A LITERARY CORNER

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 6176, 6 April 1907, Page 8

A LITERARY CORNER

ORIGINAL AND SELECTED MATTER. CURRENT CANADIAN VERSE A SONG OF WIDE SPACES. “[ll the realm of boundless (spaces, " here: 1:1, e hi,nt bents Iran «inl strong. Aii'i Uk- Kimliglil Wiion- Dio rising - 11111 Dio tu)l ui ‘' iie <lav our tooufo onDinil], Our jniiiHr* arc filial willi melody, our spirit., atirml by ioug. A tnir*Dn<? ior Die otaaii, ami a I nr Urn trail, Aii<l the glamour el.' Die gulo, . 111 «i rtnuu' and Minin" b.asi, blowing l/ill jnv bosom ni;;a t:> bursting aud my iv>Do-:..-> Uiouglit.s an-ail. Miu>t I linger in Dir iianoivs, with Die sail or fam-v Juried, Who have watehed Die biliana hurled *Jy Die Jury uf the bicczo o'er the 'Violi- ot t>rad, And bidield the Hush ol dawning tinge Die tare oi' halt :i world." -C. I’. V. Conybeare, in “Lyric* from Dm TUB OLD. OLD CALL. ft’ti not myoolf I’m grieving for, it’s not that i ni complaining (Hen a good man, is Michael, and I've never tell lih I'r-u.vn), Cut there* M.now Ir.-aling on me, like a Jong riay’s raining. For Die little wrinkled face ot her I left in Jverrydouu ,U'« just ifer.self I'm longing for. Herself and no other— Do you mind the morns wo walked to iinuss when al! the held* were green? 'Twa* i Dial pi lined your kmehief, oh, in© mother, mother, mother. The wide seas, (he cruel etas, and half Dio world between. U’s Die man'* part to say the word the wife* to up and followtit’s a fair land we’ve come to and there’* plenty hero for all) It’s not Die homesick longing that lures me like a swallow But the one voice across the world that draw* me to its call. U’s just Herself I’m longing for, Herself ' and no other— Do you mind the tales you told me when the turf was blazing bright? Mo head upon your shoulder, oh, me mother, mother, mother, The broad seas between ws and yourself alone to-night. There’s decent, neighbours all about, there's coming and there’s going; It’s kind souls will be about me when f he little one is here; But it* her word that I’m wanting, her comfort I’d be knowing. And her blessing on the two* of us to drive away the tear. IDs just Herself I'm longing for. Herself and no other— Do you mind Die soft spring mornings when you stitched tho wedding gown ? The little careful stitches, oh, mo mother, mother, mother. Mcsclf beyond the broad seas, aud you in Kcrrydown. —“Toronto Mail and Empire." CANADA'S EMBLEM. When (he white frost lies on the topmost rail Which fences the fold where tho sheep are fed; When the stems of the purple fire wood fail. And the bracken, losing its russet red. Takes tho livid hue of the clouds o’c-r-Jiead; When fear of tho Ghost from the white North grows In the sullen pines where tho wolves are bred, fn gold and in crimson the maple glows. When under the stars, on au unseen trail. The hosts of the clamorous fowl have Sped; When the old folk die aud tho young folk ail. And tho homing cattle, by instinct led. Come wandering down to tho rancher’s stead; When the old year draws to a dreary close. And tho hearts of men are oppressed by dread. In gold aud in crimson the maple glows. When the rain-storms thresh with pitiless flail, The last faint flowers in the garden bed, And tho sloops drive homo under shortened sail; When the songs are over and song- . birds dead And tho last farewell of the autumn said, Whilst a bleak world shudders because it knows That the foot of its dying are round its dead, e In gold and in crimson the maple glows. L'EnvoL -Even bo should a bravo man’s sunset shed , . _ From the heights of pain, through the mist of woos, - % flame on the path which w© all must tread— . J , , In gold and in crimson tho maple —C 11 Vo" S 'Phi 11 ip ps-1 Vo Ilcy, in Hio ’l r Spectator." AT THE TOUCH OF SPRING Among the folk of the north th© first response to Nature, the earliest conscious enjoyment of the inanimate world that finds expression either in myth ov la mediaeval art or song, is the uplift «f the spirit which marks the return of spring. What spring then meant in the way of renewal of light and warmth and food it is impossible to realise in these days of paved afreets and tho oleotric light, of soft living with a background of florists and fruit-growers, whoso hot-hoiises aud tropical agents have combined to banish tho old signs of winter. In the past men ami women did begin to live again with tho spring, and though tho great awakening is now obscured to civilised man by half a hundred veils of custom and habit, yet, like other primitive passions that have been woven deep into the fabric of the poul, the pattern still flashes up at the appointed time, faintly colouring tho lengthening days, an unconscious irisdesconfc memory, the nostalgia of. a former birth. Perhaps it is because the contrast of winter and spring is less pronounced to us that we begin to look for the change earlier—Queen Guenlvero rode on-maying, but our hearts begin to be stirred soon after we have hung Tip the mow calendar; by May we have tired of our first love and begin to have doubts and make jests of her fickleness. But Wo cannot shape ourselves other- than •wo ore, and those first hints and suggestions of tho turn of the year are so delicious just because they are so fugitive and so intangible—it will not boar thinking over whether tho goddess really

