Reviews Part 47

Somehow we seem to have heard all this before. Does it come from the fact that of all the poets who ever lived Mr. Swinburne is the one who is the most limited in imagery? It must be admitted that he is so. He has wearied us with his monotony. 'Fire' and the 'Sea' are the two words ever on his lips. We must confess also that this shrill singing--marvellous as it is--leaves us out of breath. Here is a pa.s.sage from a poem called A Word with the Wind:

Be the sunshine bared or veiled, the sky superb or shrouded, Still the waters, lax and languid, chafed and foiled, Keen and thwarted, pale and patient, clothed with fire or clouded, Vex their heart in vain, or sleep like serpents coiled.

Thee they look for, blind and baffled, wan with wrath and weary, Blown for ever back by winds that rock the bird: Winds that seamews breast subdue the sea, and bid the dreary Waves be weak as hearts made sick with hope deferred.

Let the clarion sound from westward, let the south bear token How the glories of thy G.o.dhead sound and shine: Bid the land rejoice to see the land-wind's broad wings broken, Bid the sea take comfort, bid the world be thine.

Verse of this kind may be justly praised for the sustained strength and vigour of its metrical scheme. Its purely technical excellence is extraordinary. But is it more than an oratorical tour de force? Does it really convey much? Does it charm? Could we return to it again and again with renewed pleasure? We think not. It seems to us empty.

Of course, we must not look to these poems for any revelation of human life. To be at one with the elements seems to be Mr. Swinburne's aim. He seeks to speak with the breath of wind and wave. The roar of the fire is ever in his ears. He puts his clarion to the lips of Spring and bids her blow, and the Earth wakes from her dreams and tells him her secret. He is the first lyric poet who has tried to make an absolute surrender of his own personality, and he has succeeded. We hear the song, but we never know the singer. We never even get near to him. Out of the thunder and splendour of words he himself says nothing. We have often had man's interpretation of Nature; now we have Nature's interpretation of man, and she has curiously little to say. Force and Freedom form her vague message. She deafens us with her clangours.

But Mr. Swinburne is not always riding the whirlwind and calling out of the depths of the sea. Romantic ballads in Border dialect have not lost their fascination for him, and this last volume contains some very splendid examples of this curious artificial kind of poetry. The amount of pleasure one gets out of dialect is a matter entirely of temperament.

To say 'mither' instead of 'mother' seems to many the acme of romance.

There are others who are not quite so ready to believe in the pathos of provincialisms. There is, however, no doubt of Mr. Swinburne's mastery over the form, whether the form be quite legitimate or not. The Weary Wedding has the concentration and colour of a great drama, and the quaintness of its style lends it something of the power of a grotesque.

The ballad of The Witch-Mother, a mediaeval Medea who slays her children because her lord is faithless, is worth reading on account of its horrible simplicity. The Bride's Tragedy, with its strange refrain of

In, in, out and in, Blaws the wind and whirls the whin:

The Jacobite's Exile--

O lordly flow the Loire and Seine, And loud the dark Durance: But bonnier shine the braes of Tyne Than a' the fields of France; And the waves of Till that speak sae still Gleam goodlier where they glance:

The Tyneside Widow and A Reiver's Neck-verse are all poems of fine imaginative power, and some of them are terrible in their fierce intensity of pa.s.sion. There is no danger of English poetry narrowing itself to a form so limited as the romantic ballad in dialect. It is of too vital a growth for that. So we may welcome Mr. Swinburne's masterly experiments with the hope that things which are inimitable will not be imitated. The collection is completed by a few poems on children, some sonnets, a threnody on John William Inchbold, and a lovely lyric ent.i.tled The Interpreters.

In human thought have all things habitation; Our days Laugh, lower, and lighten past, and find no station That stays.

But thought and faith are mightier things than time Can wrong, Made splendid once by speech, or made sublime By song.

Remembrance, though the tide of change that rolls Wax h.o.a.ry, Gives earth and heaven, for song's sake and the soul's, Their glory.

Certainly, 'for song's sake' we should love Mr. Swinburne's work, cannot, indeed, help loving it, so marvellous a music-maker is he. But what of the soul? For the soul we must go elsewhere.

Poems and Ballads. Third Series. By Algernon Charles Swinburne. (Chatto and Windus.)

THREE NEW POETS

(Pall Mall Gazette, July 12, 1889.)

Books of poetry by young writers are usually promissory notes that are never met. Now and then, however, one comes across a volume that is so far above the average that one can hardly resist the fascinating temptation of recklessly prophesying a fine future for its author. Such a book Mr. Yeats's Wanderings of Oisin certainly is. Here we find n.o.bility of treatment and n.o.bility of subject-matter, delicacy of poetic instinct and richness of imaginative resource. Unequal and uneven much of the work must be admitted to be. Mr. Yeats does not try to 'out-baby'

Wordsworth, we are glad to say; but he occasionally succeeds in 'out-glittering' Keats, and, here and there, in his book we come across strange crudities and irritating conceits. But when he is at his best he is very good. If he has not the grand simplicity of epic treatment, he has at least something of the largeness of vision that belongs to the epical temper. He does not rob of their stature the great heroes of Celtic mythology. He is very naive and very primitive and speaks of his giants with the air of a child. Here is a characteristic pa.s.sage from the account of Oisin's return from the Island of Forgetfulness:

And I rode by the plains of the sea's edge, where all is barren and grey, Grey sands on the green of the gra.s.ses and over the dripping trees, Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.

