POETRY.—Love's Offering. By James Hinton. (Remington )- We do not
know whether or no this volume is earlier in point of time than a collection of verse from the same pen which we noticed in these columns some little time ago. In either case we have nothing different to say. Mr. Hinton's mind seems to be in the state of effervescence which is not uncommon in young men who have, or fancy that they have, a certain gift of song. He writes extravagantly .abont love, asking, for instance,—
" If I were deep in bell, would it one moment's angn:sh Cause to the great dark eyes that smile, and flame, and languish Upon the green eirth here ?"
And he writes still more extravagantly on themes where extravagance is less endurable. We hope that a more sober mood will come in time. Meanwhile, Mr. Hinton may profitably apply to his works a severe literary criticism (quite apart from all considerations of ethics or belief), not forgetting to study the rules of prosody The Lily of the Lyn, and other Poems. By H. J. Skinner. (Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co.)—The two chief poems in this volume are two very creditable exercises in blank verse, formed, and formed with no little skill, on the Tennysonian model. Here is a passage which re- presents, and not at all too favourably, the average quality of the verse :— "TFen it fell,
That on one autumn ev'ning, Abel came Alone and unexpected from the sea; For whether by design or rosy chance, When the ead twilight shrouded the dead day, His boat lay idling on a sluggish wave, That r. lied within a mile of his own home. Be leaning on his tiller faintly saw A star. which was no star, but elfin light, That glimmered en a dusky night of cliff And marked his tiny cot. The breeze that swept Betwixt his myrt'es and his garden flowers Blew softly round his head, and like new wine, Which breathes the sun-born virtue of the grape, Warmed all the lovers blood within him. ' What !' Said he, 'befalls to hinder me this night ? Sorely I well may steal this idle hour To look on her I love and comfort her! Tell her of ray good love, which is hers!' fit), yielding up the tiller to his mates, He loosed the dancing dingy from the stern, And seated in her, soon his vigorous blade Smote pallid lights from phosphorescent waves, Till, tired of arm, he leapt upon the land, Strode o'er the beach, and climbed the upward path, The ragged stairway of the headlong cliff."
It will be allowed, we think, that the disciple has not studied his model in vain. The minor poems are, we think, less successful.— The Goal of Time. By John A. Gay Brereton. (G. Robertson, Mel- bourne, Sydney, and Adelaide.)—Here we have a brief sketch of human history, beginning with primmval man, told in verse which does credit to the writer's culture. Here are a few lines, part of a passage in which the writer touches the theme of redemption :—
"Once more is joy in heaven, for God bath won A human ground to build on ; gained a man Who bath not chosen evil for his good. Set up the lowest above the highest, and made A chaos of creation. Brit for this Love had been powerless, nor could have laid Another stone, nor yet have saved from ruin Irreparable the work already done.
For heaven is life; and life must still expand Beyond itsel, or perish must gi re, or die— Shriek back into itself, and pine and die."
—Another volume from Australia is Castle Gray, and other Poems, by Dugald Ferguson (J. Mackay, Dunedin, N.Z.), to which we can- not extend, we are sorry to say, equal praise. Here are two couplets from a poem in the heroic metre of "The Battle of Lutzen " :—
" So actively Gustevus' squadrons wheeled, So helpless back the host cf Tilly reeled, • Throngh whose dense columns a wide gap of gore, Great shot and small their horrid passage tore."
We need not investigate any further the merits of these eight or nine thousand verses.—Mr. Bracken, another colonial poet, author of Lays of the Land of the Maori and Moa (Sampson Low and Co.), at least knows the technical rules of his art. He can write verse ; and he has something to say, because New Zealand, in its scenery, and in the life, both of-its native race and of its European settlers, supplies subjects of unhackneyed interest. Yet these compositions, respectable and even interesting as they are from a literary point of view, are scarcely poems. Take, for instance, "The Golden Jubilee," which has for its theme the Sydney Exhibition of 1879, and compare its three hundred lines (more or less) with the "Ode," not much more than a tenth in quantity, which Tennyson wrote for the International Exhibition of 1862, and we shall see where Mr. Bracken fails. He wants, among other things, compression, the gift of making telling phrases. We look in vain for the concentrated meaning of such ex- pressions,—" the long, laborious miles of palace," "the secrets of the sullen mine," &c. It is a poor substitute it presents to have such comnionplaces as-
" The steeps of progresz, where the goal of Man Mimes the highest pinnace of time,' Or this.(in which a well-known phrase is certainly not improved by its new rendering) :— " Oh no ! for at the base they toiled that we Might reach the apex when the work was done ; They lived and died to build an Empire free That knows no rising and no setting sun."
Here is as good a sample of the volume as we can find :— " Now, now the roble gates of human effort are ajar,
And through their open portals sweep the squadrons from afar;
Progression holds a festival beneath our speckless skies, Where competition gathers all the wealth of enterprise; The ripe fruition of the brain, the triumph of the will, Spring into life mechanical through scientific skill ; Before the rays of intellect the clouds of error flee ; The sun of knowledge shines upon our Go'den Jubilee,
Now, now upon the Bay nf Bays the gallant ships advance ; The triple cross of Britain and the triple bars of France; The flags of Lusitania, Italia, and Spain ; The standard of Germania, the ensign of the Dane; The colours of the Austrian, the Swiss, the Swede, the Salve ; The Hollander and Belgian, the Greek and Moslem wave ; Above the noble floating forts of Commerce on the sea— Europa seeds her ofFrings to our Golden Jubilee."
Previous page
