A POET OF PROMISE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 45, 16 November 1907, Page 13

A POET OF PROMISE.

It came as a 'surprise; to tho writer, and no .doubt;also\to most other people who oared, when the recent book of "Now Zealand" Verso ,, 'revealed the modest and . un- • suspected : existence in New,/ Zealand of a very good poot indeed. When Qiicen Vic- ' torials,letters .are published six years; after her death,;one. expects to make discoveries in them; -but who would dream of finding a; surprise'in, an anthology? The poet is .'Arnold. Wall, Professor of English at Canterbury .'.College.-. Ho has published two .book's of. verse,,ho.has written a good many literary^papers,-,and ho has been in-.'- this "country ;for eight, years. It is only now, wheh-ihis; verses arc breaking tho monotony of the ■"Bulletin" and "Lone Hand" orches- • tra, 'that'he is beginning to bo known for , what,ho l .is'--tb.e ono poet whom the patriotic Now,, Zealahder need not hesitate to set forward for praise. when comparisons aro afoot. 'Professor Wall was born'in Ceylon in 1869 -^youlh..;' is still an undepreciated asset for.him—but he was educated in England,'and did not arrive in Now Zealand ■ until ■".1899.: .Thus ho grew up in happy ignorance of the verse of Australasia and its conventions and.monotonies. Where, ho lived,' poetry, was . simply, pootry, and not ■lemption -' poured into certain fixed moulds. The -"Bulletin" has done immeasurable ser- • vice to.the 'cause of poetry in Australasia, ' but-it has been at a heavy cost. The young colonial.ipoet, feeling emotion in his teens, and gathering strength to express it, has been Jed to turn naturally to tho horsepoem, tho beer-poem, tho flesh-poem, or tho wattlo. and Maori verse. Wall know nothing, of these conventions, and as a result his' , poetry is free from tho ear-marks and brands .that would proclaim its place of origin., ! Tho horso, beer, tho flesh, and . the Kauri aro simply ; and refreshingly ab■eent;,;from his'work.'. ,' •

'In a^ curiously orratic, though warmly appreciative mood, some months ago, tho ''Bulletin":; : drew attention to Wall's work as'tho , work of "a poet'of a singular detachment' from- his environment, as if Browning had been unwillingly domiciled in the bush.'! If ono must, find an analogy, it; foxM' be better 'to drag in Thoreau. In the matter of close-packed thought nnd fre-quqntly-crabbed expression of a lucid idea, Wall does rosemhle Thoreau, and to him Emerson's criticism applies as the sage of joncord: "His thyme and'marjoram are not yet honey. , '■ Wall's'method is best repre»ented in his "Parable of Fiddles": — tSfwing we ; are as viols to His hand, t> know not whether we should hope or fear That He: should smite a music out of us, Aβ out of Lear, or Goriot, or Satan — A 1 tangled wisp of music as from bells Wind-swung and ajigry, or a , comet-blaze Of 'helWiot harmonies grown slowly cool; All round' His workshop we hang, dusty, .'•silent; ... -.'■.- Will "it -be wild caprice, or deep dpfiign, Shall move His hand toward this brother or that, '. ■ ■•■■■■ Toward you or me? Will He, like. fierce old Saul, Meshed ,in a toil of cross' e'esircs and fears. out the ragged discord of His soui With somo sweet elvish moonlight melody, As of a lost breeze in the elms of Heaven, Then broak Bis instrument in ape-like fury, So that wo shriek once and are still for ever? Or will He, toyins with a single string, While we lie yet half-made, draw out crude ■trills, ■ • Madtnrna and sweeps, and soulless tremolos, A. hideous parody of music sweet, .Then, dash us to the floor as all unfit For airs diyinc and themes of Paradise? Or'shall we meekly pray that we may hang ' Mellowing, ■ peaceable, voiceless to the end, Gathering duct upon the workshop wall? What strikes one in this poem, as in many of tho others—as, for example, in tho fine "Road Makers," reprinted in Trie Dominion a few 'vceks ago—is the thoroughness of the poeo's method, bis preference for

competeness rather than impression. To the Bulletin" writer this persistence "suggests a plodding mind, intellectual rather than emotional, tho mind of a logician struggling ill at ease in tho liquid rhythm of pootry. ' His outlook is "unblurrod and almost unliterary;" ho has tho "formality" of tho pedagogue. That, of courso, was an obvious thing to say: a colonial professor is expected to show tho mark of the schoolmaster. But it is inaccurate. At tho most it may be urged that Wall sots down his images too faithfully, too deliberately:—

