THREE VOLUMES OF VERSE.*

THESE last gleanings of Mr. Lowell'a verse are of the scantiest. The slender volume owes half its bulk to blank pages; the poems are but ten in all, and number something leas than six hundred verses. Nor is there anything that can be put with the very best of Mr. Lowell's work. The first and longest piece, " The Oracle of the Goldfishes," is a carious strain of metaphysical musing, the purpose of which is not more clearly defined than metaphysical purposes commonly are. The second is a fancy which will not commend itself to those who think with us—" Turner's Old Timgraire under a figure sym- bolising the Church." Some of the others are occasional verses of slight texture. Still, it is a pleasure to recognise throughout the hand of one who was a master of his craft. Mr. Lowell had not the highest inspiration of the poet. His sincerest admirers never dreamt of putting him among those • (1.) Last Poems. By James Russell Lowell. London: A. D. Ines and CO. —(2.) The Tenth Muse, and Other Poems. By Sir Edwin Arnold, K.C.I.R. London : Lonumans.—(3.) Robert Louie Stevenson, and Other Poems, By Richard Le Gallienne. London: John Lane.

who sway the hearts of men. But he never did any slovenly work. No line that was not as good in its way as it could be made passed the keen scrutiny of his self-criticism. If any one will put these verses to the test of reading them aloud, he will not find, we venture to say, a single turn of phrase that will offend the taste, or a sound that will jar upon the ear. "St. Michael the Weigher" will probably be known to some of our readers. The poet imagines that he sees the Archangel standing with the mighty scales in his band where- with he weighs-

" The hope of Man

Since the power of choice began."

What follows reminds us of Moore's "Paradise and the Peri," but it has a vigour that Moore, we think, never reached :

"In one scale I saw him place All the glories of our race, Cups that lit Belshazzar's feast, Gems, the lightning of the East, Kublai's sceptre, Caesar's sword, Many a poet's golden word, Many a skill of science, vain To make men as gods again.

In the other scale he threw Things regardless, outcast, few, Martyr-ash, arena sand, Of St. Francis' cord a strand, Beechen cups of men whose need Fasted that the poor might feed, Disillusions and despairs Of young saints with grief-grayed hairs, Broken hearts that brake for Man."

The " Verses intended to go with a posset-dish to my dear little goddaughter," remind us again of Macanlay's admirable valentine, addressed to a lady of the Stanhope family, in which he imagines how her great kinsman, Pitt, smiles from his pedestal in Hanover Square to see so fair a bride go by to St. George's But not Macaulay himself handled his theme with a finer art. And there are things in it of Mr. Lowell's own, the fan, for instance;of these lines :—

"Though had I Amalthea's horn

It should he hers the newly born.

Nay, shudder not ! I should bestow it So brimming full she could n't blow it."

How graceful is this :—

" I wish her next, and 't is the soul Of all I've dropt into the bowl, Her mother's beauty—nay, but two So fair at once would never do. Then let her but the half possess, Troy was beseiged ten years for less. Now if there's any truth in Darwin, And we from what was, all we are win, I simply wish the child to be A sample of Heredity,

Enjoying to the full extent Life's beat, the Unearned Increment Which Fate her Godfather to flout Gave him in legacies of gout. Thus, then, the cup is duly filled ; Walk steady, dear, lest all be spilled."

The very last of Mr. Lowell's poems was "On a Bast of General Grant," left by him for a final revision which he was never able to give. It is fine throughout, but rises, perhaps, to its highest in this:— "So Marius looked, methinks, and Cromwell so, Not in the purple born, to those they led Nearer for that and costlier to the foe,

New moulders of old forms, by nature bred The exhaustless life of manhood's seed to show, Let but the ploughshare of portentous times Strike deep enough to reach them where they lie : Despair and danger are their fostering climes, And their best sun bursts from a stormy sky : He was our man of men, nor would abate The utmost due manhood could claim of fate."

