— Poems and Sonnets. By F. Reginald Statham. (T. Fisher Unwin.)—Mr.
Statham writes, it would seem, with ease, but scarcely with sufficient care. " The lode-star of an empire's smile," for instance, is scarcely an expression which would have scaped a scrupulous revision. It is a relief to find now and then such novelty as comes from a change of scene, as when, for in- stance, he writes of "A Southern Christmas" with what seems to us an inversion of seasons. Perhaps the following verses show him at his best :—
" EVENING.
0 light that knows not end or space,
0 tiny that knows not fall or rise, Thy glory shines upon my face
E'en while this fleeting daylight dies.
0 sun supreme in central might, Whose orb the widest orbit knows, To thee from these sweet gates of night My scul in rapture overflows.
As noontide wraps the world in light So let thy truth be mine alway, And let me move from right to right, As day succeeds again to day.
0 light that knows not space nor end, 0 day that knows not ri-e or fall, From strewth to strength our smile ascend, And find thee still their all in all."
—Birds of Passage. By Mathilde Blind. (Chatto and Windus.) —These "Songs of the Orient and Occident" are not without a certain vigour and picturesqueness. In the "Dying Dragoman" there is something of the true Oriental atmosphere, and the "Tombs of the Kings" brings up the repose of an Egyptian sepulchre. The thought, too, of the unnatural perpetuity in which the effort to escape _ decay has ended is expressed with a certain force :— " Motionless where all is motion in a rolling Universe. Heaven, by answering their prayer, turned it to a deadly muse."
The second line halts, for "prayer" can scarcely be used as a dissyllable.—Dramatic Monologues, by Francis Osmaston (Kegan Paul, Trench, and. Co.), show where their author has sought his inspiration. But Robert Browning's verse is, as the spear of Achilles, a weapon which one hero only can wield with effect. He was not very careful of his prosody, yet, we venture to say, he would not have written, as does Mr. Osraaston in his "Early Schoolman's Disciple ":— "Seeneth the invisilde,—Terrenitur Per great (MAUL ad Dellat."
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