TWO BOOKS OF POEMS.*

Mas KATHARINE TYNAN and Miss Constance Haden, whose new volumes have issued from the same press almost simultaneously, stand one to the other in marked and striking contrast. Each of these two writers has felt strongly, and is largely representa- tive of, one of the two dominant and opposing influences of the day. When we shut Shamrocks, and open .d Modern Apostle, we are made to realise very vividly how wide and varied is the life which can thus rear contemporaries standing in sympathy and in intellectual pose centuries apart.

Miss Tynan is a young and enthusiastic scholar in that school of Besthetio poets who, shrinking from the roar and tumult of the day, build for themselves a bower in a sensuous, languorous, purple-aired past. Telegraph-wires and special editions are anachronistic abominations to her. Except that, as a daughter of Ireland, she sympathises strongly with the "national" move- ment in that troubled country, she concerns herself little or not at all with what men are thinking and doing around her. She is a Roman Catholic—apparently a devout and earnest one —and this circumstance has no doubt had much to do with the determination of her poetical affinities. We think that it has not hitherto been sufficiently recognised that aestheticism is to an enormous extent the expression of the Roman Catholic spirit in literature and in art. Miss Haden is one of those women who have yielded themselves freely and enthusiastically to the current of the new thought. Her book is thoroughly modern, and is, in its culture, its independence, its artistic reserve, a very remarkable outcome of what we may almost venture to call the feminine renaissance.

Miss Tynan's first volume of poetry was so steeped in the Rossettian influence, as to reach us as little more than a clear and musical echo. She has now to some considerable extent shaken off the drowsy epell that was upon her. She no longer, at any rate consciously, translates her thoughts into the language of Rossetti. Her normal artistic method, however, remains, and will probably always remain, essentially the same. It may almost be said of a large proportion of her poems that they are pictures first and verses afterwards. She closes her eyes, shut- ting in some beautiful figure, or some bit of landscape with figures, viewed always through coloured glass, and her poems are only the transcription into words of what she sees. Her artistic habit may be well illustrated by a few stanzas from the poem which, on the whole, marks the highest point of her attainment,—" The Angel of the Anunciation " :— "Down through the village street, Where the slanting sunlight was sweet, Swiftly the Angel came ;

His face like the star of even, When night is grey in the heaven ; His hair was a blown gold flame.

His wings were purple of bloom, And eyed as the peacock's plume; They trailed and flamed in the air : Clear brows with an aureole rimmed, The gold ring brightened and dimmed, Now rose, now fell on his hair.

Oh, the marvellous eyes!

All strange with a rapt surprise, They mused and dreamed as he went; The great lids, drooping and white, Screened the glory from eight; His lips were most innocent.

His clear hands shining withal Bore lilies, silver and tall, That had grown in the pleasaunoe of God ;

His robe was fashioned and spun

Of threads from the heart of the sun; His feet with white fire were shod.

All in the stillness and heat,

The Angel passed through the street, Nor pausing nor looking behind; God's finger-touch on his lips ; His great wings fire at the tips ; His gold hair flame in the wind."

One of the pleasantest poems in Miss Tynan's collection is certainly "A Child's Day." Such lines as the following bring back very vividly those enchanted June days, when our heart was as the heart of a little child :— " When I was a little child

It was always golden weather. My days stretched out so long From rise to set of son.

• (1.) Shamrocks By Katharine Tynan. Loadon Kagan Paul and On.—(2.)A Modern Apostle; Ti,, Elixir of Life; 77e Story of Clorieo, and other Poems. By Conatance C. W. linden. London Kagan Paul and Co. I sang and danced and smiled—

My light heart like a feather—. From morn to even-song ; But the child's days are done.

I used to wake with the birds—

The little birds wake early, For the sunshine leaps and plays

On the mother's head and wing—

And the clouds were white as curds ; The apple-trees stood pearly ; I always think of the child's days As one unending Spring.

I knew where all flowers grew.

I used to lie in the meadow Ere reaping-time and mowing-time And carting home the hay. And oh, the skies were blue!

Oh, drifting light and shadow ! It was another time and clime—

The little child's sweet day.

