We wish to call attention here to the very curious image italicized in the second verse. Every one is struck by it at once; every one sees the great beauty of it at once: and yet the code of a narrow and merely rhetorical criticism would weed it out like a wildflower shyly intruding in "ordered gardens great." The simile is not at all a particularly happy one in relation to the preceding idea; it is well enough, but there have been apter similes, and there will be. And reducing it to fact, probably it is one of the most exaggerative images ever written. But yet it is beautiful—really beautiful, not a verbal juggle that entraps the imagination in fine words. The force lies in the bringing into juxtaposition in a new way those old emblems of beauty, flowers and sky, and the daring inaccuracy of it only adds a charm. It does a poetical thought sometimes no harm to be loose. Nature can do clear-cut work enough when she makes things for use; but all the visible loveliness of this world is in vague outlines, formless masses, incomplete curves. The law that softens the distant mountain-tops is the same that makes the beauty of these lines. Theirs is the rarer excellence that rises above rule. We notice it the more in Mr. De Vere that his strength lies generally in the other direction, of photographic exactness in reproduction. We like the very looseness of such expressions; they are like the flowing robes of beautiful women. The third verse also is excellent throughout, especially in the fine metaphor in the sixth line, and the intensity of "merciless in malice." This makes it so much the more provoking that the end is weak, insignificant, and abrupt, and in a vicious style that seems to be more and more the fashion of to-day. Still, there have been worse things; does not Horace end an ode with "Mercuriusque"?
The next short song, though nothing remarkable, perhaps, as pure poetry, we cite because it is so like the author—Aubrey De Vere all over, and the shortest epitome of his style we have yet seen in any of his works.
"A Song Of Age.
I.
"Who mourns? Flow on, delicious breeze!
Who mourns, though youth and strength go by?
Fresh leaves invest the vernal trees,
Fresh airs will drown my latest sigh.
What am I but a part outworn
Of earth's great whole that lifts more high
A tempest-freshened brow each morn
To meet pure beams and azure sky?
II.
"Thou world-renewing breath, sweep on,
And waft earth's sweetness o'er the wave!
That earth will circle round the sun
When God takes back the life he gave!
To each his turn! Even now I feel
The feet of children press my grave,
And one deep whisper o'er it steal—
The soul is His who died to save.'"
We like the honesty and earnestness of this none the worse for knowing that Mr. De Vere is no longer a young man. And yet does it not seem hard to realize that so good a writer has been before the public nearly thirty years, and seen a generation of flimsy reputations hide him from the eyes of the herd? We can only with difficulty realize, beside, that any one with so romantic and novel-like a name can ever be old. And will he ever be? Is it not true in a deeper and other sense, that whom the gods love die young?
The "Lines on Visiting a Haunt of Coleridge's" are not excelled by anything in all the volume, but hang so closely together, that, having to quote all or nothing, we are constrained by their length to pass on to an interpolated copy of verses by S. E. De Vere, which gives us a moment's pause. We do not know whether the unknown S. E. is a gentleman or lady; whether the mysterious initials stand for Saint Elmo or Selah Ebenezer, Sarolta Ermengarde or Sarah Elizabeth. But we do know that in this poem, "Charity," (p. 276,) is one passage of some beauty, as thus:
"O cruel mockery, to call that love
Which the world's frown can wither! Hypocrite!
False friend! Base selfish man! fearing to lift
Thy soilèd fellow from the dust! From thee
The love of friends, the sympathy of kind
Recoil like broken waves from a bare cliff,
Waves that from far seas come with noiseless step
Slow stealing to some lonely ocean isle;
With what tumultuous joy and fearless trust
They fling themselves upon its blackened breast
And wind their arms of foam around its feet,
Seeking a home; but finding none, return
With slow, sad ripple, and reproachful murmur!"
We find concluding the work a set of sonnets called "Urbs Roma," dedicated to the Count de Montalembert; all smooth, polished, elegant, and dim; with no salient beauties anywhere that distinguish one above another—golden means. The real climax of the volume is at the "Autumnal Ode." This is far the best of the new poems, and one of the best of any of its author's, new or old. In structure it bears a general resemblance to the rest of Mr. De Vere's longer odes; and the style is ripe, lofty, easy, and well-sustained. We have already given one citation from its rich stores, but there are two more especially worthy of attention. The first is a description like the one cited, and quite in Mr. De Vere's own vein.
"It is the autumnal epode of the year;
The nymphs that urge the seasons on their round,
They to whose green lap flies the startled deer
When bays the far-off hound,
They that drag April by the rain-bright hair,
(Though sun showers daze her and the rude winds scare)
O'er March's frosty bound,
They whose warm and furtive hand unwound
The cestus falls from May's new-wedded breast— Silent they stand beside dead Summer's bier,
With folded palms, and faces to the west,
And their loose tresses sweep the dewy ground."
III.
"A sacred stillness hangs upon the air,
A sacred clearness. Distant shapes draw nigh:
Glistens yon elm-grove, to its heart laid bare,
And all articulate in its symmetry,
With here and there a branch that from on high
Far flashes washed as in a watery gleam;
Beyond, the glossy lake lies calm—a beam
Upheaved, as if in sleep, from its slow central stream."
The images, and the way the allegory is sustained, are the beauty of the first stanza. The second is perhaps more artistic still. The adjective "sacred" is an artful and ingenious one. Without any apparent particular propriety in its places—a hundred other words might be effective as qualifications of "stillness" and "clearness"—yet, we find, on passing to the next thought, that it has had its result in preparing the mind for a more vivid and imaginative view of the whole scene. The remaining delineation is exact and cumulative, as our author's descriptions always are; and the closing lines are a singularly true and acute observation of an effect of light that very few would notice in the actual landscape, or will appreciate even now their attention is called to it. But people who are sensible enough to bask now and then in the ripeness of an autumn day will feel an electric contact of recognition.