NEW ZEALAND POET

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 139, 7 March 1936, Page 23

NEW ZEALAND POET

A. Collection of the Work of Robin Hyde “The Conquerors and Other Poems,” by Robin Hyde. (Loudon: Macmillan. 1/9.) It is pleasing to liud the work of a New Zealand poet included in Macmillan’s “Contemporary Poets” series, and one can think of no one more fitted to be the first represented than Robin Hyde, whose verse has a depth of feeling certainly unsurpassed by any of the other, writers in this series and is marked by an unfailing skilfulness in treatment. There are no rough edges about her work; every line is polished to a smooth precision, and fits neatly into the easy rhythmic scheme of each completed poem. There is rarely any halt in the even flow of words, chosen though they are with obviously meticulous care. The images and vocabulary she uses are unstrained by any attempt to introduce novelty into her poems, yet they are never commonplace. Robin Hyde finds her inspiration in a wide range of subjects, but common to her treatment of each one of them is an insistence on the emotional significance of whatever the immediate experience may be. She is not a descriptive poet intent on an accurate representation of some physical phenomenon. If she writes about trees, she is acutely conscious of the blind roots twisting beneath the earth:

They do not know How their boughs rock with April's mirth, Nor feel the ripening autumn’s glow.

There is in all these poems a logical presentation of ideas allied to a romantic conception of what constitutes the material of poetry, a satisfying combination because meaning is made clear while still reserving a strong element of attraction for future reading. One cannot better illustrate Robin Hyde’s qualities as a poet than by quoting verses from an outstanding example of her work, “Montaigne on the Hillside”: Ho will tell you, this sage, oue day— With his wise grey eyes, his still smile, tender and human— How once on the lute-curved shores of an island bay His pages were read by a woman. He will say how he fretted, to see her eyes go blind, And turn from the printed page to a pale clear sky, Blown like a bubble of God’s . . . whilst n small brown wind Boiled like a baby fox in the coverts hard by. Westward a ganuet dived iu a fire-white streak Straight to the waters, and so was gone like a stone. But she of the blinded eyes sat quiet . alope ... Though he stood at her side, and a bent bough brushed her cheek. And he knew that the curve of her throat, the dream in her eyes, Were one witii the thought of delicate growing things; That there in the forest her heart was a secret nest Whose walls were waiting the sound of wings.