A SHEAF OF RECENT VERSE

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 64, 8 December 1917, Page 13

A SHEAF OF RECENT VERSE

Masofield's New Poems. In "his "Lollingdown Downs and Other Poems, With Sonnets" (William Heinemann: per S. aud W. Mackay), John Maseneld gives us no such dramatic and tragic narratives as "Tho Widow in By-Street" and "The Everlasting Mercy," with their occasionally quite brutal realism of subject and style. His new book of poems contains a long series of sonnets dealing mainly with the mystery of life. Two or three dramatic dialogues and several scattered lyrics are added. In one poem, which should have been excluded, so perilously does it approach mero doggerel, the poet harks back to the grim ugliness of rural tragedy. With this exception there is not a poem in the book I would willingly have missed. Ah echo of the war, a pathetic tribute to lost friends, comes naturally enough from the author of that admirable book, "Gallipoli":

Here, .whero we stood together, wo thrco Before tho war had swept usto the East, Thrco thousand miles away, I stand again And hear the hells, snd breathe, and go We trod tho'samo path, to tho self-same Yet'hcre'l stand' having beheld their shadows the great seas And Cr Sedd-el-Bahr that ever moro blood So, sincere communed here, our bones have been , Nearer perhaps, than they again mil be. Earth and the world-wide battle lie beDeajth°lie3 between, and friend-destroy-Yet here Tytir ago, wo tallied and stood As I stand now, with pulses beating blood.

■ There is a suggestion, if not of the metre, at least if the philosophy of Omar Khayyam in the final sonnet: Let that -which is to come bo as it may, ■DarkneßS/extinction, justice, life intense. The flies are happy in the nunimer day, Hies will bo ha.ppy many summers honee. Time with his antique breeds that built Time with her'men to oomo whose wings will tower, • . Poured and will pour, not as the wiso man thinks, ' . . . But with blind force, to each hi' little And when the hour las struck, comes death or change, Which, whether good or ill we cannot But the'blind planet will wander through BearnVmfu likrflS who will eervo as well. The sun will riee. the winds that evor move Will blow over dust that once were men in love.

Apart from the sonnet sequence thero are some admirable pieces m the collection. As an example of Mr. Masofield's profound sympathy with Nature and his capacity for bringing, animal life before his readers with , intimate realism, I may quoto the short poem, "Midnight": The fox came up by Stringer's Pound; Ho smelt the south-west warm on tno ground, ~ From west to east a feathery smell Of blood on the wing quills tasting well. A buck's hind feet thumped on the sod, The whiplike grass snake went to clou. The dog-fox put his nose in tbo. air To taste what food was wandering there, Under the clover down tho mil. A hare in form that knew hie will Up the hill the warren awake. '„ And the badger showing teetn like .a rako. Down the hill the two thin thorpps, Where the' crying night owl waked the And° tho'moon on tho stilly windows Instead of a dead man's waking light. The cock on his perch that trtiool; hm wins When the clock struck for the chimes to K duck' that quacked, a rat that ran, And a horao that etamped, remembering man. . Mr. Masefield's book should be welcomed by all who possess his earlier work. It affords ample proof alike of his versatility and the maturing of his poetical talents. (N.Z. price 2s. 6d.) ' j A Venture in Verse. In the first of thirty and odd poems included in "A Venture in Verse," by Marjory Nicholls (Whitcomho and Tombs), the author, a well-known Wellington lady, and ex-student of Victoria College, chants the desires and ambitions of a would-be wanderer:

Why cannot I throw my cares away And journey forth like Paragot; Long roads where tall, straight poplars grow, And the sun beats white on the duet all day?

Thus wrote the author in 1911. Sinco then she has had the ."wander-years" she craved i'or. Several of these poems deal with the charm, sometimes weird and elusive, at others insistently qiiiet but equally fascinating, of various farscattered ' temporary environments. There arc pictures from the South African veldt, a tribute to the almost wantonly gorgeous colour of Colombo, memories of peaceful, restful days and evenings spent on Cam and Isis, a rural scene from a. Buckinghamshire village, a memory, of Salisbury Plain, and .so forth, liiss Nicholls seems to be specially clever in reproducing local atmosphere and colour, and she has an artist's ey6 for tho ever suggestive beauty of Nature, as thus shown in tho sonnet entitled "June Evening at Beacbnsfield (Bucks)":

Like a trail of smoke from tho sunset's llame, A long, frail wisp of cloud hung in the sky; 1 The west still glowed—the colour loth to die, , Faded so slowly, and as slowly came The gray of twilight, long ere it could claim A conquest o'er the golden light on high Which yielded, paling; lastly with a Bigh It sadk in grey enveloped—just ae Fame Sinks and is covered by the years that creep. , , . Dimmer and dimmer grew the evening light; . , , Among the corn the noppics drowsed The milky campions glimmer softly white, Tho friendly elme a vigil calm did keepGuardians watching through the darkling night.