"Now no moro the climbing years Loave each his dead ring round tho 'living soul, Muffling her flight." Orj ' again, in this brief mass of figlirative'noss;— , OLD MAN'S REVERIE. ' He sits content, facing a noble plain, Dcop woods and suusot; tells himself a talo Reminiscent of dull and windy noons, Loud afternoons, leaf-scattering, cloudily ranting ! ■ ... Of Powers bohind, dcop thing's to follow after; Of castle bulks decrepit, brushed by winds Incessant,. sunk in heavy attitudes, Yet struck by some slant beam of old romance, ' , . : A desolation's momentary glory, When a fagged Time dreams back upon his Past. , ■ ■ ' • In nearly all hia poems bno finds tho poet unable to got away from parable and figure The idea, perhaps, floats suddenly upon liis mind's horizon, and he instinctively casts about for the necessary image. ...That is not a habit peculiar to poets; it is not a habit peculiar to professors. It is a habit only of one class of mind.' How. effectively the image can fall appears well in tho 10th and 11th lines of -"Licence":— Much is forgiven to a soul in earnest, Nor shall wp carp at clicking heels on tho rail, I When a bold leaper leaps his utmost height With thuii'dery rush, ■ triumphing; nor . complain . . ! When both Will Shakespeare or our Meredith, All quivering with the heat and lust of the chase, -.'•■■ Strains out tho thews of language to the bursting, ■ . . Sets tho: shy. accent toppling on tho verge Of utmost. music, ..poising perilously Betwixt tho gulfs; or slants, the molten thought / . / Too generously, and flaws tho golden mould; For who achieves tho impossible shall havo grace. . That, too, is; excellont literary criticism. It is 'one. of several "Poems of the Craft," dealing with little-regarded aspects of literary lifo. Hardly poems, theso, but astonishing in their revelation of what figurative expression can do for a common, even an arid, idea. Thus, on "Figure of Speech": "One speaking used a nijuro. This w's heard. There was a sound, a ring, a .breach of air That smote a chord in us, and 1 our soul rang. Hotly we left the speaker's train, and hurried By n. side-track, with winged feet, spiring upward . ■ - ' ■ Following the sound, and mad to reach a summit. ' ' • ' Life slowly set in the wings of.the feet;.and

earth . . Grew : harder, stonier, steeper; and we stopped. ... : It was a pretty figure. Slowly,and heavily we descend the slope, Leaving our rustling wing-husks on the rooks. Wo find the spe&kor far advanced and proud Upon. his level road. ■ i ." This strenuous pursuit of a thought along a road of forceful phrasea, often harsh and bizarre, is not always Wall's way. It is, he says, "in the still lanes and alloys of tlio mind," that ho finds romance —"in cool backwaters of the thronging lifo." And thus lib gives us the curious and shadowy "Hosts of Sleep,' , , quoted'at,tho head of this-.page. Or this nightmare oerinoss:— . ■ ''While I lie in heavy sleep , ■ 1 Cat-footed dreams about m'e crtep; Empty-eyed and lipless things. Brush my brows with chilly, wings; And the little, breeze they make Sets my sleeping : soul a-sliako; Blindly gropes my dreaming hand,. ■ Feebly gropes, my dreaming handy. For some hand of flesh and bone To tell ,me ,1-, am-not ,al6ne.-r; '■,; Then; whippmg,off the "clogs, of. sin,, Stridjs. ; the-boni)X,.sunlight. ,in.". . r His "thyme and marjoram aro not yet honey," but there aro hero and there golden drops.. ■,In these "Linos," the first imago is one tnat any poet might wish'to' haro fathered:— • ■ ■ Why should I be more loth to fade Out of the picturo God has planned / Than the slant raindrop is afraid Of the long plunge from cloud to land? I ask a very little boon— '• • ■ ■ Such; peace about my soul to be, • Aβ of a hollow deep-blue, noon . ' Deep mirrored in a somnolent eea. There aro no "elvish fancies" in his "Landscapes" series, but only the sweetness of a quiot mind, in love with tho>beautiful things and tho placid things ' and the pathetic things of Nature's brooding., permanonces. This is an acutely-felt memory:— EVENING RAIN. !. , . A : quiet rain stole down 'twixt dark and light, I heard its.timid whisperingiin the leaves, And a thrush bubbling, and a harp far off, And down a slanted ray of music sped Into a twilight lano of childhood, hearing The long swell and eusurrus infinite . Of: many sea-grey willows wind-awaked, All under a,great golden childhood moon. Paling to silver thro' tho, silent rain. Christchurch, whibh has already Adams's pleasant sonnet, wants littlo when Wall adds his "City from the Hills" :— There lies' our city folded in the mist, liko a great meadow in,,, an early morn Flinging her spears of grass up'through white films, • ■.' ■■ ' i ■ ' ' ■ Each with its thousand thousand-tinted ■.■-. • globes. .

Above us such an air as poets dream, Tho clean arid vast wing-winnowed clinio of

ileavon. ■ Each of her streets is closed with shining Alps,. " • Like Heaven at tho end of long plain lives. It is, indeed, in his landscapo pieces that Wall is at his best, and by thoni that ho should at present bo judged—at present, for ho has still many- years for ripening and grovrth. In time, there is little doubt he irill havo done for his adopted country's 'boauties what ho has done for his Wales. We want ; for oxample, a New Zoaland yignotte as individual and fresh as this "Welsh Coast Sunrise":—' . ' The now-, day scarfs his throat with roso and primrose; . . 110 makes tho , grey old mountain faces. tlasL 'A fairy pink, like lobes of fairy ears; He hoars the raven , and tho kestrel call; Hears the Btolcd cataract chanting iu ibo heights, : And grave responses of tho kneeling sea. Our poet's futuro work, ono expects, will show a loosening, a greater suppleness of his lyrical musclos—a mollowiiiß—a smoother placing of the fit- word. And, generous in appreciation of their follows, and modestly prepared for guidance, Now Zealand vorse writers may, as time passes, acknowledge to Wall assistance out of their bondage to the "recognised methods" of colonial verso. —M.C.K.