BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1437, 11 May 1912, Page 9

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

VERSES OLD AND NEW. ' ' FORTUNE'S SONG. Fortune sang a goldon song 'Neath my latticed pane, When the world lay, bleak and jr*y, Drenched with winter rain: Birift I raised my eager eyce, dazzled with desire, _ ■ Poverty eat emihnj there, close beside my fire. Beckoned me with eun-browned hand, Lod me to the door, Where a single star, afar Streamed the moorland o'er: Sweeter, clearer. Fortune's eong, breathed from golden lute; • Poverty beside me emiled, but, hie lip» were mute. ' '' '.' . . Fared wo fast, and fared we far, vDown,the Open Ways, ' I '• Met the Spring: α-wandoring, . • '■ Through, the amoke-sweet haze: Dripi.from moorland bittern's cap, couched with dappled fawn; . Poverty, amid tho'fern,' Bang at each ■'■•.. Naught , we'recked of jewelled pomp, ■~ Arras-prisoned hall'; Peasants fire and lonely byre Heard our brother-call: : Down the widespread Wander Trail, 'neath blue moorlaiid skies, Poverty sits by my fire, smiling' comrademSe' -Martha Haskell Clark. A BALLADE OF SUICIDE. I Tho gallows in my garden, people eay, Iβ new and neat and adequately tall; I tie the noose on in a knowing way As one that knots his necktie for a ball; But just as all the neighbours-:-on th« Are drawing a long breath to ehout "Hurray.'" The strangest whim has seized me. , . ■ . After all I think I will not hang myself to-day. To-morrow is the time I get my par— My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall— I "see a littlo cloud all pink and grayPerhaps the rector's mother will not call— I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall That mushrooms could be cooked another way— ■' ' I never read the works of Juvenal— I think I will not hang myself to-day. The world will have another washing day; The decadents decay; the pedants pall; And H. C. Wells has found that children And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall; Rationalists are growing rational— And through thick woods one finds ' a stream astraj So secret that the very sky seems snail— I think I will not hang myself to-day. Envoy. Prince, I con.hear tho trumpof Germinal, The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way; Even to-day your royal head may fall, I think I will not hang myself to-day. —G. K. Chesterton. EEVERIE; (On coming from a concert-Toom. out into ".'.. '■' "■•"■ . ' the street.)" '■■' • Grey twilight sinks upon the «treet And the grey passers-by, Tho cheerless heart, the heavy feet, The unenlightened eye, —Funereal pomp, and fit.to moet When Mußic's,. daughter* .-;die. Faint not, 0 faithless mine, Thy lamentation stay? 4 . The ray, of heaven's sun divine Outlives, the loaden,day; -,■ Tjip.'lark shall,.wafcen,,at .hie.,sign, ''.\fEat'-still ;: -'-''.%_' . [.'.'■'■'■ '..■' ■'. ■"■■'■• .' ■ ■ ' : O,.yet thine , eyes through Wti ol jold Sew"dawn V Song shall-see, \ ■; '.' With sun-struck clouds, in. rapture rolled ■ Above a matin'.seaV . - [ Though now; : like flocks at' evethat fold, v. She rests awhile with t-hee. ' —Guy Kendall. ""••'■'■ •■■•';' '-''■'' *■;'ffi'' ■'■'k-''-''■-'■■'-"K■;'' ::; S%:■ '' ■ ■ ' ■'. In one of his critical essays (says an 'JSng^lish-writer)' Stevenson expresses, the ;curious opinion that, in poetry, colour are? futile. 'Someone, had quoted Shakespeare's " ' " N ' A mole-cdnque-Bpotted liko the crimson drops :-.1 , the bottom of a, cowslip.. -.as an example of the poet's colour eenso, Stevenson makes tho unexpected "I do not think literature has anything .to do with colour, or poets anyway the better of such a sense." Wai ho in a puckish ,-mood when he said this, or was the word spoken in good sadness? If the latter was the case he must have lost a good deal in his reading of poetry. Bore, for example, is Chaucer's description of Chauntecleer, husband to dame Pertelote: . His comb was redder than the fyn coral. And bataylld, as it wero a castel wal. His bilo was blak, and as the geet it schon; Lik asu re were his legges, and his ton; His nayles whitter than the lilye flour, . And lik the burnischt gold was his colour. This picture of this dandy of the poultry yard is delightful, and half its charm i lies in the • touches of colour. Elizabethan literature is full of colour effects, and ever since tho coming of the romantic school at the beginning of last century it has been impossible, for a reader •f poetry to be colour-blind with impunity. One thinks of the "Ancient Mariner," of tlio water that "like a witch's oils, burnt green and bluo. and white," of the water-snakes which, as they moved in tracks of shining white, threw off tho elfish in hoary flakes, and Af their rich attire, "blue, glossy green/and velvet black." Keats was a voluptuary, in colour, and in describing the sormmt Lamin, through sheer love of it, puts it on too thick. He is exquisite in the stanza of the "Eve of St. Agnes" in which he ■ describes the moonlight ehining through ■ the stained-glass window upon Madeline: Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, . And threw, warm;gules on Madeline e fair breast, . . , 'As down she- knelt for heaven b graco and ~ boon; Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together Aml P on her silver cross.soft amethyst, And on her hair a glory, like a saint; She seemed a splendid angel, newly drcst, Save wings, for heaven. . On Kent's love of colour Mr. Brooke say«: "It is not so much, the colour'of the lamlscapo or tho sky on which ho dwells as the colour of jewels, and tapestries, and illumined books, and dress, and fruits, and rich (lark woods in pam-lled rooms. ... It is almost with exultation that he describes in .'Lamia' the colours of the serpent and tho.se of the hall decorated for the marriage." The William Morris of Hip "Defence of Guenevere" inherits Kent's mantle of many colours, anil in the "Bluo CloFflt" it is not foT nothing that "Alice tho Queen, and Louise thn Queen" are 'fdamozels wearing purple and preen," not that in the "Sailing of the Sword" Alicia wears a scarlet gown. Ursula one of russet brown, nnd the heroine one of white, while the roofs of the good town are scarlet. Something is lost if every colour is not visualised. It would Jx> a pretty task to weave a littlo chnnlet of such quotations from poets from Rossetti onward through Oscar- Wilde to Mrs. Annann Tavlor, but they would all j bring us'back to.Stevenson's comment and the question: Did he mak> it "seriously, or wn<! he speaking out of sheer mischief? 'One thing that inclines ua to the latter , Mijwer is thie.passago'from tho "Silver-. ado Squatters":- '-' "The sky was of a. ruddy, powerful, nameless,: changing colour, dark and glossy like a serpent's back.' The stars by innumerable millions stuck boldly forth, like ,

lamps. Tlio JKlky Way was bright, liko a moonlit cljnd; half heaven seemed Milky Way. Tho greater luminaries shone each more clearly than a winter's moon. Their light was dyed in every sort of colourred, liko fire; blue, liko steel; green, like tho trades of sunset; and so sharply did each stand forth in its own lustro that thero was no nppearance of that flat starspangled arch we know so well in pictures, but all hoayeu was one chaos of contesting luminaries—a hurly-burly of stars."