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sides and stony-valleys of Devonshire , Mr . Capem found food for tv ^ ; *~ i thoughts anil sympathies . One of the most picturesque and romfnSnH English counties—now soft with pastoral verdure , and now roue * Jbh tu grey and primitive tors—has fostered his naturally imaginative mi nrt i given to his . verses their distinctive character . Those verses are of not to be tried by the highest standards , bwt are to be regarded as ^ of fresh , rural beauty , coming to us . like flowering bough s olit of u hed - spring time . . Mr . Capern is not only proud of being an Englishman 88 bS pxoud of being a Devonshire man ; and he enumerates the countv workin a poem , which contains this strikingly picturesque and vigorous lin ^" --- Speak out , old sea-dot / , J > ra 7 cz—speak out ! And Mr . Capern glories in the part his countrymen played ' in the 1 war , and has written some stirring ballads on that subject ; but he is to t at home among the leaves and flowers , the bees and butterflies the sh ^ and sunshine , the atmospheric changes and breezy freshness of pastonl Uftf which he paints -with a minute attention to details , yet with a broad e ' ene 1 effect , and with a colouring which is at onoe bright and truthful tot fj reader judge by this extract from a poem about Mr . Capern himself ™ lif ? <* The Kural Postman : " -- . e " ' called O , the postman ' s is as happy a life " How goes the war ? " quota he
QUESTIONING PARADISE . "With all our straying on the charm , As we in mortallife despise—Our sloth , and shrinking in t i e strife , A dull flat swamp of dead repose , Tbeie is a glory in this life Conquest exchaug'd for lack of foes ? Brighter than shine * beyond the arch N h e for all ^ theQ be won -Through whaeb some gravely tell us hes No lov P e ' ^ 1 will then be fair , The Garden of Gods Paradise . - And me ' rcy will have none to 8 pare , This puny , creeping , dirt-clogged ant , And zeal find nothing to be done—Striving to climb a stone in vain , Making our heav ' n by stripping « arth . Falling , but striving yet again , Of all its glory and its worth . - And winning on from want to want , Shall it be thus ? Oh , blasphemy !—Is nobler th ^ « ie moth some pa . nt , f Yet how it shall be otherwise And say , " Such glory hath the Sauit ! " i see not ; but not only eyes Oh , shall we race for such a prize ? Will lead us o ' er the trackless sea ; Or hope to quit our noble pain , 'Tis lack of sight makes wealthof trust—Earth's honour'd hardships , for such gain " Our God hath promia'd—He is just . ' ¦ ¦ . ¦ ¦ ' " . FUB 3 HER . : ' . ¦ ¦ . ¦ ' ' ' . ¦ . Oh , for a daeper insight into heaven , Is an eternity of antheming : More knowledge of the glory and the joy Or this prais'd rest—are we to sit for ever That there abide to crown the souls for- Without more strife or subject of eadeagiven , Your , Their intercourse , their worsMp , their em- No toil , no action , no advance or growth , — ploy ; Inglorious ease and unimproviug sloth ? For it is past belief that Christ hath died Alas , too oft with thoughts of earth ox Only that we unending psalms may sing ; hell That all the gain death ' s awful curtains We make our Leaven less conceivable .
lude Mr . Leigh is always intellectual and refined ; and the poem called " The Legend of . Mount ^ Pilate" contains a gloomy intensity of horror , -which , though perhaps a little oyerpiled , is very impressive . Of a similarly meditative and religious character is a volume entitled The Lamp ^ of Life ( Simpkin , Marshall , and Co . ); but there is not so much of positive poetry , and the writer has too great a tendency to indulge in a kind of sermonizing , which makes his pages somewhat wearisome . Yet he has tenderness and grace , and seems to speak out of his own veritable strugglings fox what he conceives to be genuine holiness . Great joy and satisfaction does he find in the late war , as it appears to present him with some special type of active piety for -which he has long been yearning ; but he is not fully happy till he loses his child , when he discovers " the ever-blessed Trinity" in Love , Action , and Sorrow . Such is the scheme of the volume ; the execution we have just indicated .
