AMONG THE BOOKS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1947, 18 June 1891, Page 34

AMONG THE BOOKS.

"CANTILENOSAE NUGAE."*

Having been favoured" with an advance copy of this work, I shall endeavour to say what I find to be its teaching and aim. The volume contains eighty - seven poems, each supplying food for careful study and thought — an absolute necessity, I take it, of all true poetry.

First, then, I find in these poems an unconventionality which I do not find elsewhere, save in the work of Robert Browning and a few other poets — Fawcett, perhaps, and the author of " Unspoken Thoughts." Here is one more trumpet voice that proclaims the truth heedless of what the world may think. The poet is not deceived by the apparent. He sees the real beneath the shows that satisfy the casual observer, for intuition is his unerring guide to the nature of all. He follows her and gives voice again to the indwelling spirit of created things, for he is akin to it. He sees the absolute, the true, and is faithful only when he speaks that he feels and sees and knows. This the crowd understands not, and accordingly it stands aloof and scoffs. Well, it matters, not — Talk on, talk on 1 Careless in sooth am I To justify myself. Yet hear my voice This once, and this onoe only, to your cry Make answer : " Judge ye which the ohofce, — In Church and Book and Creed to rot and die, Or lie upon God's bosom and rejoice ?t ' Truth is truth, and will out, though centuries of dust and rubbish have been piled on it, stifling it into a deathlike dumbness. Men are too ready to accept their world ready made — to glide easily into the garments of creed and custom left by their an- , cestors, regardless "of fit or texture, till at I length the neglected faculty of thought, which enables a man to select or create for himself, has become altogether useless.

Then is the time ripe for the thinker, and .he comes. " Many great men," says Emerson, " God harbours in His bosom, waiting the times and the needs of each." Shall we listen to the voice of one crying in the wilderness ? But men fear to hear the words of the prophet. He may have some unpalatable truth to deliver, and deliver it he will r as Society well knows to her cost. She would cover up the plague spot in her midst instead of letting in a broad flood of health — bringing sunlight that would speedily dissipate the evil. We are far too indolent to think deeply about the cause and effect; of our actions, and instead of the vigilant activity which alone oan keep a man's life healthy and progressive we oalmly make " Laissez faire " the motto of our lives, and then slip heedlessly down the current. But there is an awful dignity about this life of ours —an awful responsibility — and it is long ere we awake to the full consciousness of the true meaning, the possibilities, and the end and purpose of this existence. Away, then, with conventionality,' with hard and fast rules — with all that would hamper us in our ascent towards perfection 1 Let us be a law unto ourselves, and following " spirit guidance," fight on and up for evermore. First of all, let us break through our sense dream of unbased security and search out for ourselves a sustaining soul food. What we most need is a faith to live by, a re-pre-sentment of the Christ life, and a clear view of its relation to man's daily common-place existence now and here. Who shall give us this? None but the thinker, the prophet, whose inspiration is the great throbbing soul of Nature herself, whereof he also is a part. In a voice made musical by a mighty inspiration he tells out the truth that is in him, in season and out of season, heedless of the world and obedient only to the voice of his own soul. This has the author of " Cantilenoßae Nugae" done. Clearly and uncompromisingly he speaks out the truth that is in him to the world.

The keynote of the volume is the progress of the soul towards perfectness — that perfectness of Spirit for which all creation continually groaneth and travaileth; which the Christ taught, which we steadily deny by word' and deed, Earthly existence -is man's probation time. He has many lessons to learn here ere his soul may continue its upward progress, and her persistence through matter may take aeons and aeons ere she is purified. Then life Is— to wake, not sleep, Rise and not rest, bub preis From earth's level, where blindly creep Things perfected^ more or less, To the heaven's height, far and steep, Where amid what strifes and storms May wait the adventurous queit Power is Love— transports, transforms Who aspired from worst to best, Sought the soul's world, spumed the worms. \ But she has many foes to trample in the dust ere she can press on — Good will and hatred, joyouaness and woe,

Temp'rance and riot weave our tau^led dream. Our paat compels ; yet may we purer grow Since spirit* guide, defy it, and redeem Our souls § In the six sonnets to Algernon Charles

* " Oantilenosae Niicae,'" being vol. I of the poetfcal works of David Will 21. Hum, MA.. Copirjght. Oamaru, 1890. t "The Answer, first and final "— " OantUenoaae "The Answer i>ugan."

