" SEAGULLS, AND OTHER POEMS."

Otago Witness, Issue 2686, 6 September 1905, Page 77

" SEAGULLS, AND OTHER POEMS."

By Enid Welsford,

It seems to me that this little book will not be without interest. Apart altogether from its value as the work of a poet, we are interested in it as the work of a child, and of a child who will one day be a woman. Ai with all "infant prodigies"— the term is not pleasing, but we have no other for these children of precocious development—the first question we are tempted to ask is, "What will she become?" She has her start in the race; will she keep ahead, or will she fall back to mediocrity? Will .her gift grow greater as the years pass over her head, or is it at its highest now? The future will answer these questions ; for the present, let us look at the work she has done. The little authoress, Enid Welsford, is now but a child of 11 ; to judge by the photograph which forms the frontispiece of the book she is still in very truth a child, only a dreamy gravity in the wide eyes betokening the thoughts behind. Otherwise a happy, mirth-loving child, natural, wholesome, and simple. She is introduced to her readers by an old family friend, a colleague of her father's in Harrow School, who attests that the little collection of poems is the child's own unaided work, written between the ages of six and ten. "No one has ever suggested a subject to her ; no one has amended an expression." *

Her mother was warning her once about thinking too highly of her own gift, and her reply was that it would be silly to be conceited! about this, as she was only "the jug out of -which the water was poured." The most significant poem, perhaps, of the little series gives voice to the same sentiment ; it is the expression of the relation between the child and her art. She calls ifc "The Birtib' of the Poem." It is short enough to quote in full : — Like a mist before my eyes Dreamy, dreamy poetry lies. It woa't obey or honour lny word ; It always comes of its own accord. I cannot tell which way it will go ; It either comes fast or else it comes slow. Like a mist before my eyes Dreamy, dreamy poetry lies. It has its trifling faults — the "won't" and the' "else" would not be allowed, in maturer work, to pass unchallenged ; but the child-poetess has already a feeling for balance and arrangement. It is a little rondo in verse, with the two shorter lines of the commencement repeated to form the close. But the lines are most interesting, not for their form and order, but as an expression of the little artist's feeling that sihe has in her hands an instrument that she does not quite understand, something endowed with power to move in ways of its own. This is, perhaps, one of the most beautiful things in the book — this reverence paid to the divine spark within her. There is another short poem which one at once applies to the little poet herself. It is called "Genius and the Child" : Grand Genius, -with her forehead of flame, Is calling, dear child, to thee; In the heat of her fixe thou shalt rise higher, O'er city, hilltop, and lea. She will bear thee away from the haunts of men To a. home by the sounding sea ; And thy music wild shall blend, dear child, Wi'.fli the roar — with the moan — of the sea. "Away from the haunts of men" ! — has this little ten-year-old' child already realised the isolation of genius? It may be. Into this, as into many other poems, comes mention of the sea ; the title piece, "Seagulls," embodies a quaint fancy that the souls of the Vikings found a resting place in the ouiies of the seagulls, that they might abide for ever by the sea which they loved. "A Song of Sorrow" tfhows, for a child, a remarkable insight into the feelings of one whose treasure has been snatched' by the sea : Wild winds, why are ye tolling? Seagulls, why do ye cry? I Wild waves, why are ye rolling? Sad heart, why dost thou sigh? The wild winds, loudly lamenting, See what* the seagulls scream loud to see, See the waves break on my own, my own loved one, Hear my heart sigh, for he's lost to me. Sea, sea, why art thou so ciuel? Yesterday sat we together by thee, Watched than and loved thee, as gently thy wavelets Played in the sunshine — oh, tieacherous sea. And not the sea alone has appealed to this child ■. her fancy has woven for her dreams of the mermaid life below. Here her imagination has found a wider field. The fiist verse of "A Mermaid's Lament" runs : Cold is the wind, and the waves are colder, I'm wcaiy of endless Ijlue. The sea would be fair enough had I never Sceii the green fields and you. Seen the gieen fields and you, Love, Seen the green fields and you. Here the childish fancy has conjured up a picture like that of Matthew Arnold's "Foisaken Merman," except that here it is the maid who renwras below the ocean yearning for her lost love of earth. There is much force of feeling in the lino ''I'm wpary of endless blue," leading up to the contrast of green fields ; it is not the

thought of an ordinary child, but the perception of an artist.

Another poem entitled "Alone : A Mermaid's Song" shows a yet more vivid imagination. The lines are put into the mouth of a mermaid witnessing the sorrow of an earth maiden, yet feeling that the latter, in possessing a human soul, hae comfort and consolation that her sisters of the sea can never know. Alone, alone, alone, upon a wide, wide sea, The wild waves roaring loudly in. thine ear, Shrinking and shivering from the icy spray, Thy bare white arms in silent prayers are spread Towards the blackened sky. Alone, alone; in danger and in -woe, Alone, oh, maid, thou are yet not alone. For One above looks pitying on thy woe, Whoss eye can pieroa the blackest thunder-

cloud, Whose voica is heard above the breakers' roar: Thou hast a soul, sweet maid, thou hast a soul ; While we down in the coral caves have none. Ba comforted, maiden, for thou hast a soul, Though thou art left alone, ah, all alone, Alone, alone, alone, yet not alone. Oh, would we had a soul ; -vre would give everything, Diamonaa ar.d pearls, and treasures of the deap. We v/ould be». all tha woe of mortal life, And c'en be left upon a stormy sea. Think of the blessings, maid-en, thou hast got, Though thou art on the sea alone, alone, — Alone, yet not alone. In work like this there is much promise, for here are fancy and the power of expression to paint a picture before the reader's eyes. I lay no stress upon the point that it is immature, and shows faults of rhyme and offences against poetic laws ; in the early poems of most of our poets there are such faults, made at a much more advanced age than the little Enid's. Here, again, is another short poem that betrays, in spite of certain lame and halting metres, the vivid imagination of the artist : — Weird and wi!d, weird and wild, Twilight creeps o'er the .sky. An awful glooni is over all ; And breezes moan and sigh. The naked branches shiver and groaui As the spirits pass them by. Twilight falls, twilight falls, And what is that awful cry? 'Tis not the startled seagulls' scream, 'Ti3 not tihe winds "that sigh; But a shriek of anguish, a shriek of pain, From a spirit that passes by. At times there is, as in the verses above, a certain youthful indulgence in melan- ! choly ; the poems "No More" and "Death the Healer, Death the Wounder," both depict young persons revelling in their eternal despair, and pledging themselves, ! in the last verse, to suicide in order to .' rejoin the beloved departed. But this is ! a phase through which many a girl who is not a poet passes, isn't it? Time will obliterate it. There is one other point that has struck me very much in reading through this ! little booklet — that i 6, the power this' childish mind has shown over abstract ideas. In a little poem entitled "Time, Death, and Love," these three are personified as disputing the bounds of their ' empire over mankind. To the claims,., of . Time and Death Love replies : Time and Death, ye are very great, But ye cannot compare with me'; ' v >•' For thou art Time, and thou art Death, But I am Eternity. The simplicity of diction in this might be * the artistic finish achieved after many years of study and practice ; here it is the spontaneous naturalness of a child. But who would suspect the- child's brain ' of containing such thoughts? Perhaps beneath the happy carelessness of our own j children there slumber these "long, long thoughts" ; we know not what these souls are that we hold in our keeping. This little one is teaching us. L. C. F.