CURRENT LITERATURE.

POETRY.

Vane's Story, TVeddah and Om-El•Bonain, and Other Poems. By James Thomson. (Reeves and Turner.)—The poem called "Vane's Story" we may pass over with brief comment. The meaning is not obvious, and what the reader does catch of it will scarcely incline him to search carefully for what is hidden, unless, indeed, ho is attracted by a very decided revolt against belief,

• and very doubtful utterances about morals. " Wecldah and Om-El- Bonain " has, at least, the merit of being easily intelligible. It is an Eastern tale of love, full of the fiery passion of the "land of the cypress and myrtle." The hero is an Arab lover, one of the kindred of the Azra, "who perish when they love ;" and he goes without a sound to his death, the being buried alive in a chest wherein a slave. girl km concealed him, sooner than betray his mistress. This theme Mr. Thomson has treated with adequate power, but his style is any- thing rather than Oriental. Oriental imegery, however copious, is simple; indeed, it is copious rather in the sense of being copiously employed than of being varied. In the " Arabian Nights," for instance, images abound, but then they aro repeated again and again. "With a face like the full moon," is as much a stock epithet as Odor is of an Homeric hero. Here arc two stanzas :— 'At last death left the balaaoe,and the scale

Of wretched life jarred earth : and iii the morn The lover woke, confused as if a veil

Of heavy dreams involved him ; weak and worn And cold at heart, and wondering whet bale Had wounded him and left him thus forlorn :

So still italf.stunned with anguish he lay long, Fretful to rend the shroud that wmpt his wrong.

He turned; and on the pillow, near his head, He Saw a toy, a trifle, that gave tongue

To aratlf disaster forthwith on his bed

The coiled snake Memory hissed and sprang and. stung : Then all the fury of the storm was shed From the black swollen den& that overhung The hot rain Voured, the fierce gusts shook his soul, Wild flashes lit waste gloom from polo to pole."

Whatever may be the poetical power of such writing, it does not suit the subject. "Two Lovers" strikes us as better, or, at least, as less incongruous. Here the two, a Moslem youth and a Christian

maiden, change each their faith, giving up, as they thought, Heaven, in order that they may at least be together in hell. It is the tragio side of a story, which some of our readers may have heard in a comic form ; a husband and wife—Catholic and Protestant—who loved each other so dearly, that they simultaneously went over each to the opposite communion. Finally, we may quote "A Requiem," which seems to express the poet's mood when ho is not in the mood of

active rebellion :—

"Thou haat lived in pain and woe, Thou haat lived in grief and fear; Now thine heart can dread no blow, Now thine eyes can shed no tear : Storms round us shall beat and rave ; Thou art sheltered in the grave.

Thou for long, longyears hest borne, Bleeding through Life's wilderness, Heavy loss and wounding scorn; Now thiue heart is burdeuless Vainly rest for ours we crave; i Thine s quiet in the grave.

We must toil with pain and care, We must front tremendous Fate, We must fight with dark Despair : Thou 'lost dwell in solemn state, Couched triumphant, calm and brave, In the ever-holy grave."

Miscellaneous Poems. By C. K. T. (Maxon and Saunders.)— There is some pretty verse in this volume, which would have pleased more entirely, if the author had better understood the limits of hie power. Tenderness of sentiment and a feeling for natural beauty, helped by a not inadequate power of expression, are quite enough to produce poetry Which will please for the present, though it can scarcely hope to survive far into the future. But C. K. T. is too ambitious, and sometimes mars the effect of his efforts by aiming at too mush. Take this little piece, as an instance :— "THE Watt.

" Dark and cool the water lies Ill the old time-liononred well ; Down deep the bucket flies, And bow often, who can toll?

For the schoolboy, hot with play, For the labourer tired with toil, For the traveller on his way. Both the tireless rope uncoil.

And how often, who can toll? Or, who first the gracious draught Drew up from the bounteous well ? Or, who sunk the ancient shaft?

They are dust, who slaked their thirst At the little silver fount In the wild woods, where it first Called the huntsman to dismount ; They are dust, the pioneers, Who the strong-armed forest broke, Where the old well now appears, Where now earls the village smoke.

So shall we within the vale With our children's children dwell, But the waters ne'er shall fail

III the old time-honoured well."

This is pretty enough; but then come some more stanzas, beginning

- with "Thus within the Poet's Soul," making a far-fetched com- parison, which touches no chord of feeling in the reader.— Falgencius, with Other Poems, Old and New. By B. Montgomerie Ranking. (Newman.)—The story of " Fulgencius," in which the wicked plotter is thrown into the furnace where he had schemed that the innocent should perish, has been told, with variations, by Schiller, and we know not how many others besides. Mr. Ranking has em- ployed a metre which is difficult on account of its easiness, and achieved a fair success. "The Peace of the Hills," which comes next, is very intense, and somewhat unintelligible. This is what " Tho Grasses Say" :— " Ah 1 surely we can gladden him,

The meadow-grasses. thick and short I When unbelief would sadden him, To meadow-land he made resort ;

There he fell down upon his thee,—

And TVS are fruitful, his embrace Had might ; and we are soft, his tears Fell with so rich a rain. His fears Have quickened every upland bent,

And moors toss evermore, and moan as though beshont."

