MR CHRISTIE'S OFFERINGS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXIX, Issue 7825, 18 June 1909, Page 4

MR CHRISTIE'S OFFERINGS.

Under the heading of A Book op Manly Verse, and over the signature of Sherry Trim, the Otago Witness °l Wednesday, June 16, 1909, publishes the following article: A book of verse is not a rare happening m JNew Zealand. Every month or so a slender volume makes its bow to the public, receiving from this quarter a sententious bray of distaste; from that, a patronising cackle of approval; after which it sinks like a stone into the ocean of oblivion. There are many reasons why the modest little selection of poems just, published by Mr John Christie, of Ashburton, should meet with a better fate than most of these posies of verse. To begin with the most debatable, according to colonial canons of criticism, it is valiantly free of local colour. To say this m certain quarters is to utter its condemnation. But_ we' have the courage of our convictions, and maintain that local colour is a fine walking-stick, but a poor crutch. If .rata-fire burns m the blood, and "Kia Ora!" rolls tripping off the tongue, well and good. But when a man writes as a world citizen, takes his stand by temperament on broad human verities, we repeat it is a valiant thing to refrain from rata-rhymes and the shouting of "Kia Oras!" Nature, fresh and virginal as a bride, touched the eyes of the man who wrote these rhymes; but the abiding impulse of that touch was imparted m far latitudes: Wild spring! I knew it when a boy In that dear land'where I was born. The country folk when -fain to drink Would hasten to its grassy brink, And from its crystal depths would drain ' , Divine refreshment, or would lave Their faces m its: cooling wave, Which neither gave nor took a stain. Dust, drift, and other alien things Would gather round it day by day; But by the native inward play , Of its sweet water—springs of springs— \ It threw them offward from its heart, And it and they were things apart.

■ There is inner vision,, but no glint of rata-fir© m crystal simplicities like that; ; Certainly there is one characteristic taste of Canterbury m The Chant of the Nor'-wester: . I, the Spirit of Tamerlane, Freely visit the earth; again, ; But not m the guise of a wind: tha;t blows ..■•■' At. eve on a bank where the violet grows. And men on land and men at sea Who fear not God are afraid of-me. • It is .a homogeneous book. Local colour is 'not the only adventitious \ pigment whereby our Olympian confectioners', of Australasia are wont to furbish up poor goods for the market; there is in,many a sort of shallow mystery, a modish moodiness,''a theatrical Satanism,; 1 as if th© poet;:said, "See, what a wild, opaque, inconsequent,. inj comprehensible,A devil of'a genius; I ami" Here, again,l our author has .the courage to be clear and clean. and .consistent ; tq, eliminate thepersonar'problem m order. to, •.concentrate on.th§ world-problem; to'challenge the ;reader with, no intangible shibboleth of the hour, but with that old human warcry against hard, earth and adamantine heaven that has risen, rounded, swelled, and hushed into heart-harmony from the Book of Job to In Memoriam. Mr Christie has the fever of the world's pain hot m his blood. The cruelty, the unutterable cruelty, of " Nature red m tooth and claw"; of man the ghoul battening m the charnel-house his pride, his greed, his passions have created '■ around him—this crushes the poet's heart night and day; he can make no truce with it, hold no traffic with it m any shape, Melalitne, a long mono-drama of a tender soul nailed to the age-enduring cross of the world's anguish, is plainly autobiography, both m the early throes— : When fearfuller than a tiger's den To him were his own fellowmen, . With what they bore on Nature's wheel, And what they made each other feel; and m the mellowed conclusion where he sees m duty sought and duty done the slow, sure medicine of the world's fever: The lighthouse keeper on his rock. Through halcyon calm and hurricane shock, With shipwrecks far and shipwrecks near, Their agonies m his heart and ear, Though answering back with inward throes To all he dreads or dreams or knows, Stands to his duty on his height " Whatever may strike his sound or sight; Not rushing out to each wild wave That sweeps some wan wight to his grave, Lest,with_no hand to feed its flame, And to his soul's eternal blame, His beaconrtower should cease to cast Its radiance out into the vast, And many a;brave barque dash to doom Amidst the foul Charybdian gloom.