Long fled the foam-flakes around me, the winds fled out of the vast, s.n.a.t.c.hing the bird in secret, nor knew I, embosomed apart, When they froze the cloth on my body like armour riveted fast, For Remembrance, lifting her leanness, keened in the gates of my heart.

Till fattening the winds of the morning, an odour of new-mown hay Came, and my forehead fell low, and my tears like berries fell down; Later a sound came, half lost in the sound of a sh.o.r.e far away, From the great gra.s.s-barnacle calling, and later the sh.o.r.e-winds brown.

If I were as I once was, the gold hooves crushing the sand and the sh.e.l.ls, Coming forth from the sea like the morning with red lips murmuring a song, Not coughing, my head on my knees, and praying, and wroth with the bells, I would leave no Saint's head on his body, though s.p.a.cious his lands were and strong.

Making way from the kindling surges, I rode on a bridle-path, Much wondering to see upon all hands, of wattle and woodwork made, Thy bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the earth, And a small and feeble populace stooping with mattock and spade.

In one or two places the music is faulty, the construction is sometimes too involved, and the word 'populace' in the last line is rather infelicitous; but, when all is said, it is impossible not to feel in these stanzas the presence of the true poetic spirit.

A young lady who seeks for a 'song surpa.s.sing sense,' and tries to reproduce Mr. Browning's mode of verse for our edification, may seem to be in a somewhat parlous state. But Miss Caroline Fitz Gerald's work is better than her aim. Venetia Victrix is in many respects a fine poem. It shows vigour, intellectual strength, and courage. The story is a strange one. A certain Venetian, hating one of the Ten who had wronged him and identifying his enemy with Venice herself, abandons his native city and makes a vow that, rather than lift a hand for her good, he will give his soul to h.e.l.l. As he is sailing down the Adriatic at night, his ship is suddenly becalmed and he sees a huge galley

where sate Like counsellors on high, exempt, elate, The fiends triumphant in their fiery state,

on their way to Venice. He has to choose between his own ruin and the ruin of his city. After a struggle, he determines to sacrifice himself to his rash oath.

I climbed aloft. My brain had grown one thought, One hope, one purpose. And I heard the hiss Of raging disappointment, loth to miss Its prey--I heard the lapping of the flame, That through the blenched figures went and came, Darting in frenzy to the devils' yell.

I set that cross on high, and cried: 'To h.e.l.l My soul for ever, and my deed to G.o.d!

Once Venice guarded safe, let this vile clod Drift where fate will!'

And then (the hideous laugh Of fiends in full possession, keen to quaff The wine of one new soul not weak with tears, Pealing like ruinous thunder in mine ears) I fell, and heard no more. The pale day broke Through lazar-windows, when once more I woke, Remembering I might no more dare to pray.

Venetia Victrix is followed by Ophelion, a curious lyrical play whose dramatis personae consist of Night, Death, Dawn and a Scholar. It is intricate rather than musical, but some of the songs are graceful--notably one beginning

Lady of heaven most pure and holy, Artemis, fleet as the flying deer, Glide through the dusk like a silver shadow, Mirror thy brow in the lonely mere.

Miss Fitz Gerald's volume is certainly worth reading.

Mr. Richard Le Gallienne's little book, Volumes in Folio as he quaintly calls it, is full of dainty verse and delicate fancy. Lines such as

And lo! the white face of the dawn Yearned like a ghost's against the pane, A sobbing ghost amid the rain; Or like a chill and pallid rose Slowly upclimbing from the lawn,

strike, with their fantastic choice of metaphors, a pleasing note. At present Mr. Le Gallienne's muse seems to devote herself entirely to the worship of books, and Mr. Le Gallienne himself is steeped in literary traditions, making Keats his model and seeking to reproduce something of Keats's richness and affluence of imagery. He is keenly conscious how derivative his inspiration is:

Verse of my own! why ask so poor a thing, When I might gather from the garden-ways Of sunny memory fragrant offering Of deathless blooms and white unwithering sprays?

Shakspeare had given me an English rose, And honeysuckle Spenser sweet as dew, Or I had brought you from that dreamy close Keats' pa.s.sion-blossom, or the mystic blue

Star-flower of Sh.e.l.ley's song, or shaken gold From lilies of the Blessed Damosel, Or stolen fire from out the scarlet fold Of Swinburne's poppies. . . .

Yet now that he has played his prelude with so sensitive and so graceful a touch, we have no doubt that he will pa.s.s to larger themes and n.o.bler subject-matter, and fulfil the hope he expresses in this s.e.xtet:

For if perchance some music should be mine, I would fling forth its notes like a fierce sea, To wash away the piles of tyranny, To make love free and faith unbound of creed.

O for some power to fill my shrunken line, And make a trumpet of my oaten reed.

(1) The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems. By W. B. Yeats. (Kegan Paul.)

(2) Venetia Victrix. By Caroline Fitz Gerald. (Macmillan and Co.)

(3) Volumes in Folio. By Richard Le Gallienne. (Elkin Mathews.)

A CHINESE SAGE