RECENT VERSE.*

ONE fact must strike any reviewer of modern poetry. Not only is the level of technical accomplishment high, but the impulse to sing, to re-create the world in the terms of beauty, and to regard no part of life as alien to the Muses, is strong and persistent. This does not mean that good poetry is common, for technical skill and the most ardent love of beauty are not sufficient to command the divine fire ; but it means that there is a wealth of the material from which poetry is born. It is a hopeful sign which our modern pessimists would do well to note. At few periods in our history have so many people from so many different points of view been writing verse, distinguished, musical, sincere, and original. There is little of the very best, but it is promising soil wherein to look for its appearance. As we might have expected from his prose, Mr. Frederic Manning's slim sheaf of Poems is not to be lightly passed over. He has two qualities not often found together, a wide range and a fastidious scholarship. He can tell a saga-tale, like " Helgi of Lithend," with something of the spaciousness and fire of the originaL In " Theseus and Hippolyta," and again in his hymn to the dawn, "After Night," and in " Kore," he recaptures from the dim early world of Greece a kind of jewelled freshness, where the spirit of spring and passion throbs behind the delicate words. Very fine too is the song " Love Alone," with its haunting cadences. It is all the work of a craftsman with a store of knowledge, who has contrived simplicity from the many- coloured riches of learning and fancy. The book contains no banal phrases or desiccated thoughts, and at the same time it is free from the captious revolt which disfigures much modern poetry. With a scholar's knowledge of the best, Mr. Manning is content to follow in the great tradition. We quote the last sonnet :- • (1) Poems. By Frederic Manning. London : John Murray. [Se. 6d. net.] -(2) Thirty six Poems. By James Elroy Flecker. London: Adel,phi Press. Ls.]-(3) Windlestraw. By Pamela Tennant. London : Chiswick Press. 3e. 6d. net.]-(4) Farewell to Poesy, and other Poems. By William H. Davies. London: A. C. ifield. nel-(5) Poems. By Frances Cornford. Hampstead : Priory Press. [2s. net. -(6) A Country Boy, and other Poems. By Douglas Goldring. London: Ade phi Press. [1s. net.]-(7) Threnodies, Sketches, and other Poems. By the Author of " Thysia." London: G. Bell and Sons. [3e. 6d. net.]-(8) Thyme and Thistledown. By C. G. Anderson. London : Digby; Long, and Co. [3s. 6d. net.]-(9) Buccaneer Ballads. By E. H. Vsk. London : Elkin Mathews. [1s. 6d. net.]-(10) Poems of Empire. By George Benson Hewetson. Same publisher. [is. 6d. net.]-

(11) Poetry Militant. By Bernard O'Dowd. Melbourne : Lothian. [18. -

(12) Downward f Same author and publisher. [2s. 6d.]-1)13) The dent Land, and other Verses. Same author and publisher. fis. 6d. -(14) Alpha Centaari, By M. Forrest. Same publisher. [3s. 6d. s of Many Waters. By E. J. Brady. Same publisher. [3s. 6d. J-(16) The Land We Love. By Will Ogilvie. Dalbeattle : Fraser. [3s. 6d. net.] 7) Told Verse, and other Lines. By Kingsley FoArbridge. London : D. Nutt. [2s. 6d. net.]- (18) Twenty Chinese Poems. Paraphrased by Clifford Bar. Hampstead : Orpheus Press. [2s. 6d. net.]-(19) From the Eastern Sea. By Yone Noguchi. London : Elkin Mathews. [48. net.]-(20). Quacks and Twitters. By A. A. Patterson. Oxford: Alden and Co. [2s. 6d. net.]-(21) Poets on the Isis, and other Perversions. By Wilfrid Blair, Oxford : B. H. Blackwell. [3s. 6d. net.]

