LYRIC POET

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 630, 27 July 1951, Page 13

LYRIC POET

TWENTY-EIGHT POEMS, by Merval Connelly; the Caxton Press. MERVAL CONNELLY is a lyric poet with a small, uneven talent reaching no great intensity but often of considerable charm. These poems are mainly short pieces, and the best in the collection is the longest, Midas and His Daughter. Here the author’s romanticism shows to its best effect: For curious kings from overseas have stilled Their tongues in wonder, gaping at my hoard Of honeyed gold. I, who could afford To keep a thousand dancing girls to speed The midnight boredom saw the hours recede Like tide-turned waves; But she is not always as felicitous as this. She can seldom resist a lazy adjective, and phrases like "sensuous Oriental eyes" (of a cat), "the rainbow’s prismatic arc," or "war’s tame heralds" unleashing "a symphony of death" spoil many poems which contain flashes of far more effective writing. Merval Connelly’s is essentially a sweet, fragile lyricism, and there is a kinship with nature poets like W. H. Davies in the _ best of it:

I take my cue from small and placid things: | The grass and flowers safe beneath the sun, The triple-tender songs of birds; the wise Unmoving lizard scrolled across the stone. | This kind of poetry must be fresh and original in expression if it is to be of much value. Where the words are stale, as they are in many of these lines, the effect of the poem as a whole is largely wasted.' Despite these faults Twenty-Eight Poems shows a considerable advance in technique and maturity of feeling on Miss Connelly’s earlier

book, iwelve Poems.

P. J.

W.