Poems. By James Mather. (Gardner.)—These poems, for the most part
descriptive in character, abound in good feeling and defective metre. The author has a love of Nature which does him credit ; but the expression of that love is marred by gram- matical deficiencies. He writes with singular diffuseness about the familiar objects around him, but has little to say that is original in thought or expression. He can be obscure, however. The first poem in the volume, an address to June, ends with the following verse. After saying that June days are few, the writer adds :—
"Yet, if thy flight is into heaven, Who there may follow thee, From joy no more shall e'er be riven Through all eternity."
And where was Mr. Mather's poetic ear when he wrote the following ?—
" I look around, but the lake is still, And silence rests on the hoar-frost, That silvers the sod of plain and hill, Which the green of April wore first."
The author is evidently a great rambler, and it might be supposed that he jotted. down his rhymes while on the road, so little indica- tion is there of care in these Poems. When will verse-men learn that the faculty of stringing rhymes does not make a poet, and that the most estimable sentiments, when expressed in metre, may be terribly prosaic ? Mr. Mather may have derived much pleasure from the rhyming art, but it is a pity that he was not better advised than to publish his halting verses.
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