I " Afolands ": Bobert Browning. § " Ihe Xemp«>6 l "t Monthly Review* July 1890,

Swinburne we have a clear exposition of the divine nature of the soul — so clearly seen by Bocrates and every thinker and mystic to this day. I quote the third sonnet: The spirit of man God is ; the central Will Ot personal men, and of impersonal Man The essence sMII. But ah 1 for him who can Fierce past this truth to vaster regions still This is the path to— onward press until He meet God face to face, in extaay scan The four-fold fullness of his gorgeous plan, Sphere within sphere— then will the glad soul fill With larger knowledge, that God's more than this, A mighty Personally in Whom All things do live ; Who If all things, yet is More than they all ; the Spiritual Loom Which weaveth all— t,ho Welt. These are not His— Body, Fire, Soul, and Spirit, but He. Give room.

In the three sonnets entitled "Transmigration" the same idea is powerfully expressed. The last one must be quoted in its entirety : Sometime* the body sleeps, and my freed soul Stands up eraot and »eea, and thui I know That tome day— all the alternate ebb and flow Retreating waves that gradually roll Back higher than before and near the goal Only to sink again, alas, how low I Till the very depths their slime, blaok, hideout, show — All gathered in one tide— on, on the whole Shall glide majestic and resistless toward The greater Ooean, knowing ebb, nor shore,

Nor wave, nor itorra ; onoe and forever poured Heturnless into the Infinite 1 *IU o'er — The perfecting ; and, wedded to her Lord The perfect soul dwelleth for evermore.

" The Curate " is a powerful piece of work. It is an awful revelation of the possibilities of evil that lurk in a man's soul. Life is a many-sided complex problem that baffles most. Robert Browning is one of the few who have been able to depict it in all its bewildering complexity. Like him, too, the author of " The Curate " looks far below the surface, and pierces through appearances until he sees the very workings of the soul itself, and not the fair professions of the outer life.

There is a dramatic vigour and a very real grandeur in the poem. This Curate is a living lie. He loved pleasure, and has glided into sin after sin till his " limed soul " sees no loop-hole of escape. Nor does he seek one. How fearful is his calm soliloquy and frankest recognition of his own blackness 1 There is no word of complaint, no self-pity, no cry for help— as) for«fcelf-murder — that is to him but a weak solution of the difficulty. Suppose I do lie like the worthy Father Of Lies h'mtelf, preach a lie, live a lie, AM a He, Do you think I am afraid of the sequence ?

It is the defiance of Lucifer over again. Dor 6's picture of the Day of Judgment and a physical resurrection meets bis wandering eyes, and he sees all the irony in the artist's conception. Just as a criminal, while hearing his death doom pronounced by the judge, can trifle in his mind with the movements of a fly on his hand, so the' Curate, though never for a moment forgetful of the dead weight on his heart, yet plays with the thought of the mistakes that will be made when the last trump .sounds, and the bones re-clothe themselves with flesh. Whew 1 what a rare old scramble Amongst us for the limited supply Of flesh to clothe our bony nakedness.

Next the marble group of" the Laokoon catches bis eyes, and the agonising priest seems to be his own soul encircled and stifled by the cold, slimy monsters that twice themselves around him till they crush out the divinity for ever.

' And then a head of Christ thorn-crowned gleams whitely before him. Alas 1 it reminds him of her he has wronged ; and then comes the whole story, beginning with defiant accusation of his Maker, and ending with a peal of mocking laughter at the simplicity of a woman who could thank God for a murder that relieved her from the immediate consequences of her love.

" The Curate " is in one sense a fragment, but none the less it is artistically complete in its suggestiveness. It is like the limb of some lost ancient statue, which suggests a complement of limb and body proportionate in strength and beauty, and so affords to the imagination a fuller satisfaction than the perfect statue ever could.

