C URRENT LITERATURE.
PANSIES.
Pansies. By Ennis May. (G. Allen. 3s. 61 net.)—This is a little volume of graceful and sympathetic verse. We feel, indeed, bound to repeat once more what we have already said many times, —that the execution might have been better. There are books of
verse in which there is, it may be, some thought with much feeling—always more in evidence than thought—but an absolute want of all technical skill. Pansies is not one of such. The writer has an ear and some metrical skill, yet there is not a piece which quite satisfies us as to technique and expression generally. Here is a quatrain which is spoilt by the fourth line, which wants the distinction of those which precede it :—
Though myrrh be mingled with the wine, The bitter with the sweet at Strife, Good is the foaming draught of life, The Father's pledge of love divine."
The same experience was repeated as we searched through the volume, anxious to show the writer at her best. The specimen which we give we have chosen, not for its special excellence, but because it gives with no little feeling and tact the other side on a matter which it is not easy just now to look round:—
Tern ask my thouahts about this cruel war ; I cannot think. I dare not—The tierce wave That blindly hurls both ship and seamen brave On the sharp sunken rock with thunderous roar Has nobler mercy— When the costly freight Of loyal hearts lies stunned on ocean's floor Shame and regret shall vex them nevermore,
Their home and they 'whelmed in one common fate.
I dare not judge. Deliberate decree
Of mighty Eugland's wrath has firmly doomed That stubborn remnant battling to be free.
Yet bleeds my heart. Less rigorous the fate
Of foundering ship. Shame's ansraish deep entombed
The nufurrowed ocean guards inviolate."
Previous page