And in the long day's waning The skies grew rose and amber And palest green and gold,

With a moon's white flame: And if came wind and raining,

Grey hours I don't remember ; Nor how the warm year waxed cold, And deathly Autumn came."

No doubt there is here a certain reminiscence of Mrs. Brown- ing'e "Deserted Garden" and "Lost Bower;" bat, with all deductions on that score, Miss Tynan's poem must he allowed to rank as a happy conception delicately realised. Among the other poems in this volume which have given us genuine pleasure, are "A Mother's Heart "—full of tender and wistful pathos—" Sanctuary," and "In a Meadow." "The Dead Mother" obviously owes much in conception and some- thing in execution to Mr. Buchanan's weird ballad—if we may so call it—bearing the same name ; and one or two of the lyrics —such, for example, as "Sun and Wind Maid Daffodil's Song "—could hardly have been written if Miss Christina Rossetti had not been earlier in the field. Of the longest poem in Miss Tynan's book, "The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne," we can speak only with qualified approval. It contains not a few good passages, but on the whole there is more straining than strength in it. The writer has evidently felt her tendency to affectation and " preciousness " rebuked by the blunt sincerity of the old Celtic romances from which she has drawn her stoiy. She has laboured hard at terse simplicity; but unfortunately, while the labour is evident enough, the simplicity is not. Miss Tynan has secured some of the properties of the ballad-singer, but she has not acquired the ballad-touch. Throughout the poem—though less strongly in the later parts—we are conscious that a very modern hand is trying the old harp. But our most serious quarrel with Miss Tynan is on the score of her treatment of the supernatural element which is so predominant in the Gaelic legends. In dealing with this element she might fairly have adopted any one of three methods. She might have aimed at so impregnating her whole story with the sense of the weird and the strange, that the supernatural in that climate should seem the probable and the natural. Or she might simply have eliminated the magic and marvels as grotesque incongruities in a possible and probable story. Or, again, she might—following Lord Tennyson's example in dealing with the supernatural in the Arthurian legends—have sought to touch and change the old diablerie, lifting it into the region of spiritual suggestiveness. But Miss Tynan has not done, or aimed at doing, any of these things. She has left the super- natural element exactly as she found it; and, good and fitting as it is, woven into the rough fabric of the ancient story, it is an incongruous and jarring patch upon the material of her nineteenth-century recast. On the whole, Miss Tynan may be congratulated upon her second book. It marks a very decided advance upon its predecessor.

Miss Constance Haden is, as has been already implied, Miss Tynan's antipodes. In some respects she reminds us of Mrs. Nesbit, but she does not possess the soft and tender charm of that delightful writer. Her poems are more purely intellectual; she is more caustic, more prone to satire. As a literary executant, Miss Haden is entitled to very high praise. The metre which she most affects—that of "Orlando Furies° " and "Don Juan "—she wields with a precision, a delicacy, an easy mastery, difficult to surpass. The greater part of her volume is filled with stories in verse. Of all of these—except, perhaps, "The Elixir of Life "—it may be said that the exceedingly slight plot is overweighted with the fabric reared upon it. The poem named appears to us to be the gem of the collection. It tells the old story of one who has discovered that combination of potent elements the draught of which defeats death. But from this point a new turn is given to the story. The discoverer of the elixir vainly seeks to find any people or any individual worthy to receive the gift of immortal life in the flesh. Here are a few stanzas, describing a part of his wanderings :—

" I sought the motherland of many hopes—

Land of the sun, whose summer rays ilium° Blue lakes, engarlanded by golden slopes, And valleys dim with amethystine bloom; The wondrous land of scholars, painters, Popes, The Church's cradle, and the Empire's tomb : Dear land, my promised Canaan of delights, Peopled, alas! by soft.tongued Canaanites.

I knew fair Florence in her noon-day glow, And in her late repentance and remorse ; Saw the first joy of Michel Angelo When great Lorenzo marked his bedding force, And pacing at Careggi to and fro, Heard silver-voiced Mirandola discourse, Though from San Marco thrilled a note of fear- ` Repent, repent ! the sword of God is here !'

