Reviews Part 31

How Gautier would have liked this from the same poem!--

Hew the timbers of sandal-wood, And planks of ivory; Rear up the s.h.i.+ning masts of gold, And let us put to sea.

Sew the sails with a silken thread That all are silken too; Sew them with scarlet pomegranates Upon a sheet of blue.

Rig the s.h.i.+p with a rope of gold And let us put to sea.

And now, good-bye to good Ma.r.s.eilles, And hey for Tripoli!

The ballad of the Duke of Gueldres's wedding is very clever:

'O welcome, Mary Harcourt, Thrice welcome, lady mine; There's not a knight in all the world Shall be as true as thine.

'There's venison in the aumbry, Mary, There's claret in the vat; Come in, and breakfast in the hall Where once my mother sat!'

O red, red is the wine that flows, And sweet the minstrel's play, But white is Mary Harcourt Upon her wedding-day.

O many are the wedding guests That sit on either side; But pale below her crimson flowers And homesick is the bride.

Miss Robinson's critical sense is at once too sound and too subtle to allow her to think that any great Renaissance of Romance will necessarily follow from the adoption of the ballad-form in poetry; but her work in this style is very pretty and charming, and The Tower of St. Maur, which tells of the father who built up his little son in the wall of his castle in order that the foundations should stand sure, is admirable in its way.

The few touches of archaism in language that she introduces are quite sufficient for their purpose, and though she fully appreciates the importance of the Celtic spirit in literature, she does not consider it necessary to talk of 'blawing' and 'snawing.' As for the garden play, Our Lady of the Broken Heart, as it is called, the bright, birdlike s.n.a.t.c.hes of song that break in here and there--as the singing does in Pippa Pa.s.ses--form a very welcome relief to the somewhat ordinary movement of the blank verse, and suggest to us again where Miss Robinson's real power lies. Not a poet in the true creative sense, she is still a very perfect artist in poetry, using language as one might use a very precious material, and producing her best work by the rejection of the great themes and large intellectual motives that belong to fuller and richer song. When she essays such themes, she certainly fails. Her instrument is the reed, not the lyre. Only those should sing of Death whose song is stronger than Death is.

The collected poems of the author of John Halifax, Gentleman, have a pathetic interest as the artistic record of a very gracious and comely life. They bring us back to the days when Philip Bourke Marston was young--'Philip, my King,' as she called him in the pretty poem of that name; to the days of the Great Exhibition, with the universal piping about peace; to those later terrible Crimean days, when Alma and Balaclava were words on the lips of our poets; and to days when Leonora was considered a very romantic name.

Leonora, Leonora, How the word rolls--Leonora.

Lion-like in full-mouthed sound, Marching o'er the metric ground, With a tawny tread sublime.

So your name moves, Leonora, Down my desert rhyme.

Mrs. Craik's best poems are, on the whole, those that are written in blank verse; and these, though not prosaic, remind one that prose was her true medium of expression. But some of the rhymed poems have considerable merit. These may serve as examples of Mrs. Craik's style:

A SKETCH

Dost thou thus love me, O thou all beloved, In whose large store the very meanest coin Would out-buy my whole wealth? Yet here thou comest Like a kind heiress from her purple and down Uprising, who for pity cannot sleep, But goes forth to the stranger at her gate-- The beggared stranger at her beauteous gate-- And clothes and feeds; scarce blest till she has blest.

But dost thou love me, O thou pure of heart, Whose very looks are prayers? What couldst thou see In this forsaken pool by the yew-wood's side, To sit down at its bank, and dip thy hand, Saying, 'It is so clear!'--and lo! ere long, Its blackness caught the s.h.i.+mmer of thy wings, Its slimes slid downward from thy stainless palm, Its depths grew still, that there thy form might rise.

THE NOVICE

It is near morning. Ere the next night fall I shall be made the bride of heaven. Then home To my still marriage-chamber I shall come, And spouseless, childless, watch the slow years crawl.

These lips will never meet a softer touch Than the stone crucifix I kiss; no child Will clasp this neck. Ah, virgin-mother mild, Thy painted bliss will mock me overmuch.

This is the last time I shall twist the hair My mother's hand wreathed, till in dust she lay: The name, her name given on my baptism day, This is the last time I shall ever bear.

