MODERN VERSE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23885, 12 August 1939, Page 4

MODERN VERSE

FROM LUXOR TO PIPIKARITI “ The Land and the People.” ; By Charles Brasch (Caxton Press. Christchurch). ss. Mr Charles Brasch is an archaeologist, and an archaeologist knows full well that treasures are not to be haa for the picking up. Time and again he seems to challenge the reader with “my thought is worth a little dig-' ging,” and the reader, if he be so inclined. proceeds to delve, and ultimately comes upon something that is worth acquiring. Yet Mr Brasch. who owes far more to Gerard Manley Hopkins than to Tennyson, though he has apostrophised St. Simeon Stylites, writes of the blackbird’s “ carol.” whereas his master, if master he has. compassed something better when he wrote of the “ rince ans ring ” of the ineffable garden note. It is pleasant to come upon a book of verse by a man of fastidious intellect, who approaches his native couqtrv in the same spirit as he approaches the burial-ground of • past civilisations, or the demesnes of Buckinghamshire. where the living in some instances proffer a hint of communion with those who have gone before: Who lived before us here? • Some in grey cowls ■ Who raised these defensive -walls Against the wearing air, ' The enemy 1 of souls? r Or some who loved the slow Flowing of deep years, Guiding their ploughshares ■■■ Through fields that have known the plough ' Since men first knew the shires? The title. “The Land and the People.” recurs at intervals through the book, and gives it homogeneity. Mr Brasch may be said to expound a philosophy in the main . -body of these poems, though sorne are individual and ex,;ttapeousr One . almost recalls the ibountalri which seemed to follow the boy. Wordswbrth. according to an earlier book qf the “ Prelude,” when one reads the first poem, in the collocation! v- . • ]fi: What • expectancy or .dream',-,-, . Mountains, holds your toward sight? Do you remember through this plausible ” day ■IJ . •,’> The maternal tilghtiy-flood Where all things rest and are renewed. " - And! separateness falls-away? ' For all your creatures'have-knowledge . of that greater sea; y■> But born and dying-to the sound Of water on. these shores, and wind They are governed by til®'momently Event, aftd 'put from'totod that disturb-' Ing.,-power., '; .tiV.-"-: Yet sometimes memory stirs in them And leaping, forward, into, time They see’ the, root become the flower. Some will-Arid- in Mr Brasch a pantheist, some a ; mystic.',Others may , possibly put, themselves, in ' the place of W S. Gilbert, in “Ferdinand and Elvira, or the Gentle Pieman.” when he appealed to Mr Tupper for enlightenment and was presented with an enigmatic line which provoked the comment, “which I know,was very clever but I didn’t understand it." It all depends upon one’s estimate of what noetov, can or cannot. do, by .way of ' brideing 1 the Chasip'between mind and toind. psyche, and Psyche, or pneuma and pneiima. The volume, which. is hand-set. is an earnest of the care given by its pub- : fishers to. thriir productions. C. R A