Poems. By Joseph Skipsey. (Blyth : W. Alder.)—The author is,
we -understand, a genuine working miner, who went down into the pit when he was five years old, and is working in it when he is between thirty and forty. Here, it is clear, is another curiosity. The " poems " are of Iwo kinds ; imitations, fairly good, of well-known models, not very in- teresting in themselves, but proofs of considerable literary power ; and ompositions which may be fairly called original, with a strong flavour of the soil from which they come. There is no mistaking the genuine- ness of this little bit :—
"GET UP!
"'Get up.' the caller calls, 'get up !' And in the dead of night,
To win the bairns their bit and sup I rise a weary wight.
"My flannel chidden donned, thrice o'er My birds are kissed, and then I with a whistle shut the door I may not ope again." Or of this :—
" WILLY AND JENNY.
"Duskier than the clouds that lie 'Tween the coal-pit and the sky, Lo! now Willy whistles by, Right cheery from the colliery.
" Duskier might the laddie be, Save his coaxing, coal-black e'e Nothing dark could Jenny see A-coming from the colliery."
"Bereaved," again, is a powerful drawing of the desolation which is seen in many homes after one of the dreadful fire-damp explosions. A great poet might draw it, though be had never been near a coal-pit, for a great poet sees the invisible and knows the unknown ; it would be a foolish flattery to call Mr. Skipsey a great poet, but he is a man who feels the moaning and pathos of the life which surrounds him and which he shares, and who has at the same time no mean gift of express- ing them in verse.
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