BOOKS.

A NEW POET.•

THESE poems are poems of great promise. We know nothing of the author, but we have found a wealth of surprises in the strength, the simplicity, and the terseness of the imaginative feeling they display, that convinces .us of his power to do- much more than he has here done,—though even that is no trivial beginning. We will take the less ambitious, and certainly the more powerful play first. Fair Rosamund, short as it is, contains several fine sketches of character, of which Queen. Elinor, though the least original, is also perhaps the most striking. Margery and Rosamund are foster-sisters—Margery being the daughter of a forest keeper of King Henry II. at Woodstock, and Rosamund the daughter of some lady who had reasons of her own for giving her child to' the old woodman to bring up. The King, who never loved his

Canirria.—Fair Rosamund. By Michael Field. London George Bell and Bone.

wife,—though she is represented as consumed by passion for him, and by jealousy, when she finds that his love is given to another,—meets the woodman's foster-daughter in the chase at Woodstock, and gains her love. The love-scenes, we must admit, are somewhat poor. While the maze at Wood- stock is building for Rosamund, a spy and retainer of the Queen's falls in with Margery, the foster-sister, and tempts her away from her father—partly to be his mistress, partly to be his tool in betraying Rosamund to the Queen ; and to this plot Margery, the simpler, but also much the vainer and the coarser of the two girls, unwittingly lends herself. A fine passage in the play is that in which the deserted forester persuades himself that his own daughter must have been pro- tected by her simple industry and her rustic tastes from the snares that beset his foster-daughter, and that, missing though she be, she is sure to be found upright when he regains her :-

" Mags was the faggot-gatherer, what a wench !

They'd not 'tice her to mischief ; she was shrewd ; She milked the goat, and never lolled about ; It's the lying on the grass that leads to sin, Snapping at flies. I kept Mags at my side ; She knew the paps from their birth ; she'd work to do Feeding and training 'em. 'Twas a soft hand Of Rose's, seemed to make you warm at once

The way she led you in. She didn't talk;

And it's a sign of honesty to talk.

That sighing, when there's nothing wrong, looks ill.

Mag's eyes were wet two days for Blackberry ; Rose stroked my head—she didn't care for the cow ;

She hadn't got the sense ; but _Margery—

A child to lean on that ! just like yourself, With a temper you'd grown used to—knew the rash At sight, like measles, and could tackle Mags, Mags, what have they done with ye, my wench ? the fire won't burn ; just lie down a bit. No, no; I'll try again To stir a flame. She may have lost her way, And look for the red light about the door. I'll try."

That has the true personal ring in it ; and to the reader who knows how much less of love, and how much more of coarse joy in finery, there was in Margery's desertion of her father than in Rosamund's, the passage has a deep pathos as well as &eat dramatic force. So, too, have these beautiful lines, in which Margery, pure no longer, complains that her playfellows the wild flowers look at her askance :-

"Mar. The country makes me shy—so shy ! The trees 0' the forest seem to stand aloof—straight up, An' ask respect, like gentle folk in town. An' then . . . the flowers, somehow, are not kind ; They only look at me . . . the marigolds ; But they are in the gardens. . . . Yet I've stopped At every wild flower, . . . an' they only look. We were such cronies ! Oh, it frightens me ! "

But there is more of dramatic force in Fair Rosamund than even these passages would give us any hint of. Michael's desire to see in his own girl's rustic tastes, evidence that she is beyond temptation is powerful and pathetic ; Margery's sense of the reproachfulness of the wild flowers is powerful and pathetic, too ; but the power of which we get a glimpse when we see Elinor vindictively thanking God for boys who will revenge her wrongs on their father, by making him feel the force of the evil passions of both father and mother, without that touch of sweetness which love between them would have given, gives us a quite new sense of the hard shock of cruel, clashing natures. The passage we are about to give opens with a speech of the Queen's, when told by her spy Wilfred,—who is asking for the hand of one of her ladies, Beatrix,—of the King's secret love for Rosamund. To Rosamund herself, it will be seen, Elinor at first makes no allusion :—

"Q. Elias. Thank God for boys!

To have reared a treasonous brood from his own blood,

To have it at my call ! John laughs in 's face ;

'Tis a fierce pup My first ; he'll fasten where I bid, relax When Death or I cry Loose; Oh, I am glad To have the record of those ancient moods Writ clear In my boys' faces. That first ecstasy Of anger, then the weak drift of despair In puling Godfrey. From a fire of tears Leapt out my Lion-heart!

When I again conceived, my flesh was cold, I bred a coward !

[To Wilfred.] Come, a covenant ;

Join hands! . . . My Beatrix,

I toss her, a bright posy from, my breast,

The day, the very hour, I've smoothed her limbs.

This . . . Let me loose on her! . . . Speak fast ! Direct me I I have sown i' mT sons The whirlwind of my nature; he will reap.

This doe of the forest—my peculiar prey—

With silver-arrow'd death she must be pierced ; The wrongbd Dian must behold her bleed!

I have not shared the King's love o' the chase; It 'gins to stir in me.

[Enter Henry.] My lord, these twain Have kept me all the morning with their loves. Will you not bless them ?

