THE BOOKFELLOW.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 133, 12 June 1909, Page 9

THE BOOKFELLOW.

Written for The Post by A. G. Stephens. (Copyright. — All rights reserved). THE MUSE'S SUNDAY OUT. I envy not the men of old who lived and loved in stirring times; I roar and rant in creaming rimes and my delights are manifold. I envy not the king who reigns, my pleasures are not weigiied in grams ; I pluck the tramguards from the trams and weave them into daisy-chains. My fancies seem to mo unique; I glory in the oddest things — I glory in the grog that brings effulgence to the toper's bealc. I take the universe in charge ; the laws of nature I control, And love to prove the proudest whole small, small ; whoroas its parts be. large. I envy not the millionaire whose treadmill is the whole bright earth, I have assisted at the birth of stars, and stellar space, and air. I envy not the mountaineer who makes the virgin peak his bride — Upon the scudding clouds I ride over abysses without fear. I envy no Creator, I. I gift great snakes with Sheraton legs; My calvos and foals aro hatched from eggs; and men, born old, as infants die. I envy _no Creator, I. I deck the hog with corkscrew curls; I filch complexions from the girls and hand thorn to the wapiti. I envy not fine fairies' halls and -wedding feasts in moonlight dells; J hear the peals of cowslip-bolls clang shrilly for my nuptials. v My brides -are comets, suns, and stars; I make the heavens my harem — Like wraiths of some forgotten dream diaphanous gleam their avatars. I envy not the statesman wise who holds a nation in his hand ; At all Creation's helm I stand, and lean and guide hor destinies. I envy not the poet's art who knows deep secrets of the breast; Sinco to my very oar arc pressed the pulses of Creation's heart. I envy not tho motorist who eats the road with greedy wheel — Ton thousand times more thrills I feel as philologue-psychologist. I envy not the medium-kind, their contacts with the spirit hosts; I have, _ laid by, unnumbered ghosts, draped on the ghost-racks in my mind. I envy not the artist's hands aohieving all his hot desire ; The Autumn poplar's pillar of fire beckons mo to enchanted lands. How should I then at Fate repine, or fear the shadows of the tomb, Though Sorrow's vast ponumbr,a gloom above me, since the world is mine? —ARNOLD WALL. SWINBURNE AND GORDON. Little has been heard lately of " the Australian melancholy." The legend seems to be fading. Truth to tell, there never was any Australian melancholy characteristic of the country or its typical sons and daughters. " Black bile " is a northern secretion, a symptom of winter ; it does not belong 'to Sunshineland. The old Australian aboriginal was the liveliest of ratllepates, and the new Australian aboriginal, the whitish one, seems likely to imitate temperamentally his blackish brother. Climate makes race. There has been, probably there is, melancholy in Australia ; but it is usually the^ melancholy of exiles — and. particularly of " black sheep " and remittance men. 11. de Vere Stacpoole, who has found adumbrations of the True Romance (adumbrations only, for there is not enough azure in his Irish sky), seems to tell his own experience in the experience of a hero who passed three years in Sydney, "three years in hell." In Sydney, one of the most fascinating cities of the world. And the hero was a remittance man, with £150 a year paid quarterly, for " nothing to do all day, and no need to do that unless he lilted." Clearly he carried his coldcountry curse along with him. That is what they all have done : all the explorers in "Australian melancholy." Marcus Clarke's preface for Gordon, for example, so inippessively rhetorical, is demonstrably false. To begin with, the little bit of Wimmera bush that Clarke knew does not subtend one degree of the wide arc of Australia. To end with, clever Clarke was a Londoner, a city man, a man to walk pavements in pat-ent leather shoes. Naturally the bush depressed him. Necessarily he found it "funereal, secret, stern." Doubtless these adjectives apply at some times to some parts of the Australian wilderness. But the characteristic melancholy was not in Australia ; it was in Clarke's own soul. He has beautifully belied us. So with Gordon himself. Probably Clarke's melancholy represented merely his temporary ennui : and when he wrote he remembered his sense of vast desolation in the face of dispiriting Nature. Manna dropped from the gum-trees for him, and he abhorred it. In Melbourne he was happy. But Gordon's melancholy was of the blood. Like Byron, that other Gordon, he carried his gloomy horizon everywhere. " 'Twas merry in the glowing morn," with a good horse under him ; but as soon as he was still he grew sombre — like Byron when he stopped swimming. Black care sat behind them both — in Australia, and in Italy. But the care was their own, not the country's : it emigrated along with them. Swinburne owned a poetic melancholy, ! yet no more. He was no pessimist, unless, possibly, in regard to the fidelity of some ladies, and he atoned by being quite unduly optimistic concerning other ladies' offspring. Still, there is' a good deal of youthful despondency to be culled from Swinburne — shadows of the World-Grief, sorrows of Werther ; and when "-Poems and Ballads" appeared in 1866, Gordon took his own where he found it. The result is seen in the " Bush. Ballads and Galloping Rhymes " of 1870. Here was Job's comforter! here was poetry for exiles in Australia ! Over the vast continent roamed thousands of Britons who had lost their money, their sweethearts, or their homes, and were ready to assail the Universe upon every pretext. To them came Gordon, with his own version of Swinburne's baked meats, made doubly sad by the tears dropped by the second cook, and trebly dismal by the blue devils hid in all rechauffes. He was "funereal, secret, stern," and the exiles hugged him to their mournful breasts. How melodiously one could mope with "The Triumph i of Time": — "I have put my days and dreams out of mind, Days that are over, dreams that are done. Though we seek life through, we shall surely find There is none of them clear to us now, not one." ■» Ninety-nine in a hundred of "Y&Wearie Wayfarers" never saw "The Triumph of Time," but they read it in Gordon's "Rhyme of Joyous Garde" : t have done for aver with all these things — Deeds that were joyous to knight* and kings. . . ■ The songs are ended, the deeds are done. There shall none of them gladden mo now. not one. And the Woman who had wrought their Woe, the Woman whom they meditated atr every halt in their joyless pilgrimage, wondering was the world well lost for Her? Yes. Swinburne answered in VLes Noyadej.".: yes, the world was well

