Things Ye - s and Old. By E. H. Plumptre, D.D. (Griffith
and Farran.)—Dean Plamptre has collected here a number of occasional Poems written at intervals during the last twenty years. All are not dated, but we are under the impression that the greater part of the volume is "old" rather than "new." What is undoubtedly new is not the best. The "In Memoriam" verses to the Duke of Albany are the least felicitous effort in a class of poem in which Dr. Plamptre finds a peculiarly suitable occasion for his powers. The choice of the metre of "Hiawatha" for such a subject was particularly unhappy, incapable as it is of dignity, and, indeed, of almost all the neces- sary qualities of the "In Memoriam" poem. In his sonnets, and in his use of the rhythm which Tennyson has appropriated, so to speak, to this purpose, he is much more successful. " Adrastos," a metrical amplification, of the tragic story told by Herodetus, suffers by the cofnparison which it suggests with the simplicity and force of the original. The two poems which stand in juxtaposition with Chalfont St. Giles," in which Thomas Elwood is supposed
to describe Milton to his correspondent, William Pennington ; and " Bedford," in which Pennington answers with an account of John Bunyan—suffer from no such disadvantage. We may quote from the latter a specimen of the writer's manner :—
" And yet the dreamer bath a human heart,
And wife and children cling around his knees, When the rough gaoler yields to gentler mood; And he will clasp them in his bands and pray,
With sobs and tears, as they prayed, who, of old,
Where stretch the yellow sands of sinful Tyre, Knelt down, and then, to rippling of the waves, Wept sore, and grasped the loved Apostle's hand, And fell upon his neck, and kissed his cheek, And parted each upon his several way.
Bo they two met and parted ; and he lies In that close prison, where the walls are green With festering damp, and gnawing teeth of rata Break the dark night's great stillness, and he dreams, And lives once more in Heaven."
The "yellow sands" and "to rippling of the waves," strike us as • inappropriate ornaments. Picturesqueness sometimes becomes a foible. The verse, too, is somewhat wanting in strength. "The Emperor and the Pope," which tells the curious legend of Trajan and Gregory the Great (where the Pope prays, not without favour- able answer, for the great pagan's soul), is, perhaps, as good a piece of workmanship as can be found in the volume. One other quotation will show how Dr. Plumptre deals with the difficulty of the sonnet
SPRING MEMORIES.
0 Sun-bright season in a sea-girt isle, Spring's burst of beauty flushing o'er the earth ; At morn the cuckoo, harbinger of mirth, At eve the bird whose songs the grief bowline : Here let us cease from care and rest: awhile, Look back on vanished years that lie behind, And, as we gaze, new hopes and courage find, And on the things that vexed we calmly smile. So, though the years axe dire that lie before, We shall not doubt the Father's will to blew; Much though we hope, yet He has given us more, That we His love and wisdom may confess, And so pass on, though song and vision fail, To that far-off Unknown behind the veil."
—We have also to acknowledge new editions of this writer's earlier poems, Lazarus, and other Poems, and Master and Scholar.
Looking back through them, we still feel, as we said in these columns
many years ago, that in " Gomer," the story of the Prophet Hosea, Dean Plamptre has reached his highest point ; and it is, indeed, no small elevation to which culture, taste, and learning, informed by a genuine poetical feeling, though not the inspiration of poetry, can be raised.
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