Commonly, Mr. Ranking struggles to say things in new and striking ways. When he is most reposeful, he pleases us best. "St. Dorothea," for instance, will be read with pleasure, while the lofty straina of the "Pindaric ode" to solitude, as our grandfathers would have called it, fail of their aim. Sometimes Mr. Ranking follows in the steps of Mr. John Payne, as in the "History of Susanna." We would counsel him to forbear, for the future. Rigorous self-restraint, and a kern command exercised over a too wandering fancy and a too facile Pen, may make something of Mr. Ranking, though he has written too much to allow us to be very hopeful.—Scenes and Songs. By Gerald Bendall. (S. B. Barrett.)—Mr. Bendall's " Scenes " are certainly not above the level of the average of modern dramatic poetry. "The Flight of Venus," which cannot be called a " scene" in the ordinary sense, is a piece of calm and sustained dignity. But it is in his songs that Mr. Bendall is seen at his best. Many of these have a tenderness and quaintness of pathos which seem to distin- guish thorn from the better known poems they resemble in fem. In yore de socidte, Mr. Bendall shows a creditable skill, There are three prayers to women, suggested by the direction of Comte to his disciples, that they should pray three times a day to some woman. The first, to Cleopatra, is by far the best, as a work of art ; the second, to George Eliot, is fairly good ; while the third, to Joan of Arc, strikes a thoroughly wrong note. Mr. Bendel' appears to have swallowed the Joan of Arc myth unquestioningly.—The Poetical Works of J. C. Prince. Edited by R. A. D. Lithgow. 2 vols. (Heywood and Son, Manchester ; Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., London.)—It is clear that something besides a sense of tho poetical value of Mr. Prince's work has prompted this republication. Mr. Prince had contributed for very many years to the "poet's corner" of various Lancashire papers, and it is quite credible that his merits should have made the readers of those papers aux ions for an edition such as the present. But to criticise these poems as works of art is a very different matter. Briefly, the author had much metrical fluency, a genuine love for nature, and a power of producing some of the most deliciously bathetic verses we have ever encountered.— Poems. By John MacIertry Peacock. Chosen and edited by Walter Lewin. (Reeves and Turner.)—Mr. Peacock was an artisan, but one whose occupation gave him more opportunities of seeing the world than commonly come to his class. Something of this advantage appears in his verse, which has an ease that seldom comes except from long culture. Both in politics and in religion Mr. Peacock was something of an irreconcilable. He tells us that,— " Princes, and prelates, and peers That night wore at sport and play "The fiend Superstition, who's long wared wi' men SRO IRO weird warlock, creeps back to his den ; Au' tyrants in terror noo quake on their thrones, For men gather knowledge in spite o' sic drones ;" and other common-places of revolutionary invective, that were more in favour five-and-twenty years ago than they are now. But there is something better in his verse than this,—a feeling for nature, and sympathy for man.—Songs in the Twilight, by the Rev. Charloa D. Bell, D.D. (Nisbet.)—Here is some very graceful and tender verse ; °Effie," for instance, which reads like the outcome of personal emo- tion, has much sweetness and pathos. But Dr. Bell writes too easily, —" lituram inscite motuit." In this very poem he spoils one of the best stanzas by using " placbd,"—" God has plead all things sweet." It is surprising to see what an impression of feebleness, and even falsity, a single word of this kind will give. A "Village Lay " is another poem worthy of note and praise. Here is a stanza on "The Lake Country," which gives a not unfavourable specimen of the poet's power :— "No spot without its beauty, far or near ; Green glen and glade, huge scaur, and wood-clothed hill, Fair field and fell, and silver mountain-rill,

And lakes where lilies, flowering all the mere

Glass their white loveliness in waters clear

That sleep beneath them, pure, and cool, and still. Here have I drunk of beauty to my fill. As friends who bettor known become more dear, So with thy charms. When life draws near the end, Ye shall be with me, hills and valleys green; And dying eyes from dying bed shall send A yearning look to each remembered scone, Fresh in my heart as though beheld yestreen ; And thoughts of you with hopes of heaven shall blend."

—A Few Lyrics, by An Amateur (C. Kogan Paul and Co.), have some little freshness about them, especially when the writer is minded to be satirical or didactic ; but why they are called "lyrics," it would be very difficult to say.—Lyrics and Elegies. By Charles Newton Scott. (Smith and Elder.)—This is a volume of verse which, though not free from weakness of expression, and never giving any impres- sion of fullness of thought, yet sometimes earns the praise of grace and tenderness. The translations, chiefly made from the German, are, perhaps, the best things in the volume.—The Lady of the Rose, and other Poems. By Thomas Mead. These verses, to judge from a pleasing and gracefully-expressed introduction, entitled, "My Motive," are intended for the ear of one reader, rather than for the world. Yet they are better than many of the volumes which have a more ambitious aim. Especially noticeable is a love of nature, which sometimes find a happy expression, as in " The Excursion."-- We have also received Scenery and 2'hought5 by Edwin Lees (Henry Frowde) ; Occasional Verses, by J. Stuart Navino (R. L. Holmes, Glasgow); Erin—Verses, Irish and Catholic, by the Rev. Matthew Russell, S.J. (Gill and Son, Dublin) ; A Vision of Nimrod, by Charles Be Kay (Appleton and Co., New York) ; The Chantry Owl, and other Verses, by Henry Sewell Stokes (Longmans). that,—