SOME VOLUMES OF VERSE.*

" TliOnsiNns of fine lines fly up the chimney," said Lord Tennyson, describing his winter habit of sitting by the fire and composing. Not a few of the writers of verse who crowd the shelves of the reviewer might profitably imitate his • (I Poems. By Katharine Tynan. London : Lawrence and Bullen. Pa. 6c1.]

—(2. Aquamarines. By Nora Cliesson. London : Grant Richards. [5s. net. _I

—(3. Ode on the Coronation of Ring Edward. By Bliss Carman. London : David Nutt. [59. net.]—(4.) Ballads and Lyrics. By Bliss Carman. London : A. H. Bullen. [611.]—(5.) The Queen, and other Pease. By Richard Garnett, C.B. London : ,John Lane. [3s. 6d.]—(6.) Through the Gateway. By Francis William Bourdillon. London : Arthur L. Humphreys. [2s. 6d. not.]— (?.)'Poems. By A. Romney Green. London i B.-Bnmley Johnson. [Ss. net.] practice. Here is a volume of Poems by "Katharine Tynan." It contains, we calculate, between four and five thousand lines. Virgil was busy writing poetry for more than thirty years—he is not known to have done anything else—and he left some fourteen thousand lines behind him, and two-thirds of these, so fastidious was he in his judgment, he was for sending " up the chimney," even after they had satisfied his first tests. And here we find a lady, eloquent and accom- plished it is true, but scarcely in the first rank of literary genius, who sends out about a third of the total Virgilian out- put. We should say that a volume of this size would require the undivided labour of three, or at least two, years. That, of course, is impossible. But it is possible to give time and trouble without stint to a piece now and then. Inspiration will not come, it is true : what can be attained is a faultless execution. Whether this is worth the labour is another matter. But though we must make our protest against the " fatal facility " which is the bane of so much modern poetry, we gladly admit that there is much in the volume that moves us : there is love of Nature, often shown in happy touches of description ; devotional feeling ; a pathos that comes straight from the heart. Of this last quality we shall give a characteristic example; it ought to go some way towards refuting the heresy that a poet expresses himself best when he does not feel what he writes :—

THE CHILD'S CALL.

He calls with quick, insistent cry, He calls at work or play, And I must put my business by, And all my books away.

He summons me from house- hold cares Back to his sunny room, And up the stairs and up the stairs In happy haste I come.

Sweeter than lark and mavis dear, And nightingales in May, The little voice so shrill and clear That I must yet obey.

While up the stairs and to the door My heart runs on in glee, I hear a voice I knew of yore That never calls for me. Ever through shadow-time and sun I hear a baby call, That is not you, my precious one, That is not you at all.

Afar, where heavenly waters flow 'Mid Paradisal calms, All on a sward where lilies blow The shepherd counts his lambs.

Afar, beyond the wintry cold

-Upon the heavenly hill, A little lamb a few weeks old

Bleats for his mother still.

0 mother's love and mother's

Buo y ! tt while I come in haste, I hear another lovely boy

Cry from the lonely past.

And while I kiss your curls aside And hold you to my breast, I kiss the little boy that died, That will not let me rest."

Before we leave the verse of "Katharine Tynan" we may remind our readers that poems from her pen have often appeared in the Spectator. If we have criticised her work, it is not to condemn it, but because we think it well worth criticising,—i.e., capable of improvement.

Mrs. Nora Chesson—the author of Aquamarines—would not be the worse for applying to herself so much as she may think fit of the little sermon just preached ; but it is only fair to say that there is much of her work that shows finish. We will not flatter her by saying that it could not be improved—she would certainly not believe it—but we may say that it shows again and again that she has the "root of the matter" in her. Sometimes she rises to a height seldom reached in occasional verse : in " Hertha," for instance, a fine exposition of mystical pantheism. The poem that stands next to this is in a different style, but highly imaginative, and reaching, we think, a high level in force and beauty of expression :— "THE SHEPHERD OF THE SEA.

I am a mighty shepherd, and many are my flocks ; I lead them, I feed them among the weedy rocks.

My shepherd's crook is fashioned out of a Norway pine, And there's no sheep-dog in the world will herd these flocks of mine.

My fold is wide, and day and night the walls shift of my fold, No upland, no lowland my lambing ewes withhold

From the cry of their shepherd, the beckoning of his hand; For my own desert places they leave the pastureland.

With wild white fleeces surging about me to my knee, I go about my herding, the Shepherd of tho Sea ; I call to the rock-pastures the white sheep of the waves,

For they but find their grazing where sailors find their graves.

I am a mighty shepherd, and mighty flocks have I; I lead them, I feed them while stars are in the sky; And when the moon is waning on sheltered shore and lee, I rest not nor slumber, the Shepherd of the Sea." Mrs. Chesson reaches in these two pieces her culminating point; but she does not fail to maintain a high standard of

excellence.

Mr. Bliss Carman gives us a Coronation Ode as well as a volume of verse. Of the Ode we must frankly say that it does not appeal to us. In the first place, the metre is, we think, a somewhat undignified jingle,—

They will take him up to Westminster, and set him in his place ; And Church and Lords and Commons will stand before his face " ;

and we think as we read of the roll of the choruses in Atalanta in Caledon. There are fine things in the Ode never- theless; and one stanza of the best part, where the pioneers of Empire are celebrated, we must quote, if only for the fine line which closes it :—

" They have visions of a country that sorrow never knew ;

They have rumours of a region where the heart has naught to rue, And never will they rest Till they reach the fabled West, That is charted, dim but certain, in the Volume of the Breast.

