Age lorded not, nor rose the hectic Up to the cheek of youth; But reigned throughout their dialectic Sobriety of truth.
And if a long-held contest tended To ill-defined result, _It was by calm consent suspended As over-difficult_.
Mr. Austin, however, has other moods, and, perhaps, he is at his best when he is writing about flowers. Occasionally he wearies the reader by tedious enumerations of plants, lacking indeed reticence and tact and selection in many of his descriptions, but, as a rule, he is very pleasant when he is babbling of green fields. How pretty these stanzas from the dedication are!
When vines, just newly burgeoned, link Their hands to join the dance of Spring, Green lizards glisten from cleft and c.h.i.n.k, And almond blossoms rosy pink Cl.u.s.ter and perch, ere taking wing;
Where over strips of emerald wheat Glimmer red peach and snowy pear, And nightingales all day long repeat Their love-song, not less glad than sweet They chant in sorrow and gloom elsewhere;
Where purple iris-banners scale Defending walls and crumbling ledge, And virgin windflowers, lithe and frail, Now mantling red, now trembling pale, Peep out from furrow and hide in hedge.
Some of the sonnets also (notably, one ent.i.tled When Acorns Fall) are very charming, and though, as a whole, Love"s Widowhood is tedious and prolix, still it contains some very felicitous touches. We wish, however, that Mr. Austin would not write such lines as
Pippins of every sort, and _codlins manifold_.
"Codlins manifold" is a monstrous expression.
Mr. W. J. Linton"s fame as a wood-engraver has somewhat obscured the merits of his poetry. His Claribel and Other Poems, published in 1865, is now a scarce book, and far more scarce is the collection of lyrics which he printed in 1887 at his own press and brought out under the t.i.tle of Love-Lore. The large and handsome volume that now lies before us contains nearly all these later poems as well as a selection from Claribel and many renderings, in the original metre, of French poems ranging from the thirteenth century to our own day. A portrait of Mr.
Linton is prefixed, and the book is dedicated "To William Bell Scott, my friend for nearly fifty years." As a poet Mr. Linton is always fanciful with a studied fancifulness, and often felicitous with a chance felicity.
He is fascinated by our seventeenth-century singers, and has, here and there, succeeded in catching something of their quaintness and not a little of their charm. There is a pleasant flavour about his verse. It is entirely free from violence and from vagueness, those two besetting sins of so much modern poetry. It is clear in outline and restrained in form, and, at its best, has much that is light and lovely about it. How graceful, for instance, this is!
BARE FEET
O fair white feet! O dawn-white feet Of Her my hope may claim!
Bare-footed through the dew she came Her Love to meet.
Star-glancing feet, the windflowers sweet Might envy, without shame, As through the gra.s.s they lightly came, Her Love to meet.
O Maiden sweet, with flower-kiss"d feet!
My heart your footstool name!
Bare-footed through the dew she came, Her Love to meet.
"Vindicate Gemma!" was Longfellow"s advice to Miss Heloise Durant when she proposed to write a play about Dante. Longfellow, it may be remarked, was always on the side of domesticity. It was the secret of his popularity. We cannot say, however, that Miss Durant has made us like Gemma better. She is not exactly the Xantippe whom Boccaccio describes, but she is very boring, for all that:
GEMMA. The more thou meditat"st, more mad art thou.
Clowns, with their love, can cheer poor wives" hearts more O"er black bread and goat"s cheese than thou canst mine O"er red Vernaccia, spite of all thy learning!
Care I how tortured spirits feel in h.e.l.l?
DANTE. Thou tortur"st mine.
GEMMA. Or how souls sing in heaven?
DANTE. Would I were there.
GEMMA. All folly, naught but folly.
DANTE. Thou canst not understand the mandates given To poets by their G.o.ddess Poesy. . . .
GEMMA. Canst ne"er speak prose? Why daily clothe thy thoughts In strangest garb, as if thy wits played fool At masquerade, where no man knows a maid From matron? Fie on poets" mutterings!
