NEW ZEALAND VERSE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20740, 6 December 1930, Page 8 (Supplement)

NEW ZEALAND VERSE.

A RICH ANTHOLOGY. Criticism of one's own kith and kin is notoriously difficult.' Avoiding the Scylla of partiality, one is caught by the Charybdis of cruelty. Dangers beset even the middle course, for here be the dragons of shallow condescension and patronising approval. So it is with every real diffidence that the local reviewer approaches such a book as " Kowhai Gold, a collection of post-war New Zealand verse, published by Dent and edited by Quentin As regards title and format, both editor and publisher are to be congratulated. The adaption iof Kipling's phrase is an apt choice for an anthology of the fairest blossoms of a young country in the early springtime of its literary life, and the kowhai sprays upon tho cover (should there be leaves, though?) will go straight to the heart of every New Zealander at home and abroad. In the introduction, Mr. Pope is surely needlessly sensitive about " the state of native culture" revealed in a recent advertisement at Home of New Zealand as " The Empire's Dairy Farm." He .forgets that New Zealand has yet to be made safe for minor poets, and even now, in tho words of Tennyson (adapted for colonial use): Fine calves are more than triolets. And butter-fat than printer's ink. Still, Mr. Pope must take heart. Youth will not endure, and meanwhile let ns hail without undue self-depreciation or selfsatisfaction the proof afforded by " Kowhai Gold " that the poetic impulse is already alive and growing in our midst. The anthology opens with selections from Eileen Duggan's verse. Its Celtic and devotional quality in alliance with local colouring is charmingly illustrated in "A New Zealand Christmas." Here is one verse:

Oh, my heart goes crying through these days of summer. Through the sleepy summer, slow with streams and bees. Had my land been old then, here He might have lighted. Here have seen His first moon in the ngaio trees. " The Last, Look " is poignant in its simplicity. Her dying look waß all for you. It touched you to the last, they said, Are you not proud to think of that Though she is dead ? O death alive, i 3 that peak proud Because it was the last in gold? It only knows the sky is blind And it is cold. The anthology is enriched by some dozen poems of Katherine Mansfield's, in eluding the tragically lovely lines "To L.H.B. (1894-1915)," beginning Last night for the first time since you' were dead I walked with you, my brother, in a dream. A poem which, despite the individual note, might be the lament of "Any Sister to Any Brother killed in the War." Another sad echo of the war, grim in its bitter truth, is heard in Alan Mulgan's " Soldier Settlement."- For too many who . . . saw beyond the murdered earth And moaning of the tortured, skies. The promise of his place of birth A dream-home to his weary eyes. the war, after the war, upon " the forest's walled defence," " the creeping barrage of the fern," proved tho bitterest disillusionment of all. The influence of Rupert Brooke is here noticeable in the verses of many whose eyes have been opened by " The Great Lover " to the beauty of common things. " Reality," by Quentin Pope, is also reminiscent of that intellectual quality in Brooke which sometimes dominated the purely poetic inspiration. The same writer's " Sonnet for Elizabeth " is a delightful example of a difficult form. When limitations of space prevent quotation in full it is often fairer to the writers to refrain from it altogether. So the varied excellences of " Glory," by Bartlett Adamson, "A Leaf from a Fly-book " (Seaforth Mackenzie) and Helen Glen Turner's " God Rest Michael " must be left for readers to discover for' themselves.These and many another justify the aim of the anthology and, like our own shining cuckoo, will surely bring, in the words of D. M. Ross, Greetings from other lands to our young Spring.

" Kowhai Gold," an Anthology of Contemporary New Zealand Verse. Edited by Quontin Pope (Dent).