Friendship is the theme treated of in " A Conversation." The true friend is not sought ; he is God-given, and the gift is a precious one. A friendship between a man and a woman, however, can exist only between natures so rare and pure that no base aspersions of the world can separate them — ay, or join them in a mere conventional bond as in the poem " Blind."

Love her ? Ay, But not as thou would'st think. With that broad

love That clasps the world's good to its throbbing breast — Bven the not-good, too. She is my friend.

And that is sufficient for him. Yes, but the world says, " Will not y6ur wife resent such friendship 1 " Here is the answer : — She trusts me, and she knows right well that love, Extended to the meanest fellow creature, A movie or worm even, worketh back to her The Centre or my system. The world smiles sceptically. There must surely be dissembling somewhere — no wife could act so. But with the calm assurance of experience comes Ihe reply — " Thou knnw'it not nil the world, and maybe lack'efc That sj m^atheMo insight that oan pierce To the core of things Tcou take'st the husk too

oft To be the kernel. Look a little deeper.

" Her Poem " is a royal treatment of wifely love. Rarely has it been handled with such insight. Hear the wife : —

My King 1 Ah never ean'it thou ao Look up to me as I to Thee ; no. no — Nor would I wish it, for Thou could'at not then Look down so lovefully upon who kneels In homage, and extend a gracious hand To raise her to Thy throne -to Heaven 1 O, I would not for fcbe world— ten thousand worldg— Thou should'st look up to me — bo 1

" This is an ideal love," someone will say ; yet I question very much if wedded happiness exists without it; ideal, perhaps — but only let it be the ideal of every wife and every husband, for though the poet s>ing3 us Wife he means But soul, and we shall ere long " find this grey-aged world redecked with youth, whose charms and strengths Time bath no power to steal."*

" Ruth "is a spiritual love poem. Here is a love that needs not the ■'bodily presence, but is satisfied with the communion of souls ; the body to him who sings is form, and form alone— the soul's house and not the soul. Ruth the beloved is dead, and yet ber lover feels " joy unspeakable " in the kcowledge.

*" Sonnets (0 Swinburne," C.H,

.Dead 1 Yea, to this life, which is Itielf a deathDead to the shows of sense, deceits of time But b irn to realler life, to wider Truth, To knowledge that is knowledge ; ay. and more ; Mot lost to me, but gained to me— to be For ever by me. in me, till the day That bids me bid farewell to earth, and join Her— yonder. Equally spiritual are the three poems, " To My Love." They are true love songs. What could be finer than this ?—? — Soul of thee, darling, To my soul Is knitted, Foolish who sundered Lovers have pitied 1 What reck we, darling, When daily the nearer Boul grows to soul, while Clearer and clearer % Our vision Is?

The soul knows not time and Upace, and cannot be bound by either. She is royally free, and swiftly flies to her own "Whither" is an exquisitely musical little poem. There is a gleam of fairy-like enchantment— a rippling undertone of joyousneßs, with just a touch of regret for' the old child-like life— all past for ever. The future of husband and wife is full of deep ' happiness, but the old life was sweet too. They embark together on the sea of life— The Infinite sea with its nnbroken rim, Where blue loins blue, to live— The idyl is perfect. Sunshine gleams on the shore behind them; sunshine spreads seaward before them, and so they disappear. Of Nature pictures there are very few in " Cantilenosae Nugae," as might be expected in a work devoted to the highest truths, but the two sonnets "Night" and " Morning " are fine. One would think ihat everything that could be said on night and morning has already been said, yet here there is a terse exactitude that strikes ns with a sense of newness. Take the two lines from the sonnet on "Morning": With drops unlovely everything -was dank, Not yet bejewelled by the Lord of Day.

All is cold and cheerless still ; the dewdrops are merest drops of water, bat when the sun rises in his kingly splendour each one will gleam with a hundred points of light And note that "Lord of Day," that one had thought lifeless these centuries. What freshness in it, now no more a portion of the rhymester's stock-in-trade, but a true figure, fraught with meaning once again 1 In the sonnet "Evening" the poet has expressed for us the mystery of grandeur that ever waits around the close of day — an aweful hush of expectation and worship/ that is with most more easily felt than expressed.