Even in her wanderings her memory opens up retrospective vistas. "A. Memory in London" is the wanderer s graceful tribute to the fascination of her far-away Maoriland home;

Tho high hills stretching westward are very, green and fair. The yellow • gorse grows on them, ana Bturdy, wind-brushed broom; The winds from off tho mountains come. down to dally there, And friendly stars shine ocr them through evening's softened gloom.

The grey and silver rain-miets come stealing gently down, Looking for tho forent trees, where now the (passes grow; For lost has Tinakori its proudly-nlunied And C (. r tor n 'againfit (ho oky-line the longbacked ridges show.

A winding road goes, climbing and looks down on the sea; . . Over the blue waters and the island in There's no place on the broad earth is lovelier to me— . With eyes fast closed I picture it. liall the world away. •

The poems are marked by a striking felicity of phrase, and reflect a delicate fancv' and a quiet but shrewd outlook on life. Miss Nicholls is, perhaps, most successful in her employment ot the sonnet form, but my own specaa favourite in a collspvion full of good

things is the tender and pathetically beautiful lyric entitled "A Littlo Place Apart," which I quote in full:

A little garden ] iave i raa ,] o m 0 ] lcro Of tender, fragrant plants-nono bright or sny— And hithur shall I come in twilight's time To dream of the dear yesterday,

A little breeze comp.B whispering from the PastA magic whisper, wondrous, soft, and sweot; I knoel upon the path, tp closer come To those dear bloesoms crowing at my feet. A littlo scent of lavender, bo faint. And rosemary—and that I plyck nnd hold Thinking of you—Death came so Boon to you; Another breeze blows by.. 'Tis strangely cold. Miss Nicholls's poems are a long way above the average of amateur verse, and her little volume whero "sweets compacted lie" will have, I trust, a wide circulation. Songs of Love and Lifo, There is a too evident, and, in places, almost offensive sensuousness in Zora Cross's "Songs of'Lovo and Life" (Sydney. Angus ami Robertson, Sydney, per S. W. Mackny) for the majority of her poems to be suitable for what is called "family rending." Tho author has been influenced, I should say, by Swinburne, and, perhaps, too,, "by the Anglo-Indian poet, Lawrence Hope. It is

a pity that her themes are frequently so frankly erotic, for her verse displays groat powers of imagination, and is often instinct with a musical beauty which is most fascinating. Not all the pooms, however, are tinged with tho unrestrained passion of the "Love Sonnets" sequence. There are many charming short poems, although even in some of these there is a quite Baudelairean morbidity. I quote some pretty lines entitled "The Poppy":—

The muffled bells of sleep toll drowsily As down the dim cathedral of the day The scented censer of your lifo you sway, And all its sweotness scatter over me. Here, where I lie and watch the loveless \ bee Wed flower with flower, and go his swaying way, The loose white winds amongst your petals play, Whispering of Tempo aad of Arcady. Dusk breaks, tho bowl of <lay with sound- ■ lcsß chink, And, as its liquid jewels foam to flamo A rainbow, npplo stains the sapphire sea; So, when Death fireame upoii your ruby brink, The fallen petals from your fragile flamo Colour the waters of oternity. I would, too, I could quote in full a very delightful fantasy, "Tho Fairies' lair." I have only space for the two last verses, which irill servo to show what dainty grace and what happily lilting rhyme is at Miss Crose's command :—

What's for salo at the fairies' fair? Tiny trumpets, Nuts and crumpets, Gossamer gowns that the spidors wear, And woe. red ribbons from the Poppy's hair!

Co'me, uuy a moonTieam, slender, tender, l'osect pans or a witch's spur,, Pixie packets, Goblin jackets, Stiflinß Ago in their elfin fur.

All yon pay is a. dream or two. Fairies reeling, Too and heeling, Purchase the pleasures that the fairies woo, For none want money as tho firey-folk do, Come for tho wee ware, free ware, glee ware. Holiday emiloa in your loosened hair, Tako your fiddle, Trip the middle, Buy lack Youth at the fairies' fair. (N.Z. Price, 45.)