MRS. WOODS'S POEMS.*

THERE is power enough in Mrs. Woods to furnish two or three poets with grim imaginative subjects, and such a grim drama as Wild Justice will haunt the memory of those who read it for the rest of their lives, but her imagination runs almost too exclusively on grim subjects till her readers find it difficult to believe that to her mind light means anything except the concealed source of exceedingly black shadows. Even in tragedy there should be something to lift the mind above the misery into the secret of which tragedy plunges M. But Mrs. Woods in her Wild Justice gives us no solitary gleam of hope or peace. The drama begins in the misery caused by a bad man, and ends in the blacker and more en- during misery caused by the vindictive determination of those who are far from wholly bad, not to endure the anguish allotted to them, but to prefer the deeper anguish which their own passions substitute for it. The wife and children of a cruel and dastardly tyrant, being impatient of the cruelty their wretch of a husband and father inflicts, conspire together, some of them deliberately, others of them unconsciously, to make things worse. Some of them plunge into a murder-plot, which turns out not only too successful, but too destructive, so that the least guilty and the most beloved of the wretched family perish with the wretch whom it was intended to strike down. We have seldom read a more vigorous picture of unalloyed despair than that of the far too successful revenge and the awful retribution in which the plot against the tyrant's life ends. Not only the wicked and malignant father dies, but the comparatively innocent daughter, and a quite innocent son, perish with him. Here is the final scene between the eldest son, who is chiefly responsible for the crime, and the mother, who has involved herself in the murderous plot for her children's sake :— " Mrs. Guryllim. See, see ! I've waded

Waist-deep and shrieked, holleaing against the wind

• (1.) Wild Justice: a Dramatic Poem. Ey Margaret L. Woods. London : Smith, 1-Per. and Co.—(2.1 deromoney, and other Poems. By Margaret L.

Woods. "Elkin Mathew,' Bei:Ming Gai L adai: Elkin 11.thews.

Till my throat cracked its strings; yet nothing answered Save the hoarse sea-bird. What of that ? The wind Blew back my voice. Shall one despair so soon ?

The comfortable light brings hope. Look yonder, A patch of solid darkness gathers in

From the universal grey. I've watched it shaping—

Clearly the boat now. 'Twero an easy thing, Old Williams says, the boat bring water-logged, Just there, in such a tide to get aground. They are waiting for the day.

Owen. Old Williams thinks so?

His eyesight fails. I would mine own confirmed him. No, I'm not cruel. Mother, let's brae our hearts, For now's the pivot moment that must swing us From an unfixed suspense to a fixed knowledge Less miserable however based with horror.

Mother, I think that boat is empty.

Mrs. G et Olin:. Lo:k!

To me it seems there's somewhat lying there.

They sleep perhaps.

[OWAIN looks at the boat through the telescope.

Mrs Gwyllint. Well ?

[He turns it about, still looking.] What did you seo ? Owain. There's something floating.. Mrs. G tcyltim. What? Who?

Owain. No one.

'Tis something small—a lamp, I think.

Mrs. Cap./Wm. But the boat, Look in the beat.

Owain. I have.

Mrs. Gwyllint. What did you see ?

Dwain. 1 saw the sail.

Mrs. Gwgttmt. Nothing besides ?

Owain. No, nothing. Mrs. Gwyllirn. There's someone lying under it?

Owain. No, no one. Mrs Gicyllint. [Taking the telescope.] You are mistaken,

you must be mistaken, For if they are not in the boat, where can they be ? I have looked and looked, there's not a possible place But 1 have searched.

[Looks through the telescope, then turns away. There's something in my eyes,

My band trembles. Do you look again.

Owain. 0 mother ! Mrs. Gwyl/im. Where are my children, if they are not there?

They cannot both be—Owain, where are they ?

()wain. [Makes a gesture towards the era.] Mother, May God have mercy on us!

Mrs. Gwytlint. No, not both, Not both ! She's somewhere in the house. Cone, Ellen!

She is afraid to come. Come, Nelto, Nolte!

Shonnin, my heart's adored, Shonnin, my love, Do not be angry with me, answer, Shonnin, Shonnin! Not dead—not dead!

Owain. 0 hush—hush—hush."

