POET AND RULER.

Evening Star, Issue 3012, 14 October 1872, Page 3

POET AND RULER.

To the Editor of the N.Z. Herald ,

g IR> —The following is from the Eclectic for August, just received “ Every collection of English verses made within the last quarter century has contained a certain poem on the birth of Christ, through which runs the refrain : In the solemn midnight, Centuries ago. Thirty-five years ago its author, Alfred Domett, gave a royal entertainment to his friends; left them, leaning on Robert Browning's arm ; left him, vanished. Many years after he was seen in a boat, manned by savages, off the coast of New Zealand, but this was the only glimpse vouchsafed to his friends. He was long ago given up for dead. Browning’s poem of “ Waring” is founded on this strange career. Recently the supposed dead man came back, wearied with wandering, to tell the story of a life spent in ruling the barbarians among whom he had hidden himself from civilisation. He has brought with him the fruit of thirty-five years’ practical solitude, in the shape of a poem of 14,000 lines, which is soon to be published. Its author’s life will be an advertisement such as no book ever had before.” . . Try, Mr Editor, and publish this extract in extenso. Then let us know whether the poet “ruling the barbarians among whom he had hidden himself is not the same Alfred Domett who will carry with him “the fruit of thirty-five years practical solitude” not only in 14,000 lines of poetry, but in the solid prose represented by a pension on our Civil List of L6OO or L7OO, cultivated in the “practical solitude” of the New Zealand Land Office. If so, the joke is too good to be lost.—l am, &c., Savage.

(For continuation oj 2\cws tec fourth payc.)