K. Hen. Love alone can bless :

Not kings.—Sir knight, Be merry. Of twain studies one must be For ease, one for attainment. You'll pass days Too strenuous at task with life and love.

Love therefore as a pastime,—this fair dame Your mistress of the revels. Joy to each !

[Exeunt Beat,-in and Wilfred.

Q. Elias. A pastime ! From experience you speak ?

K. Hen. I never have concerned myself with love.

Where's John ?

Q. Elin. Why, with his retinue of fools. Best set an ape

Before base things, since whatso'er he sees Most fall a prey To the antics of his visage. Do you need One to make mock of majesty ?

K. Hen. The boy, Where is he ? Tell me where. 0 Elinor, Consider : you have Henry, the young king, To dote on ; grant this favour to mine age, Let be our youngest boy—leave the soft was Of's heart unimpressed by your virulence. He calls me ' father,'—I who bear an old Usurper's aspect to your fiery three, Plant not your poison in him.

Q. Elfin. With my milk He sucked it. The soft-browed deceptive lad You munch with kissing, dogs his brothers' heels And licks allegiance to them. You're disgraced Suing for love as humbly on your knees As once for pardon at your Becket's tomb. A piteous whine !—' Love me, my little son, Or heart will buret '—a sorry spectacle ! I have a king to dote on—a young king !

I tell you to your face, that boy of ours Crowned Henry has my love, because he has My bridegroom's eyes but for the rest, my lord, You're old to think of love : when you were young You thought not of it.

K. Hen. I embraced your lands,

Not you.

Q. Elfin. Plantagenet, you wronged yourself

As you bad made the day and night your foe, And roused The violated seasons to confer Each his peculiar catastrophe

Of death or pestilence—Embraced my lands ! I'll shatter you

As Nature shatters—you, as impotent As the uprooted tree to lash the earth That flings its griping roots out to the air, And plants its burgeoned summits in the soil.

Embraced my lands I forget myself— The loveless are insensate to presage ;- 'Tis in calamity's harsh stubble-field They learn to suffer. I'll be harvester, And sickle your ripe joys. Embraced my lands !

Had you embraced me, I had borne you fruit Of soft-fleshed children. Hug the progeny Of your stony lust, and curse me !"

If that has not the true poetic fire in it,—dramatic fire, too, as well as as poetic—the present writer must be destitute of all discernment. To him it sounds like the ring of a new voice, which is likely to be heard far and wide among the English- speaking peoples. The way in which Elinor at first passes in absolute silence over the fact communicated to her by Wilfred,—to dwell upon the seeds which are to spring up into the retribution which the King deserves,—and then returns to it,. to assure herself of one sweet piece of vengeance which she can take in hand herself, while leaving him to the misery which his sons' evil passions will secure for him, strikes us as in the highest sense dramatic. The whole play is not equally good. The love between Henry and Rosamund is not powerfully drawn, though this touch in the last leave-taking is very fine:—

" K. Hen. Oh, parting is the mirror in Death's hand, Reflex of that immitigable face Whose glance for ever sunders !

Res. Dear, my lord,

There are some thoughts That through this stormy weather of my soul Cannot now travel toward you. Fare you well !

K. Hen. What ! Lightning in those eyes ! A long, long rain Follows such storms ! Farewell!" [Exeunt.

•

On the whole, however, if this be the work of a young author, it is a work of the highest possible promise.

And we should say the same of the very curiously original Callirrhoe, though that poem is, as a whole, greatly inferior in effect. There is, indeed, not the same room for dramatic force ; nevertheless, a greater wealth of imagination has been spent on (it than even on Fair Rosamund, with some very unlovely and some very fine results. The subject of the play is the first introduction of the worship of Dionysus in a society in which the old moralities and venerable customs have attained a sanctity so overpowering that all enthusiasm is regarded with a sort of spiritual dread. Dionysus and the Maenads who are his votaries are treated in Calydon as mere disturbers of the old and sacred religion—as worthy even of horror. Callirrhoe is the representative of this orderly and peaceful life, to whom passion and inspiration of all sorts are, in the first instance, subjects of suspicion. She is introduced singing a beautiful little song in praise of friendship as distinct from love :—

"Ali, Eros does not always smite With cruel shining dart, Whose bitter point with sadden might Rends the unhappy heart,—

Not thus for ever purple-stained, And sore with steely touch, Else were its living fountain drained Too oft, and overmuch.

O'er it sometimes the boy will deign Sweep the shaft's feathered end :— And friendship rises, without pain, Where the white plumes descend."