" When my poor bones are hearsed in quiet clay, And 'final sleep hath sealed my wandering eyes, The moon as now will sail through tranquil skies; The soft wind in the meadow-grasses play; And sacred Eve, with half-closed eyelids, dream; And Dawn, with rosy fingers, draw the veils

Of silver from her shining face; and gales

Sing loudly ; and the rain from eaveshoots stream With bubbling music. Seek my soul in these ;

I am a part of them; and they will keep

Perchance the music which I wrought with tears. When the moon shines above the silent trees Your eyes shall see me ; and when soft as sleep Come murmurs of the rain, ah, bend your ears !"

Mr. Flecker is not such a craftsman as Mr. Manning, but

he is more arresting. Compare with the sonnet we have quoted the grim " Town without a Market" in his Thirty-six Poems, and you will perceive the difference of the two talents. There is something of the elfish fancy of W. E. Henley in his work. The reader is impressed by the variety of his

moods and his metrical vigour, and delighted constantly by unexpected turns of fancy. It is the robustness and exhilara- tion of Mr. Flecker's work which are its most valuable qualities. He writes admirable ballads, poignant and haunting ; his masques have an Elizabethan flavour; and, as in the " War Song of the Saracens," he can write martial poetry without rodomontade. As an instance of his real originality we would mention his " Mary Magdalen." Mr. Flecker as a poet has not yet quite found himself, but we gladly recognise that he has the root of the matter in him, and we shall look forward to his future work with keen interest. A word of welcome is due to the revised edition of Lady

Tennant's Windlestraw. Several new pieces have been added, including some beautiful verses on "Wilsford " and "Lines on a Bullfinch, Freed," already known to readers of the Spectator, which have a charming Jacobean flavour. A passion for wild Nature and something of its magic, an exquisite purity of style, and a noble and simple philosophy of life are the chief traits of a poetic talent as true as any we possess to-day. The same simplicity and Nature-lore are to be found in work of a very different kind, Mr. W. H. Davies's Farewell to Poesy. The sorrows of the world shadow him, but they do not eclipse the .poet's joy :— " Nay, lovely Bird, thou art not vain ; Thou hast no proud, ambitious mind; I also love a quiet place That's green, away from all mankind; A lonely pool, and let a tree Sigh with her bosom over me."

Those lines might have been written by a seventeenth-century Quietist. Out of a hard life in dusty places Mr. Davies has won a singular and beautiful gentleness of spirit. In Mrs.

Cornford's Poems there is a true gift of music, a whimsical humour, and skill in etching small landscapes such as " From a Lincolnshire Farm." The " Child Stealer " is as charming in feeling as in its dainty rhythm. Mr. Douglas Goldring is still at the experimental stage. His Country Boy recalls sometimes the Shropshire Lad., but he is too busy testing the various notes of his pipe Co be sure what he wants to sing. The value of Threnodies, by the author of Thysia, seems to us to fall below that of the earlier book. The pieces are more modish and elaborate, and the rhythms have a sad facility. The best work is the Crabbe-like descriptions of country scenes and weathers, which show a gift of close and sensitive observa Lion. Mr. C. Cl. Anderson's Thyme and Thistledown is full of graceful and melodious verse, which would be more melodious

to the ear of one reviewer if "dawn" were not rhymed with " morn." The author is apt to ride the iambic to death, with the result that there is a certain monotony in his measures,

and now and then an irrelevant jauntiness. Mr. G. B. Hewetson's slim volunie, Poems of Empire, is to be com- mended not only for its wholesome and stirring patriotism, but for a real power of stately rhythm. The ode written for the Milton Tercentenary is not inadequate, and this is high praise. Mr. Visiak's Buccaneer Ballads have caught some-

thing of the shivering bravado of the outlaw, who does dreadful things with his head half turned to catch the sound of the avengers of blood. His metres are simple and most skilfully managed, and he avoids the literary epithet. Buccaneers are

of course a literary convention to the poet, hut Mr. :Vrisink has read himself more deeply than most into their souls. Now

and then he falls into that false virility of style which is only brutal; but pieces like " The Sea Hostel," " The Rendezvotts," " The Buccaneer's True Love," and especially " The Haunted Pirate," have both truth and beauty in them.

