A Treasury of South. African Poetry and Verse. Collected and
Arranged by Edward Heath Crouch. (Walter Scott Publishing Company. 3s. 6d.)—Mr. Crouch gives us in this volume speci- mens of more than forty South African poets and writers of verse, —he makes a distinction between the two, and quite reasonably pleads for a favourable reception of what hardly merits the more dignified of the two names. There is a great difference between the minor poet who claims a place in a literature already made and him who takes a part in the making of it. Thomas Pringle is the first of the South African bards,—his portrait, with the subscription of "Father of South African Poetry," serves as a frontispiece. Here is part of Mr. Lance Fallaw's "Old St. Thomas' Churchyard, Durban" (p. 140) :-
" No English willow for our English dead :
The soft flamboyant shades their southern sleep. On the spare grass syringa blooms are shed, And lithe virginias creep
Over the stones where the swift lizards tread.
The rose is here, but with a faint perfume ; And, standing 'thwart the hedge, the Kaffir-broom Holds in mid-air its tufts of poppy red.
Worship has gone, but Peace has never left The church deserted, with the toppling tower And the dead creeper. Time can make no theft Of his unpuasing hour,
For time in this retreat seems wing-bereft, The world is all apart—far, far away The eyes scarce catch the shapes of Bluff and Bay, While tree and gableleave an opening cleft."
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