The Press. — London, England, 1857-08-29 00:00:00

THE PRESS, AUGUST 29, 1857. dom and strength with which it inspires us We think we have put the case as favourably as it cm be put. And still we deny that the epithet "great" is a just one. If any part of the twenty-four hours deserved the title of " great," it would be either noon or midnight. Morning and evening are too soft, and sweet. and cool, to coincide with our idea of " great" in any signification of the term. The employ ment of the epithet in this case must spring either from sheer thoughtlessness, or want of fittniliatity, which seems more probable, with the aspects of a country morning. In the second of the two stanzas we have quoted we dislike the word " dreaming." even as applied to a hyacinth, much more to a " hyaeinthine haze." In another place the followir g simile is, in our opinion, still more objectionable : At midnight, when thy suburbs lie As silent as a noonday sky, When larks with heat are mute— This is an instance of an incongruous meta phor. No doubt, the two objects are alike in the one point of stillness; but The first is the stillness of death, the second of life ; and each produces in the mind such totally distinct sensations that we are certain the one would never be suggested to us by the other. We do not say that every similitude employed in poetry should have been experienced by the poet first; but it should be capable of being experienced. Many images are kindled in the mind by the heat of composition which 'would not have occurred to it otherwise. The in stinct of a real poet will often guide him right in such cases; but if he be a conscientious writer, he will carefully weigh them by the standard of nature and experience, and discard all those of which neither memory nor ana logy justify the introduction. At the end of the next poem of " Squire Maurice" occurs an exactly similar blunder see the long strings of the fishing skiff') Come home to roost like lines of evening crows. The sense of sight is compelled to acknow ledge the resemblance, but the imagination revolts from the violation of poetic truth con tained in the above couplet. Yet in this very piece, which is a sort of rhapsodical mono logue, we have one of the most beautiful pieces of description with which we are acquainted : Inland T wander slow, Mote with the power the earth and heaven wield: A blark spot sails across the golden field, And through the air a crow. Before me wavers spring's first butterfly : From one the sunny noon there starts the cuckoo's cry; The daisied meads are ernsical with lambs ; Some piny some feed, some, white as snow flakes, lie Tn the deep sunshine, by their silent dams. The road grows wide and level to the feet ; The wandering woodbine through the hedge is drawn, Unhlnwn its serenity bugles dim and sweet ; Knee-deep in fern stand startled doe and fawn, And lo ! there gleams upon a spacious lawn An Earl's marine retreat A little foot path quivers up the height, And what a vision for a townsman's sight ! A village, peeping from its orchard 'oh oni, With lowly roofs of thatch, blue threads of smoke, O'erlooking all, a parsonage of white. I hear the smith's hammer, stroke on stroke ! A steed is at the door; the ruatics talk, Prowl of the notice of the gaitered ; A shallow river breaks o'er shallow fills. Beside the ancient sluice that turns the mill The lusty miller bawls ; The parson listens in his garilen.walk, The red cloaked woman pauses on the hill. This is a place, yo❑ Nay, exempt from ill, A paradise. where, all the loitering day, Enamoured pigeons con upon the roof, Where children ever play. "The Night before the Wedding " is a sort of conclusion to " Squire Maurice," and demands no special notice. On the whole. we think the finest poem in the collection is that which succeeds, en titled " A Boy's Poem," and narrating the first love of a young townsman, the glory it shed around his life during its continuance, and the drear catastrophe of its interruption. One day, while full of joy and hope. he pays a visit to some beautiful scenery in the neighbourhood; and Part II , describing that trip, is one un broken series of exquisite little pictures of .rock, lake, and forest. It is here, however, that we more especially complain of his tautology. It is not merely in words or phrases that Mr Smith repeats himself, but in tone, and par. titularly in manner. In this respect his Now, it is impossible that the noise of bees in a sycamore, that delightful garden music, can bear Etny resemblance to a single voice. The prevalent sensation excited by this sound is that of a distant multitude—a faint low buzz proceeding, from an innumerable swarm of insects. Yet, on the other hand, if we turn over the page, we shall find an inimitably truthful and happy metaphor. Describing his companions, he says of one Among the rest, Sat one with visage red wish sun and wind, As the last hip upon the frosted In the course of the conversation ono of the party sings a song; in it occur the following expressions : Could I but win you for an hour from off that starry shore. Meaning heaven. Now, how can a shore be starry? This is one of those bastard meta• pliers humorously exposed in No. 595 of the Spectator. And then, a little lower down : R oun d aetfish shores for ever moans the hurt and wounded 1143‘ This is a new conception of the sea, which we do not at all admire. Hurt and wounded by whom, or for what end? Bait, however explained, the idea is fatal to the dignity and grandeur of the ocean, as the eternal and hoary conqueror of man's puny devices. We will take our leave of " Horton" with the following fine quotation: — I picture Art As some great captive in a gloomy cell, Who strives in vain to satisfy himself, By carving every inch of wall and roof With images of former state, and shapes That haunt him with their beauty ; awl, unsought, There starts beneath his chisel—saddening all, Freezing the lovely groups of singing girls, Bursting thromo every bunch of leaf and flower— Strange images of grief. - - - The next in order is a piece entitled " Glas gow," and is a sort of comparison between the beauties of town and country. On the whole, it is a truthful and lofty composition, as the following selections will prove : Black Labour draw.; his weary waves, Into their secret•moaning caves ; But with the morning light, That sea again will overflow With a long weary sound of woe, Again to faint in night. Wave sin I in that sea of woes, Which, night and morning, ebbs and flows. • • • • • O fair the lightly sprinkled waste, O'er which a laughing sh•mer has raced! 