Lonely Hours .- Poems . B y ; Caroline Giffard Phillipson . ( John Moxon . )—The object of these verses is to show that Mrs . Phillipson ( we believe we are right in giving her the married title ) has a weary heart ; that Mrs . Phillipson is tired of this world ; that Mrs . Phillipson ( for the volume is very autobiographical ) has lost a great many friends , and finds life , upon the whole , a sad imposition , and is mightily inclined to agree with Solomon that " all is -vanity arid vexation of spirit / ' and is in a great hurry to get hence and seek a new settlement in a brighter and better sphere . All -which fragments of personal history , Mrs . Pliillipson conveys to us in the form of some appallingly sentimental verses , extending over 393 pages ( foolscap octavo , long primer ); wherein she discourses incidentally of sundry matters common to the poetical mind . Now , it is out of no cross-grained pleasure in telling an unpleasant fact to a lady that we speak of this volume as we do ( for we cliiim to be gallant above all things , except truth ) ; but we find ourselves comp elled to state that these outpourings of Mrs . Phillipson ' s " Lonely Hours" are miracles
of common-place . We are oppressed by the weight of vapid melancholy ¦ whi ch is piled on us . If these wailings refer to any real and abiding sorrows ¦ which the authoress has endured , we bow to them in respectful sympathy ; hut they have all the appearance of being merely the offspring of that morbid affectation of poetical sadness which some persons seem to consider necessary to the poetical character . For why , if the fair authoress be really so contemptuous of this world , should she present us ( by way of frontispiece ) with a portrait of herself in fashionable evening costume , and with a general " Book of Beauty" appearance ? But Mrs . Phillipson is once or twice jocose ; and that is even worse than her dejection . Her merriment is more forlorn than the ghost of a bad pun which died of inanition ; and we are driven to take refuge even in her sorrows . But , after reading a few dozen pages , a deadly languor comes over us ; and we call faintly for roast-beef and bottled stout .
We link together two books of verses by working men—one an Englishman , the other a Scotchman . There is something touehingly beautiful in the sight of any rough toiler for daily bread solacing bis life-long labourperhaps taking much of the sting out of want itself , and lulling into temporary sleep many of the sordid cares of poverty—by the practice of versewriting , and the habit , or the instinct , of poetical observation . For let it bo noted tha . t these liumble lyrists , in by far the greater number of cases , < lo not abandon one of the prosaic duties of existence ; do not yield to any Bentimental folly that work ia beneath them ; but , after grappling with the Btern andiron , facts of life-, the brawny giants with wliioh the po ^ r man is * ncessantly wrestling , and by whom too oaen he is thrown—charm their scanty lewuro , or maybe glorify their toil itself while they are yet about it , TwlfnrK i ° ° 1 ^ T ? of tUeir tendencies towards Id e al beauty . ™ r t *§« Kl Y ^ i ^ tere 3 t and P leasure the two volumes now on ? BoaUS " afdTjF ?^ ard C , »« nd Postman of Bideford , Devon Wo ?! \ t ? £ fi t i Naiit 1 ' * Fire : a OoVeetio » of Poems and £ o » ffs , by Mr Panfn ' IS ^^ S "* ^ ( Q 1 ^^ : DavidJack ) . And fi ? st it ¥ " 9 ? , ^ . _ F L 103 > 6 d . a eok ( until the nublicaticm of then * rwma
into SantTim his reason R \ T , "* ° & * ^ lury by half-a-crown , and s ^ isSaSSS S' ^^ r ^ ways and by-way * the woody lanes and grecf dcklT , So £ & £££ S
As any one ' s , I trow ; ' And he stayeth his scythe in the earn or Wand ring away where dragon-flies play , grass , And brooks s i ng soft and slow ; To learn -what the news may be . And watching the lark as he soars on high , He lionoure the good , both . rich , and Boor To carol in yoader cloud , And jokes with each rosy-faced maid"He sings in his labour , andiyhy not I ? " He nods at the aged dame at the door ' The postman sings aloud . And patteth each urchin ' s head ' And many a brace of humble ihymes And little he thinks as he whistling goea His pleasant soul hath made , To the march of some popular tune ' Of birds , and flowers , and happy times , That beauty grows pah at the tramp of his In sunshine and in shade . shoes ,
