MISS CROSS'S POEMS.*

THESE are not ambitious poems, or rather, we should say,—for ambitiousness in the sense of straining at something above one's power to feel truly, is almost the very antithesis of a poetical temperament,—are not poems which aim at any of the more difficult tasks of true poetry ; but they have the essence of lyrical poetry in them, true simplicity, a liquid movement both in feeling and expression, a pathos that does not burn barrenly at the heart but suffuses the fancy and the imagination, a true eye for such pictures as are attempted at all, and above all—not always, but sufficiently often to give the book a charm,—that 'lyrical cry' as Mr. Arnold calls it, which no one can imitate, which it is neither given to imagination to invent without being touched by a true passion of humanity, nor to the deepest pain or pity itself to utter without an imaginative ear and voice.

* An Old 8tory, and other Poems. By Elizabeth D. Cross. London: Longman. We do not wish to exaggerate the beauty of these little poems. There are several pieces of mere verse in the volume, and only perhaps in four or five of the poems does the poetry reach a tone that lingers and returns long after the book is closed. But the little volume has that rare distinction in a first effort, perfect clearness of feeling and expression, absolute freedom from turbidity of any kind, and especially from the blurred egotism of so much of the modern verse. There is nothing that is not lucid, though there is a good deal which, though lucid, is not exactly transparent. Even light itself is sometimes a mist that isolates, instead of a medium which connects, and Miss Cross has now and then indulged in a vein of sweet and fanciful pathos which produces its effect like music, rather by touching closely associated and harmonizing chords, than by summoning up a distinct idea before the understanding.

Perhaps, on the whole, the most beautiful of these little poems is that which Miss Cross has chosen to give a name to the book, and which she has called "An Old Story." It is very simply told, —a mother's recollection of her first disappointment audits results told to her daughter on her own engagement under somewhat like circumstances. But the little poem is full of true pathos, and contains one or two slight pictures of the kind usually called "idyllic," which rest and satisfy both "the inner eye" and the inner mind. Such, for instance, is the picture of the girl after the brain-fever caused by her desertion by her first lover is over, and her dark hair all shorn away, sitting at the cottage door at sunset, spinning "as if for life, too stunned to think or to feel," when the shadow of her cousin Hugh falls upon the spinning wheel :—

"For in those days I used to sit

Spinning, outside in the air, I was too weak yet to work in the house,

Or walk to the village fair. And as I sat spinning as if for life,

Too stunned to think, or to feel (The sun, I remember, was low in the west),

A shadow darkened the wheel— I did not stop, for I thought it would move,

To pass our way there were few ; Bat the shadow remained, and I turned at last, And there was my cousin Hugh.

And he was bending a look on me, That I shall never forget, It is more than thirty years since then, But well I can see it yet.

I knew not what was the thought in his heart,

But his face was transfigured, and shone,

And his great blue eyes were filled with tears,—

But even while I looked he was gone."

There is striking truth as well as beauty in the way this memory is recalled. The girl sits in the evening sunlight, spinning mechani- cally in the half-petrified state of a convalescent after a great illness and a great sorrow, notes idly the shadow which has fallen on her spinning wheel, but, being in that hard, numb, mood in which all events seem "grains of sterile fancy loose and dry," is rather disposed to stake something inwardly to herself on the period of its duration, and to fix arbitrarily a moment for its disappearance, than to turn her eyes to what casts it. It is a mood in which events themselves seem nothing but shadows, and in which we are apt to prefer counting their shadows with averted eyes to facing the realities which cast them. Equally true, and even more beautiful, is the little picture of the evening when Hugh at length melts the stony weight at her heart. He has asked her for a lock of the shorn hair, and she, passively grateful to him, and glad to be able to have anything in her power that will please him, has fetched it from her mother's room. When she comes out again,

"His eyes were fixed on the setting sun, His face was pale and kind, Courteous and gentle the thanks he gave,

As well I can bring to mind ;

But when he had the hair in his hand, He seemed to forget I was there, And fell to saying such sweet, strange things,

And all to a lock of hair !

I could not follow the words he said—

Sometimes they seemed quite wild,

And then I saw him kiss the hair,

And then he sobbed like a child.

And while I was wondering more and more, And thought it could hardly be true,

That any man should be weeping thus— And such a strong man as Hugh— I seemed to wake from a woful dream,

My spinning began to shake, And my heart was a heart of flesh, that swelled, And throbbed as though it would break. '

Then the long-gathering storm of tears Fell fast, but not for grief, As you have seen the heavy rain Bring the sad air relief. And I could see all things clearly now, And by the wonderful grace Of God, could know and could understand, Not darkly, but face to face.