But you > would have felt mj soul in C kiss, And known that once if I loved you vrell; And I would have given my 6oul for this, To burn for ever in burning hell. Or, as Gordon repeated it still more passionately, with a still greater stress on critical detail,\in "The Rhyme of Joyons Garde" : When I well-nigh 6woon'd in the deepdrawn biiss Of that first, long, sweet, slow, stolen kiss, 1 would gladly have given for lebs than this Myself, with my soul's salvation. Then let us forgive Her all, as Gordon wrote : If ever I smote as a man could smite, If I struck ono stroke that 6eem'd pood in Thy eight. By Thy loving mercy prevajling, Lord! Let her stand m the light of Thy face, Cloth'd with Thy love, crown'd with Thy grace, When I gnash my teeth in the terriblo place That is filled with weeping and wailing. Swinburne in "Les Noyades" had already borne the chivalrous burden of a man : . . Lord, if 1 loved—Lord, if I served — If these who darkened- Thy fair Son's face I fought with, sparing not one, nor swerved A hand's breadth, Lord, in the periloue place — I pray thee say to this man, O Lord, "Sit thou for him at my feet on a throne." I will face Thy wrath, though it bite a» a sword, And my soul shall burn for his soul an<T atone. Gordon changed the sex of the hea-' venly substitute, while preserving the maiu idea—together with its buttresses of justification' by good fighting and atonement by good burning. There is no mistaking the imitation. If anything, Gordon's version is the more vigorous, but he has lost several nuances of form and thought. And after that, with life a demnition desert, what to do? Swinburne replied in "The Triumph of Time" : I will go back to tho great, sweet inothei, Mother, and lover of men, the sea. I will go down to her, I and none other. Close with her, kiss her, and mix her with me; , . . Thy large embraces are keen, like paia. Save me and hido me with all thy waves, . . I shall sleep and move with the moring shipe. . . Clear of the whole world, hidden ab home, . . Gordon replied in "The Swimmer," where he imitated Swinburne's metre (with a difference) and paraphrased many of Swinburne's ideas. The most musical stanza- in Gordon —one that for mere music is rarely surpassed anywhere, though the alliteration is too luscious—condenses tags of phrase and thought from half-a-dozen of Swinburne's stanzas. I would that with sleepy, soft embraces Tho sea would fold me, would find 014 rest In luminous shades of her Becret places, In depths where her marvels are inani-i fes,:, So .the earth beneath her ehould no* discover My hidden coucli —or the heaven abov« her — As a strong love shielding a weary lover I would have her s'hieid me with shining breast. It may be estimated that a good third of Gordon's verse is influenced or coloured by Swinburne, and to a greater ■or lesser extent echoed Swinburne 3! words or ideas, or both. The "dedication" of "Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes" — "They are rhymes rudely strung, with' intent less Of 6ound than of words" — is modelled, of course, on Swinburne's similar description of "Poems and Ballads." Partly by merit of Swinburne, .and partly by merit of-Gordon, this piece has a strong Australian appeal, despite flaws where the pupil's awkward hand is seen. Really, then, we can add to all the other iniquities attributed to Swinburne, this : that he inadvertently did a great deal, by making British melancholy, vocal, to fasten the undeserved imputa** tion of melancholy upon cheerful Aus« Iralia. NOTE. This, by Edwaxd Thomas, in "Th* English Review," may be endorsed, atf sound criticism :—: — Malory may not have been a greatj writer, but his book is a great book, one of the half-dozen or so great books in English Prose of the class of "Th* Bible." "The Anatomy of Melancholy,** "The History of the Great Rebellion^ "Tom Jones," "Bos well's Johnson,*^ books of great size and inexhaustibly suggestiveness. Had Tennyson perceived its true value he could neven have endured to pilfer it with- such ra* pacity, taking not only the groundwork! of whole tales, the striking incidents, speeches, pictures, but tho very phrases and words, to such an extent that w« can scarcely believe it possible for ai man to enjoy "Le Morte d'Arthur'' without discarding "The Idylls of th« King" as a whole. The second mistake is implicit in th« first. Tennyson over-estimated the conteat of the tales. He thought then* capable of expanding to his epic needs, and of gaining a new modern signifi. cance while retaining the old charm v Perhaps they were capable of even greater expansion, but his method seem* to have burst them. For he did not recreate, but versified and poeiised them insteod. translated them into the melodious Tennysonian tongue. We do not! dispute his marvellous virtuosity, and that learned skill in which he appears to rank with Milton. In line after lino, Und the whole of "The Passing of Arthur," this is conspicuous. In Tennyson's day Malory was far less knowa than now, and there is little doubt that the Idylls Created his vogue. But tha fact is now that once we have read Malory wo read Tennyson chiefly to se» what he has done with hi^ inateria], and what he has done is to decorate and obscure the quaint, the romantic, the ineffably simple, 'with a vaguely solemn morality, much dignity, ana much melody of words.