MR W. E. HENLEY'S POETRY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1367, 12 May 1898, Page 10

MR W. E. HENLEY'S POETRY.

The Editor, Literary Notes, New Zealand Mail. Dear Sir, —I am glad you have referred to Mr W. E. Henley's poems, just ■published in London. I have been an •admirer of this poet for many years—ever since, some fifteen years and more ago, lie published in the Comhill Magazine his admirable pictures of hospital life. To your quotations in last week's " Books and Bookmen" you might add two or three more extracts I "send you herewith.- They •exhibit his marvellous grasp of the pictur•esqueness of London, that most marvelSous of congregations of human beings 'that the world has ever known. As an •example of what can be done with unrhymed' rhythms, you won't easily beat the following: — "■• For earth and sky and air Are golden everywhere, And golden with a gold so suave and fine The looking on it lifts the heart like wine. Trafalgar Square (The fountains volleying golden glaze) Shines like an angel-market. High aloft Over his conchant Lions in a haze

Shimmering find bland and soft, A dust oc chrysoprase, Oar Sailor takes the golden gaze Of the saluting sun, and flames superb As once he flamed it on his ocean round. The dingy dreariness of the picture-place, Turned very nearly bright, Takes on a luminous transiency cf grace, . And shows no more a scandal to the ground. The very blind man pottering on the kerb, Among the posies and the ostrich feathers And the rude voices touched with all the weathers Of the long, varying year, Shares in the universal alms of light. The windows, with the fleeting, flickering The height and spread of frontage shining sheer, The quiring signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires—'Tis El Dorado—El Dorado plain, Tbe Golden City ! And when a girl goes Look ! as she turns her glaneing head, A call of gold is floated from her ear! Golden, all golden! la a golden glory, Long-lapsing down a golden coasted sky, The day not dies but seems Dispersed in wafts and drifts of gold, and "shed Upon a past of golden song and story And memories of gold and golden dreams." See too how ho grasps the poetry of dawn breaking over a great city!

" What miracle is happening- in the air, Charging the very texture of the gray With something luminous and rare ? The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire, « And, as one lights a candle, it is day. The extinguisher, that perks it like a spire On the little formal church, is not yet green Across the water: but _the house-tops nigher, The corner lines, the chimneys—look bow clean, How new, how naked! See the batch of Here at the stairs, washed in the freshsprung beam! And those are barges that'-"were goblin Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream! And in the piles the water frolics clear,, The ripple! into loose rings wander and flog And we—we can behold that could but hear The ancient Eiver singing as he goes New-mailed in'.morning to the ancient Sea. Surely after reading the above my fellow readers of the Mail will agree with me that in a multitude of not inharmonious "minor" poets, Mr William Ernest Henley looms up a veritable giant. My third and last extract exhibits Mr Henley's command of dramatic power : " «Tilk of pluck!' pursued the Sailor, S*t ab euchre on his el-»ow, ' I was on the wharf at Charleston, Just ashore from off the runner. «It was grey and dirty weather, And I heard a drum go Tolling, Rub-a-dubbing in the distance, Awful dour-like and defiant.

* 111 and out among the cotton, ] Mud, and chains, and stores, and anchors, Tramped a squad of battered scarecrows— I Poor old Dixie's bottom dollar! « Some had shoes, but all had riflas, Them that wasn't bald was beardless, And the drum was rolling Dixie, And they stepped to it like men, sir! * Ra»s and tatters, belts and bayonets, On they swung, the drum a-rolling, Mum and sour. It looked like fighting, And they meant it too, by thunder! Mr Henley is a Scotsman I believe, a countryman of Barns the Great, and as a Scotsman myself I am proud of his genius. Trusting you can find room for the extracts and thanking you for the Literary Column, which ought to do much to en courage a love of literature and culture. J am, yours truly,