BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1216, 26 August 1911, Page 9

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

VERSES OLD AND NEW. SCHOLARS. It is pity I have And ttmt is a truth, For tno Triniry men And tlie men of ilaynooth. The mon of ilaynooth aro tho liko o' the roo.te With their solemn blnck coats an' their serious looks; j n An' the Trinitv men aro no better at all, For when they're not studyin' deep;in their booJcs , ,', ' Their only diversion is batting a ball, An' that is a truth. If myself now were there Jly heart would be broke, For the sniell o'l'ho earth c )r a whiff of peat smoke. The weight of their learning would sure havo mo bet, • I'd sell all their books for an old fishing net, And pawn their professors for Danny's young horse. . . • . Och! glory to goodness I'd pine an' I'd fret . ■ For the mountainy wind an' the smell o' the gorse, An' that is a truth. It's the old one's that's there, They'd- ask a poor lad . . To be searching his mind For the knowledge he. had. For. learning in poaching they'd, givo .mo small thanks, Or for tricks to catch trout hidden under the banks, There's much I could tell them of grouse and of hare, But still they'd not bid me to enter their ranks, '■ , An' faith! I'm not wishful to be with them there, An' that is a truth. -W. 'M. Letts. LOVE AND DEATH. Love with his flaming -wings forever bsateth At the fast-barred doors of Death's abede: With yearning lips and longing eyes cntreateth That vainly life to man should not bo showed. From : earliest ages of the world's ' creation— From the 'first silent dawn of gleaming light, Love still hath sought in patient supplication Freedom for men—the vassals of. Death's might. Tea! at the last, the hands of Love shall sever The bonds whereby the soul of man is bound: The gates' of Hell shall not prevail forever—. Immortal joys, sought, longed for, shall bo found. —John Beresford.

THE MEMORIES OF THE TIDE. The tido is'sad with crowding memories Of all its ceaseless wanderings; where leaps The white cascade, and where the black tarn, sleeps, ; * And where the long waves mourn on changing seas. It chanls J the plaint, the slow grey death of trees Above its breast; the ambushed ■ death that, creeps Fierce-oyed, soft-padding in the forest deeps, , And frail lives crushed, and strangled melodies.. , Coiled by vast, towns, by brooding citadels, Jt bears the dirges of a million bells, The siist despairs to sudden darkness hur|dd. Th» exile's choked farewells, and strained eyes; ■ On-shir* that climb the far ridge of tho , world, In fadim* smoke-plumes trailed on sunset skies. —T. O'Neill Gallagher, in the "Daily ISews." POETS OF THE EMPIRE. , In a recent issue of the -Literary Supplement of the London "Times" there was,an interesting discussion upon tho poetry of the overseas Dominions. We print some Lengthy extracts:—

