The Express.
London, England, 1851-08-09 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, SATURDAY EVENING, AUGUST 9, 1851.

LITERATURE. , description, not only because it describes the actual
place, but because it gives the moral character with the
Poem,. By WIT.T.IAM ALLINOIIAX. Chapman and halt. same exactness. And mere picturesque power alone
This volume of poetns hus been out for some time; —mere sensuous perception of the beautiful or
striking—may belong to very ordinary men ; some
hut what are a few ramifies more or less in the history
twople feel all the more acutely because th. 7 are
of a volume of good poetry.? We notice Mr. Alliug-
idind. It is by the thought that we must measure
ham now, because he is just beginning to attract
retest
the value of all that pretends to address the ldghest
attention at the time when new bards usually "cease in man.
from troubling,- and their few readers " are at mat.", By this time the reader, we trust, is put in good
And we propose to give in the way of extractcertain humour with Mr. Allingham, to say nothing of his
niteeimens of his powers which will make our reader: critic. lie secs that Mr. Allingham has the genuine
wary thankful for our resolution. In a word, we j ti
power, the omens dirinior, as Horace culls it.
gate at once that here we have genuine poetry once , r
, That is the result of high powers in due harmony.
more to set before the public. Poetry is the
Pert"- i But there are certain mental qualities which a very
I
lion of the highest in everything that exists. It sees
go- od poet may be without. l'oets whom we dare
healthily into the best and sweetest of every object.
~..1 , not pretend to speak slightingly of have no wit, nor
The first question, accordingly, one asks with regard A there are great poets without
to a man professing to write poetry is, is he a genuine! h
amour, even. But we find in this volume repeated
and whole man ? lf, for instance, he must run off i - - - - - •

. -
touches of quick glancing dexterity; sharp worldly
perception; and a fancy playing gracefully in
illustration of thought—nay, touches sometimes of
that kind which are opprobriously called " conceits,"
and a goodly collection of which figures in Johnson's
" Life of Cowley." Thus, we have in " Frost in the
Holidays"—
May the cold weather keep, as is but meet,
Our milk of human kindness sweet !
which Addison would have called false wit. The
same faculty is more legitimately employed when he
I .!lls us, that, in the morning—
While thoughts stand luminous and tiara
Like statues in the suu.

to Ispahan fur beauty, and fly to the middle ages for
faith, we deem his vision and susceptibility imper-
fect. Ile may be very gifted—as an enchanter
is gifted •who can work wonders by extraneous,
powers, not properly belonging to his moral being--!
,end who will be laughed at when his trick is once
band out. But the genuine man sees poetry all
round him, bounded by the natural horizon wherein
his soul is set. Ile lives in that horizon, and not in
a fairy ring. He will accordingly- be related both
to the high and low—has his sublime side as his
humorous one—and what he writes will breathe of
his daily life—just us honey tastes of heather or
violets, according as you get it in Scotland or Ma-
deira. Now, what we like primarily in Mr. Ailing-
ham is a strongly marked individuality in
him—the first condition of intellectual honesty.
His poems arc all, like his preface, dated
"Ballyshannon, ISZ/o;"—that is to say, they smack
of the sea, the hills, the Irish life, the wild moun-
tains and rivers, one way; and in another, of the intel-
lectual life of the said 1840—its culture, hopes, doubts,
andaspirations. First of all, therefore, he is thoroughly
original, in the true sense; and if a poem or two re-
mind you of certain contemporaries in form or man-
lier, that originality is noways interfered with by it.
Every age liars certain predominant forms—for its
poems as fur its creeds: the sky is not the less infi-
nite, because from the shape of the p!anct it always
looks concave. Though, by the by, we must remark
that in even form nod nrinner fir. Allingham is as
original us any of his contentswaries. But we will
start off with the very opening poein of all, called
TIIE PILOT'S PRETTA DAUGHTER.
The harbour lianks, all glittering gay,
Laughed in their turn no sad
In parting from a fair spring day
That langbingly withdr,
Great briltled clouds, piled round the sea
And hilts. hail left blu • zenith free
For last lark earliest 'tar to greet ;
When, for the crowning vernal sweet,
Along my path I chanced to meet
the Pilot's pretty Drightee.
Round her gentle, happy fate,
Dimple-soft and freshly fair,
Danced, with careless oc.an-grace,
Leeks of silk-brown hair;
Shading her cheeks or waved behind,
As lightly li:ew the veering wind,
L'nbound imbraid, d, and unhtepAl ;
Or when to tie hoe shoe she stooped,
Below her chin the half-curls droma4l,
And veiled the Pilot's Daughter.