And then I entered those Imperial walls Where every epoch finds its magnet.pole, And watched the great Cathedral's domed halls Ries, and Life's yellow Tiber.current roll, And beard wise Leo and his Cardinals Wittily prate of God and of the soul, Or lightly mock, as Teuton ravings drunk, The thundering theses of the rebel monk.

But I beheld a blaok abyss of lust And hatred yawn beneath Italia's prime— Groaning, I said, 'Where is a man so just, Bo wise, that he should live beyond his time ? What poet, priest, or woman can I trust To use in righteousness my gift sublime P Or shall I aid the oracle, one-sided plan Of friar Augustine or Dominican ?'

And so I kept my boon, and sought anew For one to share it. Now in tranquil seas I waged, where they lap with waters blue The white or ruddy sands; with westward breeze I sailed, that proud Iberian land to view Made Empress by the ill-starred Genoese, Fain to rule Europe, an she ruled her slaves In diamond-mines beyond Atlantic waves.

But here, 'mid wealth and courtesy and pride, Methought the vale of Hinnom ever burned, There tender maids and youths in torture died, Parents and children, sages, hinds unlearned, Who all with blind heroic faith defied Faith blindly tyrannous; heartsore I turned From the grim King, who seemed what proverbs tell Of his Madrid—' half winter and half hell.'

Now to the valiant island, whieli that King Had thought to win with mightiest armament ; There gladsomely I heard at heaven's gate sing Blithe birds of morn ; and though the song was blent With notes unworthy so divine a spring, A thrill of joy through all my frame it sent But not in city or in mart I stayed, Nor joined the wooers of the Royal Maid.

It was a midland village that I sought, Where daisy-banked a placid river ran Past a grey church, and near it dwelt and wrought A bard whose god.like eyes the heart could scan, • Telling its dreams and humours; but I thought- ` Nay, let the Poet live, and leave the Man To die in peace ; he quaffri his own rich wine Of Immortality—what needs he mine ?"

We owe Miss Naden an apology for trying to represent her by any extract, since the real strength of her poems resides not in the beauty of passages, but in their roundness and finish as wholes. The reader's pleasure is not marred by crudities or weaknesses. At length the discoverer of the Elixir finds a woman of perfect beauty whom he judges to be meet to receive the divine gift ; but on the very evening when it is to be conferred, the light creature, shrinking from her tremendous destiny, plane an elopement with a less philosophical and less exacting lover. Miss Naden's turn for epigram is well illustrated in this poem :—

The boast, 'I have not sinned,'

Was vain ; for sinned I have in wish and thought— Cares conscience in what ataff the sin is wrought ?"

And again :— 4, Worshipping, perchance,

The painter's flattery of a harlot's glance."

"The Story of Clarice," graceful and charming as it is, carries with it too strong a suggestion of Romola and Tito.

The poems in Miss Naden's book which will probably attract most general attention are the bright and witty "Evolutional Erotica." Here is a part of "Solomon Redivivus " :— "We were a soft Amceba In ages past and gone,

Ere you were Queen of Sheba, And I King Solomon.

Unorganed, undivided, We lived in happy sloth, And all that you did I did, One dinner nourished both Till yen incurred the odium

Of fission and divorce—

A severed pseudopodium You strayed your lonely course.

When next we met together Our cycles to fulfil, Each was a bag of leather, With stomach and with gill.

But our Aecidian morals Recalled that old mischance, And we avoided quarrels By separate maintenance.

Long ages passed—our wishes Were fetterless and free, For we were jolly fishes, A-swimming in the sea.

We roamed by groves of coral,

We watched the youngsters play—

The memory and the moral Had vanished quite away.

Next, each became a reptile, With fangs to sting and slay ; No wiser ever crept, I'll Assert, deny who may.

But now, disdaining trammels Of scale and limbless coil, Through every grade of mammala We passed with upward toil.

Till, anthropoid and wary,

Appeared the parent ape, And soon we grew leas hairy,

And soon began to drape.

So, from that soft Amceba, In ages past and gone, You've grown the Queen of Sheba, And I, King Solomon."