And forever they are dreamers who make the dream come true."

In Ballads and Lyrics there are two sharply defined provinces of satire and sentiment,—the word is used with no arriere pens& of depreciation. The satire is bold, even audacious. Our fathers would have probably looked askance at the following; nor, indeed, is it a piece which a prudent man would give at a penny reading :—

" HEX AND Hew.

Hem and Haw were the sons of sin, Created to shally and shirk ; Hem lay 'round and Haw looked on While God did all the work.

Hem was the father of bigots and bores ; As the sands of the sea were they. And Haw was the father of all the tribe Who criticise to-day.

But God was an artist from the first, And knew what he was about ; While over his shoulder sneered these two, And advised him to rub it out.

They prophesied ruin ere man was made : Such folly must surely fail !'

And when he was done, `Do you think, my Lord, He's better without a tail r And still in the honest working world, With posture and hint and smirk, These sons of the devil are standing by While Man does all the work.

They balk endeavour and baffle reform In the sacred name of law ; And over the quavering voice of Hem Is the droning voice of Haw."

The same vein may be found, but of less sterling metal, in Hack and Hew," in " In the Workshop," and in " In the House of Idiedaily," and elsewhere. In "Above the Gaspereau," on the other hand, and in " Bahaman" we have fine landscapes, where the aspects of Nature are finely informed with the spirit and iftcnanug of human life. (The " Gaspereau," we should explain, " is a landscape in the St. Lawrence region.") But perhaps the best example of Mr. Bliss Carman's manner in this kind of verse is the " Seamark,—a Threnody for Robert Louis Stevenson." We quote the concluding stanzas, as they more directly bring out the meaning of the title which has been prefixed to the poem :- " His fathers lit the dangerous coast To steer the daring merchant home ; His courage lights the darkling port Where every sea-worn sail must come.

And since he was the type of all

That strain in us which still must fare, The fleeting migrant of a day, Heart-high, outbound for others here,

Now therefore, where the passing ships Hang on the hedges of the noon, And Northern liners trail their smoke Across the rising yellow moon, Bound for his home, with shuddering screw That beats its strength out into speed, Until the pacing watch descries On the sea-line a scarlet seed

Smoulder and kindle and set fire To the dark selvedge of the night, The deep blue tapestry of stars, Thep sheet the dome in pearly light,

There in perpetual tides of day,

Where men may praise him and deplore,

The place of his lone grave shall be A seamark set for evermore."

In The Queen, and other Poems, Dr. Garnett chiefly affects the form of the sonnet, an excellent corrective, by its severity, of any tendency to haste and careless work. They vary greatly in interest ; some, we may frankly say, do not attract; but they are all carefully wrought, all obviously the work of a well-stored mind, familiar with great literary models. Of course these conditions often produce verse that has all good qualities except originality and force. But we should not so characterise Dr. Garnett's work. If the sonnet which we quote below stood alone it would vindicate him from such censure:— " BREVITY.

Windows in heaven, lakes in transparency ; Eve's waning hour, of light not all undrest ; The distant river's mimicry of rest ; Gleams for a moment given to the sea; The passing face that snares thee innocently ; Unbidden tears ; proud sob with pride represt ; Unlooked for look of Love ; these bring Life zest Savoury with the salt of brevity.

Briefness of life doth life to Life endear ; One mortal heart for all the Gods bath room; Restriction moulds and rolls the suns aright ; By circumscription of compacted sphere Welding to orbs that kindle and illume,

The beamless dust of spaces infinite."

And stand alone, in this respect, it does not.

Mr. Bourdillon's name is, we are sure, favourably known to readers of the Spectator. We shall not, we think, be mis- interpreting their views if we say that among many high qualities he has a certain lack of simplicity and strength. Beauty of diction he shows, a fine fancy sometimes rising into imagination, and refinement and tenderness of sentiment. Nor does he exhaust himself with much writing. Through the Gateway, a slender volume containing less, we reckon, than eight hundred verses, represents much honest labour. We may take the following as a good sample of Mr. Bourdillon's

work :— " A SLEEPING CITY.

The silence of a sleeping city fills The hungering soul more than the jar and feud And noonday noises of the multitude.

It bath a mystic kinship with the hills,

With torrents thundering in lonely ghylls, With shoreless seas, and awful solitude Of deserts, where are giant statues hewed By hands unknown for old despotic wills.

Man's soul is vaster than man's senses. Lo, Where eye and ear find nothing, avenues More secret open ; and by ways untrod The stealing thoughts come, silent as the flow Of inland tides, and tranquilly infuse Our muddy shallows with fresh streams from God."

Mr. Romney Green in his Poems says a fine thing now and then, indeed not unfrequently. Such are the latter lines in the sonnet addressed to "Love " Much thwarted Tyrant ! this our bondage thou, To make us free, dost bitterly increase ; And ere thou set the laurel on our brow Of victory and everlasting peace,

Wouldst show us how faith, wisdom, peace, might be Unprofitable, easy, but for thee."

But we cannot find any longer pieces that would justify quotation; nor, indeed, is this by any means perfect. The subject on which Mr. Green is most in earnest would seem to be the G-raeco-Turkish War of 1895. But if Mr. William Watson failed to persuade us, we do not think that we shall revise our judgments at the bidding of Mr. Green. Here is what he says of England :— " But see her now ! in solemn treaty sworn The champion of a cause her heart alone, If not a common faith, should make her own, This perjured name become ; for which the scorn She bath procured by mortals yet unborn Shall justly be preserved and handed down."