The kindly old physician, Machaon, is the great friend of the rational and peaceful religion of law and custom, and the great foe of the turgid and emotional religion of passion and inspira- tion. Consequently, Callirrhoii is his ideal of maidenhood, and the new worship of Dionysus is an object of disgust to him. The play shows how he is converted into a disciple of the new religion and becomes its high priest, though he endeavours to subdue to rhythmic and ordered laws the wild inspiration of the new worship. All this sounds highly allegorical, and absolutely unlike any subject we should choose for a real drama. And so un- doubtedly it is. But that is precisely why we regard it as in some respects a more satisfactory test of Mr. Field's power as a poet than even the more dramatic subject of the second play. We took up Callirrhoe with a strong prepossession against its subject, but when we laid it down, we felt that the author bad dissipated that prepossession and filled us with interest, and sometimes,—in spite of one extremely unpleasant scene, for the relevancy of which we can see no sort of pretext,—with admira- tion. There is a picture in Callirrhog of a faun dancing in competition with his own shadow, and of the dread that creeps over the same faun as his first conception of the true significance of death, when it extinguishes the life of him whom he loves, dawns upon him, which would of itself stamp Mr. Field a poet. Observe the lightness of touch in this :—

" Faun. I dance and dance ! Another faun,

A black one, dances on the lawn.

He moves with me, and when I lift My heels, his feet directly shift.

I comet out-dance him, though I try; He dances nimbler than L I toss my head, and so does he; What tricks he dares to play on me !

I touch the ivy in my hair ; Ivy he has and finger there. • The spiteful thing, to mock me so !

I will outdanoe him ! Ho ! ho! ho !"

And now take this passage, in which Callirrhoe, after the priest of Dionysus has died for her, learns to believe in the truth of what he had taught—that the inspiration of a passion which descends from above has an authority over all mere law and order, an authority over the heart, without obedience to which life can never bear its true blessings :-

" Callirrhoe. Alone at last ; deep in the shady hills,

The dark heights I have yearned for. Far below A pyre is burning. Leap, ye glowing flames, Leap up to me ! Coresns, it avails Nothing to heap thee with my proffered love.

Do we lay food and wine about the dead, When the stiff lips are barred, to make amends

For past refusal to the trembling mouth ?

Had I done evil deeds, I might atone; The gods are gracious, and make clean from guilt.

But simply to have lived my summer through And borne no roses ! Nothing compensates For dearth, for failure, when the season's past. All me, ah me! and he besought my love As wildly, passionately, as the dead Beseech their burial. My heart aches with tears."

Eventually, Machaon, too, has begun to spell out for himself the same lesson

" Men acclimatise To new emotion rapidly ; it takes Time to develop custom. Clear the truth By uproar of the Asiatic band Concealed, and overclamoured.

You discern There is a truth ?

Machaon. Rather a mystery

I would unravel. I have looked abroad, And learnt to use life deftly as a tool Keen-edged to execute my purposes.

I had no pleasure; I just won my ends, Toiled and was served ; there was no music born.

Whereas these Maanads, eager as hot Pan, Catch up all life as the peculiar reed To make sweet passage for their spirit's breath ; And Nature leaves her shyness, shows her mind, This sullen Nature, laughing in my face, Like an idiot, his imbecility Made resonant By shrieking echo from the void within.

Deep in the forest here, I found a faun

Coresus loved ; I captured him, and tried To tame his wildness ; he would none of me, Was stubborn, restive; when I made him feel His master could not come to him again, The creature blanched and shivered, and fled scared, As though the news were mortal.

Callirrhoe. Can it be !

A little, wizen body lies along You root o' hazel ; and a powdery heap Of bones is close about ; the band still grips A horny cone that purple-patches it.

Machaon. Oh, bring me there! He went to the dead deer.

[They come to the hazel.]

'Tis be ; and Death is spread all over him, Death that looks startled at itself, as if It had mis-settled, falling on a prey Unnatural to its appetite. Ah me!

How brutal, coarse, and ignorant I stand Beside this sweet stray in humanity ; A thing so passionately gay, it seemed The fresh, warm juice that fills the hyacinth And pulses sudden verdure through the pines, Leapt in his veins; the laughter of the spring Flowed through him ; Nature's vehemence, and Youth's

Met in his rapture. Now I see him wear

Death's hoary aspect, shrunken and defaced, The youth o' the world is gone."

And Machaon ends by taking this resolution, as the new priest of Dionysus :-

" The white troops through the moonlight steal away ;

The last pale nebris glimmers on the hills.

Now can I bare myself To the white skin o' my spirit unto thee, Great Evius!—finding not the wherewithal To worship by the altar, but in life.

As I am Bacchanal, I will relax No effort till mankind be broken in By discipline of pleasure to true want In commerce and in dream."

The play seems to us to express with great power what the emotions can do to fill life with meaning,—what the emotions can do which mere rational purpose altogether fails to do. The pas- sage, for instance, in which Nephele recounts the intoxication which came over her when the spell of the new worship fell upon her is full of genius. The play has no evidence in it of such dramatic power as that which we find in Fair _Rosamund. But as it deals with a far more difficult subject, and deals with it with a buoyancy and life such as we seldom meet with, it has, we take it, even more evidence of poetical wealth and elasticity. Against one great blot in Callirrhoi we must, however, make our protest. The beautiful coward, Emathion, Callirrhoe's brother, is finely sketched ; but the scene in which the wizened old priestesses of the oracle of Dodona fall in love with, and make love to him, is at once excessively unnatural, disagreeable, and irrelevant to the main subject of the play. For what reason Mr. Field has embodied it in this striking poem we cannot even conjecture.