Rising, she to.s., d them gaily lock.
With gesture soil brief,
To fall around ID soft a neck
A. wilding-rose's leaf.
Iler Sunday frock, of lilac shade
('lbst choicest tint), was neatly made,
And not Os, long to hide from view
The stout but no-way clumsy dew,
And stocking's smuttily-fitting blue.
That graced the l'ilot's Daagliter.
With look half-timid and half-drol,
And then with slightly downeaq ,yes,
And blush that outward eddy stole,
l'n!iss it were the s
Whosi, sonlight shifted on her cheek,
She halfdunted when she heard use speak ;
But 'twas a brightness all her own,
That in her firm light step was shown,
And the clear cadence of her tone ;
The Pilot's lovely Daughter!
Were it my lot, there peeped a wish,
'fu hand a pilot's oar and will,
Or haul the dripping moonlight mesh,
Spangled with herring scale ;
By dying stars, how sweet 'twould be,
And dawn-blow freshening the sea,
With weary, cheery pull to shore,
gals my cottage home once m.,re,
And meet: before I reached the door.
My darling Pilot's Daughter !
This element beside mx.feet
Looks like a tepid tome of gold;
One toneh, one tort,', dispels Me heat.
Ti,' salt and bitter cold.
A fisher's hut, the scene perforce
Of 11.11 TOW thoughts and manners coarse,
Coarse as the curtains that lic-cm
With net-ti.stoons the smoky beans,
Would no-way lodge my favourite dream,
E'en with my Pilot's Daughter.
To the open riches of the earth,
Endowing men in their own spite,
The '• Poor," by privilege of birth,
Stand in the closest right :
But not alone the palm grows dull
With dory delve and watery pull ;
And Labour sends n sleepy class
To school, a childish school to Mass :
True here will raise, not sink,—alas!
How fades my l'ilut's Daughter
Raise leer, perhaps ?—Dut eh! I said,
'Twece wiser IA such thoughts alone.
Su may thy beauty, simple maid,
Be mine, yet all thy own
Joined in my free, eontented love
With these fair gathering stars above—
Before whose stedfast truth it scent.
That "Rich" and " Pour" are as the beSSai
And shadows on the river streams
That swat will sing thee into dreams.
So passed the Pilot's Daughter.
'fake this for what it pretends to be, a picture
of natural life. How fresh, picturesque, and real it
is! How homely, even when it is romantic. The
girl is nut made a goddess, nue has she a tincture of
the commonness wliich a vulgar mind would inevit-
The Life qf Father Garn:gi. Arthur Hall, Virtue, and Co.
ably see in her, in her position. Why, the description'
The surprising eloquence which the public has
would prove her identity as the genuine daughter of
recognised in the orations of' the great Barnabite, has
the Pilot in any court of law ! :Cote, too, the moral
awakened a general curiosity to learn stnnething
truth of the poem, the genuineness of the sentiment.
As for the lines which we have marked in italics, the particular of his history. This feeling is as just as
it is natural, for, astonishing as are the addresses of
force, beauty, and aptness of the metaphor they
Gavazzi, considered as oratorical displays, yet the
embody make it rauk with the highest efforts of the
kind we know. true eloquence of the man is in his life and deeds.
Our next extract shall be also a piece of natural «e like to sit and hear him—the penetrating, the
all-informed--direct the thunders of his oratory
description. Before we examine the professed or
aga.inst the corruption of the Itomish church, and
deliberate reflection of a man, we like to know how
he describes—his descriptions will embodywhat was strip the harlot of' those fictitious charms which have
led so many astray from the right way ; but we
'best in his reflection, the unconscious, innermost,
moral action of his nature. " Ask a man to de- !admire him yet more as he rises superior to the pre-
scribe something he has seen, and you get a measure judices of early instruction and the force of circuit-
of what intellect there is in the man," says a cele- stances, to become a man and a citizen, instead of a
bated writer. The verses we' quote are without a mere monk and the tool of despotism. We like to
title: see him encouraging and marching with the volun-
By the shore, a plot of ground teer youth of Rome against the Austrian ; standing
Clips a ruined chapel round, and pleading for Italy, when 18,000 Neapolitans,
Buttressed with a grassy mound ; recalled be Bombe, were about to abandon the sacred
Where Day and Night and Day go by, mew ; arid protesting, amid the menaces of officers
And bring no touch of human sound.
anti the murmurs of the soldiery, and then journey-
Washing of the lonely seas, ing from Padua to Florence, Venice, Milan, Genoa—
Shaking of the guardian trees,
animating while work was to be done, and comfort-
Piping of the salted breeze ;
arid lag when the worst was to be suffered. Those who

Or, when
The old tower shakes his ivy board.
