BOOKS.

RECENT VERSE."

A COLLECTED edition is a pleasant milestone in a poet's career : the reader rests by it and looks back upon the road which has been travelled. It would be bard to find two singers more different than Mr. Geese and Mr. Trench, but they are alike in one thing-they faithfully reflect the Poetic. fashion of their especial age. Mr. Gosse, in his modest and charming preface, hazards the theory that "a verse writer learns his business thoroughly at the dawn of manhood, and continues in a state of mental equilibrium till his skill as a craftsman falls from him." On this theory he represents the

early 'seventies, when Swinburne was a model and people had discovered the old French metrical forma and evolved melting cadences undreamed of by the early Victorian. Mr. Trench would stand for the early 'nineties, when verse came under the spell of the Celt and was beginning in the Meredithian fashion to put a philosophy of life into metre. Both, of course, stand for far more than these epochs, for both in their different fashions stand for poetry, which does not date itself. To turn over Mr. Gosse's pages is, for any man of middle age, to awaken many happy recollections. It is like an old cabinet in which scents remain from many different wares. There are echoes of Tennyson, Swinburne, Rossetti, even of Stevenson; we find a careful scholarship, a sensitive love of beauty, an aptness of diction and music which more ambitious bards have lacked. Sometimes, as in the delightful lines, "With a Copy of Herrick," we get the very perfection of occasional verse. And throughout all there is an extraordinary youth;

for Mr. Gosse the knocking at the door of the younger generations has no terrors. He is the most modest of poets, but what he will not claim for himself a critic may claim for him-that love of essential beauty which is at the heart of all poetry. The " Epilogue " is a noble statement of a sound

philosophy :- "I wait, till, down the eastern sky 1Kuses, like Monads in a throng, Sweep my decayed traditions by, In startling tones of unknown song.

So to my day's extremity May 1, in patience infinite, Attend the beauty that must be, And, though it slay me, welcome it."

Mr. Trench's brilliant and thoughtful work has the accent of a later day. We have so often expressed our admiration for it that at present we may confine ourselves to noting-what is conspicuous in a collected edition-its remarkable width of range. He moves with equal ease in the classic and stately "Song for the Funeral of a Boy," the rollicking "Old Anchor Chanty" (one of the beet we have met with), and the haunting lyric "Jean Riohepin's Song." We give ourselves the pleasure of quoting the beautiful poem, "A Charge," for there may be some to whom it is unfamiliar :- oil thou bast squander'd years to grave a gem Commission'd by thine absent lord; and while 'Tis incomplete,

Others would bribe thy needy skill to them- Dismiss them to the street!

• (1.11The Collected Poems of Edmund Gone. London : Heinemann. [56. net.] (2 Lyrics and Narrative Poems. By Herbert Trench. London : Hodder and Btoug ton. 15e. not.]-(3) The Ballad of the White Norse. B G. K. Chesterton. London Methuen. [50.)-(4) Ti,. Everlasting Mercy. By John Masefield. London: Sidgrrick and Jaokson. [3s. 6d. net.]-(5) A Sicilian Idyll and ith, By T. Fiturge Moore. London : Duckworth and Co. [2s. net.]- (6) Retina, and other Aromatic Poems. By the author of ".& Hymn to Dionysus." Edinburgh : .W. Brown. [7s, 6d. net.1-(7) Poems. By Rupert Brooke. London Sidgwtok and Jaekson. ram. 6d. net.1-(8) Songs of Joy. By W. H. Davies. London [2e. ca. net.1-(6) Poem. By Gentld `lould. London; Sidgwick end Jankson. [1s.J-(10) Poems. By Marna P08.80. London : Elkin Mathews. [2s. 6d. net].-(11) Ballads and Verses of the Spiritual Life. By E. Nesbit. Same publisher. De. nd. net.1-(12) New Poeme. By Katharine Tynan. London Sidgwiek and Jackson. [fia. 6d. net.]-(13) Love's Parrying. Margaret Maitland: Radford. London Herbert and Daniel. [3s. 6d. net3-__tl41 Bata and Mistletoe. By Dora Wiloox. London George Allen. rse, (1. net --(15) The Land of the Starry Cross, and Other Fonds. By Gilrooney " ( .7. Cassidy). Melbourne Lothian. [3s. ed. net.1-(16) Metri Gratia Verse and Prose. By Philip Guedalla. Orford Blackwell. 11s. net. J-(1.7) The New Child's Guide to Knowledge. By Laurence MOnenlan. London Sidgwick and Jaekson, [2s. 6d, 'keg Shouldst thou at last discover Beauty's grove, At last be panting on the fragrant verge, But in the track,

Drunk with divine possession, thou moot Love- Turn, at her bidding, back.

