p.4, l. 21. rove over. This expression is used here to denote the running on of the sense and sound of the end of a verse into the beginning of the next; but this meaning is not easily to be found in the word.
The two words reeve (pf. rove, which is also a pf. of rive) and reave (pf. reft) are both used several times by G.M.H., but they are both spelt reave. In the present context rove and reaving occur in his letters, and the spelling reeve in 'The Deutschland', xii. 8, is probably due to the copyists.
There is no doubt that G. M. H. had a wrong notion of the meaning of the nautical term reeve. No. 39 line 10 (the third passage where reeve, spelt reave, occurs, and a nautical meaning is required—see the note there—) would be satisfied by splice (nautical); and if this notion were influenced by weave, wove, that would describe the inter- weaving of the verses. In the passage referred to in 'The Deutschland' reeve is probably intended in its dialectal or common speech significance: see Wright's 'English Dialect Dictionary', where the first sense of the verb given is to bring together the 'gathers' of a dress: and in this sense reeve is in common use.
p. 7. EARLY POEMS. Two school prize-poems exist; the date of the first, 'The Escorial', is Easter '60, which is before Poems G.M.H. was sixteen years old. It is in Spenserian stanza: the imperfect copy in another hand has the first 15 stanzas omitting the 9th, and the author has written on it his motto, Batraxos de pot akridas os tis erisda, with an accompanying gloss to explain his allusions. Though wholly lacking the Byronic flush it looks as if in- fluenced by the historical descriptions in 'Childe Harold', and might provide a quotation for a tourist's guide to Spain. The history seems competent, and the artistic knowledge precocious.
Here for a sample is the seventh stanza:
This was no classic temple order'd round
With massy pillars of the Doric mood
Broad-fluted, nor with shafts acanthus-crown'd,
Pourtray'd along the frieze with Titan's brood
That battled Gods for heaven; brilliant-hued,
With golden fillets and rich blazonry,
Wherein beneath the cornice, horsemen rode
With form divine, a fiery chivalry—
Triumph of airy grace and perfect harmony.
The second prize-poem, 'A Vision of Mermaids', is dated Xmas '62. The autograph of this, which is preserved, is headed by a very elaborate circular pen-and-ink drawing, 6 inches in diameter,—a sunset sea-piece with rocks and formal groups of mermaidens, five or six together, singing as they stand (apparently) half-immersed in the shallows as described
'But most in a half-circle watch'd the sun,' &c.
This poem is in 143 lines of heroics. It betrays the in- fluence of Keats, and when I introduced the author to the public in Miles's book, I quoted from it, thinking it useful to show that his difficult later style was not due to in- ability to excel in established forms. The poem is alto- gether above the standard of school-prizes. I reprint the extract here:
Soon—as when Summer of his sister Spring
Crushes and tears the rare enjewelling,
And boasting 'I have fairer thing's than these'
Plashes amidst the billowy apple-trees
His lusty hands, in gusts of scented wind
Swirling out bloom till all the air is blind
With rosy foam and pelting blossom and mists
Of driving vermeil-rain; and, as he lists,
The dainty onyx-coronals deflowers,
A glorious wanton;—all the wrecks in showers
Crowd down upon a stream, and jostling thick
With bubbles bugle-eyed, struggle and stick
On.tangled shoals that bar the brook a crowd
Of filmy globes and rosy floating cloud:
So those Mermaidens crowded to my rock.