And so, upstanding there, sublime, Betwixt eternity and time, The mortal and immortal blend Within him to a glorious end, For God's warm touch is on his soul, And God Himself shall be his goal. It is not Mr Christie's fault, but the common fate of the questing pen that dips m divinity, that the other long spiritual monodrama of. the book, Night at Nazareth, is less forcible, less convincing, than the merely human study, MelaJuFine, even though the former contains such sonorous lines as this: All That dwell beneath the ancient arc of heaven. There is some strong, briny reading m such lines as O^sarism, where the poet lashes : The irreparable sin Of those who bring a Csesar m, Of those who stoop as men to raise a king,; Than which Time never spawne^d a viler thing; Because were men not base kings could not be, ; And basest they whom baseness gives j degree.

I But he sets against the pinchbeck of I pseudo-patriotism the gold of reality, as 'here: ,; tJlest is the land whose.people keep Alive that flame of heart and head Which burns for ever on the leap j To scorch the alien threatener dead. Its merest schoolboy, when he dreams , A hostile host is on the shore, Stands iorth a, demigod m arms, And hurls the invader fiercely o'er Black-beetling crag and cloven cliff, To perish m the surging sea; Then dies with glory m his eyes, Acclaimed of freedom and the free, A passionate vein of chivalry runs through his verse—chivalry that now finds vent m-such airy form as the Princess of Erin, perhaps the most' artistically charming pieco m the book. We have not many poets among us who can round such a line as Morning, shaking put her golden hair; and again storm out m such words as these: God kind? Indeed! To whomP—to her Whose spirit never feels the stir Of kindness, nor inhales its myrrh ? Contented! She, whose loveless life Is filled with ceaseless stress and strife ? And heaven-sent,children! Brats, begot ■By drivelling, fool or seething sot Sad things that rasp her life away: flings born to be themselves the prey Of grimier guilt and wearier woo Plan earth's worst wretch deserves to " 'know. " "■■-.■.:.■ ;,* ■ ; .'. A poet is a man who is a lover. There i$ mo lack, of the love-theme here, wreathing like young ivy round the grey, time-battered towers of life. Sometimes it is the lilt of a song: My love and. I went roamjng upon a summer day, My love and I went roaming among the fields of hay, When the bees were m the clover and clover reached the knee— And when I was fiverand-twenty and my love was twenty-three. Sometimes it is wrought into the deeper web of such poems as Similitude and the Guardian genius. But m all fo,rjn§ it is iridescent and tTOp, If there needs tP he emphasised, one last commendation of this unusual booklet, it my well baits unusual.

poetic sponsorship. In Australasia definite schools of poetry are not numerous, and most of them are defiantly fii^ de siecle. But few critics can read, Offerings without being aware of an atmosphere our newer Olympians selr dom breathe now. Yet m that self-same air was England nursed back to the sane, sweet wholeness she had wellnigh lost m alien poet-questing. Mr I Christie's master is Wordsworth. -The homely idyl of The Ruined Homestead is m the very manner of the old Lake j poet: and no less is his enduring charm ■ recalled m Bird and Man: Blest bird, with wings a-wet with dew From daisy tips besprent, Thou blendest with the boundless blue Of God's great firmament, And welcomest the waking day • . With such a wildly joyous lay That mount and mead and lawn and lea Grow gladsomer because of theel Nor turnest thou, though clouds may come To darken all the welkin, dumb; • But singest on through shade and shine With an indomitable heart, As though thou wert thyself thy song, Or felt m every mortal part The splendid ardour of a strong, And immemorial wine. Something, we trust, has been said and shown, though inadequately enough, to point the elect reader to a friendly companionable little book, the' tissues of which are free of shoddy and the tinting of which is fast dye. For! the rest, good wine needs no bush.