The Press.
London, England, 1856-09-27 00:00:00

CONTEMPORARY POETRY.

Ix a previous number of this Journal we glanced
briefly at the causes which generate so plentiful a
crop of poets of a particular character at the precise
stage of civilisation we have now reached—a stage
in which we witness a wide diffusion and a high
standard of intellectual culture ; while the dis-
coveries of science have superseded, but not 3et
destroyed, our masculine energy and our adven-
turous spirit. In the batch of volumes we have
selected for present notice the exceptions to the
general description we then offered to our readers
are, we regret to say, very scanty. The tast

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for poetry seems to progress in proportion to
the decrease of poets. Whether it is that true
genius shrinks from contention with the ruck of
writers, fearful of being thrown out of the race by a
bad start, or is too proud to run the risk of being
catalogued with the versifiers of the passing day—
from whatever cause it arise, the absence of any
glimmer of real poetic inspiration in some fifty or
sixty volumes of rhyme and blank verse which are
now before us is a most melancholy and remarkable
fact. That many of these are written by persons of
taste and education cannot be disputed, and they
sometimes succeed in pleasing us by touches of
genuine feeling and happily chosen phrases de•
scriptive of natural objects ; but there is not one
of them in whom the composition of some hundreds
of pages of poc try with a view to publication is not
it sad waste of mental power, which would have been
1 ix better employed on the study of a profession, the
improvement of a family, or the acquisition of fresh
k iowledge.
If there he ono volume among those we have enu-
merated below towards which these observations
may possibly sound harsh or unjust, it is Mr. Ailing-
ham's. We cannot certainly concede that in The
Music Master, and Day and Night Songs,* is to
be found any evidence of poetry in its true sense.
But there is in the former a good deal of descriptive
writing which exhibits the highest degree of clever.
ness, and the story in itself is simple and affecting,
though it may be doubted how far the extreme diffi-
dence of Gerald is true to nature. The young
music-master is in love with one of his pupils, a girl
of sixteen. When his father dies, he resolves to
emigrate, because he dare not tell his love to the
maiden who is all the time dying for him. He goes,
and while abroad hears of her death three years
after his departure, and the poem ends with his
return to visit her grave. The picture of a summer's
day in a village is beautifully executed. The follow
ing stanza contains two most ingenious expressions:—
From little cottage gardens you almost
Smell the fruit ripening on the sultry air.
Opprest to silence, every bird is lost
In cave and hedgerow; save that here and there,

With twitter swift, the sole unquiet thing,
Shoots the dark lightning of a swallow's wing.
The elder-tree also is well touched off:—

The writhen elder spreads its creamy bloom.
Mr. Allingham is a very agreeable verse-writer, and
it is with unfeigned self-denial that we say anything
which may tend to put him out of conceit with his
own performances ; but they are not poetry, nor do
we think that if his ambition lie i❑ attaining the
fame of a poet he will be able to escape disappoint-
ment. In the meantime he is the best judge of his
own prospects, and we are very willing to be enter-
tained by his musical stanzas as long as it suits him
to manufacture them.

fin Mr. Leigh's Garlands of Verse+ we meet with
some genuine pathos, and some felicitous and natural
thoughts. One expression struck us as especially
delicate and thoughtful. The writer is in the first
period of mourning for his lost wife. Everything
around seems clmfortless, dull, and gloomy. Nature,
however, and the birds and beasts still rejoice, as of
old, and are still as beautiful. Then he says :
But all accept their joy, and bless
The giver in some voice;
Oh, Alice, shall I lore Thee less,
/ Lou can rejoice?
This is a beautiful expression of the truest and
deepest feeling, so deep, in fact, as seldom to find
expression in words.:
Mrs. Ogilvie's Poems of Ten Years: evince a
careful study of good writers, and display very con-
siderable imitative powers. The poem of " Bona and
Piero " is written with well-sustained rhythm, and in
a bold style. The following stanzas are a specimen :
Next day at dawn the helmsman cried
" Behold yon far off streak,
It is our bright Calabria,
And Mondragone's peak,
And Tiber./ waters to the north
The blue Tyrrhenean seek."
She came, she gazed upon her land,
Gazed northward o'er the sea,
Where underneath the morning clouds
She knew her home must be,
With all the sunny seething plains
Of warm moist Lombardie.
She gazed, and down her eyelids dropped
Upon her withered cheek,
No word she said to answer them
IN'ho hailed the shining streak,
Anti of their kindred's welcoming arms
bid passionately speak.
No word she said, her lips were pale,
They saw her eyelids close,
For she had owned the mastery
Of death, her last of foes;
And after all her sufferings
Had f mud the end of woes.

• &' stter, ass Day and Night S,,figa. By William
Allingliatn. Routledge and Co.
+ Garlands 4 Verse. By Thomas Leigh. Smith and Elder.
Poem of Tea ]'cars. By Mrs. Ogilvie. Thomas Bosworth.

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