O weary world, O heavy life, farewell!

Like a tired child that creeps into the dark To sob itself asleep, where none will mark,-- So creep I to my silent convent cell.

Friends, lovers whom I loved not, kindly hearts Who grieve that I should enter this still door, Grieve not. Closing behind me evermore, Me from all anguish, as all joy, it parts.

The volume chronicles the moods of a sweet and thoughtful nature, and though many things in it may seem somewhat old-fas.h.i.+oned, it is still very pleasant to read, and has a faint perfume of withered rose-leaves about it.

(1) A Book of Verses. By William Ernest Henley. (David Nutt.)

(2) Romantic Ballads and Poems of Phantasy. By William Sharp. (Walter Scott.)

(3) Poems, Ballads, and a Garden Play. By A. Mary F. Robinson. (Fisher Unwin.)

(4) Poems. By the Author of John Halifax, Gentleman. (Macmillan and Co.)

SIR EDWIN ARNOLD'S LAST VOLUME

(Pall Mall Gazette, December 11, 1888.)

Writers of poetical prose are rarely good poets. They may crowd their page with gorgeous epithet and resplendent phrase, may pile Pelions of adjectives upon Ossas of descriptions, may abandon themselves to highly coloured diction and rich luxuriance of imagery, but if their verse lacks the true rhythmical life of verse, if their method is devoid of the self- restraint of the real artist, all their efforts are of very little avail.

'Asiatic' prose is possibly useful for journalistic purposes, but 'Asiatic' poetry is not to be encouraged. Indeed, poetry may be said to need far more self-restraint than prose. Its conditions are more exquisite. It produces its effects by more subtle means. It must not be allowed to degenerate into mere rhetoric or mere eloquence. It is, in one sense, the most self-conscious of all the arts, as it is never a means to an end but always an end in itself. Sir Edwin Arnold has a very picturesque or, perhaps we should say, a very pictorial style. He knows India better than any living Englishman knows it, and Hindoostanee better than any English writer should know it. If his descriptions lack distinction, they have at least the merit of being true, and when he does not interlard his pages with an interminable and intolerable series of foreign words he is pleasant enough. But he is not a poet. He is simply a poetical writer--that is all.

However, poetical writers have their uses, and there is a good deal in Sir Edwin Arnold's last volume that will repay perusal. The scene of the story is placed in a mosque attached to the monument of the Taj-Mahal, and a group composed of a learned Mirza, two singing girls with their attendant, and an Englishman, is supposed to pa.s.s the night there reading the chapter of Sa'di upon 'Love,' and conversing upon that theme with accompaniments of music and dancing. The Englishman is, of course, Sir Edwin Arnold himself:

lover of India, Too much her lover! for his heart lived there How far soever wandered thence his feet.

Lady Dufferin appears as

Lady Duffreen, the mighty Queen's Vice-queen!

which is really one of the most dreadful blank-verse lines that we have come across for some time past. M. Renan is 'a priest of Frangestan,'

who writes in 'glittering French'; Lord Tennyson is

One we honour for his songs-- Greater than Sa'di's self--

and the Darwinians appear as the 'Mollahs of the West,' who

hold Adam's sons Sprung of the sea-slug.

All this is excellent fooling in its way, a kind of play-acting in literature; but the best parts of the book are the descriptions of the Taj itself, which are extremely elaborate, and the various translations from Sa'di with which the volume is interspersed. The great monument Shah Jahan built for Arjamand is

Instinct with loveliness--not masonry!

Not architecture! as all others are, But the proud pa.s.sion of an Emperor's love Wrought into living stone, which gleams and soars With body of beauty shrining soul and thought, Insomuch that it haps as when some face Divinely fair unveils before our eyes-- Some woman beautiful unspeakably-- And the blood quickens, and the spirit leaps, And will to wors.h.i.+p bends the half-yielded knees, Which breath forgets to breathe: so is the Taj; You see it with the heart, before the eyes Have scope to gaze. All white! snow white! cloud white!

We cannot say much in praise of the sixth line:

Insomuch that it haps as when some face:

it is curiously awkward and unmusical. But this pa.s.sage from Sa'di is remarkable: