TWO VOLUMES OF VERSE.*

THE first of the two volumes before us—Mr. Masefield's Salt Water Ballads—is marked by that brutality which has

come to be synonymous with power in the minds of too many persons. The author has set out to depict, with every assist- ance in the direction of realism that strong language can afford him, the attitude to life of the ordinary seaman before the mast. Ballad after ballad records with tiresome iteration the ugliness and callousness of the conventional fo'c's'le. One poem lit by imagination would have done all that was necessary to lay bare the business; but Mr. Masefield offers a score, and every one is like the last, and all are unrelieved. We quote a little. These lines are from the story of an ill- fated ship whose crew, after many vicissitudes, made seven- and-twenty dishes " for the big jack-sharks and the little fishes ":— "The wives and girls they watch in the rain For a ship as won't come home again.

I reckon it's them head-winds,' they say, She'll be home to-morrow, if not to-day.

I'll just nip home 'n' air the sheets 'N' buy the fixins 'n' cook the meats As my man likes 'n' as my man eats.'

So home they goes by the windy streets, Thinking their men are homeward bound With anchors hungry for English ground, And the bloody fun of it is, they're drowned ! "

The last line, we presume, is intended to portray the ordinary callous attitude of a survivor to the misfortunes of others. It would succeed were it not that the penultimate line is purely literary, self-conscious, and destructive of the verisimilitude

of the comment which follows it. Sailors who talk of anchors hungering for English ground do not go on to remark upon

the "bloody fun" of twenty-seven women waiting in vain for their dead husbands. Either one thing or the other. Mr, Masefield's narratives of cynicism and disaster fill half the book. Now and then he hits upon something rather vivid, which half persuades us that it is a genuine phase, as in the dialogue between the sailor and the crimp ; but the case is always, we think, overstated, and always errs on the wrong side of brutality. Mr. Kipling's "Bolivar " is brutal enough, but it conquers; we feel that it was written because the vessel went out. Mr. Masefield does not conquer; he seems to write because the " Bolivar " was written.

(L) Salt Water Ballade. By John 2daaelleld. London : Grant Bichards.

Vasi b(13a--(2.) AVMs Lyrim2 and Dramatic. By W. G. Hole. London : in thews. [Se. ad. net.] Yet there are some lyrics in the latter half of the volume which show that Mr. Masefield, though he may fail as a poet of the fo'c's'le, has poetical thoughts and some gifts of style ; but here again we regret to find too often a derivative inspiration. Would " The West Wind," for example, have been written but for Mr. Yeats's "Lake Isle of Lunisfree " Would another poem be just as it is but for Mr. A. E. Housman 1' The following, however, is good and original, although no tramp would have thought it. The voice is the voice of the poet, whatever the diction:—

"VAGABOND.

Dunno a heap about the what an' why, Can't say's I ever knowed.

Heaven to me's a fair blue stretch of sky, Earth's jest a dusty road.

Dunno the names o' things, nor what they are, Can't say's I ever will.

Dunno about God—He's jest the noddin' star Atop the windy hill.

Dunne about Life—it's jest a tramp alone From wakin'-time to doss.

Dunne about Death—it's jest a quiet stone All over-grey wi' moss.

An' why I live, an' why the old world spins, Are things I never knowed ; My mark's the gypsy fires, the lonely inns, And jes' the dusty road."

The writer of that little lyric ought to have brought away from the sea something finer than the expositions of debased sailor nature which form the bulk of this book.

The second volume is not essentially of the present time. It has independence, and Mr. W. G. Hole, its author, is in his best moods a poet far more to our mind. For his dramatic monologues we do not greatly care : his themes are somewhat lurid, his manner has a tendency to be violent, and his blank verse has a freedom that amounts often to license. But such a lyric as that which we are about to quote must remain in the mind, or at any rate the thought that it expresses must remain in the mind, practically as long as the mind that has been struck by it remembers anything. The form is perhaps a little hard : Mr. Hole is not an inspired singer; but the poem

cannot but make its way :— "CAPTIVE IN LONDON TOWN.

There comes a ghostly space 'Twix midnight and the dawn, When from the heart of London Town The tides of life are drawn.

What time, when Spring is due, The captives dungeoned deep Beneath the stones of London Town Grow troubled in their sleep, And wake—mint, mallow, dock, Brambles in bondage sore, And grasses shut in London Town A thousand years and more.

Yet though beneath the stones They starve, and overhead Those simple lines must revolutionise London to the Londoner ; where once we heard only the clamorous music of humanity, henceforward we shall hear at the same time— on the streets, in the " Tube "—the still protesting rustling of the roots. Another good poem with a somewhat similar in- spiration is "The Quick and the Dead," from which we take the following quiet stanza :— " The Saxon lies, too, in his grave where the plough-lands swell ; And he feels with the joy that is Earth's The Spring with its myriad births ; And he scents as the evening falls The rich deep breath of the stalls ; And he says, Still the seasons bring increase and joy to the world= It is well !'"

But "Captive in London Town" remains the most notable lyric in Mr. Hole's volume ; which is throughout thoughtful and serious and worthy of attention.

The countless feet pace London Town Of men who hold them dead, Like Samson, blind and scorned, In pain their time they bide To seize the roots of London Town, And tumble down its pride.

Now well by proof and sign. By men unheard, unseen, They know that far from London Town The woods once more are green.

But theirs is still to wait,

Deaf to the myriad hum, Beneath the stones of London Town A Spring that needs must come."