THE NEW LAUREATE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 179, 29 July 1913, Page 7

THE NEW LAUREATE.

<To the BiUor.) Sir, —In your leading article of the IStli July, you cay this appoointment will cause a heated controversy in England. May I venture then, very diffidentiy, to disagree wibh your estimate of Mr. Bridges? You quote at length the opinion of "a critic of acknowledged standing." I know this critic -well; as a. boy he was an iconoclast, caustic in speech; now lie is prosaic, elderly, cautious. The article from which you. quote is an introduction to a selection from Mr Bridges' poems. I presume Mr. Warren . chose them, and considers them typical. I can find absolutely nothing to admire ,in them. Where all are mediocre, I quote almost at random: —

History and Science our playthings are: what an untold Wealth of inexhanstive treasure is stored up for amusement! Shall the amassed Earth-stnicture appeal to mc less than in early Childhood an old fives ball, whose wraps I wondering unwound, Untwining the ravel'd worsted that mere rubbish and waste Of leather and sharings had hounded and moulded elastic Into a perfect sphere? Shall not the celestial earth-ball Equally entertain a mature inquiry, reward our Examination of its contexture, conglomerated Of layer'd debris, the erosion of infinite ases?

Now., is thi3 poetry at all? OJ course, I myself can scan it; Mr. Bridges iB an authority on Virgil, and I spot at once his metre. But I don't think he imitates Virgil well; and as to being poetry, it is fo far from that that 1 can't even diaciissi it. I think that instead of. quoting what a too kindly critic (probably b personal friend) says of Mr. Bridges, you should quote some of Mr. Bridges' work.

My opinion is that we have only two live poets cf any worth. Kipling is so far" nhead in quantity of work thai he should have been offered the poet. Probably he has declined it. I So not wi=li to discuss his claims now. The other is Stephen Phillips, a poet of far higher rank as poet pure and simple; if I criticise him at all, it is upon my knees. Of his poems, "The Academy" eaid very beautifully: "How should language, without the slightest strain, express more? It' has an almost physical effect upon the reader, in the opening of the eyes, and the dilation of tie heart."

•Now, to justify this criticism, I will quote the classical (already) epceeh ot Idas: —

I love tbee* then Not only for thy lwd> packed,'with sweet Of all this world, that •■aip -ot hrimniins June, That Jar of violet wine set , in? the air, That palest rose sweet in the night of life; Nor for that stirring boso-ia nil besieged i By drowsing lovers, or th;r perilous hairNor for that face that mfcjht indeed provoke Invasion of old cities; no. nor all Tliy freshness stealing cm mc like stranze sleep. Not fer this only do I lore thee, but Because Infinity upon these broods; And thou art full of whispers and of shadows. Thou meanest whut the sea has striven to nay So long, aud yearned up the cliffs to tell; Thou art what all the wiuds have uttered. not. What the- still night unggestetb to the heart. Thy voice is like to music heard ere Wrtn, Some spirit lnte touched on a spirit sea: Thy face remembered Is from other worlds I It has beeii died for, though I know not when. It has been snng of, though I know not where. It hee the strangeness of the loriujr West. And of sad sea-horizons; beside thee 1 am aware of other times and lands Of birth far-back, ot lira to many star*.

What *an I say of this that will not seem pale and colourless beside the m?ryellous witchery of my poet? If I say that the man it does not move almost to tears eaan never have loved you will laugh at mc. But tnsat else can one say? I could quote dozens of eqnallv fine passages.—l am, etc., W. F: lIOWLETT. Tanc, Eketahuna.