That is very powerful, and the whole drama leads up to it, but the fault of it is that there is a drill dreadfulness about the whole which is hardly exceeded by that of any drama we know, except it be Shelley's Cenci, and even there it is possible to find heroism and passion of the higher kind, while in this play all the best characters are more or less feeble and unheroic, while the worst is a pure devil. Mrs. Woods has a fine imagination, but she busies it too much with the black side of life, and too little with its higher lights. Yet all the characters in this little drama are individualised and carefully outlined. It is not difficult to individualise a cruel and selfish brute like Mr. Gwyllim. But his wife, naturally a submissive creature, who turns against him more for his cruelty to her children than for his cruelty to herself, is also painted vividly, and the children with their very different characters,—Owain, the cripple, made a cripple by his father's violence, Nelto (or Ellen), the fanciful imaginative girl, with her delicate scraps of ballad poetry, and Shonnin (or John), the bright boy who plans to leave his mother and brother and sister to their father's violence while he goes to find his fortune in the world, and who is utterly aghast at the plot to decoy him to the quicksand, are all made living to the reader by Mrs. Woods's

few but telling strokes.

It is a relief to turn from her Welsh inferno, with its unre- lieved miseries, physical and moral, to the tiny volume which actually contains a few subjects that are really bright in con- ception as well as some which are either dismal or obscure. The poem called " A&omancy," which gives the title to the small volume, is not much to our taste, as to the ordinary reader it is decidedly obscure, though we can quite conceive that it is perfectly clear to the writer, to whom it is no doubt rendered clear by its autobiographic clue. It appears to be a study of the early years which she spent in the beautiful city of Oxford, and the associations connected with the Cathedral bells which rang out for her childhood and youth the various hours so full of vivid joy and grief. It contains some very beautiful verses, but to the uninitiated reader they are somewhat incoherent and hardly form a whole. Where the prophetic element in them, which the title implies, is to be found, we hardly know, but that of course is visible enough to the author, though not to the reader. The gems of the small selection are "An April Song" and "The Child Alone." The former is the very life and breath of April at its best,—fresh, bright, buoyant. The latter is an exquisite sketch of a child's lively and eager " make-believe," into which almost every one who can remember childhood can enter most heartily. But before we give our readers a specimen of its singularly fresh and living humour, let us just ask Mrs. Woods why she spoiled the true pathos of the verses on "The Death of an Infant" by the artificial and ambitious. conclusion in which she connects the misery of the mother who has lost the infant of whom she writes, with the woes of all the other mothers who have lost and wept for their offspring from the beginning of the world to the present time. It is true, no doubt, that maternal griefs, like most other kinds of grief, are not so much griefs of the individual as griefs of the race, and are threaded together by a kind of hereditary nexus. But is this a thought which really enhances the grief ? May it not even attenuate it? And whether it enhance it, or attenuate it, does this kind of ambitions pressure on the chord which has vibrated so often in a mother's heart, add to or detract from the effect of the language in which the mother's wrung heart is poured forth ? To our mind the artificial and rather grandiose conclusion spoils the poem which begins with so much simplicity and beauty. The gem, however, of this very small selection is the poem called " The Child Alone." It would be impossible to express the elaborate and buoyant make-believe of an imaginative child's reverie with more force and humour than are given in these spirited verses. We

select a portion of them :-

" I was a child, a little child, I am a happy creature wild. I used to have to run or walk As I was bid, be still or talk ; To shun the wind or sun or show'r,

And then come in at such an hour.

I was a child, a little child, I am a happy creature wild.

Now, now again, Reversing the spell, Turning this plain Little ring on my finger, See I regain

Form of a child, spirit as well. Yet I am free, no one can tell Margie to baste, come and not linger. Turn it again, thrice mutt it turn, Thrice the sunlight flicker and burn Deep in the heart of its single gem— And see I ride from Jerusalem.

I am a knight ; the paynim horde Have felt the weight of this good sword About the Sepulchre of Our Lord.

Turn, turn again, Magical ring.

I am a Dane, Cunning and brave, A pirate king. Swiftly I come over the wave.

The shore, the Saxon town I see.

The smoke hangs blue on roof and tree At evening over the little town.

I hear the bells in the gray church tower.

With fire and sword at midnight hour I mean to harry and burn it down.

But fierce as a wolf, as a raven wise, I come at first in a deep disguise To the little town.

And when I climb to the nursery yond2r.

They'll call me Marjorie, and wonder Why I should want to run away

And be as any rabbit wild,

For I shall seem to be a child Named Marjorie. What would they say If they could know it was instead A pirate that they put to bed ? "

That is quite perfect of its kind. Mrs. Woods seems to us to succeed better in her dramatic conceptions,—of which this is. evidently one,—than she does in the lyrical expression of joy and grief. Her mind delights in the play of a partly imagined, rather than of a personally felt, emotion.