smiled on us or not, but all at once we j f#-l flint Ihe air i, 1 and !aii;'hin;-. : .Meantime it i' no 1 rcuriicry to fell Hie signs of clian ;,'e, Uio (.artiest kE.j stones dial, mark Die circling year, lu J.omloa—ami il- n in Loudon that epr.ng (.•ome< most Maidenly, since Die flowershop-. are too top-y-turvy in their seasons to a fiord any warning; violets are grown as an autumn flower now and daffodil- come in with the sf rengthening cold—in i-ondon spring opens with Dio almond blo.-som in the squares, unee evening Die miox>s and warenou.-es discharge their toilers into a goiuen haze, ami oy the wayside a weary girl, . spent Willi me not ami .edious elierm/on, i suddenly finds her uout dissolved into languor; where in Die frosty morning •dm passed a naked bush there is now a. spray ot pink petals again-L tin* sky; al once in hints of old gardens and .-oft . brocades, in dream fragments of .rnpan and Die happy i-les set ia distant M-as. all tiie kaleiuumope of romance is turned again. Her fellow clerk finds lamseli walking, now swiftly and alive willi sudden purpose, now slowly and with, surprise; because very goddesses arcafoot, ami his courage fails hint. Tho. rainbow of illusion is over life again ; s we need not smile at Die iliirisiiie.-s of i its foundation or the cheapness oi Us expression, it is common to tho race, and from it spring all the graces and all the virtues from Ihe D minor symphony to Hie wreck of Die Birkenhead. Of all Die virtues; for courage and high purpose, devotion ami self-sacrifice make but a poor show in the dry light of reason, ihev are the last homage* of a man to lib own dreams.

