New-York tribune., 1896-11-15
KIPLING'S NEW POEMS.
SONGS OF SAILORS AND SOLDIERS
rr,r SEVEN SEAS. BY Rudyard Kiping. octave
Do VII 209 D. Appleton d CO.

THE SEVEN SEAS. BY Rudyard h'pi"s'
PIP VII. 209 p. Appleton q Co.
This is the last book Of poems pupi'snea
since Mr.. Kipling brought out his barr an
Room Ballads" in 1892 The first thoush,' ~
crovokea are Of how rare the man Is VI "'"
fresh and stirring his songs are OF no" "e' "''.
ha alone to-day. revives the exultant leeH"s y.
d,.coverv which moved men when Coeruec anu
1pordsworth first dawned upon them III '"o
"pa,,ads" and when Tennyson sent MS i"i''o"'
volume Of 1890 out into the world NJ o'"
poet Of Killings time has quite this spe''
he shares with the great lyris's' ~ ""
swiftly takes the reader captive makes nun -o
get the prose and trouble OF the ea''"' ""N
r,,,,gas hin, into the romance of life whose
ho,dos, nrose becomes enchanting in the poets
strain. The fine thing about his romance too'
q. that no never pretends to invoke it by means
OF conventional rhetorical. merely literary
incnntations. 1t springs from the lhstiic'Ne
music In his lines; from the piercing giinpses
they give you-haf humorous, half pathet'c-oi
rassionately human things; from the originality
ouaintness and point OF the diction; from, nnaiiy
the truth that pervades the work like sea- wind
or light This last quality Is never absent ana
that IL means so much as it does in the poems
ia explained by the fact that Kiplipg not only
feels anxious to tell the truth, but sees clearly
and car report exactly wnat he sees. The most
idealistic of poets will fail of his effect II ne
Aatters himself that seeing into the heart or
things" absolves him .fIom transferring MS
vision 10 the reader in vivid tangible colors
Kipling rarely leaves his reader in doubt Some
times he he obscure. There are specimens
Of his vagueness In this volume But MS most
characteristic verse is transparently clear. His
touch is direct to the point Of roughness. In
his manner as we'll in his outlook upon life
he fully justihes the attitude expressed by these
stanzas prefxed to the barrack-room ballads IN
the present collection:
When 'Omer smote is boomin' Tyre,
He'd card men sing by land an sea;
An what he thought e might require
e went an took-the same as me-
The market girls an fishermen
The shepherds an the sailors, too.
They card old songs turn up again
But KEEP ii quiet-same as you.
They knew e STOLE 'e knew they knowed.
They didn't tell. nor make a fuss.
But winked at 'Omer down the road
An e winked back-the same as lis.
And with what men this poet has foregathered.
with what gusto he has entered into their ex-
periences and ideas. Their very souls have
passed into the lines he puts into their mouths;
he has identified himself with them and speaks
with their tongue. adding always his own fire.
Sometimes the thoughts of poet and parsonage
closely together that they seem to come
from individual. For example, there Is the
conclusion to the "Sestina Of the Tramp Royal:
Gawd bless this world. Whatever she 'ath
done
Excep when awful long-rve found it good.
CO trp to hofn 10 ikQd oil
Or. in the same vein. this refrain to the bal
lad beginning. THE Injan Ocean sets an
smiles:
For 10 admire an for to see,
For to beold this world so wide
1t never done good to me,
But l can't drop II il tried
The point Of view illustrated by these frag-
ments constitutes. has been said. one Of
Kipling's strongest claims upon our sympathies.
The thrill he communicates to his reader is the
thrill Of participating in the strange happen
ings of men, especially of sailors and soldiers.
It will be observed that references have
been almost involuntarily TO the songs Of ships
and barracks The truth Is that while the
poems dedicated to other themes are in some
instances good they are never frst-rate. they
are never quite good as the poems in Kip
ling's first volume which were not barrack-
room ballads. In each Of his two volumes he
has presented a compact body Of these ballads.
and with them a number Of miscellaneous
things. When the latter included In the
first volume, poems like THE Last Suttee"
"The Ballad of East and West" they ac-
cepted as typical Of Kipling at his best. He
was himself on any SIDE Now he is himself.
his best self, only when writing Of Tommy At
kins or the sea. The long poem called "The
Mary Gloster." a reminder Of "Tomnson." in
the earlier volume. is written as only Kipling
could write IT, but he might have been en-
ployed upon better work. Similarly, the OPEN
ing pages. devoted to "A Song Of the English"
embalm the imperialistic enthusiasm which has
Of late years been rampant among some Eng
lishlnen in lines Of undoubted vgor and celerity.
But on the other hand, there Is bombast thrown
In with the picturesqueness Of these patriotic
verses Just there is shallow cynicism thrown
in with the tragic elements Of 'The Mary
Gloster": and, while the book before us will not
permit the reader to slight a page there is,
nevertheless, no impulse to come back to the
productions Just mentioned, once they have been
read With the greater number Of the poems 1t
10 different happily. They are read only to be
reread again and again. The throb Of the en-
zines has got into "McAndrew's Hymn and
one cannot forget IT, One nears the strange
hard rhythm. one sees the gray old engineer.
and feels the mingling In his mind Of matters
Of fact and matters that touch his soul. A
singer Of the sea, Kipling is not rhetorical
painter Of pictures. not student OF spray and
. color and sails and nothing else. but poet
who feels the rapture Of living and working
amid the waves Of having life moulded by
mariners duties and opportunities. Once. IN "A
Song Of the English" there occurs passage
an N. cable strands which recalls Swinburne:
Hero in the womb Of the worid-here on the tie
ribs Of earth ..