LIVING NEW ZEALAND POETS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14145, 21 August 1909, Page 4 (Supplement)

LIVING NEW ZEALAND POETS.

[SFECLVLLT WRITTEN- FOR THE SEW ZEALAND HERALD.] BY ARTHUR A. D. BATLDOX. (Concluded.) The poems of Hubert Church, set to a subdued keynote, display conscientious craftsmanship. His Nature pieces are often sublimated by an ideal lift above objoctiveness. Sometimes there is a high touch, as in ono on a mountain lately written, where reference is made to the sunset: A pilgrim to its snows. 1 lover of the sonnet-form, his work is compact with a reserve of finish. More meditative than emotional, he handles his themes rather with an austere regard tor classical completeness than pours himself out in opulent details. Discriminative!}" selective of an uncoloured vocabulary, ho has something of Matthew Arnold faculty for awakening appreciation of chaste work with a uniform surface. A virginal coolness rests on his poems, even where there are abrupt transitions to energies of metrical movement. The following • poem is a * -fair specimen of his manner: —

SPRING IS M.VORILAXD. Thou wilt come with (suddenness. Like a pull between the waves, Or a snowdrop Hint doth press Through the white shroud on the graves , Like a love too long withheld That at last has over-welled. What if we have waited: long. Brooding by the Southern role. Where the towering icebergs throng, And the inky surges roll : What, can all their terrors be When thy fond winds compass thee? They shall blow through all the land Fragrance of thy cloudy throne, Underneath the rainbow spanned Thou wilt enter in thine own; And the glittering earth shall whine. Where thy footstep is Divine. ["Inky" is a defect in craftsmanship.] ANNIE GLENNY WILSONS

poems are the optimistic rendering of a soul's delight in Nature. They are full of eagerness "and quick, fanciful expressions like:

The willow leaning from the ridge, Shaped like some green fountain playing. » • - Indeed, they seem so largely to be the exuberance of high spirits and enjoyment of landscape as to perpetually discharge evanescent, vet piquant, glints of simile. Though never interpretive, yet they are always elusivelv titillating with quick sidelights thrown* from the impressions of alert senses. In "At Home" (of which, however, the motif is inadequate) the craftsmanship is richlv ornate and more mature than most of the "Nature poems. Precluded through its length, we select in lieu of it this passage from j

A SPRING AFTERNOON IS NEW ZEALAND. A shadowy land of deep repose! Here when the loud nor'wester blows, How sweet, to soothe a trivial care. The pine-trees' ever-murmured prayer! To shake the scented powder down From stooping boughs that bar the way, And see the vists.s, golden-brown. Touch the blue heaven far away, But on and upward still we rule Whither the furze, an outlaw bold, Scatters along the bare hillside Handfuls of free, uncounted gold, And breaths of nutty, wild perfume, Salute us from the flowering broom. TESSIE MACKAY possesses one of the poet's finest attributes, together with a singing note of facile though sometimes with rather too light a movement, her, poems are permeated with dream-glamour. That occult spring from ■which 'Keats'drew a beakerful of enchantment for : " La Belle Dame Sans Merci" has been visited "by this poetess. "A Folk Song," in its exquisite conception and glamour, allies - her with Christina Rossetti and the Ettrick Shepherd when inspired, though its craftsmanship hauntingly reminds us of Matthew Arnold's " Tho Deserted Merman." - This magical dream-stuff is rarely absent from Mackay's poems. In "The Noosing of the Sungod" is a rough strength and barbaric fervour we did not expect to find in the work of one of such artless lyrical movement and elfin phantasy. We cite, as the most magical poem by a New Zealander, ~..'.

A FOLK.SONG.. - ' I came to your town, my love, And von were . awav. away! I said," She is with "the Queen's maidens: : Tbev tarry long;: at their play. '" Thev "are stringing her words like pearis, , To "throw to the clufcea and earls. ,-.".; But 0, the pity! I had but a mora of windy red • To come to the town where you were bred, ..*. And you were away, away! ;";, v( i came to your town; my love, ' • And you "were away, away! I paid, "She is with the mountain elves, And misty' and fair as they. They are spinning a diamond net To cover her curls of jet." :''■■;'■■" But 0, the pity! I had but a. noon of searing heat To come to your town, my love, my sweet, - And you were away, away! I came to your town, my love, And you were away, away! I said, " She is with the pale white saints, And they tarry long to pray. . They give her a white lily-crown, And I fear she will never come down." But 0, the pity! I had.but an, even grey and wan To come to your town and plead as man, And you were away, away! JOHANNES C. ANDERSON has moods akin to Jean. Inglelow'e in her " Divided"—afroth with iridescent senti- . ment : v ■;-•■-;. ■ . .;. . < '..'. Medley of harmony ringing, Musical, mellow, and chiming; . 'Night-airs a-cruiver with singing- - Tangle of sweetness and riming 1 His poems make pleasant reading, but lack the -under-well of emotion. WILLIAM PEMBER REEVES is a poet who betrays in, some of his work an appreciation of Shelly. "The White Convolvulus" instantly reminds us in its metre and theme-handling of "The Sensitive Plant." Notwithstanding, we find therein individualised touches: Laburnums nigh, with the ringlets bold Dangled their lanterns of shaking gold. Many and. many a flower-maid, For her tender beauty ha t afraid, Loosed for the Lord of the Day her zone, Seen by the wandering wind "alone.

ARNOLD WALL, . having assimilated Meredith, conveys through his poems a masculine mentality. This cameo, however, is sharply cut and free from Meredith boulders and language-inflation: THE CITY IN THE PLAINS. In a silvern afternoon We saw the city sleeping, Sleeping and rustling a little Under the brindled hills. Spectres, of Alps behind, Alps behind and beyond— Tali, naked, and blue. The city (Sleeps in the plain— A flight, of glittering scales Flung in a wanton curve, Sinking softly to earth Flung from a Titan's palm. In the silver afternoon, All round the shining city, A thousand, thousand sheaves Loll ; n the golden plain ; On goes the stately wain, The dun hind striding by it. Beside the elms and willows, Between the Alpw and the sea. Notwithstanding their derivative impression from elder bards, there is a freshness about some of the poems of EBENEZER STORRY HAY that wins our otherwise passing notice. , Though there be two or three other New Zealand poets who might be mentioned, yet we may fitly finish by citing his sonnet on Keats, of Which the octave—despite the stiffness of the seventh line—is charmingly fresh, sweet-singing, and Saxon "•■,'■•■'. KEATS. ' Now, whUe - the air is sweet with breath of spring,. And loud with' liquid melody and mirth; When budding flowers burst into early birth, ind orchard trees are white with blossoming, . And on their snowy twigs the sweet birds sing; ' When beauty is new-born o'er all the earth, And with the last chill wind the fear of dearth And other : piercing fears have taken wing; thus is the season I would think of one— The dear Endymton, the star-eyed youth— ; Who loved the quickened earth as doth the sun, ' ft/hose heart was full of courage and of ruth, ' whose voice in ' sweetest melodies would run; And, 10, how Beauty was with him the Truth 1

"When beauty : .is new-born o'er all the V. earth" expresses spring with simple yet ef. fective vision. *