MRS. CRAIK'S POEMS.*

THOSE who have the power of expressing themselves easily and melodiously in verse, who have, moreover, a quick eye and a ready heart and sympathy for the thousand little incidents which go to make up our daily life, must possess in themselves a fund of pleasure and interest which their more inarticulate fellow-creatures would find it difficult to realise. To one possessed of this faculty, and unencumbered with too nice a sense of the proportion of things, there seems absolutely no limit to the material for his facile pen. The wide range of natural objects, the stored-up records of the world's heroism, the treasures of art, and the simple details of homely life and affection, all serve in turn to feed the gently flowing current of his song ; and while nothing seems too trivial, nothing, on the other hand, seems too high or too awful to be cast into the mould of some graceful or fantastic rhythm. It is with the recently published volume of poems by the late Mrs. Craik open before us, and with the sound of her easy rhyme and rippling metre in our ears, now spritely and gay, now tinged with a tender melancholy and pathos, and not wholly without touches of humour, that we are led to observe upon the solace which such a power of universal expression must have given its author. As a well-known and much and deservedly beloved writer of prose fiction, Mrs. Craik has been very long familiar to us, and many who are well acquainted with her delicate and appreciative descriptions of natural beauties, her sympathetic delineations of character, and her overflowing,—shall we not also say superabundant P—senti- ment, will have felt sure that her life could not have passed without leaving some poetical record of her thought and im- pressions. The present volume is a republication, with some additions, of a collection published in 1880, which Mrs. Craik speaks of in her dedication as :- " This under-voice, for twenty years

Still running on, a brook unheard,"

and which, we presume, has been the verse accompaniment, unpublished until then, to her published novels through the greater part of her life. Beyond one or two ballads and legends of no great length, the poems are all short, each seeming to have been written as the occasion presented itself, without effort

Poems. Tty the Author of "John Halifax, Gentleman." London : Macmillan and Co. 1888.

and without any need of prolonged strain of concentration.

There is little apparent order in the volume. About half-way through, we come across a group of five little Irish songs, light

and graceful, and seeming to invite the music for which they were evidently written. The sonnets, not many, are arranged in sequence. Two on Dante and Beatrice, and two im- mediately following these, under the heading " A Question," are not without dignity and beauty ; but as a rule, Mrs. Craik's style seems to us too diffuse and too thin to lend itself

adequately to the concentrated fullness of the sonnet. Perhaps that called " David's Child," which we like on the whole best, may be given in illustration

" In face of a great sorrow like to death How do we wrestle night and .day with tears ;

How do we fast and pray ; how small appears The outside world, while, hanging on some breath Of fragile hope, the chamber where we lie Includes all space.—But if, sudden at last, The blow falls ; or by incredulity Fond led, we—never having one thought cast Towards years where the child' was not—see it die,

And with it all our future, all our past,—

We just look round us with a dull surprise : For lesser pangs we had filled earth with cries Of wild and angry grief that would be heard :— But when the heart is broken—not a word."

By far the greater part of the book consists of short pieces upon almost every conceivable subject, and sometimes it is

hard to discover whether there is really a subject at all. They are written in many different forms of rhyme and metre, but neither this variety of style nor the wide range and scope of subject can prevent a creeping sense of sameness from numbing our minds after a somewhat prolonged perusal. The often recurring moral or human application, brought in almost in- variably at the close or somewhere in the charming little descriptive poems, becomes at last a little wearisome. We feel sure that the greater part of the pleasure gained by these natural beauties described would have been lost for Mrs. Craik without the application to human life ; but we cannot help wishing—since by their publication we are given a right to share in the pleasure of her poems—that we might have been left to find out the moral for ourselves, not to speak of occa- sionally wholly dispensing with it. At the risk of having our thus freely given opinion called captious and hypercritical, we extract one among the many of these little poems, that our readers may judge for themselves ; and we call the attention of those who can refer to the volume to several perhaps equal or surpassing it in grace and beauty,—" The Path through the Corn," " At St. Andrews," " The Golden Island," "Autumn Psalm," "Indian Summer."

"THE NIGHT BEFORE THE Nowise. All shimmering in the morning shine And diamonded with dew,

And quivering in the scented wind That thrills its green heart through,— The little field, the smiling field, With all its flowers a-blowing, How happy looks the golden field The day before the mowing !

Outspread 'neath the departing light, Twilight, still void of stars, Save where, low westering, Venus hides From the red eye of Mars ;

How quiet lies the silent field With all its beauties glowing;

Just stirring,—like a child asleep,— The night before the mowing.

Sharp steel, inevitable hand,

Cut keen, cut kind! Our field We know full well must be laid low

Before its wealth it yield : Labour and mirth and plenty bleat Its blameless death bestowing : And yet we weep, and yet we weep, The night before the mowing."

We feel we are doing Mrs. Craik's volume of verse but scant justice by thus hastily passing through it and selecting for illustration two or three among the many charming and often thoughtful poems it contains. The tender outpourings of a refined and loving nature, the simple record of sights and incidents which have touched a heart peculiarly sensitive to the significance of often seemingly trivial circumstances, would find their more fitting recognition from those who, taking the book as an intimate companion, would dip into it from time to time for relaxation and pleasure. There are many, we are sure, of the tongue-tied to whom the refined and delicate delights of authorship are denied, who would thus

come to share in great measure in the solace and pleasure which must have been Mrs. Craik's in writing. Those who, having tasted of the best, fail to find pleasure in poetry of a less lofty kind, and those to whom reading must necessarily convey excitement and novelty, must not expect to be satisfied. by Mrs. Craik's poems, nor yet by her novels. For the .numerous little songs written to music we have nothing but

praise. Many are well known, and all seem light, graceful, and melodious. Here and there we come across poems more ambitious in their subject; but these are disappointing. Mrs. Craik does not possess the power of moving us very deeply by her tragic pictures or by her reflections on the darker phases of human passions. They abound in sentiment, but have too little force and substance.

As an example of simple beauty of thought and language far surpassing the more elaborate and, to our minds, some- times overstrained poems, we quote in conclusion the two little verses called " Now, and Afterwards," which seem to have been suggested by the Russian proverb,—" Two hands upon the breast, and labour is past :"—

" Two hands upon the breast,

And work is done ;

Two pale feet crossed in rest—

The race is won ; Two eyes with coin-weights shut, And all tears cease ; Two lips where love is mute, Anger at peace ;— So pray we oftentimes, mourning our lot : God in His kindness answeretfi not.

Two hands to work addrest Aye for His praise ; Two feet that never rest Walking His ways ; Two eyes that look above Through all their tears; Two lips still breathing love, Not wrath, nor fears ;— So pray we afterwards, low on our knees ; Pardon those erring prayers ! Father, hear these !"

•