________________________________________________
_ (Pall Mall Gazette, June 24, 1889.)
Is Mr. Alfred Austin among the Socialists? Has somebody converted the respectable editor of the respectable National Review? Has even dulness become revolutionary? From a poem in Mr. Austin's last volume this would seem to be the case. It is perhaps unfair to take our rhymers too seriously. Between the casual fancies of a poet and the callous facts of prose there is, or at least there should be, a wide difference. But since the poem in question, Two Visions, as Mr. Austin calls it, was begun in 1863 and revised in 1889 we may regard it as fully representative of Mr. Austin's mature views. He gives us, at any rate, in its somewhat lumbering and pedestrian verses, his conception of the perfect state:
Fearless, unveiled, and unattended
Strolled maidens to and fro:
Youths looked respect, but never bended
Obsequiously low.
And each with other, sans condition,
Held parley brief or long,
Without provoking _coarse suspicion
Of marriage_, or of wrong.
All were well clad, and none were better,
And gems beheld I none,
Save where there hung a jewelled fetter,
Symbolic, in the sun.
I saw a noble-looking maiden
Close Dante's solemn book,
And go, with crate of linen laden
And wash it in the brook.
Anon, a broad-browed _poet, dragging
A load of logs along_,
To warm his hearth, withal not flagging
In current of his song.
Each one some handicraft attempted
Or helped to till the soil:
None but the aged were exempted
From communistic toil.
Such an expression as 'coarse suspicion of marriage' is not very fortunate; the log-rolling poet of the fifth stanza is an ideal that we have already realised and one in which we had but little comfort, and the fourth stanza leaves us in doubt whether Mr. Austin means that washerwomen are to take to reading Dante, or that students of Italian literature are to wash their own clothes. But, on the whole, though Mr. Austin's vision of the citta divina of the future is not very inspiriting, it is certainly extremely interesting as a sign of the times, and it is evident from the two concluding lines of the following stanzas that there will be no danger of the intellect being overworked:
Age lorded not, nor rose the hectic
Up to the cheek of youth;
But reigned throughout their dialectic
Sobriety of truth.
And if a long-held contest tended
To ill-defined result,
_It was by calm consent suspended
As over-difficult_.
Mr. Austin, however, has other moods, and, perhaps, he is at his best when he is writing about flowers. Occasionally he wearies the reader by tedious enumerations of plants, lacking indeed reticence and tact and selection in many of his descriptions, but, as a rule, he is very pleasant when he is babbling of green fields. How pretty these stanzas from the dedication are!
When vines, just newly burgeoned, link
Their hands to join the dance of Spring,
Green lizards glisten from cleft and chink,
And almond blossoms rosy pink
Cluster and perch, ere taking wing;
Where over strips of emerald wheat
Glimmer red peach and snowy pear,
And nightingales all day long repeat
Their love-song, not less glad than sweet
They chant in sorrow and gloom elsewhere;
Where purple iris-banners scale
Defending walls and crumbling ledge,
And virgin windflowers, lithe and frail,
Now mantling red, now trembling pale,
Peep out from furrow and hide in hedge.
Some of the sonnets also (notably, one entitled When Acorns Fall) are very charming, and though, as a whole, Love's Widowhood is tedious and prolix, still it contains some very felicitous touches. We wish, however, that Mr. Austin would not write such lines as
Pippins of every sort, and _codlins manifold_.
'Codlins manifold' is a monstrous expression.
Mr. W. J. Linton's fame as a wood-engraver has somewhat obscured the merits of his poetry. His Claribel and Other Poems, published in 1865, is now a scarce book, and far more scarce is the collection of lyrics which he printed in 1887 at his own press and brought out under the title of Love-Lore. The large and handsome volume that now lies before us contains nearly all these later poems as well as a selection from Claribel and many renderings, in the original metre, of French poems ranging from the thirteenth century to our own day. A portrait of Mr. Linton is prefixed, and the book is dedicated 'To William Bell Scott, my friend for nearly fifty years.' As a poet Mr. Linton is always fanciful with a studied fancifulness, and often felicitous with a chance felicity. He is fascinated by our seventeenth-century singers, and has, here and there, succeeded in catching something of their quaintness and not a little of their charm. There is a pleasant flavour about his verse. It is entirely free from violence and from vagueness, those two besetting sins of so much modern poetry. It is clear in outline and restrained in form, and, at its best, has much that is light and lovely about it. How graceful, for instance, this is!