But we will now quote one poem inure, which con-
tains all Mr. Allingham's excellences, and on which
we safely stake our judgment :
I heard the dogs bark in the moonlight night,
And I went to the window to sec the sight;
All the dead that ever I knew
Going one by one and two by tao.
On they passed, and on they passed ;
Townsfellows all from first to last;
Born in the moonlight of the 'one,
And gvenehed ut tier heitry shadom again.
Schendmates, marching as when we played
At soldiers once, but now more staid ;
Those were the strangest sight to me
Who were drowned, I knew, in the awful sea.
Straight and handsome folk ; bent and weak too ;
An I some that I loved, moll gasped to spzal; lo;
Same just buried a day or two,
And some of whose death I never knew.
A long, long crnwd—wherecaeli seemed lonely.
And yet of them all there was one, one only,
That raised a head or looked my way ;
Alia she seemed to linger, hut might nut stay.
How loag since I saw that tor pale face !
Ah, mother dear, might I only place
Mc Mad on thy breast, a moment to rest,
While thy hand on my tearful check were prest !
00, on, a moriny hridge they moth.
AMASS the momnstreoen from shorty to shmie :
Young and old, and women and men ;
Many lung-forgot, but rimein:iered then.
And first there came a bitter laughter ;
And a sound of tears the moment alter;
Anil then a music so lofty and pay,
That every morning, day by day,
I strive to recall it if I may.
We have again italicised those touches which a
casual reader so easily overlooks, but which have
great value as evidences of p oetie insight. It is
quite superfluous to particularise the eYeelleneeS here;
the truth, the tenderness, must be perceptible to
everybody. There is a sound in the music of the
last stanza that rolls along after the pathos, like the
brisk notes after a military funeral. Nothing is more
observable here, as elsewhere in the volume, than the
simplicity with which the best effects are produced.
The poet sets the soul on fire with the most natural
gesture just as the sun-god in the poem of Claudian
lights the nest of the expiring l'heenix by simply
shaking from Ms tresses a single golden hair.
Of etm-se, Mr. Allingham has a long poem ; every
new poet usually has a morepretentious one than the
remainder of his volume. Mr. Allingham has his
" Music-Master," a love story, in two parts, contain-
ing about a hundred and fifty-six, stanzas of "lbws
rims. As a mem poetic production it is no better
than the other poems in the volume, except iu so fur
as it is longer. We mean to say that there are no
qualities displayed in it which do not exist in
the former Ones. It is full of tine things;
hut we do not consider " Claude " and " Milly"
as successful instances of impersonating power.
Hence it lacks vivid interest us a story—which
noway implies that it is not a line poem, how-
ever. But we think that there is both negative and
positive evidence in this volume that Mr. Allingham's
strength is in his individuality, as we hinted when
we began this criticism. For instance, be gives us
here a poem on the " Wandering Jew," of course an
object to he contemplated pureiy with the separate
Faze of the imagination. Somehow it lacks reality.
There are sonic wonderful illustrations of the notion ;
but there is not life. There is "wandering" but
there is no "Jew," in fact; and beside., there is
something about the treatment which recalls Tenny-
son's " St. Simeon Stylitss.'' Now, Mr. Allingham
is, in his way, as much a master in what he writes from
himselfasTennvoon. Ills real forte is outpouring,
cal, or other. He is fit to teach, directly, as well as to
inspire and suggest. lie is antorlithwauns—the pro-
duct of his own soil in every way. And we confess
that one reason we like his volume especially is,
that it •sives abundant evidence that he is likely to
be an "honest, healthy, direct worker in his time;
neither sickly nor dreamy ; nor only a literary paint
pot, for painting what is sweet to look upon ; nor apt
to be dazzled by the splendour of dead murnho-
jumhaa ; nor over fond of isms: but intellectually
opsiocied and honest---using his faculty, us Bacon
says, i• fur the glory of tho Creator, and the relief of
Unties estate."
Meanwhile, we commend the above volume to all
persons who have any appreciation of poetry, as un-
doubtedly full of the highest promise, and likely to
afford them great delight.