When round thy ship in tempest Roll appears, And every spectre mutters up more dire To snatch control

And loose to madness thy deep-konnell'd Fears- Then to the helm, 0 Soul!

Last; if upon the cold green-mantling sea Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar- Both castaway And one must perish-let it not be he Whom thou art sworn to obey!"

Mr. Chesterton's splendid ballad leaves the critic in a help- less position, not because it is without faults-for there are many-but because the very blemishes are true ballad blemishes. It is an extraordinary piece of reconstruction, full of the inconsequence, the noble nonsense, of the best ballads, and full, too, of their speaking simplicity, their magical lilt which sings itself in a man's memory. The Ballad of the White Horse tells of Alfred in his defeat and in his victory; the king who "When is great talk of trend and tide,

And wisdom and destiny, Rail the undying heathen That is sadder than the Boa."

To show Mr. Chestorton's command of the mystery of his craft we quote two verses

"For folk came in to Alfred's faze

Whose javelins had been hurled On monsters that make boil the 808,, Crakens and coils of mystery: Or thrust in ancient snows that be

The white hair of the world.

And some had knocked at the northern gates Of the ultimate icy floor, Where the fish freeze and the foam turns black, And the wide world narrows to a track, And the other sea at the world's back Cries through a closed door."

Mr. Masefield's The Everlasting Mercy is also a kind of ballad. It tells of Saul Kane, a village profligate, and his struggles with the Spirit of God. It begins with a fight, when Kane knows he is in the wrong, but resists the impulse to make peace with his enemy. Then comes a sordid drinking bout at the inn. In the morning in the foul room the madness of disgust seizes him, and he runs naked through the village, cry- ing hell-fire. Then comes more drinking and a last debauch,

when he insults the Quaker woman who goes round the public. houses. It is his last effort, and he is conquered. He wanders out into the country, a captive of Grace, drinking in from the morning a peace and a divine intoxication :- "0 Christ who holds the open gate, 0 Christ who drives the furrow straight,

0 Christ, the plough, 0 Christ, the laughter

Of holy white birds flying after ;

Lo, all my heart's field rod and torn, And Thou wilt bring the young green corn."

That is striking, but it has not the noble simplicity of the old world and its ballads. In The Song of the Hitehin Mayors we have the same thought - "the same, but, all how different" "The Heavenly doors are open wide, Our paths arc beaten plain ; And if a man be not too far gone He may return again." "fought as gravely As a wise child at play."

and his enemies, the Dance- "A Christless chivalry :

'Who knew not of the arch or pen, Great, beautiful half-witted men From the sunrise and the sea."

By a happy device Mr. Chesterton makes a Saxon, a Celt, and a Roman fight by Alfred's side at Ethan dune. The great tale goes as swingingly as if it were sung by the living voice. It is full of passages of splendid poetry, as when the four lords confess their sins before the battle, or when the Danes take counsel, or when Eldred falls. It is full, too, of splendil imagery, scattered with the lordly indifference of the true ballad-maker. Mr. Chesterton would not be himself if be did not depart from accepted canons and point a moral. Alfred smote the heathen, but the heathen still rages and needs a new smiting. It is a strange and most powerful tale, told in verse which has sometimes the limpid clearness of Blake and sometimes a curious rapid rhetoric, half-Scriptural, half-ballad. There are passages of grimy realism which haunt the reader, but raise a question, too, as to the justice of the method. Realism is not carried out to its logical consequence, for many lines arc far too literary for any village rake, and there are thoughts and references wholly out of keeping. It may be questioned, therefore, whether the fidelity to fact of some of the scenes is artistically necessary. The same effect might have been attained with less coarseness. We question, too, the rele- vance of the scene with the parson. A libertine in the process of conversion would be hardly likely to talk dubious politics. At such a moment in his life they would be naked Pharkaism. Nevertheless Mr. Masefield is to be congratulated on a remarkable achievement—a vital portrait of a man, the drama of a great spiritual conquest, and many passages of high beauty.

Of the two volumes of dramatic poetry on our list Mr. Sturge Moore'e A Sicilian Idyll is a little disappointing. It reveals all Mr. Moore's mastery of form, his austere beauty of style, his subtlety of thought, his gift of original and apt images. But it is singularly inconsequent, and we feel that the motif is too vague and slight for so much assiduous work- manship. We like better the second piece in the book, Judith, which is a finely imaginative treatment of the slaying of Holofernes. Throughout he creates an atmosphere of impend- ing tragedy, and the babbling of the old eunuch, Bagoas, is a skilful piece of dramatic irony. In Bertrud the author of "A Hymn to Dionysus" shows herself a mistress of rich musical verse and the possessor of true sense of drama.

