C CTRRENT LITER AT LIRE.
MR. ALFRED AUSTIN'S NEW VOLUME OF VERSE.
A Tale of True Love, and other Poems. By Alfred Austin. (Macmillan and Co. 5s.)—We cannot say much for the "tale" that gives a title to this volume, and occupies something less than
half of its space. Mr. Austin does not possess the art of easy narrative in verse. There seems to be something of the old con- fusion between easy writing and easy reading. Maesalay's verse runs with scarcely a hitch, but it cost him labour without an end, whereas the six lines which we now quote can scarcely have demanded more than as many minutes :—
" Ana day by day Egeria scans and watches
The ebb and flow of fluctuating war.
And ofttimes sees his name in terse dispatches Shine among those that most distinguished are.
Then pride and terror in her heart contend, And low she prays anew, • Dear God his life befriend "
Here are two imperfect rhymes, while the concluding couplet is marred by a strained expression. No one would gay "his life befriend ! " unless it were to make an assonance with "contend," a most incongruous motive in a prayer. There is a natural un- reasonableness in rhyme, and a writer of so much experience as Mr. Austin, with so much technical skill, if he will only take the pains to use it, should be careful above all things not to let his readers be conscious of any strain. And the tale itself is really. very "thin." What woman worth more than a braes farthing would be so foolish, not to use a stronger word, as to marry a man whom she did not love because the man she did love had straitened means,—and all out of pure devotion? The next poem, "In the Forum," is on a very different leveL It is on an old theme, but it is finely expressed. Here is a specimen :— " The lank-ribbed she-wolf, crouched among The regal hillside's tangled scrubs, With doting gaze and fondling tongue Suckles the Vestal's twin-born cubs.
Yet once again Evander leads .2Eneas to his wattled home, And, throned on Tiber's fresh-cut reeds, Talks of burnt Troy and rising Rome."
"Polyphemus" is another old subject handled with some fresh- ness. "A Border Burn" also shows the author to advantage. What we may call the official poems, "The Passing of the Century" and "A Royal Home-Coming," are not more success- ful than such efforts commonly are.
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