The theme which Sir Edwin Arnold has chosen to give a title to his volume snits exactly his somewhat rhetorical genius. He has, too, in treating it, the satisfaction of paying what we may call his Oporripice, for the "Tenth Muse" is nothing else than the Press, especially the Newspaper Press. It is difficult, perhaps, to suppose that his lofty panegyric is inspired by a wholly serious conviction. The Press is a business like other businesses, and talk of how her heart is set-

" On hopes, undreamed of yet

By those who worshipped once, old bards and sages ;— The onward march of Man

From what began His uprise, to the goal of all the Ages,"

--can only be used in the sense in which it may be used of all human work. Still, Sir Edwin Arnold preserves an admirable gravity, and puts his case with all the persuasiveness of one who is used to putting cases that are not always perfect. This modern Muse—Ephemera he names her—is devoted to the patient crowds,—the thirty-five myriads or so who respond to her love by creating the "largest circulation in the world "

" To minister to these

'Neath all the roaring seas. Her messengers, tamed lightnings, come and go; O'er all the busy lands Her duteous eyes and hands Gather up knowledge, that the people know. From them she bath her power, And hour by hour To them she payeth back her debt of greatness, Accomplishing full score With blessings more and more, And service wrought in silence and sedateness."

The remaining contents of the volume come chiefly from Eastern sources. There are "The Passing of Muhammad : a Dramatic Sketch," "The Story of the Snake," from the Sanskrit of the Mahitbhitrata„ "The Four First Ghazals of Hafiz," " Roses from S'Adi's Rose Garden," and "Poems from Japan." The other original poems are "A Japanese Soldier," which seems to us a little too much drawn out, and a very pretty piece called "My Guests," the guests being swallows.

Here are some of the stanzas :—

" Think on the speed, and the strength, and the glory, The wings to be, and the jubilant life, Shut in those exquisite secrets she brooded, My Guest's small consort, the swallow's wife !

Nay, and no southern Lazzarone, No lazy desert-bred Beddawee, Was her glossy husband ! five hundred forays 'Twixt morning and evening accomplished he, Hawking the gnats, and raiding the midges, And darting home from his dipping bath With meat in his mouth for the wife and children ; A Lord more gentle no Lady hath ! ......... . . Now, dawn after dawn, there are painstaking lessons To teach sky-science, and wing's delight; Soon will they follow the swift feet of Summer ; Oh ! Senor Swallow ! I envy your flight !

Ah ! Golondrina! I grieve you are going! Say greetings for me to my East so dear! You have paid your rent with your silvery cheepings, La case e sua ! Come back next year !

Mr. Le Gallienne lacks the craftsmanship which we find so fully developed in Mr. Lowell, and lacks still more the re- straining taste. In the "Elegy," which gives a name to his volume, he rises to his best. He has never written anything quite so good as this :—

" Death ! why at last he finds his treasure isle, And he the pirate of its hidden hoard ; Life ! 'twas the ship he sailed to seek it in, And Death is tut the pilot come aboard. Methinks I see him smile a boy's glad smile On maddened winds and waters, reefs unknown, As thunders in the sail the dread typhoon, And in the surf the shuddering timbers groan ; Horror ahead, and Death beside the wheel : Then—spreading stillness of the broad lagoon, And lap of waters round the resting keel."

" Alfred Tennyson," too, though it wants the inspiring force of a personal emotion, is strong, and often finely phrased, for instance, in "the toga sweep of his great style." But why couple with these two the not very wholesome triviali- ties of "Paris Day by Day" or a "Snatch"? Among the better things in the volume are "My Maiden Vote," which is a bit of really fine-edged satire, and there is a pathos not less effective because it is restrained in the following :—

" Precious the box that Mary brake

Of spikenard for her Master's sake, But ah ! it held nought half so dear As the sweet dust that whitens here.

The greater wonder who shall say : To make so white a soul of clay, From clay to win a face so fair, Those strange great eyes, that sunlit hair

A-ripple o'er her witty brain,—

Or turn all back to dust again.

Who knows—but, in some happy hour, That God whose strange alchemic power Wrought her of dust, again may turn To woman this immortal urn."

Mr. Le Gallienne's volume is a curious medley.- If he would always think and write at his best !