The sun sinks low behind the purpling hills, With long slant rays of glory o'er the land, Like the parting blessing of a sacred Hand.

Scattered passages occur, too, mere incidental lines and phrases that dash in, as it were, -with half a dozen strokes, a perfect picture :

A breath went round the world. Like the sigh of a rousing sleeper, then one ray i Shot level o'er the silver capping us, I And the e»rth awoke.* v And in the same poem : The mountain sides streamed like a Conner's flanks, Who will not lose and cannot win the race. Does not the following bring us- a waft of the delickrasly wild field scents ?—? — Out in the fields where the may and tha clover abounded, And threw lavish perfume away like the veriest spendthrift t Here is another taken from a ballad : 7h3 sunshine streameth o'er the lea, Ihe river prattleth to the sea ; The urcnina with their bare brown feet Take refuge there from the roontide heat. What can that glittering white thing be ? A skull— blanoht white in the ripples* beat. I single out one more from a musically 3weet song : As rhythmically dip my oan In the da<-k stream Its magio mirror shatt'ring, till The stars are lost In a thoutand thousand wavelets.'still Orost and reorost. "Rienzi" is a rousing poem. It is a memory of the overture to Wagner's opera, and is a fine example of the power of a noble musical composition. All through the poem is heard the stirring music, changing j ever with its theme ; now " melodious bursts and floodingiharmonies,""how a waiting lull, now the strife, and last of all the victory. IWe seem to hear the trumpet call ; but I | shall quote : The trumpet oatl t Again, again I A new Sll'vrier tone. It woke a nobler life. And bade me burst through all the bonds of fate

Like packthreads ; and I rose, and thro' it all ■ I fought— a man I The man sees himself pass as he listens from growth to growth — from childhood to manhood. The trumpet call is a call to live, to be. It is the history of a soul's development — its struggle through the bewildering tangle of existence on to triumph and to victory. The chaos died ; back, baok Came flowers, and dew-notea to the strain again, And the booming surf-rosr and the tempest rage— Discard no longer, each now felt to be A needful part of the mijistio whole, And blended wi h them notes celestial From lips of who had wandered, walkfc, and fought And— conquered.

As Robert Browning has it : Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar, and dwelt with mine, Not a poiufc or a peak but found, but, fixed its wandering star ; Meteor-moons, balls of blaze, and they did not; pale or pine, For earth had attained to .heaven, there was no more near nor far.l

"Sanctuary," the title is itself a poem; piercing as it does to the interior meaning of the piece, it seems to shed a white lustre over the whole. In it, as in " Rienzi," the fine effect must be noted of words carefully chosen to suit the subject. Take the first nine lines of "Sanctuary" and mark the harsh dissonance that gives the effect of the boiling mass of waves swelling, roaring, and tossing their crests heaven-high. You can hear the storm rage — and then note the change : Yea, even then there are gem-lit oaves Where dwelleth Peace, Where the lessening roafof the brawling waves Must cease.

How peacefully we are carried with this low melody away, away down through the sea depths, to pale Undine in her rosy coral

* " Within and Without."— Cant. Hug. t " The Curate."— O«nt. Nog. I« lAbtVogler."1 AbtVogler."

and emeraldine home. Through the stillness we hear

The echoing songs Of the mermaids fair — Just bend and listen ; surely you can hear the tremulous- rapture : Those witching notes the ripples thrill, They tremble, tremble, tremble still From the centre to tbe shore In exquisite agony of bliss, > Dylug, dying evermore - Whispetlngly— like a spirit's klttt .■ Creeds are regarded by this thinker— as, indeed, by every man who has thought at all— to be merely a. kind of garment— a church garment that drapes and hides £he inner meaning of true religion. In f'The Pivot," a finely-chosen name, by the way,vhe , says : - ' ' ' ' Creeds I> do you dress the tame as I dress, ' ' , You who 'are taller, brofcder too? ' " Pretty effect if I took- for my dress That which the tailor made for, youl ■ Yet you would have me clothe my wondrous -- - Soul in the. garments' your soul wears— ••> What would reanlb; with 6he gulfs that sunder us. But wrinkled folds or" uglier tears ? - A man's knowledge of God depends on the ' spirituality of the . man, and he must' find Him himself — no one can come between ; there can be no mediator. Men have con- " strued the Divine teaching according to their own materialised views, and their words j. are barren — but well says thepoet: ' ' God was larger than tbe creeds ; they were the oun- - , ning compromise . . " , ' ' For unanimous decision of the many and the few, Bafts that leaked at every log, so loose the binding of their ties ; ' But they floated, and the thoughtless held that' therefore they were trae * . i

