Astrophel.

Auckland Star, Volume XXV, Issue 149, 23 June 1894, Page 12

Astrophel.

SwnrßtrsNE's New Volume.

Bbxef Excebpts.

Feom ottb Special Cokeesposdknt.

London, May 5,1894. Mb SwraBUEmES new volume of poetry Bhowß thab age has nob in the least affected his gorgeous gift of song. Here as in 'Poems add Ballads' and 'Songs Before Sunrise' the great master of words pours forth melodies with reckless prodigality. As one of his reviewers observes * His tides of song mast rash and roll and roar* like the tides of the sea he worships.' Some of these songs doubtless leave the reader a little hazy as to meaning, bub they are majestic, imposing and goal stirring. The opening poem, ' Aefcrophel,' consists of a set of stanzas in two of Mr Swinburne's favourite measures, composed after reading Sir Philip Sidney's 'Arcadia' in the garden of an old English manor house. In Swinburne's eyes, Sidney is the typical English hero: * Ay. not yet may the land forget that bore aad loved tfaec, and praised and wept. Sidney, lord of the stainless sword, the name of names that her heart's love kept Fast as thine did her own, a sign to light thy life till it sank and slept. But England, enmeshed and benetted With spiritless villainies round. With counsels of cowardice fretted, With trammels of treason enwound; Is yet, though the season be other Than wept and rejoiced over thee. Thine England, thy lover, thy mother, Snblime as the sea. Hers wast thou; if her face be now less bright, or seem for an hour less brave. Lat bat thine op her darkness shine, thy saviour spirit revire and save; Time shall ace, as the shadows flee, her shame entombed in a shameful grave. A long nature-poem, ' A Nympbolepb,' in seven line sta'nzaa, is followed by a poem addressed 'to Theodore Watts,,' and entitled 'On the South Coast.' It contains a fine description of an unnamed ' shrine which has seen decline eight hundred waxing and waning years' :— Tower set square to the storms of air and change of season that {dooms and glows. Wall and roof of it tempest-proof, and equal ever to suns aad snows, Bright with riches of radiant niches and pillars smooth as a straight stem grows. Aisle and nave that the whelming wave of time has whelmed not or touched or neared, Arch and vanlt without stain or fault, by hands of craftsmen we know not reared. Time beheld them, and time -was quelled: and change passed by them as one that feared. Ken that -vyrought by the grace of thought and toil things goodlier than praise dare tr* se. Fair as all that the world may call most fair, save only, the sea's own face, Shrines or sonfs that the world's change wrongs not. live by grace of their own gift's grace. Dead, their names that the night reclaim*— alive, their works that the day relumes— Sink and stand, as in stone and sand engraven: none may behold their tombs: Nights and days shall record their praise while here this flower of their grafting blooms. Flower more fair than the sun-thrilled air bids laugh and lighten and wax and rise. Fruit more bright than the fervent light rustains with strength from the kindled skies. Flower and fruit that the deathless root of man's love rears though the man's nune dies. • An Aufcnmn Vision ' contains one of Mr Swinburne's many eulogies of Shakespeare, too long to be quoted entire. The following is perhaps the most characteristic passage:— But higher than all its horrent height of shade Shone sovereign, seen by light itself had made, Above tho woes of all the world, above Life. sin. and death, his myriad-minded love. From landward heights whereon the radiance leant Full-fraught from heaven, intense and imminent, To depths wherein the seething strengths of cload Scarce matched the wrath of waves whereon they bowed, From honioborn pride and kindling love of homo To the outer skies and seas of fire and foam. From splendour soft as dew that sundawn thrills To gloom that shudders round the world it fills. From midnights murmuring round Titauia's car To midnights maddening round the rage of Lear. The wonder woven of storm and sun became One with the light that lightens from his name. The music moving on the sea that felt The storm-wind even as snows of springtide melt Was blithe as Ariel's band or voice might make And bid all grief die gladly for its sake. Then follow some shorter numbers, ' A Swimmer's Dream,' a spirited and tempestuous -metred celebration of Grace Darling's heroism, and a beautiful mountain and sea piece, 'Loch Torridon.' After, recounting his arrival by night on the shores of the loch, the poet bursts forth into this glorious description of the morning :— And the dawn leapt in at my casement; and there, as I rose, afmy feet No waves of the landlocked waters, no lake submissive and sweet, Soft slave of the lordly seasons, whose breath may loose it or freeze; But to left and to right and ahead was the ripple whose poise is the sea's. From the gorge we had travelled by starlight and Bunriae, winged and aflame, Shone large on live wide wavelets that shod--1 dered with joy as it-came: As it came and caressed and possessed them, till panting and laughing with light ■ From mountain to mountain the water was kindled and stuns: to delight. And the grey gaunt heights that embraced and constrained and compelled it were g!ad. And the rampart of rock, stark naked, thatthwarted and barred it, tvaa cJad With a stern grey splendour of sunrise: and scarce had I sprung to the soa When the dawn and the water were wedded, and the hills and the sky set free. ' The Palace of Pan ' gives an impressive picture of ' the pine-forest's infinite aisles,' and ' A Year's Carols ' consist of an eightline versicle for each month, not, to our thinking, in the poet's happiest manner. ' England : an Ode,' is conceived in the strain which we have now learnt to expect with confidence whenever Mr Swinburn pats on the patriot. Oner verse will suffice as a sample :— Far and near from the swan's nest here the stormbirdg bred of her fair white breast. Sons whose home was tbe sea-wave's foam, have borne the fame of her east and west; North and south has the storm-wind's mouth rung praise of England and England's quest. Fame, whorever her flag flew, never forbore to fly with an equal wiDg r Franco and Spain with their warrior train bowed down before her as thrall to King; India knelt at her feet, and felt her sway more fruitful of life than spring. This is pretty strong ; bub Mr Rudyard Kipling can sweep the Greater British lyre almost a3 effectively. Then, after ' Eton, an Ode' came four stanzas on ' The Union,' of which this is the first:— Three in one. but oae in three, God, who girt her with the sea, Bade our Commonweal to be; " Nought, if now not one. Though fraud and fear would sever The bend assured for ever. Thai shameful strength shall never Undo what heaven has done. On which one can only remark that if Mr Swinburne will look into the history of the Legislative Union he will find that heaven chose strange instruments to bring it about. Of tbe ' Inscriptions for the Four Sidos of a Pedestal' of a statute of Mcrlowe, the second is, to our mind the most happily inspired:— Marlowe, a star too sovereign, too superb. To fade when heaven took fire from Shakespeare's light. A soul that knew but song's triumphal curb. And love'B triumphal-bondage, holds of right His pride of place, who first in place and time Made England's voice aa England's heart i sublime. '