Part 14 (2/2)

And now Mr Cleable researches, has unearthed seventy-one more, and published them with the sixty-seven and with Charlotte's thirty-nine[A]

[Footnote A: _Complete Works of Ehton, 1910)]

And the world continues more or less unaware

I do not kno o Street can turn out in a week But I do know that somehow the world is made sufficiently aware of soo Street has had no hand, the publication, after more than sixty years, of the Complete Poems of Emily Bronte, has not, so far as I know, provoked any furious tumult of acclaim

And yet there could hardly well have been an event of more importance in its way If the best poems in Mr Shorter's collection cannot stand beside the best in Charlotte's editions of 1846 and 1850, enius hitherto unknown and undreamed of; one or two even reveal a little more of the soul of Emily Bronte than has yet been known

There are no doubt many reasons for the world's indifference The few people in it who read poetry at all do not read Emily Bronte much; it is as much as they can do to keep pace with the perpetual, swift procession of young poets out of Vigo Street There is a certain austerity about Eance, pomp, and decoration, whichlyrics loaded with ”jewels five-words long” About Emily Bronte there is no emerald and beryl and chrysoprase; there are no vine-leaves in her hair, and on her white Oread's feet there is no stain of purple vintage She knows nothing of the Dionysiac rapture and the sensuous side ofsoul that thirsts and hungers for these things

It is not surprising, therefore, that the world should be callous to Emily Bronte What you are not prepared for is the appearance of indifference in her editors They are pledged by their office to a peculiar devotion And the circumstances of Emily Bronte's case made it imperative that whoever undertook this belated introduction should show rather more than a perfunctory enthusiasm Her alien and lonely state should have moved Mr Clement Shorter to a passionate chivalry It has not even moved him to revise his proofs with perfect piety Perfect piety would have saved hi to Emily Bronte four poems which Emily Bronte could not possibly have written, which were in fact written by Anne: ”Despondency”, ”In Memory of a Happy Day in February”, ”A Prayer”, and ”Confidence”[A] No doubt Mr Shorter found the; but how could he, how _could_ he mistake Anne's voice for E Charlotte Bronte's posthumous ”Selections”

in 1850]

My God (oh let h I be), My tres to Thee

It is Anne's voice at her feeblest and rateful and ungracious to say these things, when but for Mr Shorter we should not have had Emily's complete poems at all And to accuse Mr Shorter of present indifference (in the face of his previous achievements) would be iniquitous if it were not absurd; it would be biting the hand that feeds you The pity is that, owing to a ious spirit, Mr Shorter has missed his own opportunity He does not seem to have quite realized the splendour of his ”find” Nor has Sir William Robertson Nicoll seen fit to help him here Sir William Robertson Nicoll deprecates any over-valuation of Mr Clement Shorter's collection ”It is not claimed,”

he says, ”for a moment that the intrinsic merits of the verses are of a special kind” And Mr Cle his treasures ”No one can deny to theraphical interest”

Mr Shorter is too modest His collection includes one of the profoundest and most beautiful poems Emily Bronte ever wrote,[A] and at least one splendid ballad, ”Douglas Ride”[B] Here is the ballad, or enough of it to sho live it is with sound and vision and speed It ritten by a girl of twenty:

What rider up Gobeloin's glen Has spurred his straining steed, And fast and far fro speed?

I saw his hoof-prints mark the rock, When swift he left the plain; I heard deep down the echoing shock Re-echo back again

With strea wide, His le there Soars up on every side

The goats fly by with timid cry, Their realaze, but he is gone

O gallant horse, hold on thy course; The road is tracked behind

Spur, rider, spur, or vain thy force-- Death coh the pass with threatening crash Co roar!

But what shall brave the deep, deep wave, The deadly pass before?