Among the overseas poets on our list, Mr. Bernard O'Dowd not only gives us songs, but in a little essay Poetry Militant provides a theory of the poetic art. He wants poetry to be militant, to " say something," to be a true weapon of civilisa- tion, to be modern in the sense that it speaks the thoughts and dreams of the men of to-day. It is sound doctrine, though we should quarrel with some of Mr. O'Dowd's instances. Looking over the new editions of his Downward ? and The Silent Land—poets in Australia command second editions—we find a curious mixture of strength and weakness. He is haunted by meaningless capital letters and dubious popular science. But through all the crudities there is a real force of thought and vision. He is the most intellectual element in modern Australian poetry, and therefore a valuable corrective to robustious rhyming. Mr. Forrest's Alpha Centauri is more in the ordinary ballad tradition, but there is one poem, " The Dead Slave," a soliloquy of a Roman master, which shows high imaginative power. Mr. Brady's The Ways of Many Waters is in some respects the most original book of Australian verse which has been published for years. Probably if there had been no Mr. Kipling these songs would not have been written, at least not in the same way; but they have a grip, a humour, and an intensity all their own. "Sailor-man" is the most accurate reading of the British sailor we have seen. "Laying on the Screw" and "The Passing of Parker" are ballads in the true line of descent, and in another style "A Ballad of the Flag" has all the glamour of our sea story in it. Mr. Brady's is a new and most desirable note in our literature. We associate Mr.. Will Ogilvie with the Australian school, but in The Land We Love he sings of the Scottish Borders. It is curious to find the lilt of bush-songs in the old quiet world of Border poetry. Mr. Ogilvie is always vigorous and tuneful, but he scarcely attains that subtle interpretation which the Borders merit, though in " The Brown Burns" and "On Cheviot's Shoulder" be comes very near it. Mr. Fairbridge's Veld Verse is interest- ing because of the hope and enthusiasm of his verses. He is deeply in love with South Africa ; but sincerity is not of itself a warrant for good poetry. He is too dithyrambic, too prone to banal phrases, and a fine conception like that of " To the Grower of Mealies at Rusapi" is spoiled by his magniloquence. We trust that to his sincerity of thought he will add sincerity of style. Mr. Clifford Bax's Twenty Chinese Poems are the work of Cantonese poets some three hundred years ago. The translations (as also the coloured illustrations) are very delicate and beautiful, curious indeterminate songs in which human emotion and human fancy are scarcely distinguishable from the moods of Nature. The same feeling is present in Mr. Yone Noguchi's From the Eastern. Sea, in which a Japanese poet, writing in felicitous English, conveys directly to the West the poetic traditions of his country. We have before this had occasion to praise Mr. Noguchi's work. It says much for Mr. Clifford Bax's skill as a translator that we should find in his Chinese poems the same quality as in Mr. Noguchi. We quote one little song " Now have I bidden farewell to the Spring that is ah ! how fleet, And a long farewell to my lover; alas, how long is the pain ! Truly the flowers in a year will blossom afresh at my feet,

But never the season return when I and my darling shall meet. Who gave me a gift so precious but left.me to love it in vain? The Master of Magic who sent it, ah surely could send it again.

If only to darken the darkness, 0 Thou in Thy heavens above, Why dost Thou light for a moment the lamp of a beautiful thing? Who is there now that will carry my little wine-gourd for love When I go next year to the meadow to look on the joy of the Spring P " Last on our list come two volumes of lighter verse. Mr. Patterson's Quacks and Twitters is, in spite of the stupid title, an amusing book. His sonnet " To 'Hawkins " is good mock- heroic; and "Hans and Gretchen" and "A Lament" are excellent fooling. Mr. Wilfrid Blair is still better, for he keeps burning the sacred lamp of parody, which never quite flickers out by the Isis. Where all are so good it is hard to choose, but we should select as specially good the version of Mr. Kipling, "Butler an"Ousemaid Too," the set of sonnets on Oxford sights, " The Schools " in the style of " Locksley Hall," and the various perversions of Whitman. He can also, as in "The Nautical B.A.'s," write nonsense ballads with something of the mad gallop and ingenious rhymes of the author of the Ingoldeby Legends. •