3YA Lecturer Writes Some Verse

Radio Record, Volume VIII, Issue 17, 2 November 1934, Page 32

3YA Lecturer Writes Some Verse

"The Litany of Beauty,’ by C. Stuart Perry, Sets a New Standard in New Zealand Verse-A Book to Keep the Reader GuessingAn Apprentice in the Days of Sailing Ships.

"Ps LITANY OF BEAUTY," a collection of verses by the former SYA lecturer. Mr. C. Stuart Perry. sets a new standard. Almost for the first time we have verse which is typically New Zealand. and yet disregards altogether the kowhai, rata and pohutakawa. Beautiful although they are, these flowers have so often been flaunted across the pages of New Zea: iand magazines that we have come to take them as the only mark which can stamp poetry as belonging to our own

country. Mr. Perry shows us what s wrong impression that is. Written in widely different metres, the verses are almost all free from the taint of the modern trend-and-uplift school. Their beauty. is often frank!y of the senses-someéetimes, however. only of the intellect. Often the lines are striking :- "By the sweet lilac smell that drifts across The drowsy long verandah’s glimmiering cool... the lucent sea, A stained-glass restfulness,’ all grecu and blue." Mr. Perry's more recent work shows a’ marked advance and a yery livel: perception of beauty in all its count. less forms. "Princeling’ is an unusual poem, and striking in its balance-at the other end of the scale "The Pirate" is a rollicking little impression. The unusual metres include a sequence 0? eight eleven-syllable lines :- "That you should die, who lived so much with laughter, That when your eyelids, weighted by dark lashes, ; Have closed at last; no tears that follow after,

Can ever make life blossom from your ashes: That our remembrance of you should grow dimmer, As the fair face of parchment, age: ing, yellows : So Death, kind friend to you, to uy scems grimmer, And old ghosts, grey with years, your fitier fellows." A touch of eynicism on the same page strikes another note :- "Illusions make a Paradise for fools. And lost illusions turn it into Hell; And, if you fall betiveen these vicious stools, Doubt makes you clapper for his cracked old bell." Messrs. Ferguson and Osborn hay presented the book in a most ‘attrac. tive form; and-have probably choseu this month-to put it on the market in the expectation that people will realis: it-as a delicately flattering Christma~ present. N "The Crime at the Quay Inn," Mr Erie Aldhouse has written one of those murder stories with a dozen possible solutions, none of which seems altogether satisfactory. The true solution rests in a doctor's casebook, and it is hardly possible to deduce it from the ascertainable facts. The detective. Chief Inspector Lennard, takes the investigation ‘as far as it is possible to take it-even finds the so:ution-but dismisses it as fantastic, Wad the victim’s medical history been placed before the reader at the beginn ng of the book, and then airily dismissea (as it _ might have been), this would have heen a fair and ingenious puzzle. As it is, it is only ingenious; yet there is enough incident for the story to stand on its merits as a tale without havins the added attraction of being also 4 problem, And the reader can readiiv get as far as the detective-as far as’ the Scotland Yard authorities in conference could get before closing the case. And one of the subsidiary problems leading up to Chief Inspector Lennard’s impasse is difficult but perfectly possible for the reader to solve. and most intriguing. The situation is quite unusual-four men in a bar parlour, one shot dead; no possible meaus of ingress for the bullet from outside; collusion highly improbable-one of the three living men being a doctor and on» a priest. And the chief clue is a most tantalising apparatus, "The Crime at the Quay Inn," Bric Aldhouse. Philip Allan. Our copy from the publishers, (CAPTAIN FENTON’S "The Sea Apprentice" is not a story with a plot, but a narrative of two voyages round .the world under canvas. The style, as might be expected, is a little old-fashioned, but the author succeeds in presenting a very real and interesting picture of the life of a sea apprentice in a full-rigged sailing ship.

The apprentices served as_ ships’ boys, but were being trained an:l studying to become officers. Captain Fenton’s voyages (the book is autobiographical) contained practically every incident of any interest or excitement, short of shipwreck or dismasting. The loading of a nitrate cargo, fire at sea. the anties of sailors ashore, the joss of all the ship’s canvas and the rudder in a blow off Hatteras. are all described with a commendable economy of

words. A South American calaboose, the Newcastle grub-houses, where the boys used to congregate, the catching of a mollyhawk, are pieces of descrip- . tion which keep the book from any suspicion of dullness. Indeed, it is extraordinary how little the interest lagseven in a calm there seems to have been plenty to do. The Marechal Suchet was a hungry ship-from wne cause or another there were never enough stores aboard-and the narrative is relieved by the efforts of the apprentices to obtain more to eat, an:l of one of the men to starve himself in order to get compensation on their arrival in port. This man was unlucky -an accident put him to bed; and he was fed on arrowroot, beef extract and port from the medical stores under the eye of the captain. He put on weight and ended the voyage as well-looking as any man on board, . "The Sea Apprentice," Captain ©, Fenton. Nautilus Library. Philip Allan, Our copy from the’ publishers,