Part 8 (2/2)

This rondel, too-how light it is, and graceful!-

We'll to the woods and gather may Fresh from the footprints of the rain.

We'll to the woods, at every vein To drink the spirit of the day.

The winds of spring are out at play, The needs of spring in heart and brain.

We'll to the woods and gather may Fresh from the footprints of the rain.

The world's too near her end, you say?

Hark to the blackbird's mad refrain!

It waits for her, the vast Inane?

Then, girls, to help her on the way We'll to the woods and gather may.

There are fine verses, also, scattered through this little book; some of them very strong, as-

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever G.o.ds may be For my unconquerable soul.

It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

Others with a true touch of romance, as-

Or ever the knightly years were gone With the old world to the grave, I was a king in Babylon, And you were a Christian slave.

And here and there we come across such felicitous phrases as-

In the sand The gold prow-griffin claws a hold,

or-

The spires s.h.i.+ne and are changed,

and many other graceful or fanciful lines, even 'the green sky's minor thirds' being perfectly right in its place, and a very refres.h.i.+ng bit of affectation in a volume where there is so much that is natural.

However, Mr. Henley is not to be judged by samples. Indeed, the most attractive thing in the book is no single poem that is in it, but the strong humane personality that stands behind both flawless and faulty work alike, and looks out through many masks, some of them beautiful, and some grotesque, and not a few misshapen. In the case with most of our modern poets, when we have a.n.a.lysed them down to an adjective, we can go no further, or we care to go no further; but with this book it is different. Through these reeds and pipes blows the very breath of life.

It seems as if one could put one's hand upon the singer's heart and count its pulsations. There is something wholesome, virile and sane about the man's soul. Anybody can be reasonable, but to be sane is not common; and sane poets are as rare as blue lilies, though they may not be quite so delightful.

Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow, Or the gold weather round us mellow slow; We have fulfilled ourselves, and we can dare, And we can conquer, though we may not share In the rich quiet of the afterglow, What is to come,

is the concluding stanza of the last rondeau-indeed, of the last poem in the collection, and the high, serene temper displayed in these lines serves at once as keynote and keystone to the book. The very lightness and slightness of so much of the work, its careless moods and casual fancies, seem to suggest a nature that is not primarily interested in art-a nature, like Sordello's, pa.s.sionately enamoured of life, one to which lyre and lute are things of less importance. From this mere joy of living, this frank delight in experience for its own sake, this lofty indifference, and momentary unregretted ardours, come all the faults and all the beauties of the volume. But there is this difference between them-the faults are deliberate, and the result of much study; the beauties have the air of fascinating impromptus. Mr. Henley's healthy, if sometimes misapplied, confidence in the myriad suggestions of life gives him his charm. He is made to sing along the highways, not to sit down and write. If he took himself more seriously, his work would become trivial.

_A Book of Verses_. By William Ernest Henley. (David Nutt.)

SOME LITERARY LADIES (_Woman's World_, January 1889.)

In a recent article on _English Poetesses_, I ventured to suggest that our women of letters should turn their attention somewhat more to prose and somewhat less to poetry. Women seem to me to possess just what our literature wants-a light touch, a delicate hand, a graceful mode of treatment, and an unstudied felicity of phrase. We want some one who will do for our prose what Madame de Sevigne did for the prose of France.

George Eliot's style was far too c.u.mbrous, and Charlotte Bronte's too exaggerated. However, one must not forget that amongst the women of England there have been some charming letter-writers, and certainly no book can be more delightful reading than Mrs. Ross's _Three Generations of English Women_, which has recently appeared. The three Englishwomen whose memoirs and correspondence Mrs. Ross has so admirably edited are Mrs. John Taylor, Mrs. Sarah Austin, and Lady Duff Gordon, all of them remarkable personalities, and two of them women of brilliant wit and European reputation. Mrs. Taylor belonged to that great Norwich family about whom the Duke of Suss.e.x remarked that they reversed the ordinary saying that it takes nine tailors to make a man, and was for many years one of the most distinguished figures in the famous society of her native town. Her only daughter married John Austin, the great authority on jurisprudence, and her _salon_ in Paris was the centre of the intellect and culture of her day. Lucie Duff Gordon, the only child of John and Sarah Austin, inherited the talents of her parents. A beauty, a _femme d'esprit_, a traveller, and clever writer, she charmed and fascinated her age, and her premature death in Egypt was really a loss to our literature. It is to her daughter that we owe this delightful volume of memoirs.

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