MR. BOURDILLON'S POEMS.* TitouGn we have from time to time

shown our appreciation of Mr. Bourdillon's delicacy of touch by publishing not a few speci- mens of his verse, we do not feel in any degree debarred from the right to judge his poetry impartially, and to give our readers a

• Among the Potters, and other Pools. By Francis W. Bourdillon. London • Marcus Ward and Co. seen of the difference between the loveliness of an emblem, and the sincere judgment on the character and on the promise of his verse. At present, we should speak of his best efforts as poetical cameos. Like the beautiful little eight-line poem which gained so much popularity, called " Light," the best of these poems are cut with extreme delicacy in a very fine and delicate medium, and charm us almost as much by the tenuity, as they do by the grace, of the thought or expression of emotion they contain. There is a beauty in the mere airiness of any earthly substance. To feel that we are dealing with something lovely which it takes some delicacy of perception to recognise as distinct from nothing, as when we admire the shining gossamer threads drawn from leaf to leaf on an autumn morning, has a charm of its own. The fragility—the frailty, if you will—of any beautiful object, adds to the sense of its beauty, so long as that beauty is real and un- deniable. The dewdrop is more beautiful, to human fancy, than the raindrop, just because it is conceived as more evanescent, as hardly surviving the sparkle of the morning sun in its cool centre. And the cameo is more beautiful than the wood or ivory carving, for the same reason, because the delicate tissue of the shell from which it is carved gives the sense of something at once requiring and repaying fineness of touch, more perfectly than either wood or ivory. Those who can express adequately a very fine shade of thought or feeling can do something which very few can do, and for which all who are sensible of these fine shades of thought and feeling, without having the requisite power to utter what they feel, are sure to be grateful. Take, for instance, a very slight poem indeed,—not one of Mr. Bour- dillon's most beautiful poetus,—but still one that shows the cunning of his touch all the better, perhaps, that the feeling expressed is not of the deepest. It would be difficult, we fancy, to contrast more gracefully than Mr. Bourdillon contrasts, in the following poem, the pang, not to say the resentment, with which we are made fully aware of the beauty we have lost, with the ease with which we are reconciled to losing that which we lose only gradually :—

"Two ROBBERS.

When Death from some fair face Is stealing life away, All weep, save she, the grace That earth shall lose to-day.

When Time from some fair face Steals beauty, year by year, For her slow-fading grace Who sheds, save she, a tear And Death not often dares So wake the world's distress; While Time, the cunning, mars Surely all loveliness.

Yet though by breath and breath Fades all our fairest prime, Men shrink from cruel Death, But honour crafty Timo."

That is nearer to vcrs de sociele than Mr. Bourdillon generally approaches. If be wrote many verses of this kind, we should hardly admire him as much as we do ; for delicacy of touch on subjects which are the theme of society is more common, and not so fascinating, as delicacy of touch on the finer themes with which, by preference, Mr. Bourdillon deals. But it would not be easy to express with more case and grace, though Mr. Bourdillon himself might easily have expressed with more depth of feeling, men's ingratitude to the heavy blows which bring them to them- selves, and their easy tolerance of those which, by constant re- iteration, chisel away the very substance of what they most value.

But the specific charm of Mr. Bourdillon's best verse is that it shows this fineness of touch on themes serener and higher and nobler than those which most interest the young poets of the present day. There is an air of purity and restfulness, in short of spiritual loveliness, about the better of these poems, slight and all but gossamer in fibre as they are, which diffuses itself through the mind of the reader, and makes him, too, live for a few moments in what Milton calls " empyrean " air. Take this, for instance, by way of illustration of the limited view which confounds love with pain, through the mere defect of its vision :—

"TILE SHADOW OF LOVE.

The branching shades, in woodland glades, Seem to the under-fern

Wide as the night that leaves no light ; No shape can they discern.

And we, who seek in senses weak

Love's folm to entertain,—

So far Love's whole o'erspreads the soul,— Too oft see only pain."

Or take the following as the most perfect expression we have ever

loveliness of that which needs and uses the emblem, but lives in a far higher world than that of emblems :— " To A WATER-LILY AT EVENING. Sleep, Lily on the lake,

Without one troubled dream Thy hushed repose to break, Until the morning beam Shall open thy glad heart again. To live its life apart from pain !

Se skill is thy repose, So pure thy petals seem, As Heaven would here disclose Its peace, and we might deem A soul in each white Lily lay, Passionless, from the lands of day.

Yet but a flower thou art, For angel ne'er, nor saint, Though kept on earth apart From every earthly taint, A life so passionless could know Amid a world of human woo."

We will give one more perfect specimen of Mr. Bourdillon's, before we begin to find fault. It would be difficult, we think, to portray more exquisitely than Mr. Bourdillon portrays in the following sonnet, either the ideal fairness of a bright anticipation and the fear we feel lest when the reality comes it will come with disap- pointment,—or the reason for this, namely, the blending of all our higher pleasures together into an ideal whole which raises the level of every separate part, and so renders the charm of a memory or a hope or dream of beauty, greater than the charm of any one of the individual experiences which have enabled us to hope that hope and dream that dream :— "UNDER TIIE LIMES.

