outline of the whole,—and ask our readers whether or not the poet gives an adequate representation in his metre, of the effect he intends to convey :— " SAINT Peres.

T.

0 not here the faint illnming, not the mystery sombre-dooming That o'erahadows old Cathedrals of a dimly-dreaming time ; Grand as Forests with their tangles, interlacing high arch-angles, And long alleys pillar-crowded ; type of Faith that stifles, strangles All discursive Speculation and free Reason as a crime I Not their faery-frowning fretwork, not their glamour-lights and

glooming- "Tis another kind of grandeur makes Tars TEMPLE so sublime!

n.

What a thrill of exultation—sense of freedom, elevation, As its luminous expansion seems to welcome you and cheer !

Now aspiringly ascending, and now lovingly o'erbending, Such a whirl of golden circles so harmoniously blending !

How the lovely lines of lustre link, dispart and reappear !

With a majesty how graceful, what a grand serene elation, And a flowery sunny gladness, like the World's in Spring-career !

m.

'Tis as Nature had the moulding of this Temple—its upholding— And had deigned to proud Invention her diviner might to prove ; So had fashioned it in keeping with the Planets in their leaping, With the Suns and starry Systems in resplendent circles sweeping; And that ample dome of heaven circumambient above, In its tender blue infinitude of beauty all-enfolding, Sweetly swathing all Creation with immensity of Love !

Tv.

Is not this the very Shrine for the consummate Faith men pine for,

Bright and boundless as the Future of the enfranchised human mind?

Which shall gather all the races in real Catholic embraces, Lend idealised World-worship every Muse's gifts and graces; When the nation to its marvel of magnificence less blind, Shall fulfil the dream of glory 'twas imagined so divine for, And invest it with the splendours its conceiver first designed.

v.

Then those massy piers upstanding so symmetrical, commanding, Flute and fillet shall be tinted with striation flowery-warm; And the rainbow arcs diverging from them everyway, and merging In the maze of circled beauty, as o'er cataract-clouds upsurging, Shall be robed in radiant colours iridescent as their form; While a thousand golden gleanings, to the Dome's superb expanding, Flash around as happy Earth's do, when Hope's symbol crowns the

storm."

The intention of that metre we take to be exultation, but it is certainly rather harsh exultation—the somewhat too skilfully- contrived rhymes surprising one here and there with a sense that a problem has been solved which was within an ace of failing, and has been solved with a certain jerk, after all. The ball falls into the right socket, but falls with a little crash that requires you to take note of the completeness of the design. Now, to us, that effect does not recommend the drift of the poem but rather pleads against it. Even if the exultation were more perfectly joyous, it would hardly plead for the simple unity of the dome-like form of cathedral, since the clearest image of the divine unity would hardly produce exultation in the human heart. We fancy that the more successful method in which to plead for such a Cathedral as St. Paul's, against the Gothic type which repre- sents the upward straining of the human heart towards an in- finitely distant goal, would be to let something of Shelley's profound sense of the objective unity rising above all our changeful desires steal subtly through the poem, after such a fashion as

this:— " The one remains, the many change and pass, Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly ; Life like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity."

That, so far as it goes, does awe into silence the many strivings of

human desire before the great objective unity of God. But Mr. Domett's brilliant and powerful lines keep you ever awake to the many surprises rather than to the manifold wonder of the uni- verse,—to the welding of the fragments, rather than to the undivided whole.

But we have criticised enough. The volume before us is full of imaginative power and of brilliant illustration. Let any one, for instance, who holds the theory of evolution to be atheistic, read the wonderfully caustic and striking poem called " Fireworks," and he will see what Mr. Domett can do with a few brilliant strokes of his fancy fo annihilate that mistaken impression ; or for a vivid picture of Milton's last years, let him read the fine lines oddly called " Cripplegate." After indulging in so much criticism, we must give at least one instance in which, as it seems to us, the lyrical feeling which breathes through the poem is in perfect har- mony with its idea, and so makes a whole in which form helps to convey the substance, and substance to enhance the form. It seems to us that the mixed playfulness and puzzledness expressed in the following gay and yet profound little poem is admirably conveyed by the quick-repeated ictus of the brief, mounting rhythm :—

" CHILDREN.

