MR. F.A.NSHAWE'S POEM.*

By Iteginn'd Fanshawe. London: George Bel an)

NO reader of this small volume, whether he be perplexed or delighted, can lay it down without a feeling of profound, respect for the writer; no critic can read it without seeing that Mr. Fanshawe, so far from being the idle singer of an idle lay," has endeavoured, through a record of his own experience of suffering, to teach in song a lesson worthy of the poet. His purpose is to show how, through the en-

tanglements and perplexities of modern life, we may find a clear path to walk in, and how the lessons learnt from spiritual conflict may yield courage and strength. Subtle thought, and a certain largeness of outlook, are to be seen in this poem ; but these qualifications are more essen- tial to a philosopher than to a poet. The thought that gives- life to poetry, and the wisdom which we glean from it, must have their source in imagination. What we learn in song is gained incidentally, the first object of a poet being not to teach, but to sing. How far then, it may be asked, has Mr.. Fanshawe fulfilled his vocation ?

Two Lives is preceded by a preface of considerable length. In it, the author states that the note of the poem is primarily per- sonal and essentially modern. Prompted in the first instance by the loss of a wife, he has endeavoured to harmonise the spiritual gain resulting from that sorrow, with the hopes and aspirations of the age. After saying that the specific privilege of song "is to idealise and unify more freely, in modes per- sonal and passionate, melodious and imaginative," he adds :—

"This poem is an attempt to embody, even in such personal and imaginative forms, with directness and delibera- tion, the spirit of our age, in the phases of its denial and in the fullness of its positive promise. One who has lived through those phases, and realised that promise, can read in himself the reflection of their life. To represent such a life, personal and common, as a growth which has reabsorbed a full organic sus- tenance from the roots of the past, and which has been quickened thereby to push forward a flower of faith and vision into the spring of the future, is the sum of his purpose. What has been sung has been lived, and it has been sung because it has been lived."

It will be seen from the words which we have marke& in italics that Mr. Fanshawe comes before the public with good credentials. A poem, whatever its intrinsic value may be, that has its source in the author's life, can scarcely fail to be worth reading. Something of interest we shall gain from it, even if we do not reach the conviction that the interest is wholly due to the incommunicable gift of imaginative art. Two Lives, it is needful to say, is but a fragment of a work to be completed in the future. It is written in the Spenserian stanza, and interspersed with lyrics. The dedica- tion to the poet's dead wife has some beautiful lines, written in six-line stanzas, the first four lines being in the verse made familiar and dear to us by "In Memoriam," while the fifth. line rhymes with the first, and the last line with the second. Despite the difference of metre, we see, though indistinctly,

the noteand mood of Tennyson throughout these opening tines. Three stanzas shall be quoted :—

".01ibrothers living hopeless, whom Doubt's heavy pole doth still incline To one deep winter undivine,

If I, who circle from the gloom By God's slow season, might illume Your underworld, which else were mine.

If even I in song might serve And touch again to tune's control The sickness of an age whose soul I felt with all my nature's nerve From its sane issue start and swerve, Or free for perfect vision's whole.

If song itself might half unloose The law that plucks two lives apart, Half bind one broadening nature's heart, I too were less a thing recluse, By your free brotherhood's full use, For whom I hold this human art."

Where the "In Memoriam " metre is adopted the resem- blance is more striking :— "I know not whether love unwed

A crown unworn, a life uncrowned, More hopeless were, or love that found All its fulfilment in the dead.

My sorrow I have told to song, God knoweth, in a doubting hope, That it may win there truer scope, And make at last my weakness strong.

And so perchance, my love, unlost, Shall pass to some more subtle power Of formless heat ; my life shall flower More fruitful for this deadly frost.

And I must deem my nature's nerve By death himself was there restrung, That I should be as one who sung How sorrow learnt from love to serve."

The refined feeling visible in these lines allured us on in the hope of discovering traces of the imaginative energy which the critic so often finds the one thing lacking as he works his painful way through volumes of carefully constructed verse.

Song springs from deep emotion, and Mr. Fanshawe has two sources of inspiration,—the memory of a lost love, and of a conflict in which joy has conquered sorrow. The result is a poem fall of the compressed power born of deep feeling, some- times admirably expressed, and sometimes with a difficulty of utterance which obstructs the flow and obscures the meaning of the verse. The author strikes us as a poet with more gold than he knows how to turn into sterling coin. There is at one time the vision, without the faculty, and at another both faculty and vision seem to fail, and the "burden "the poet has to deliver falls lifeless from his pen, or becomes an enigma.

Mr. Fanshawe's treatment of the stanza in which the body of the poem is written, resembles the method of Byron rather than of Spenser. Too often in the poem the frequent repeti- tion of words or phrases shows a want of careful revision, and sometimes the meaning appears to be sacrificed to the rhyme. These are blemishes which vex the reader, and might readily be removed, if they do not greatly interfere with his pleasure. Whether, when Mr. Fanshawe's fragment is moulded into a complete poem, he will prove it possible to blend as he designs the "experience of a private soul" with "the larger

unity which is born of an effort to realise and reflect the spirit of an epoch," is a question for the future to decide. Assuredly, so far as Two Lives is carried at present, the stanzas that dwell on the memories of the past, and express the author's personal emotion, are by far the most poetical. An interesting passage shall be quoted, in which the poet relates how when his life VMS filled with love, there was no room for the song which came later with sorrow. He re- members that, in the early days of love,— " When laughing strife

Of light words still betrayed not, we were stealing Spirit to spirit nearer "—

4' a phantom hope of formless song," and of producing music

to which she should grant "an ear of graciousness," haunted his spirit for awhile, and then again passed away.

And after, when so sweetly she came down

From her far heaven unsphered, and deigned to dwell Amid my twilight, fair fulfilment's crown Lay on my life. Her quiet eyes would quell The unrest and fever of my own, and fell With new enchantment on my sense, and wove About my weakness and my strength a spell, Whose subtle music overwhelmed and drove My dream of song aloof by countercharm of love."

The most harmonious passages in the poems are those prompted by the poet's loss. It is not fanciful to believe that memories which are at once sad and soothing, passionate and yet sweet, should affect the modulation of the rhythm. Several stanzas might be quoted to illustrate this character- istic, but one must suffice :— " A.h me! I dare not dream. I dreamt last night, Methought that I was standing at her door,

And saw my sweet within by the wan light, Wearing the simple black that once she wore, When, at our first full kiss, we learnt the lore Of love made perfect. Pale she stood, a stone, And cold, as she was never wont before, And crying Come not' in a troubled tone, Left me in winter darkness with my love alone."

Mr. Fa,nshawe, who is an Oxford man, finds, like Matthew Arnold, food for his song in that most beautiful and revered of cities. There, too, as we learn, love was linked with life,

and made the ground sacred :—

"I may not linger by the mill, or brood

Among the meadows, though the pulsing oar Beats echoing on my heart of solitude ; I must not loiter aimless on the shore, Where the two rivers mingle, where, before Her pure life melted wholly into mine, We spake apart, and listened to the lore Of undercurrent love.

. . ......

Again I wander round the garden walk, Between the grey wall and the drooping lime ; And dreams live on in fragmentary talk, Tinder the magic of that May's pure prime, And light thoughts o'er dim feeling cross and climb, Where chestnuts hold high tapers shimmering, And the beech bronzes ; while as chapel chime Awe briefly lingers, and life seems a thing Of airy blossoms blown from the soft lips of spring."

One feature of this volume deserves notice in these days when many of our younger poets, losing 'the faith that in-

spires hope, have become morbid and pessimistic. Mr. Fanshawe's sorrow finds its aliment in joy, and the poem closes with two beautiful lyrics in which that joy finds expres- sion. We should like, were more space at our command, to quote "Song's Season," but take the following lines :—

Oh plant, whose flowers of lilac pale, And leaves of ivy, climb and keep Life's vision through the months that sleep ! Oh, deathless past, whose tendrils trail Over my fancy still, and veil Its bareness, send your fibres deep Into my heart, where love once clomb, And clothe in song love's empty ho me.

Oh love, to-day, since thou west born

In some sweet hour the date of this,

I, too, have felt the sun's light kiss With earth ; for me the woods have worn Fresh-tasselled catkins, though the thorn Be silver yet with clematis; And by gaunt bracken's withered wraith The golden gorse has flowered in faith."

There are several fine stanzas on the death of Lord Tenny- son, which some readers may regard as the crown of the volume; and the art with which the passing away of the Laureate is linked to Mr. Fanshawe's private loss, which occurred about the same time, is marked by delicacy and skill. In common hands, such a personal reference in connec- tion with a national loss would have proved offensive or ridiculous, but the author's fine sense of what is fitting serves him here in good stead. The Laureate's "Crossing the Bar" is recalled in this stanza :— "And therefore consecration's sound hath passed

On the memory of that mellow sunset song, Prophetic of his parting, and the last Whereto she listened, trembling from my tongue ; Whose pure waves echoed on, perchance, among The fragments of her memory, softly stirred By little steps, till love, who would prolong His deepening proof, might ripple with no word The dreamful shore of death, and only God was heard."

We have said enough, we hope, to show that Two Lives is worthy of attention from the students of poetry. Mr. Fan- shawe has merits that do not belong to the mechanical versi- fier. That the author is a poet will probably be acknowledged by those who are most sensitive to his shortcomings ; but whether he will prove a poet of more than minor significance is a question that cannot be answered until we are able to estimate the poem of Two Lives in its complete form.