How sweet in winter-time we feign the Spring, How fair by night we dream the day shall be ! Can any April-tide such freshness bring, Our eyes on any morn such brightness see ? Half heedlessly wo hear the first bird sing, Behold the first shoots breaking on the tree ; And when we wake, our reason fain would cling Prisoner to fancies, fearing to be free.

For like the crossing leaves, that day by day Grow larger, till they weave the linden shade, Our pleasures so are woven to a whole ; Not in the part we see how glad are they, But after find ov'n fairer than we prayed Their dreams and memories left within the soul."

On the other hand, we must admit that there is not a little that is simply thin, and one or two pieces which are even trashy, in

this little volume. The long poem, for instance, called " Gertrude's Love," is a disagreeable tale, poorly told, with hardly a line characteristic of Mr. Bourdillon. "Alice, my Wife," is in- tended for sharp satire, but seems to us blunt satire, and eminently trashy. " Ella " is a far more lively and successful attempt in the same line, but still it is not Mr. Bourdillon's line. "A Nun's Dream," again, is obscure in drift, disfigured a little by jerkiness, and not marked by the exquisite workmanship of many of the poems. Nor do we see the point of such a poem as this :—

" TILE UNKNOWN DEITY.

There stood an altar in a lonely wood, And over was a veiled deity, And no man dared to raise the veiling hood, Nor any knew what god they then should see.

Yet many passed to gaze upon the thing, And all who passed did sacrifice and prayer, Lest the Unknown not rightly honouring, Some great god they should anger unaware.

And each one thought this hidden god was he Whom be desired in his most secret heart, And prayed for that he longed for most to be, Gifts that was no fixed godhead to impart.

Nor prayed in vain, for prayers, scarce breathed in word, Were straight fulfilled, and every earthly bliss Showered down on men ; till half the world had hoard, And left all ancient gods to worship this.

But Jove, in anger at his rites unpaid, Tore off the veil with one fierce tempest-breath :— Lo that to which all men their vows had made, Shuddering, they saw, was their fell foeman, Death.

And all forgot the blessings they had bad, And all forsook the kindly carven stone.

'Tis now a shapeless block ; the zephyrs sad,—

None else,—their nightly prayers around it moan."

The difficulty here is with the meaning. How so many could

have gained their prayers by the power of Death, even though he was still unknown to them, is not easy to understand. You may gain peace or rest by death, but you do not think you gain what you pray for if you die before you gain it. And how half the world could have heard of the success of the prayers offered up to the unknown Deity, if they were only gained by Death's agency, does not seem clear. No doubt, Death gives to some the possessions of which he robs others, but as a rule, he makes them wait long for those possessions first, and he would gain no great praise as a powerful deity, we fancy, after that fashion. On the whole, we can only regard this poem as one which, contrary to Mr. Bourdillon's usual habit, is a little forced.

But we must not leave a young poet of so much promise with words of discouragement. In the spirited poem called "The Hill Pass," we find another kind of promise from that of any of the little gems of which we have hitherto given specimens,— promise of fire and passion. It has the ring and force in it of true martial ardour :— "Tit HILL-PASS.

It is time to arouse us from slumber, For the peaks are foresaken of night, And the stars of their 'wildering number Leave only one light.

No fear now to find not a footing In the shadow on slippery crag, Or to stumble at torrents uprooting Of pine-tree or jag.

See each watch-fire far of the foemen Is a smoke, that all night was a spark ; Let us hail it triumphant, the omen ! Their hopes dashed and dark !

Quick to horse, ere the daylight be stronger, Lest our steel, blue as true blood, should seem To turn traitor with loitering longer, And betray us by gleam!

Now by rock and by chasm we thunder, On, on, to the pass in the hills, Where the sheer rocks are parted asunder, And the white torrent spills.

For there, 'twixt the black walls uprising, A host may be barred by a score ; And there, save for traitor's surprising, Will our bands be before.

On, on, with a thunderous clanging, Through the echoing gorges we go, Heights a thousand feet over us hanging, Depths a thousand below.

And here, where the rock wall runs curving, Our horses, so headlong the pace, Half over the chasm hang swerving ;— Who reeks in a race ?

What heart fears for death now, or danger, With his Fatherland's freedom for prize? What is death to the yoke of the stranger, On a free neck that lies?

But darker the cliffs now are closing Above to a cavernous glen, Dark as death, hidden deep from day's rosing, A horror of men.

Above us, on black wings are wheeling, New startled, the raven and kite ; On our heads, from the damp crevice stealing, Fall dews of the night.

Beneath, from the valleys mist-clouded, A skeleton fir, here and there, Rises dark as death's finger, enshrouded In folds of despair.

But in us is no heart of a maiden, To flutter at omens of ill; With a purpose too stern are we laden ; Let tremble who will!

The dews from our heads we shake, scorning; And the horror of death from our souls, Like the mists at the rising of morning, Impalpable rolls.

For there see a cleft in the ridges, That rise like a wall in our way, Which a cloud, red with sunrising, bridges, The portal of day.

There, there is the pass ; there the icemen Not yet bar the way; and behold, There right in the cleft, for good omen, The great sun, all gold!"

That is thoroughly spirited, and there are one or two other poems which are more than spirited, which have a real grandeur of tone in them. But for the most part, Mr. Bourdffion's promise consists in the clear and beautiful terseness with which he can catch the essence of a transient shade of thought or feeling, and chisel it out in words which savour of a common origin with the purest sentiment.