A SONG OF SPEED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12266, 9 May 1903, Page 6 (Supplement)

A SONG OF SPEED.

"A Soxg of Speed," by W. E. Henley, is published in the April number of the Woria's Work.

Mr. Henry Norman, M.P., the editor, writes in a footnote: " This imparishable poem (as Mr. William Archer truly calls it) possesses great interest from the fact that it is the first time a great poet has sung the delights and significances of motoring." Mr. Archer, in a critical review in the same magazine, describes the circumstances of its origin. Mr. Henley, 'who has ever sung in splendid strains of the delights and joys of strenuous activity, has been crippled for many years, and confined to his room. Then came the motor-car, and by the kindness of Mr. Alfred Hannswortn, to whom the poem is dedicated, writes Mr. Archer, " Mr. Henley has been enabled to taste in ample pleasure that keenst of sensations to which he has here given (I think it is no rashness to aver) imperishable utterance. "It was exquisitely opportune— shall we say providential?that, when the motor came," Mr. Henley should be here to sing it. Never was English poet better fitted for the task.

" His style might seeme to have been, from the outset, in training for this effort —its swiftness, its suppleness, its naked sincerity and strength, begotten and perfected to no other end. Nor can it be doubted, that t'ko sensation cornea home to him with treble poignancy by reason of his previous incapacity for all such delights. "It was exquisitely opportune—or shall of his greatest utterances. In these three or four hundred lines we have not only a daring and vivid celebration of the new factor in human affairs, but a compendium of all the poet's art and philosophy." We append extracts from some of the finest passages in this beautiful poem: — In the Eye of the Lord, By the Will of tho Lord, Out of the infinite Bounty dissembled, Since Time began, In the Hand of the Lord, Speed! Speed! Speed, and the range of God's skies, Distances, changes, surprises; Speed, and the hug of God' 3 winds And the play of God's airs. Beautiful, whimsical, wonderful; Clean, fierce, and clean, • With a thrust in the throat And a rush at the nostrils; Keen, with a far-away Taste of inhuman, Unviolable basts,

Where the Stars of the Morning Go singing together. Speed, and the lap 01 ! the Laud that you know For the first time (it seeing). As you push through the maze Of her beauties and privacies, Terrors, astonishments: Heath, common, pinewood, Downland and river-scape, Cherry-orchards, water-meads, Forests and stubbles, Oak-temples, daisy-speads, Vistas of harebell. Hills of the ruggedest, Vale 3 of the cromliest, Barrows and cromlechs; Broks, with fat, comforting, Sociable shallows Fenced, and still, sleepy-faced Lengths of Canal. Where tile one thing alive Is the horse on the tow-path, Tugging in dreams At the long barge that hangs Like a dream on his collar; Beech-woods mat burn out The life in their leafage, Arid figure the death Of the Year in a glory Of colour and fire; lloads, where the stalwart .Soldier of Caesar Put by his bread And his gariic, and, girding His conquering sword To his unconquered thigh, Lay down in his armour. And went to his Gods By the way that he'd made. All this, and more than this: Hence the Mercedes! Look at her. Shapeless? Unhandsome ? Unpain table? Yes; but the strength Of some seventy-five horses: Sevent-livo puissant. Superb fellow-creatures: Is summed and contained In her pipes and her cylinders. This marvellous Mercedes, This triumphing contrivance, Comes to make other Man's life than she found it;' The Earth for her tyres As for the Sea for his keels; Alike in the. old lands, Enseamed with the wheel-ways Of thousands of dusty And dim generations, 1 And in the new countries, Whose Winds blow unbreathed, And their Lights are first-hand ' From our Father, the Sun. Thus the Mercedes Comes. 10. she conies This astonishing device, This amazing Mercedes, With SpeedSpeed in the Fear of the Lord. So in the Eye of the Lord, Under the Feet of tlio Lord, Out of the measureless Goodness and grace In the Hand of the Lord. Speed! Speed on the Knees, Speed in the Laugh, Speed by the Gift, Speed in the Trust of the Lord— Speed!