Fifty years ago it .would have- been poseible to say that the Empire possessed no poetry at all rave that which was actually or essentially English. The timo was not yet come-when Canadians'and Australians and South Africans, having ceased to think of themselves as merely types of the Englishman errant, would wish to hear their national' aspirations and inspirations expressed in the language of poetry—the only language that gives to words the forco and substance of actions and living things. Meanwhile they were content to road, the poetry of the Homeland (in 'pirated editions), and if they had any money to throw away on what'seemed the mere luxuries of living, they bought the works of those', local rhymesters. who were most faithful in their imitations of the Dii Majores of English literature. So that-the poetical pioneer was either starved into silence or constrained to adapt himself and his wares to the requirements of the markot. More often than not, it would appear, he choss the less worthy part. On any other assumption it would bo difficult to explain how and why Canada, for example, produced so many "sedulous apes" of the mannerisms of Scott and Burns and other popular masters in tho first half of the •nineteenth century. It is terrible to think how many of these indefatigable and indistinguishable versifiers were complimented with the title of '"The. Canadian Burns"—at. least it would be terrible if we had not b:en tausht to accept the Scottish gift of adaptability a? ft gr-ist Imperial asset. One at least of these copyists carried the flr.Uorv of imitatisn. a thought too far; for lie painted the Lfiurcntian hills purple, forgetting that heather grows only in one piaco in all Canada—tho -sylvan ambuscade near Halifax, white the Highland regiments were wont to camp in the open sewn: of the year. Nowadays all such poor, painstaking umbrao can' be forgiven and forgotten; each of tho thrco greater Dominions has its own national school of literature in i becoming, if net as yet in boing, and Swinburne's hope that thay will givo us truly great poots should presently bo realised. Even whore the grim word "development" covers the mtiltitudo of tho materialist's isins,-lumberjacks and roustabouts ct hoc genus omno will read books of verse and put a rasping thumb on a line ■ they like (which is almost always pond of its kind), and say. "That hits me right." As everybody knows who has lived with them, there is often a trea-1 euro of true poetry in those who are busy j with the spade-work and axe-work of Em-1 rirp-nmkin.cr. "Bitter as a dying man's sweat is the water of that lake" (Western Canada); "Three dead fellows went by sitting on a wave and warming theirselyos in the moonlight" (Newfoundland); "Hclonning to himself, but not meddlesome, like* an old man kangaroo" (Australia) ; "Can't see through her any moro'n through a diamond, but you cn'i>j trust her"-(South Africa)—hero are some I specimens of the poetic saying:-: that can I be picked tip on tho frontiers of Imperial ! civilisation. ■ (Coventry l'atmore discovered the fourth for himself.) The givers nf such' gifte, indeed, might themselves have been pools of the Empire under another dispensation; however that may be, they are sound critics of all poetry below tho'plane of thunders and splendours; at all times they can appreciate tho "sad oarnestm'.-s and vivid exactness," to nso Cardinal Newman's phrase, which are tho characteristics of the poetry that is nearer akin t" sculpture than to music-or painting. Workers all their lives, th'oy expect the poet's words to lie as good as their own works; 'wisely they prefer to roses tho attar nf roses', valuing a quintessential Invn-song of Bums more than all tho amorist's still-fading flowers of acted angui«h. "It don't ketch me nohow," said n 'Western critic silling by his watch-lire »ii ,i land where the rivers How over the Jrink of evening. "I guess it's one of

yer button-hole pieces." (He had seen wired hot-houso flowers in a florist's shop at Winnipeg, so painfully erect and expanded.) In England, alas! tho love of truo poetry has been trodden out of tho working man by his own hungry generations. It was not so in "Mc-rrio England," but the antiquo merriment, an abiding and by no means inarticulato joy of living, has long ago departed. But whither? Into those faroff lands, of cour:'.?, which are still demiEng'.anrls from Hie pnet's, if not from tho politician's, point cf view, .where the wage-earner is once more- in touch with Jlother-enrtb.—so . that the Herculean worry will not throw him j-.it awhile—and is his own man again and has time for all poetic wisdom. Tho criticism of .'the man in touch with tho stern ET.'eet realities of life, wheresoever it has been sought systematically in the Dominions, Ins bean a salutary'influenco in the evolution of national poetry. Yet although such healthy and homely influences are Working up from under, as !tho clean savour of the soil ascends to tho largo and luminous stars of an evening in the Continental Dominions, Canada, and Australia and South Africa aro not yet poetical independencies. They aro still demi-Englands. Not because tho yearn-in? for tho sights and sounds of the English countryside and all its beauty of memorial is still a drone-note of repining in tho work of those who still feel they aro exiles—a feeling that may endure, so mistress-liko is tho Jlotherland forsaken by their fathers, even to the second or third generation. There is, indeed, a touch of this bitter-sweet sentiment in the work of. the most Canadian of Canadian poets. They arc all haunted by England, even those whose ancestors were transplanted across tho Atlantic three centuries ago. Even Bliss Carman, who is (he Wordsworth cf Canada-by-the-soa, must revero tho English muse of daffodils and nightingales and warm, green hills, .and so confess Tliero. is no common fame of her Upon the 'cornars, yot snmo. word Of hnr most secret heritage Hor lovers from' her lips have heard. Indeed not one of the poets of the wider shores but U3es her diction as his mothertongtio when ho turns from tho world about him to look into the other world of the' human heart. When he is making pictures of nil that lies .without he cannot ignoro tho birds and beasts and flowers of his nativo wilderness. Goldenrod and wattle, gophers and wombats, bobolinks and mopokes—if he would, ho could not keep thorn out of his descriptive verse. Tho occasional English reader looks askance at their queer unfamiliar namesgargoyles of verbiago that, for him have no ulterior significance. Word-play would havo been easier for the Canadian or Australian pc-et if tli£sa_ creatures had been named more euphoniously, less, fantastically. However, he does his duty by them all even at tho cost of saying, for singing it was out of the questionBefore tho 'Alchcringa sighed In Australia desolate, The Kookaburra, agog, descried Tho tangled threads of Fate.

