-
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
His covering with blood red
may be said to add another horror to martyrdom. Still it is a thoroughly well-intentioned book and eminently
suitable for invalids.
Mr. Foskett's poems are very serious and deliberate. One of the best of them, Harold Glynde, is a Cantata for
Total Abstainers, and has already been set to music. A Hindoo Tragedy is the story of an enthusiastic
Brahmin reformer who tries to break down the prohibition against widows marrying, and there are other
interesting tales. Mr. Foskett has apparently forgotten to insert the rhymes in his sonnet to Wordsworth; but,
as he tells us elsewhere that 'Poesy is uninspired by Art,' perhaps he is only heralding a new and formless
form. He is always sincere in his feelings, and his apostrophe to Canon Farrar is equalled only by his
apostrophe to Shakespeare.
The Pilgrimage of Memory suffers a good deal by being printed as poetry, and Mr. Barker should republish it
at once as a prose work. Take, for instance, this description of a lady on a runaway horse:
THE POETS' CORNER II 60
Reviews
Her screams alarmed the Squire, who seeing the peril of his daughter, rode frantic after her. I
saw at once the danger, and stepping from the footpath, show'd myself before the startled
animal, which forthwith slackened pace, and darting up adroitly, I seized the rein, and in
another moment, had released the maiden's foot, and held her, all insensible, within my arms.
Poor girl, her head and face were sorely bruised, and I tried hard to staunch the blood which
flowed from many a scalp-wound, and wipe away the dust that disfigured her lovely
features. In another moment the Squire was by my side. 'Poor child,' he cried, alarmed, 'is
she dead?' 'No, sir; not dead, I think,' said I, 'but sorely bruised and injured.'
There is clearly nothing to be gained by dividing the sentences of this simple and straightforward narrative
into lines of unequal length, and Mr. Barker's own arrangement of the metre,
In another moment,
The Squire was by my side.
'Poor child,' he cried, alarmed, 'is she dead?'
'No, sir; not dead, I think,' said I,
'But sorely bruised and injured,'
seems to us to be quite inferior to ours. We beg that the second edition of The Pilgrimage of Memory may be
issued as a novel in prose.
Mr. Gladstone Turner believes that we are on the verge of a great social cataclysm, and warns us that our
cradles are even now being rocked by slumbering volcanoes! We hope that there is no truth in this statement,
and that it is merely a startling metaphor introduced for the sake of effect, for elsewhere in the volume there is
a great deal of beauty which we should be sorry to think was doomed to immediate extinction. The Choice,
for instance, is a charming poem, and the sonnet on Evening would be almost perfect if it were not for an
unpleasant assonance in the fifth line. Indeed, so good is much of Mr. Gladstone Turner's work that we trust
he will give up rhyming 'real' to 'steal' and 'feel,' as such bad habits are apt to grow on careless poets and to
blunt their ear for music.
Nivalis is a five-act tragedy in blank verse. Most plays that are written to be read, not to be acted, miss that
condensation and directness of expression which is one of the secrets of true dramatic diction, and Mr.
Schwartz's tragedy is consequently somewhat verbose. Still, it is full of fine lines and noble scenes. It is
essentially a work of art, and though, as far as language is concerned, the personages all speak through the lips
of the poet, yet in passion and purpose their characters are clearly differentiated, and the Queen Nivalis and
her lover Giulio are drawn with real psychological power. We hope that some day Mr. Schwartz will write a
play for the stage, as he has the dramatic instinct and the dramatic imagination, and can make life pass into
literature without robbing it of its reality.
(1) The Queen's Innocent, with Other Poems. By Elise Cooper. (David Stott.)
(2) The Chimneypiece of Bruges and Other Poems. By Constance E. Dixon. (Elliot Stock.)
(3) Oliver Cromwell and Other Poems. By Dawson Burns, D.D. (Partridge and Co.) [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
- doc.pisz.pl
- pdf.pisz.pl
- matkadziecka.xlx.pl