Not even to you, my daughter, All that passed that night can I tell, Nor all the words that were spoken, Though I remember them well.

But before the end of the evening I was as happy as you, I had wealth untold who was once so poor, And my troth was plighted to Hugh."

The melting of the girl's heart at her lover's tenderness to a lock of her shorn hair,—which, indeed, rouses her own sense of self-pity as a sort of symbol of her own former self, is very beautiful and natural. The little story called " Nathalie" has a good deal of beauty of the same kind, but scarcely equal in degree.

We have said that Miss Cross has this genuine mark of poetry on her best poems, that her pathos is not mere emotion, but is dis- tinguished from it by being bathed in an atmosphere of imagina-

tion which makes it luminous, makes it, in fact, art. Perhaps the really best illustration of this is in the poem we have already

given,—but the most strikhig illustrations, to extract both of which, however, we have hardly space,—the two cases in which

the lyrical feeling passes most clearly into the sphere of fancy without losing its pathos,—are perhaps the little poetic parables called "A River" and "The Wild Roses." "The River" is a story told to a child who begs for one that is at any rate "true." The drift of it is contained in the French motto that heads it :—

"Dieu Createur pardonne It lour demence ;

Ils s'etaient faits lea echos de leurs sons, No sachant pas qu'en une chaine immense, Non pour nous souls, raais pour tons nous naissons."

And the application of it is, that the river's waters, instead of pour- ng on to the goal to which they were so eagerly hastening, are dammed up by art for the better irrigation of the thirsty earth, though not without a cry of passionate remonstrance from the thwarted stream :—

"A wilful, headlong river,

That turned not to left or right, You might hear the passionate rushing Far in the silent night.

"' Where was it hasting, the river, Flowing so straight and true ? ' I cannot tell you, my darling, For only the river knew.

"Nay, do not smile, to the river It was a matter of life and death; To have watched it hurrying onward Had taken away your breath.

"Perchance, in depths of a far blue lake Its waters yearned to rest ; Perchance the many-voiced sea had called The river home to his breast.

"Whatever the dream, it might not be ; For they laid great stones, and hard, In the bed of the shining river, And all its purpose marred.

"And if you had heard the sobbing Of waters, the passionate moan, You would have thought a human heart Was breaking against the stone.

Yet now, in the thirsty meadows Is water enough and to spare,— The drooping flowers in the gardens Raise faces so fresh and fair !

"Well—was it well for the river? You think, it was better far,'— I cannot tell : is the trailing light Sweet to the falling star ?

"But if you had heard the sobbing Of waters, the passionate moan, You would have thought a human heart Was breaking against the stone."

There is a true pathos here, though a pathos of fancy rather than of real life. And in "The Wild Roses" there is even a deeper pathos of the same kind. It is a song which faintly reminds us of Goethe's exquisite little song, merrier in movement but sadder in meaning, " Roslein auf der Heide."

When Miss Cross leaves her more human subjects, and launches into political rhapsodies like those on ' Poland ' and 'the Volun- teers,' we cannot say that she stirs us at all. This is the sort of thing that is written to order, and the delicacy of touch which marks the author seems to have disappeared :—

""Low lies thy head,

0 thou forsaken ! grieved in spirit, and not comforted, Thou captive, bound by cruel foes, Beautiful amid thy woes, Dreaming in thy dungeon drear, Thy love, and thy deliverer near, To heal all wounds, and calm all fear, But waking, find him not, nor arm, nor voice to cheer.

Trust not in princes, or the word of kings, But in the power that brings To light all hidden things.

Trust not in princes, or the lofty ones, Who for themselves, and not for thee, will scheme, But lean upon the love of thine own sons, Who bleed for thee, and dream But of thy destiny ; They die, that thou may'st see The divine light of liberty!"

That, we may safely say, will go to the heart of no one, Pole or Englishman, proper as the sentiments it expresses are ; and even the poem on "the picture of the Christian Martyr," " Moriens Cairo," seems to us a little conventional. Nor, again in the strictly personal verses, the lines to Madame D., and others, does Miss Cross seem to us to shine. It is in dealing with real subjects when east in an imaginative framework that she passes the boundary between verse and poetry,—as in not only the poems we have mentioned, but others, like "A Virginian's Tale" and "The Falcon,"—the lat- ter, again, half parable, half picture, where the parable gives pathos to the picture, and the picture luminousness to the parable. But it would be unreasonable in any book of poems to expect to find the true stamp in all. And we can truly say that even where Miss Cross has failed, there is no sign of false taste ; and where she has succeeded she has bathed her subject in a bright and lucid atmosphere, which not only stirs the fancy while we read, but leaves the memory grateful.