BOOKS.

THE LATE MISS COLERIDGE'S. POEMS.*

THE greatest poetry is always impersonal,—in the sense that we value it primarily for its own sake, and not for the sake of its creator. The most poignant of the songs of Heine, the most intense vociferations of Caulks, are 'immortal in virtue of their own splendour and beauty; they have risen into the sphere of the universal, wherein the particular griefs and joys and passions which gave birth to them are irrelevant things. The biographies of great poets are of interest merely from the historical and psychological point of view ; so far as poetry is concerned they are, so to speak, -works of superero- gation; we could do very well without them. The voice of Homer will ring for ever in -the ears of the world, though it be a voice and nothing more ; and our enjoyment of Shake- speare's sonnets need not—fortunately enough !—wait on our unra.velment of the mystery of "W. H." But there is another kind of poetry, which, though it must take rank below the greatest, can never fail to call forth affection-and delight. It is the kind whose merit depends less on pure artistic achieve- ment than on the power of personal revelation,—the capacity of bringing the reader into near relationship with a charming or distinguished mind. It often happens that poems of this class do not owe their origin to the poet proper—the "pro- fessional poet," as he might be called—but that they are the by-product of some intelligence whose main activity lies in other fields. Thus many of the delightful verses written by the accomplished men of action of the Elizabethan days— those of Sir Walter Raleigh, for instance, or Sir Henry Wotton—belong to this personal class ; and -so does much of the poetical work of some of our great prose writers, such as Charles Lamb and Oliver -Goldsmith. It is on this select and quiet shelf of the library of the Muses that the late Miss Mary Coleridge's little volume of poems will find a place. Miss Coleridge will doubtless be remembered principally as a novelist, as the author, in particular, of that striking book, The King with Two Faces ; and to all who know her novels the present volume will come as a pleasant renewal of old acquaintance. Nor will it be less welcome, on its own account, to all lovers of poetry.

About one-third of the poems have previously appeared, Mr. Newbolt tells us in his brief preface, either privately printed or as contributions to periodicals. Readers of the Spectator will recognise some of these, and the rest are now published for the first time. Miss Coleridge's printed verse, says Mr. Newbolt, "was always either anonymous or signed with the pseudonym

"Avoaor ' Probably several reasons or feelings prompted this concealment ; the one by which my 'own arguments were always met was the fear of tarnishing a name which an ancestor had made illustrious in English poetry. She would close the dis- cussion with a gay and characteristic inconsistency—' Never, as long as I live! When I am dead, you may do as you like.' Now that death has so soon taken her at her word, I cannot help thinking myself justified in acting on that permission, however lightly given; and I belieVe that nt• poems are less likely than these to jar upon lovers of "Christabel' and. ' The Ancient 1 Mariner." It would, indeed, be difficult to find a style which in its main .* Poems by Mary E. Coleridge. London: Elkin lifathenve. [4e. 65. net.]

features is -more remote than Miss Coleridge's from that of her great ancestor, though his strain of haunting and phan- tasmal allegory is not altogether absent from her verse. She can, like him, raise up suggestions of strangeness,—"incompre- hensibles, and thoughts of things which thoughts but tenderly touch."

"Where dwell the lovely, wild, white women folk, Mortal to man ? "

one of her poems begins, and one is tempted to reply with the opening words of " Kubla Khan,"—" In Xanadu"; for what place could be more appropriate P At other times she clothes her allegory with something of the childlike simplicity of Blake, as in the poignant little history of the bird of paradise "in London Town "

" It was a bird of Paradise,

Over the roofs he flew ;

All the children, in a trice,

Clapped their hands and cried 'How nice!'

'Look—his wings are blue!'"

The bird, of course, was shot, and shot to no purpose :— " They flung it into the river brown.

'A. pity the creature died !' With a smile and with a frown, Thus they did in London Town; But all the children cried."