0 fair the April shoots ! 0 fair the woods on summer days, While a blue hyscinthine haze Is dreaming; round the roots! In thee, 0 City ! I discern Another beauty, sad and stern. Draw thy fierce streams of blinding ore, Smite on a thousand anvils, roar Down to the harlour•bars ; Smoulder in smoky sunsets, flare On rainy nights, with street and square Lie empty to the stars. From terrace proud to alley base I know thee as my mother's face. When sunset bathes thee in his gold, In wreaths of bronze thy sides are rolled, Thy smoke is dusky fire ; And, from the glory round thee poured, A sunbeam like an aneel's sword Shivers upon a spire. Thus have I watched thee, Terror! Dream) While the blue Night crept up the stream. The wild Train plunges in the hills, He shrieks across the midnight rills ; Streams through the shifting glare, The roe'. and flap of foundry fires, That shake with light the sleeping shires; And on the moorlands bare, He sees afar a crown of light Hang o'er thee in the hollow night. Perhaps if tbtre is any exception to our asser tion that there is no one passage in the "City Poems " containing all the attributes of the highest poetry, it is to be found in these stanzas. But the poem is disfigured in other parts by the same kind of mistakes and mannerisms that we have already pointed cut. In the second stanza Mr. Smith says : Neer dwelt I where great mornings shine. Now, there is a school of criticism that would demand why morni g is greater than evenina. Lot to take Mr. Smith upon his own ground e will presume that he means by the word "great" the broad, genial, life-breathing bright atiee a Ane morning, and axe *elm of fiee• poetry reminds one a little of Mr. Islacattlay's prose. When you have read a fair amount of it, it' you were given a half sentence you could generally finish it as he would Lave dono himself. This spoils the charm of all compo sition, but especially of poetry. Our conclud ing quotations will be from the passages treating of the young lover's disappointment. Here is an exquisite simile:— Hope's door closed with a clang.— I rose up calm, Cal... as a country when the storm is o'er, At.d broken boughs are hanging from the trees, And swollen streams have crept within their banks, Leaving a mighty marge of wreck and sand Along the soppy fields. What sweet enchantments hover round Love's name ! Far out to sea, from off her syren Steal wandering melodies, an I lie in wait To lure the sailor to her fatal shores Within the crimson sunset. 'Tis our doom To sit unhappy in the round of self. From our necessities of love arise Our keenest heartaches and our miseries. When death and change are flying in the sky, Our spirits tremble like a nest of doves, Beneath the falcon's wing. Each time we love, We turn a nearer and a broader mark To that keen archer, Sorrow, and he strikes. How irresistible is the languishing melody of the first five lines, and what fine imaginative power in the concluding comparison, though not perhaps wholly original. But here, if possible, is something more touching than either : Love, unretumed, Hath gracious uses; the keen pang departs, The sweetness never. Sorrow's touch troth ope A mingled fount of sweet and bitter tears, No summer's heat can dry, no winters cold Lock up in ice. When music grieves, the past Returns in tears. The red and setting sun Is beauty indescribable, and leads The heart 'mong glares. 'f he old man shuts the door Of his still soul, and, in the inmost room, Sits days with memory. Grey Adam, roofed With smoky ratters—how unlike the blue That bent o'er Eden :—torgets Eve's faded face— His wandering boy—his eyes are far awa ; Atni. in his heart, remembrance sad and sweet, Of Paradise long lost. Excepting the slight quaintness of the phrase " Grey Adam," this passage is nearly perfect. We might q"ote 3 great number of single lines of very great beauty. Among others the following struck us more particularly : A wide grey windy sea bespecked with foam. Horton. Of an ancient grange, which, though it be winter, hag stored A summer's sunshine in its olowds of stacks. A Boy's Poem. There was a rilinel chapel on the coast, And by it lay a little grassy grave Still as a couching lamb. Ditto. We assure Mr Smith that if we had liked his poems less we should not have criticised them with so much minuteness. We exhort him above all things to study truthfulness. A simile should never be indistinct ; not where the object of it is indistinct itself. A cloud may be indistinct, and we may like►► it to something else which is indistinct too, but, the resemblance should he clear. This law, though seemingly so obvious, is neglected by many of our modern poets. It is only by long and patient observation that the confused impressions we receive of external things shape themselves into clear images in the brain—a truth which any man will acknowledge who sits down for the first time to describe an imaginary landscape with his pen. Neglect of this difficulty betrays at the same time a carelessness of truth and an indifference to art that will in course of time prove the ruin of the highest powers. A keerf.y susceptible nature, a sensuous admiration of beauty, and a facility of rhythmical expression, will make a man a poet ; but they will never make him a great one We have faith in Mr. Smith yet. We see in him the germs of true poetry. Here and there gleam little bits of sunl ght, " refulgent as the god of day." Perseverance and labour may yet sweep away the clouds that hang over his genius, and enable him to shine out with a clearer and stronger brilliance.