Afield spring is of more workaday importance, and anticipatory signs and I».ken- are more numerous, the method*-e-il man even enters them up in Ins diary. Long before the face of the countryside has palpably changed, when Hie farmer looks at his rapidly shrinking hayricks aud yet cannot persuade himself that Die pastures are n .-hade greener or one half-inch longer, there is still comfort to be drawn from Dio hedgerows and Die bank sides. Neither Die honeysuckle leaves nor a shay primrose or two in the southern sloping copse count for much, t hey eau generally be found in the right place Indore Christmas, But the spotied arum leaves, uncoiling themselves on the side ot some sheltered lane, stark and shining, mark tiie first stop. About Die same time the flower buds of the elm grow brown and bursting, and amongst them will be found the bullfinches, diverted for a week or two from the pear buds, to which they will return. I low much more Eden-like our gardens would become if only Die bullfinches could be educated to remain in the; elm trees! An exactor date to mark the progress of the season is Die finding of Die tiny crimson flower of the hazel, a veritable jewel reset every year for those whd know. After our first hazel bloom wo generally make for a waste heap, where we may hope to find a coltsfoot unfolded, an eager yellow disc set on an ungainly stalk, but more truly the flower of tho sun in the way it follows and opens and closes than any girasol known to fame. How many a dingy railway cutting owes to the February coltsfoot its one glow of the year; and yet the flower lias found no poet, indeed better so than one of the sort of pedestrian expressions of laboured gratitude it would provoke, for there is an element of the stodgy and ludicrous about it—Don Quixote’s passion in Saueho’s body. It is a little early yet for the sallows, they are still silvery and virginal, “olio a yeux commc des saulcs” ; in a few weeks’ lime they will be scattering golden pollen and their thin clear perfume, elusive aud troubling like the young spring itself. But the delight that comes with these flowers is tame beside the upleap of the heart to the spring rail of some of the birds. Of course in February the missel-thrush is already in tho full tide of his rejoicing, but Jig may have been heard any mild evening from November onwards. The wren and the lark and the hedgesparrow. too, try over their notes even in midwinter; tho cheerful scales with which the chaffinch begins his practice for the season mark a more definite change. But the authentic voice which summons the spring is the call of tho great tit from the tree-tops, the clear, ringing notes that seem charged with the passion of Die swelling buds and with messages of Dio open road beyond the hill to where “la belle aux bois dormant©" is waiting. For how many springs can wo recall those notes; they used to seem tho most wholly gay and joyous sound tho woods possessed—a pure, lighthearted invitation to tho sun and tho open air. But now these brave notes of Die wonder and the beauty of tho world are melancholy enough; we know Die prize is there for the winning, but it is to late,to make tho adventure—we are too weary and faint-hearted, too unbelieving perhaps. “O pulchritudo, tam nntiqua ot tain nova, sero to amavi." In the old clays the courage and the passion that are needed to carry a man afield were spent in tho dozen and one little dusty achievements of a career, hot and eager for the near delights; now wo look from behind tho fence of circumstance and habit we have been building while tho divine beings move along the hills. The poets write of the melancholy of autumn, but that is a soft and comfortable feeling, tho sighs of tho full-fed who would fix the fleeting hour and preserve its pleasures from the touch of the inevitably advancing decay. It is the melancholy of spring which is fierce and poignant, which catches the throat, because it is touched with desire—tho things we shall never do, the hands Wc shall never clasp, the little that will over be ours of all tho dreams and visions. Scro te amavi. —"Saturday Review." A NEW ZEALAND POET ON LONDON A now book of verso by Arthur H. Adams, called “London Streets,” has just been published in London, and has already attracted favourable notice in Fleet street. The London “Daily News," in a half-column review, gives Adams some unusually high praise ; and also, in the erroneous belief that our poet is still in London, warns him of Dio perilous fascinations of tho great city. He is (says the ‘News’O one of the very few distinguished writers of Dio modern Australian school. His work is always careful and serious; it is, if anything, inclined to be “precious”; but a young man’s work is generally “precious” until the care and delicacy have given tho artist the reward of power. In this book of poems* Mr Adams gives ns some impressions of London, ns it appears to his fresh, alien eves. He considers it as a whole in a sonnet which compares favourably with Dio sonnet on tho same subject in the “City of tho Soul." Mr Adams has no image so fine as that of tho giant “in whoso mighty brain men creep like thoughts”; but his octavo (the sest-ette is less good) is a thing of strange strength and suggestion ; London, that like a vast grey cobweb lies Upon green England, in whose maze outspread Palo Youth, with all his splendours from him bled, And whining Wealtn that still regrets and siglus. And meanly-murdered Hiippincss, liko flies Are caught and strangled—aud yet arc not dead! And at tho centre, silent and full-fed, A spider.' old, contemplative and wise. After this come several poems and

1. j'hds in ligln er and quicker nma■;'!r - cf reninrhahlc technique. Il is li; it - Ip'i, llsev remind US /"// ego. v. hon Mr TLvTT:;n did something not nn...r i‘n'-c mil:::;,u ~i a.i/.as: and Mr Sjii.!)l)S, always an exquisite 'orb-i! iutisl, wrote of London in something ill the same spirit. Mr Adams's verse lias not the occasional lift into pure poetry which may lie seen in Air. Davidson. ’He is not swept olf his feet; lie remains cfways London s :-n'.ic even in his most golden moment. liis Interludes, or ballads ot iiotnal individual human life in London, have not .Fir Davidson’s strength nor the critical power of similar work hv Mr Symons, They aro, p* haps, the weakest tilings in the bocL it is in poems like "Bond “liegent a'lrool," and ‘’The Last’’ th-!'/ his skill and Insight are shown nm.-t clearly. There is a touch, an oclc, a suggestion o, tho author of 'The Sphinx'’ m the following stanzas from the first-nam-!'he champing horses standing still, \Vliooc veins with life's impatience thrill; A mi—tl-vad beside the- carriage door— Flu. footman, m.iskr.i ami irnmo.nlc. Ami a suave carven god of .' al| e, Dv some on! liral led old Asian made, With that I bin svoni still on his lip-. Waits, in the window-front displayed. The Inirrvin;,'. olieaming crowds he tc-es. With the same smile lu- watches Ihece A ; from his Temple-dusk lie saw Tim passing of the crnhirict-. Few hooks of verso of tho last few venrs have shown a surer technique. Mr Adams is one of the few poets of real promise. Ho may, of course, he caught hy the spider, like so many others;" or lie may "develop into somcthing considerable. Me see danger for him in London; for this hook shows ".'hat ho lifts been influenced unduly hy the peculiar and unsettling atmosphere of the great city, it is not a good sign when a poet leaves life to study atmosphere; even if he studies if: to fine purpose, as in this book.