MR. WARREN'S •' BY SEVERN SEA."•

THE first two poems in this little book, the dedication to Mr. Black more, as the "prose poet of the fabled West," and the poem "By Severn Sea," are so beautiful and so full of the genuine originality of the poet, that we have felt a little. disappointed to find in the remainder of the volume so little,. comparatively, that rises above the elegancies of thoughtful' and careful verse. In the dedication to Mr. Blackmore, the President of St. Mary Magdalen College has used with some- thing like Lord Tennyson's own art the measure in which. In Memoriam was written. In such hands as Lord Tennyson's and Mr. Warren's that metre, with its inner kernel of rhyme folded up in the grasp of an external shell of rhyme, has a grave though somewhat complex and rather artificial beauty, as of the tissues that envelop the chestnut "when the shell divides threefold to show the fruit within." But we are not sure that Lord Tennyson has done any great service to English literature by rendering this form of verse so popular as his deli- cate use of it in In Memoriam has made it. Tennyson's own mind was essentially subtle. He loved to fold one surface of meaning within another, and for that purpose no metre was ever better fitted than the one he chose. But when it is used,. as it now often is, in place of the simpler verse which rhymes the first line with the third, and the second with the fourth, yet without anything in the meaning or purpose of the verse tc render the more complex structure specially fitting, it pro ducee the rather sad music of patience and subtle discrimina- tion where patience and subtle discrimination seem ont of keeping with the general drift of the poem. Mr. Warren has far too good an ear to use this peculiar metre simply as he would use the more ordinary rhyme. On the contrary, we note that with him the enfolding rhyme shall generally be more comprehensive than the interior or enfolded rhyme and shall hold it together as it were, as the shell hold! the kernel. Take this opening of the dedication to the author of Lorna Doone :- "Prose poet of the fabled West,

Ere school and railway had begun To fuse our shires and tongues in one, And equalize the worst and best, While Devon vowels fluted yet By Dart and Lynn their mellow length, While flourished still in Saxon strength The consonants of Somerset ; Your Exmoor epic fixed the hues That lingered on by comb and tor, And in the hollow vale of Oare

You found a matter for your Muse !

The brigands' den, the prisoned bride,

The giant yeoman's hero mould, Who fought and garrulously told The Iliad of hiscountry-side;

• By Severn Sea, and other Poems. By Herbert Warren. Oxford: H. Daniel. You bade them live and last for us

And for our heirs, as caught erewhile The Doric of his rocky isle Lives in your loved Theocritus." (pp. 1-2.)

There the inner rhyme is, as it were, a detailed explanation of the larger and more abstract conception of the final line in almost every verse. The lines, " While Devon vowels fluted yet by Dart and Lynn their mellow length," and " while flourished still in Saxon strength the consonants of Somerset," give us a vivid impression of the closing round of the characteristic provincial speech of the South-West of England on the subjects of Mr. Blackmore's romances ; and the inner rhyme is but the expansion and interpretation in detail of the larger meaning of the outer rhyme. And the same is generally true of the other verses. The enclosing shell, as it were, is given in the enfolding rhyme, and the comment on it in the one enfolded. But it is not many subjects to which this pause before the clasp between the first and last line is appre- hended,, seems at all suitable, and yet since In Memoriam was written it has become almost as common to adopt this peculiar arrangement of the rhymes for all sorts of subjects as it was before the publication of that poem to give the setting of alternating rhymes to any happy incident or picturesque national tradition. But Mr. Warren knows better than to use this involuted verse when he is dealing with the memories or reveries which are the most characteristic subjects of his verse. In the beautiful poem, "By Severn Sea," for instance, the verse flows on with a rich and yet pensive, fullness of its own. Take, for instance, this fine passage, written at Minehead five years ago, in defence of the mild and beautiful climate of the estuary of the Severn :— ft Ah western winds and waters mild ! Others your vaporous langours chide; They have not loved you from a child,

Nor grown to strength your shore beside.

Ye speak of youth and hope to me, Ye airs, ye floods of Severn Sea!

For I was native to your mood And apt to take your influence, To muse and pause, to pore and brood, To doubt the shows and shapes of sense, To dream how not to dream away The long large hours of boyhood's day.

And when high noon on many a sail Was bright along the brimming flow, Or when the westering sun must fail Blood-red, and from the shifting glow Of lilac-citron skies the queen That sways your motion glimmered green, One lesson still my spirit learned From flood and daylight fleeting past,

And from its own strange self that yearned Like them to lapse into the vast, And merge and end its vague unrest In some wide ocean of the West ; Ere we can find true peace again, Our being must have second birth, Purred and made one through toil and pain

With Him Who rules and rounds the earth, Beyond the dark, behind the light, In mystery of the Infinite.

And we like rivers from their source Through cloud and shine, by deep or shoal, Must follow that which draws our course, The Love that is its guide and goal; Of life, of death ye made me free.

Waters and hills of Severn Sea!" (pp. 7-9).

There are few finer verses in the English language perhaps than that which depicts the effect of the soft, and yet in. spiring, influence of that beautiful_ channel on the writer's dreamy boyhood :—

" For I was native to your mood,

And apt to take your influence, To muse and pause, to pore and brood, To doubt the shows and shapes of sense, To dream how not to dream away The long large hours of boyhood's day." (p. 8.)

"Dreaming how not to dream away" one's early youth, has been too often the unsuccessful effort of our younger poets, which has not always resulted half as happily as in Mr. Warren's case.

Amongst the other pieces we find the verses entitled "The Everlasting No," the best, passing as they do far beyond the standard of elegance, though hardly coming up to either the art of the dedication to Mr. Blackmore, or the medita- tive glow of " By Severn Sea." Still this is a very fine and characteristic picture of a mind that had not then found the fall object of life :—

" THE BVZILLLSTING NO.

Thou who hast seen for once and all the vision, Thou who bast felt high discontent, And known the bitter sweet of great ambition

Not for these short-lived follies thou wast meant.

Yet which to follow of the striving voices, Faith, knowledge, nature, still to meet Surfeit in pleasure, in faith superstition, In knowledge weariness, in love deceit?

Forth to the wilderness ? Ah I see only Desert winds shaking the desert reeds: Ignorant and thirsting still and lonely Shall solitude suffice my thousand needs ?

What though the inner eye be filled with seeing,

What though the mountain and the plain be great, Only to think and brood in dreams of being,

This cannot solve the riddle of our fate.

Sight of the stars and conscious sense of duty, These are but drops in the still vacant heart, These have I known and felt and loved their beauty With half my soul, nor filled the other part." (pp. 51-52.)

We could wish all the rest of the little volume like these pieces. But we cannot care much for such conceits as the piece "To the Bride," or "The Birthday Ode," or "An Excuse," or the lines " With a Copy of Robert Bridges's Shorter Poems." There is certainly a grace in many of the lighter verses, but there is an air of something neatly made for the occasion rather than of something which Mr. Warren was constrained to write. Yet the too few fine poems are good enough to make us grateful for the whole.