As Mr. Newbolt observes, Miss Coleridge was not ashamed of making "intentional experiments in a manner not her own." This is one of the privileges of the " non-professional " poet; and we owe to it some of the poems in the present volume which we should be least willing to miss. Particularly note- worthy among these are the verses "To a Tree," with their reminiscence of Mr. Swinburne, and the brilliant "Jealousy," written after the early manner of William Morris, with its sinister and unforgettable conclusion :—

"'Is it even so?' said the King's Majesty. 'Even so!' said the Queen."

But though Miss Coleridge was able, when she wished, to speak in the voice of another, her book shows clearly enough that she was not without a voice of her own. In fact, her poetry is original in the truest sense, for it bears the indubitable marks of being, as Mr. Newbolt says, "the off- spring of character not less than of intellect." Perhaps its most striking quality is the extreme simplicity of its outward

form. It would be difficult to imagine a less ornamented style. The splendour of mere sound, the beauty of the unanticipated word, all the graces and arts of rhetoric and "fine writing," —these things are banished from Miss Coleridge's verse, which produces its effects in a totally different way.

For it produces them, not by means of the magic of expression, but simply and directly by means of what is

expressed. This is a difficult- art, and it is clear enough that

the' essential condition of its success is that there should be something worth expressing. If one only has commonplaces in one's mind, one must send them forth in gorgeous rahnent, or not at all; to show them to the world naked and unadorned is simply to court derision. But Miss Coleridge's mind knew nothing of c,ommonplacee, and stood in no need of fancy dress. Her verse, always distinguished and never strained, has all the charm of a refined and intimate conversation ; as one reads it one feels that one is as it were, overhearing her thoughts. 'What, for instance, could be at once more subtle and more direct than these lines called " News " ?-

"Ask me not how it came,

If I sought it ! - My very thoughts are flame Since first I thought it.

I saw it not with eyes.

It was not spoken.

These mysteries

Have neither sign nor token.

Ah ! say not, 'Is it true In faith uphold me ! I know not how I knew.

My heart told me."

Very often the combined simplicity and conciseness of the expression produces the happiest phrases, which have all the point, but none of the flash, of an epigram. For instance:— , "I saw my soul look out of your eyes,

You saw your soul in mine."

"For ever it was morning when we met, Night when we bade farewell!"

And these -beautiful lines f' After St. Augustine" .1-es

"Sunshine let it be or frost, '

Storm or calm, as Thou shalt choose;

Though thine every gift were lest, The thyself we could not lose."

The feeling, ranging from the lightest. momentary thrill over a bird or a butterfly to the profoundest emotional question- ings upon the mysteries of Love and Death, is always reflec- tive, always rare, and always absolutely sincere. In its more serious phases it is filled with an introspective melancholy which broods darkly over the pains and the contradictions of life—. "For other eyes the roses; but for me The iron gate, the shadowy cypress-tree, The solemn dirge that cloistered voices sing "—

a melancholy that looks forward into the bitterness of death,

praying sometimes for "the dark unconsciousness of rest," and looks backward over the strange visions of memory,— " murderer and mistress of my heart." But it is not the melancholy of weakness, it is the melancholy of strength. In the powerful sonnet—perhaps the best poem in the book— beginning "True to myself am I, and false to all," the intensity of the passion and anguish is ennobled by a high resignation, an unflinching acceptance of the truth; and that, one feels, was the central quality of this fine intelligence. "The strong gods know," she wrote in another poem, "that I have strength to hide

The greatest of their gifts, the power to grieve,

In silence; and in silence I receive Their last reward; in silence I abide."

One is reminded of the splendid sentence of Sir Thomas Browne :—" Be substantially great in thy self, and more than thou appearest unto others ; and let the World be deceived in thee, as they are in the Lights of Heaven." But these are matters which can hardly be touohed upon within the compass of a review. If it is true that the "last reward" of "the strong gods" is indeed "the power to grieve," there are, as Miss Coleridge herself tells us, other deities, with far different consolations :— "Love, whereof purest light the shadow is,

What ? shall thy gnerdon be the general bliss ? Nay ! for thou think'st to gather wealth in vain. Labour—affliction—death—is all thy gain.

Love, that made Love, this only gift hate given Of love itself—Heaven in exchange for Heaven."