BARE FEET
O fair white feet! O dawn-white feet
Of Her my hope may claim!
Bare-footed through the dew she came
Her Love to meet.
Star-glancing feet, the windflowers sweet
Might envy, without shame,
As through the grass they lightly came,
Her Love to meet.
O Maiden sweet, with flower-kiss'd feet!
My heart your footstool name!
Bare-footed through the dew she came,
Her Love to meet.
'Vindicate Gemma!' was Longfellow's advice to Miss Heloise Durant when she proposed to write a play about Dante. Longfellow, it may be remarked, was always on the side of domesticity. It was the secret of his popularity. We cannot say, however, that Miss Durant has made us like Gemma better. She is not exactly the Xantippe whom Boccaccio describes, but she is very boring, for all that:
GEMMA. The more thou meditat'st, more mad art thou.
Clowns, with their love, can cheer poor wives' hearts more
O'er black bread and goat's cheese than thou canst mine
O'er red Vernaccia, spite of all thy learning!
Care I how tortured spirits feel in hell?
DANTE. Thou tortur'st mine.
GEMMA. Or how souls sing in heaven?
DANTE. Would I were there.
GEMMA. All folly, naught but folly.
DANTE. Thou canst not understand the mandates given
To poets by their goddess Poesy. . . .
GEMMA. Canst ne'er speak prose? Why daily clothe thy thoughts
In strangest garb, as if thy wits played fool
At masquerade, where no man knows a maid
From matron? Fie on poets' mutterings!
DANTE (to himself). If, then, the soul absorbed at last to whole--
GEMMA. Fie! fie! I say. Art thou bewitched?
DANTE. O! peace.
GEMMA. Dost thou deem me deaf and dumb?
DANTE. O! that thou wert.
Dante is certainly rude, but Gemma is dreadful. The play is well meant but it is lumbering and heavy, and the blank verse has absolutely no merit.
Father O'Flynn and Other Irish Lyrics, by Mr. A. P. Graves, is a collection of poems in the style of Lover. Most of them are written in dialect, and, for the benefit of English readers, notes are appended in which the uninitiated are informed that 'brogue' means a boot, that 'mavourneen' means my dear, and that 'astore' is a term of affection. Here is a specimen of Mr. Graves's work:
'Have you e'er a new song,
My Limerick Poet,
To help us along
Wid this terrible boat,
Away over to Tork?'
'Arrah I understand;
For all of your work,
'Twill tighten you, boys,
To cargo that sand
To the overside strand,
Wid the current so strong
Unless you've a song--
A song to lighten and brighten you, boys. . . . '
It is a very dreary production and does not 'lighten and brighten' us a bit. The whole volume should be called The Lucubrations of a Stage Irishman.
The anonymous author of The Judgment of the City is a sort of bad Blake. So at least his prelude seems to suggest:
Time, the old viol-player,
For ever thrills his ancient strings
With the flying bow of Fate, and thence
Much discord, but some music, brings.
His ancient strings are truth,
Love, hate, hope, fear;
And his choicest melody
Is the song of the faithful seer.
As he progresses, however, he develops into a kind of inferior Clough and writes heavy hexameters upon modern subjects:
Here for a moment stands in the light at the door of a playhouse,
One who is dignified, masterly, hard in the pride of his station;
Here too, the stateliest of matrons, sour in the pride of her station;
With them their daughter, sad-faced and listless, half-crushed to their likeness.
He has every form of sincerity except the sincerity of the artist, a defect that he shares with most of our popular writers.
(1) Love's Widowhood and Other Poems. By Alfred Austin. (Macmillan and Co.)
(2) Poems and Translations. By W. J. Linton. (Nimmo.)
(3) Dante: a Dramatic Poem. By Heloise Durant. (Kegan Paul.)
(4) Father O'Flynn and Other Irish Lyrics. By A. P. Graves. (Swan Sonnenschein and Co.)
(5) The Judgment of the City and Other Poems. (Swan Sonnenschein and Co.) _
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