Children ! from the darkling Spirit-region, sparkling With its fresh night-dew !

Lovely laughing Sphinxes, Pretty mystic minxes, Every one wbo thinks is Puzzled oft by you!

Here's a tiny creature, Mirth in every feature— Veins that run delight ! Such a pet and plaything— Midsummer and May-thing !—

Cheeks whose gipsy white Damask rose-hue tinges ; Eyes—with wondrous fringes Carling—long—blue-black,

Which, above, beneath are Thick, close-set as teeth are For fine hair refining, In a sable-shining

Comb of polished lining Of the turtle's back ; II'.

Well, this plaything playing, Pet—her pets arraying This quicksilver Blanche, Though a romp so wild too, Though a thorough child too,

Still to toys so staunch; Four years old or nearly, Loved and loving dearly,—

Yes, this midge, this fly, Pauses 'mid her raptures— Coming life's pre-captures- Those long lashes gravely Lifts, and tells you bravely, Calmly too and suavely, She would like to die !

IV.

Not that she has notions Caught from babe-devotions, Angel, harp or throne !- Vainly you remind her What she'd leave behind her ; Chocolate cream-nuts gone I Turk's Delight,' she craves for ; Dolls she dotes on—slaves for ; From her surplus life Six at once supplying With mock laughter—crying ; Whims for ranks and stations, Dress—a hundred fashions, Prattle, pets and passions, Mimic love and strife!

v.

What ! leave sister Marion— Those dark eyes Hilarion- Any devotee Might have prayed with surely ; They look up so purely Innocent and free!

Traits you'd lavish on a Miniature Madonna ; Brow serene and clear, Open, and alluring With the frank assuring Goodness it expresses ;

Everything one blesses!— Then such golden tresses1— Could she leave her here ?

What ! leave sister Saintie- Elfin l—like a dainty Fairy-hunter's horn, Little nose upturning ; Eyes so shrewd—discerning- Whence sly sparks are born,

Gleams of speaking muteness—

Comical acuteness ;

Locks across the brow Short-clipt like a valance, Down each cheek to balance. Silky curtains, flowing; Tongue satiric showing Thoughts so odd and knowing!—

Would she lose her now ?

Blanche ! so full of fun too Who the chair will run to.

' No—no kiss for you ! ' Wheedling looks entreating, Eyes that coax repeating, 'Come and take one—do!'

Thread-ball chasing kitten—

Hearts, when some day smitten, Will they smart for this ? Baby yet—beginning Tiny wiles of winning; Traps of nature's setting ; Artless spirit-netting ; Infantine coquetting For a mother's kiss !

Well, your talk—she knows it ; So repeats, to close it,

Yes! she would be dead! Then away she dances, Tosses—tumbles—prances-

Scarce knows heels from head !

Wild as she were aping, Say, Kate Vaughan escaping Earth, the air to tread ; When, with many an antic Fancifully frantic, Thistledown kept twirling Madly in a hurling Hurricane—her whirling Leaves but lumps of lead !

What can be her reason ? Summer her one season—

Eden every breath ! Does the mite discover, Brimful life runs over Into love of death ?

Does to heaven her nearness Give unconscious clearness

To her faith in bliss ? Seems it to such joyance- Spirit-fount's upbuoyance, Nothing new is frightful ? Change, or wrong or rightful, Can but be delightful—

Cannot come amiss ?—

0 the more one ponders, Children—mystic wonders— Less one looks you through !

Lovely little Sphinxes, Pretty puzzling minxes, Wisest wight that thinks is Staggered oft by you."

And again, the opening lines in the book, the lines called " Hougoumont," are full of a delicate music and pathos which admirably mirror the thought. The same may be said in still higher degree of the " Christmas Hymn, Old Style," which is a poem full of grandeur and awe. We do not like equally well the " Christmas Hymn, New Style," which, thoughtful and full of striking lines as it is, is certainly, to our mind, written from the point of view of intellectual survey, and not in the tone of lyrical feeling. Taken as a whole, the volume is a remarkable one ; and the poems of later years are certainly, take them all in all, much superior in force and form to those of youth,—which cannot often be said of even the best poet's productions.