Here, again, we prefer the other contents of the book to the title-piece. "The Wooing of Dionysus" may be profitably compared with the second play in Mr. Hewlett's The Agonists. It portrays the god, blind to the homage of passion, repulsed by the decorous placidity of womanhood. " Tereus " is a grim version of the grimmest of Greek tales, and "The Return of Ganyrnede " shows us the return of the immortal to earth and his disillusionment, which yet does not slake his passion for earth as he once dreamed of it. There are both originality of thought and beauty of phrase in these short dramas.

Mr. Rupert Brooke's Poems are plainly the work of a young man. But unlike most youthful work it shows a curious absence of imitation and a strenuous originality. At his worst he falls into a kind of abusive Byronism, where he mistakes ugliness for strength. But his worst is infrequent, and there is much that is uncommonly good. He has both imagination and intellect—so much of the latter sometimes that the verse is crabbed and heavy with its weight of it. We like best " Mummia," "Flight," the arresting little poem called "Paralysis," and "On the Death of the Hippopotamus-Goddess." The few sonnets are finely wrought, and "Dust" and the " Song " on p. 42 show that when he chooses he can write exquisite lyrics. It is a book of rare and remarkable promise. Mr. Davies in his Songs of Joy proves once again his kinship both with Blake and the Jacobean singers. No work of our day seems so in- evitable. The thought flows in liquid numbers; there are no artifices and no labour ; his verso reflects nature as in a mirror, and reflects, too, a gay and reverent spirit. We hope that Mr. Davies will never seriously write his "Farewell to Poesy." We cannot do without such an inspiration as he himself describes :— " Tell me, Fancy, sweetest child,

Of thy parents and thy birth ; Had they silk, and had they gold, And a park to wander forth, With a castle green and old P In a cottage I was born, My kind father was Content, My dear mother Innocence; On wild fruits of wonderment I have nourished ever since."

Mr. Gerald Gould's new Poems have not the boyish charm of his earlier Lyrics. He carries a heavier burden of thought, and he has lost his first gaiety. His work is highly accom- plished and sometimes of great excellence, aa in "In the Woods," "Artemis," and the delightful verses on p. 40 with their echo of Stevenson. But others can write in this way ; and we like Mr. Gould best when he remembers his first romantic manner as in "The Knight Errant." There is one little lyric on p. 18 which seems to us almost perfect. Mrs. Pease's Poems are mainly "descriptive," as old historians of literature used to classify verse. They are full of the seriousness and glamour of the Northumbrian border; full, too, of its gracious austerity. In all her slim book there is not a forced cadence or an inapposite word. A gift so sincere and true deserves every welcome. E. Nesbit's Ballads and Verses of the Spiritual Life are a collection of richly coloured legends and meditations. Her verse is sonorous and eloquent, and she tells a story with vigour. Of the tales the finest are "The Three Kings," "The Devil's Due," and "Earth and Heaven," but we like best the beautiful "Evening Prayer" and the lines on "Romney Marsh." "Katharine Tynan's " New Poems are variations upon and repetitions of themes with which she has long made us familiar. "Lambs," for example, is simply a long-metre version of a much finer poem of hers, which, if we are not mistaken, is printed in the Oxford Book of English Verse. Her talent, if sometimes too facile, is always sweet and tuneful and sincere. "Christmas Eve in Ireland" sounds a deeper note than the rest.. Miss Radford's Love's Ferrying is the tale of a young monk who is called from his cell by love—a talc told in highly decorated and musical verse. Some of the fancy is trite, but there are many beauties, and the song on p. 39 makes us wish for more such lyrics. Miss Wilcox's Bata and Mistletoe is a volume where, though it contains many English subjects, the true inspiration is from New Zealand. The verse is pleasant, graceful, and cultivated, and when she writes from the heart, as in "On a Biograph," it is some- thing more. " Gilrooney " is a different type of oversee, poet. The Land of the Starry Cross is noisy, slangy, and its brand of music is the hurdy-gurdy. He seems to have modelled him- self partly on Mr. Kipling and largely on such early minstrels as Thomas Haynes Bayly. And yet the book has its own merit, for behind the barrel-organ tunes there are realism and passion. It is a picture—even a kind of philosophy—of life.

We have left to the last two curious little volumes. Mr. Guedalla's Metri Gratia is a nondescript medley of verse and prose, mainly parodies and good ones at that. The" Garland" from the Oxford School of Modern History is excellent. He can write, too, a good martial song, as is "The Frontier." Mr. Housman's New Child's Guide to Knowledge is an amusing and irreverent work. Good Mrs. Trimmer and good Mrs. Elizabeth Turner have their own arts turned against them. The prudential type of moral is fatally easy to point the wrong way, and Mr. Housman with unprincipled skill points it. A delightful work—for the old I