It is a pity that the "wise, unruffled, I droll bird of tho Never Never" has been handicapped by the gift of a name so ungainly and uuwieldy. Feathered Socrates as ho is with his dialectical beak and never-failing irony, the kookaburra has no future in poetry; he cannot hope to hold his own against the ordinary owl at tho odds of three such syllables. Manifestly, there were more reasons than one why, when ho comes to writs •of the'things within, the poet of the Dominions must needs think in terms of the older symbolism. Thero aro no daisies ' in its sere pastures, no nightingales in his gaunt woodlands. Yet for him the daisy remains tho symbc-1 of simplicity gar.ing open-eyed; tho nightingale still typifies tho passion that may not step. Until ho has invented a symbolism of his own. as indigenous and inevitable as tho English poet's, his natural school of poetry is not yet in being. The deftest use cf 'local colouring" will not suffice. He must open the door of his heart as well as that of his studio to the bobolink or the mc-poke. Ho must follow the example of Archibald Lampman, the "posts' poet" of Canada, and as loving an observer of birds and flowers as the lato Lord do Tabley, who wrote a charming set of interlinked sonnets to tho frogs that sing unceasingly from early spring to harvest-time in every lako and pond and sscret slough from end to cud of Canada. All day and all night their song fills tho passing timo with arabesquerics of shimmering sound. Rightly are these water-singers called "Canadian . nightingales," and tho most loving-careful of Canada's poets praises them aright:— In those mute days, when spring was in her glee, And hopo was strong, we know not why or how, And earth, the,mother, dreamed with brooding hrow, Musing on lifo and what the hours might be When love should ripen to maternity, Then like high flutes in silvery intor- . change, Te pip:d with voices still and sweet and strange, And ever as ye piped, en every trco The great buds swelled; among tho pensive woods The spirits of first flowers awoko and flung From buried faces the close-fitting hoods, ■ Anil listened to your piping till they fell; The frail spring beauty, with her perfumed bell, The wind.Dower, and the spotted adder . tongue. An Australian poet, who also knew the creatures of his wilderness by heart, was the late Victor Daley—to whom, rather than to Gordon, the English reader should resort for tho true pathos of Australian life. See how the un-English tre?s of a fjck, Southern valley enter into his unhappmess:— And I saw sorrow everywhere, In blackened tree; and rust-red ferns, Blasted by bush-fires and tho sun; And by the salt flocd—salt as tears— Whero tho wild applo trees hung low, And evermore stooped down to stare At their drowned shadows in tho wave, Wringing their knotted hands of wee; And the dark swamp-oaks, row on row, I.inod either bank—a sombrs train Of mourners with down-streaming hair. TiVro is the upw symbolism in the making. Ant! somothing of thn same process is discernible in several. South African poems. Until a nation is at one with the genius loci, tho work of creating a system of poetic symbolism cannct be completed. To-day the Canadian poet loves Nature; the Australian loves and loathes her; the South African has only just -emerged from the exil»'s mood of shrcr loathing; whereas tho English poet loves and is loved by. Nature in a marriago withcui anv amazement. '