DANTE (to himself). If, then, the soul absorbed at last to whole-- GEMMA. Fie! fie! I say. Art thou bewitched?
DANTE. O! peace.
GEMMA. Dost thou deem me deaf and dumb?
DANTE. O! that thou wert.
Dante is certainly rude, but Gemma is dreadful. The play is well meant but it is lumbering and heavy, and the blank verse has absolutely no merit.
Father O"Flynn and Other Irish Lyrics, by Mr. A. P. Graves, is a collection of poems in the style of Lover. Most of them are written in dialect, and, for the benefit of English readers, notes are appended in which the uninitiated are informed that "brogue" means a boot, that "mavourneen" means my dear, and that "astore" is a term of affection.
Here is a specimen of Mr. Graves"s work:
"Have you e"er a new song, My Limerick Poet, To help us along Wid this terrible boat, Away over to Tork?"
"Arrah I understand; For all of your work, "Twill tighten you, boys, To cargo that sand To the overside strand, Wid the current so strong Unless you"ve a song-- A song to lighten and brighten you, boys. . . . "
It is a very dreary production and does not "lighten and brighten" us a bit. The whole volume should be called The Lucubrations of a Stage Irishman.
The anonymous author of The Judgment of the City is a sort of bad Blake.
So at least his prelude seems to suggest:
Time, the old viol-player, For ever thrills his ancient strings With the flying bow of Fate, and thence Much discord, but some music, brings.
His ancient strings are truth, Love, hate, hope, fear; And his choicest melody Is the song of the faithful seer.
As he progresses, however, he develops into a kind of inferior Clough and writes heavy hexameters upon modern subjects:
Here for a moment stands in the light at the door of a playhouse, One who is dignified, masterly, hard in the pride of his station; Here too, the stateliest of matrons, sour in the pride of her station; With them their daughter, sad-faced and listless, half-crushed to their likeness.
He has every form of sincerity except the sincerity of the artist, a defect that he shares with most of our popular writers.
(1) Love"s Widowhood and Other Poems. By Alfred Austin. (Macmillan and Co.)
(2) Poems and Translations. By W. J. Linton. (Nimmo.)
(3) Dante: a Dramatic Poem. By Heloise Durant. (Kegan Paul.)
(4) Father O"Flynn and Other Irish Lyrics. By A. P. Graves. (Swan Sonnenschein and Co.)
(5) The Judgment of the City and Other Poems. (Swan Sonnenschein and Co.)
MR. SWINBURNE"S LAST VOLUME
(Pall Mall Gazette, June 27, 1889.)
Mr. Swinburne once set his age on fire by a volume of very perfect and very poisonous poetry. Then he became revolutionary and pantheistic, and cried out against those that sit in high places both in heaven and on earth. Then he invented Marie Stuart and laid upon us the heavy burden of Bothwell. Then he retired to the nursery and wrote poems about children of a somewhat over-subtle character. He is now extremely patriotic, and manages to combine with his patriotism a strong affection for the Tory party. He has always been a great poet. But he has his limitations, the chief of which is, curiously enough, the entire lack of any sense of limit. His song is nearly always too loud for his subject.
His magnificent rhetoric, nowhere more magnificent than in the volume that now lies before us, conceals rather than reveals. It has been said of him, and with truth, that he is a master of language, but with still greater truth it may be said that Language is his master. Words seem to dominate him. Alliteration tyrannises over him. Mere sound often becomes his lord. He is so eloquent that whatever he touches becomes unreal.
Let us turn to the poem on the Armada:
The wings of the south-west wind are widened; the breath of his fervent lips, More keen than a sword"s edge, fiercer than fire, falls full on the plunging ships.
The pilot is he of the northward flight, their stay and their steersman he; A helmsman clothed with the tempest, and girdled with strength to constrain the sea.
And the host of them trembles and quails, caught fast in his hand as a bird in the toils; For the wrath and the joy that fulfil him are mightier than man"s, whom he slays and spoils.
And vainly, with heart divided in sunder, and labour of wavering will, The lord of their host takes counsel with hope if haply their star shine still.