A striking point about the workmanship of these poems is the wide command of language they display, together with a felt severity in the use of word and phrase. The reader feels that the word used is the only one that could have occupied that place without marring the meaning; and one gets the impression of seeing the clear cold out lilies of a cameo. Is it not; Matthew Arnold who speaks of the " inevitableness " of language such as this 1 • It is a rare, sensitiveness to the shades wi meaning in a word that gives the poems before me a"" force and power notoft'en ,felt. A continued use of words in certain connections produces in a short time a hackneyed poetic diction which becomes the stock-in-trade of every poetaster, but when the poet comes he " pierces this rotten diction, and fastens words again to visible things. "f Never should we forget that words are things. They are realities, powers,' and it behoves a man to take heed how he uses them. With what keen sense of satisfied delight do we not note the use of a well-known word in a new sense ! It gives a colour and a vividness that stamps the picture- indelibly upon the memory. Here is one instance of this in "My Brook": Strikes thy prattling on my tense, '- Washing away Stains of the day; While the unseen aeemeth nearer . And clearer. And life grows intense. And from " Her Poem " : I began. To study it -for his sake; conned his rimes - - However foolish (to him) they might be, till I caught a faint, a dawnlike knowledge of , The beauty and the power.of metre, rime, And the counties* flgnres that adorned his verse. ■ That knowledge grew ; the dawnlightgreatened to , An.undreamed wonder of day. < - ■: ,It would naturally be expected that such a master of thaEsglish language should tmder 7 stand the art of naming^ .There is much in T it, and I find a fine appropriateness in such titles as "Holy Days," "Sanctuary," "Th'e i Pivot," and others, which, are intended* to' body forth the interior meaning of the poem to which they belong. 1 - This choiceness of word and phrase, this mastery of language, this variety in treat*, ment — now a broad outline dr minute detail, now a rousing mental stimulus — seem' to me to render the book well worthy of careful Btudy. ■Here is a poet who thinks for himself and believes in his thought. To him it is an evangel, and he does not hesitate to publish it abroad. An- idealist of idealists, he comes forward to add his protest against the power oft matter that is apparently dominating the V present century, and threatening to lead thinker and scientist into a hideous matter worship. But the poet sees the magnificent unity underlying the seeming chaos, and the grand undeviating law of order beneath: He sees the eternally true, and hurls forth his defiance of falsehood and wrong. Let men no longer rest satisfied with their " smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment." Why should they still blindly acquiesce in the, existing state of things without seeking a better 7 ' *

"Life," says Emerson, "is 'made up of illusions." 1 Who has thought ever so little and has not found out the trnth of this ? Let us pierce through the illusions to the unchanging real: Let us burrow awhile-and build, broad on the roots of things,} and take our stand like men, fearless of all that would shake our tower of strength. Why do we •wait? In the name of truth and eternal freedom let us fare forth to our life work, knowing that it is ever from height to height — from higher to highest.

Dolce A. Cabot.

» " Hilda : Among the Broken Gods."— Walter O. Smith. t " Nature."— Ralph Waldo Emerson. J " Abt Vogler."— Robert Browning.

THE TRUE FRIEND.

To you, dear friend, we owe a debt We never oan repay — The memory of it lingers yet And will through all life's wav ; For when bowed down with grief and woe, With bope and courage gone, You came to us, you dried our teari, And sweetly cheered us on. With kind, judiolout words that soothed Our hearts, thtough sorrow flajed, You cheered us on, the path way {smoothed, And all our fears allayed. Oh blest the frieud that lifts us up On arms of love eaoh day. Who puts some sweetness in life's oup And helps us on our way.

— M. Allen.

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