Here n perplexing question presents itself. How can nations using the samo language ever bo said to possess national schools of literature? But there is no denying that tho English spoken in tho ■•minions has "been slowly but surely diverging from that spoken in England. The process of differentiation is working along three lines: variations,of pronunciation and intonation, jr-haiisos in tho meanings of familiar words, the birth of new phrases and tho death of old ones ar»' constantly occurring. It is important to note that thecultivation of poetry in tho Dominions is acting as a check on tho process in question. The history of French-Canadian speech illustrates" this point, admirably. For a century and a half the French-Canadians were out of touch with tho literary life i-.f Motbcr-Fr.-.r.00, and as a result their language was becoming crowded with what nppcarod the worst, kind of provincialisms to tho educated Frenchman. Of late years, largely as a result of the creation of a- national school of poetry in Ottnbcc, this tendency has been almost entirely arrested. French-Canadians still say or write "quitter" instead of "s'en aller," and use "male" in n cruder sense than is customary in France. But. Ihanks to Oreii'i'/ie and Frechette and William Chapman—all of them popular poets at homo and respected even by the French academics—th'j language of this Great- r Normandy" is now no longer in danger from the" contaminations of tho marketplace. Frechette, whoso noble salutation to tho Imperial Hag— Devant l'csprit humain «n niarcho Mainto fois son pli rayonna. Commc la Colombo do I'Archs, On comino l'Eclair du Sina. entitles him to be remembered as a poet of the Empire, Veldoin admitted an_ indigenous idiom into his vers?. William Chapman, his successor as the official ■laureate of the only lasting-ripe colony of France, is nearer slill to the centre. . But it is in the poems of Emilc Nelligau,

the. Chatterton cf French (not merely French-Canadian) literature, that we find the. nearest, approach to the innermost intimacies of French style. Indeed, the cleverest critic could not fay which shore of the Atlantic m\» ihe birth of some of his poems. Verlainc himself might havo made this saddest rendering of tlie doomed lad's old-youug pessimism:— Pour nc pas voir choii les vows d'automne Cloifre ton cocur mort en mon ccenr tue Vers des soirs souu'rauts mon deuil s'est nio Parallclomcnt au mois monotone. Le carmiii pale dt> la flcur detonn© Dans le hois dolent de roue ponctue. Pour no pas voir choir les ros?s d'automne Cloitro ton c-aur mort en mon coeur tuo. La-has, les cypres out l'aspect atone; A leur ombre en est. vitc habitue, Sous terre un lit Irais s'ouvre situo Nous y dormirons tous deux, ma niignomic. Tour i:e pas voir choir les roses d'automne.

It is a fine piece of craftsmanship; fee, for example, how the notes are flattened so as to suggest that the singer is too weary to sin? in tune. It is impossible to explain' the sudden appearance of this wonderful woeful youth. AVc merely know that ho happened. But he and his happier brothers-in-art have for ever prevented the language of Quebec from degenerating into a species of French Taal such as is found in New Orleans and the Mauritius. As for the. Tnal,. that wayworn and debased form of Dutch, nothing can save it from extinction in the end. The best efforts of Reitz and llalan and the rest havo left it a linguistic curiosity. After all, the Empire's separate schools of poetry need be national only in matter, not in manner. They will lose nothing by keeping the English language pure and undefiled so far as may be. Why should we not have a united Empiro in literature? Uniformity comes from without, but unity from within. Even to-day we can say at a glance tiint one poem is Canadian and a second Australian, and a third South African.' Each of the greater Dominions has its especial, strength. The Canadian poets aro pro-eminent in the interpretation of the scenery that is half man-made and half Nature-made, half on earth and half in the sky. Here is Duncan Campbell Scott's impression of Ottawa befc-ro the dawn:— The stars arc stars of morn; a keen wind

wakes Tho birches on tho slops; the • distant Efc in the vacant North; tho Chaudiero fills , . . Tho calm with its hushed roar; the river takes An unquiet rest, and a bird stirs, and shakes The "morn with music; a snatch of song thrills . ~ From the river; and the air clings and chills. . „ Fair in the South/ fair as a shrmo that makes The wonder of a dream, imperious towers Pierce and possess the sky, guarding tho halls ~ , ~ "Where our young strength is welded strenuously; '•'„•. Wh'ilo in the East, the star of morning dowers ~ ~ Tho land with a largo tremulous light that falls A pledge and presage of our destiny. Thcro the bird "of the Laurentian dawn 1 ":: "Canada, Canada, sweet, stoi Canada"; well mav its song be the leitmotiv 'of the land's peptic wonderment, To Australia we look for etchings, Mer-von-likc in avoidance of prottmess, of tho-is nameless men who toil and moil in theVangjiard of the war against tho brute forces of) a grudging nnd malignant desolation—each line, to fall slow nnd heavy as a bead of sweat.