The harvester , smiling , sees him pass : And sometimes as rosy as June . There is real lyrical instinct here - Ho \ v vital and true , also , is that hnao-fs of the harvester ! how impressive those lines about the tramp of the shoes * ! This passage , too , from a poem about the Redan , is very original an < j solemn : — ° Like the crash of ships majestic , when they strike upon tlie seas Is the coaflict of the combatants , and clamour on the breeze ; Like the lull of murmuring waters , when , the wreck has settled down , - ¦ .. Is the qfter-baitle stillness on the ramparts of the town . All Mr . Capern ' s verses are not of equal value with these ; but we could quote many more things worth knowing , if we had the space .
Mr . Little is also fall of admiration of all natural and beautiful things , ig a thinker of generous thoughts , and an exponent of strong national feefings , which , however , do not imply any disparagement of other nations . He has tenderness and energy ; is full of passionate love for Scotland ' s hills and dales and flowers , her strong-armed , courageous men and handsome girls ; and , like Mr . Capern , can stir the blood with some warlike notes about the Crimean struggle ; as in these lines from a poem called " Inkerman : "Brother of the harden'd hand , Serpent-like the foe came stealing , Toiler in this sea-girt land , Misty clouds his march concealing , Lift your head in manly pride , And his feet with silence shod , And cast your abject looks aside . Up the slopes he slowly trod : — Who stood foremost in the fight , The brow is reach'd , O God of Battles ! Where conquer'd was the Muscovite ? Now the opening volley rattles ; Who fought ever in the van ?— Y " et ne'er a cheek with fear grew wan Your Soldier Friends at Inkerman . Among our host at Inkerman .
With these poets of the working class we may associate Mr . William Dale ,, a young writer who , " amid the bustle of business , " Las produced a little volume of verse called Wild Flowers and Fruits ( Ilcylvn ) . Mr . Dale ' s conceptions are rather vague and diffuse , and he has evidently Avrittcn with too great a view to a provincial audience 5 but he is a lover of Nature , and wishes well for humanity . If he can learn to concentrate , to refine by frequent labour , and to bring every expression to the trial of a rigid and exacting judgment , he may produce a more clear and determinate eiFect oa the reader's mind in a subsequent volume .
" An India . 11 Officer , " who roars forth some Miscellaneous Poems ( Saundcrs and Otley ) , is a very dull fellow , unless when he resorts to certain modes of expression suggestive of the mess-room , by which he produces an effect that is certainty odd , if not poetical . Indeed , he is an original in many ways . He has some notions of versification which we confess our inability to understand ; he has peculiar views on the subject of abbreviations ; he calls the first Emperor Napoleon , at the time of the Battle of Waterloo , " General Buonaparte ; " and ho writes a ballad about the Balakhiva struggle in a style which is a singular cross between a commander-in-chief ' s despatch and a jocose after-dinner narrative . Two stanzas arc so remarkable as to merit preservation here : — The Turks were taken by surprise , And soon bolted from , the Outpost , To tlie tune well knotyii in Eastern parts , Of " The devil take the hindmost . "
• • • • • This hammering of cold iron , sir-, Soon made the seedy Russians fret ; For egad ! they thought the JDe'il himself , Was just tinkering for a bet ! If the reader wants more of the same kind , he will find it in the " Inuiaa Officer ' s" pages . Winter Studies in the Country ( Philadelphia : Tarry and McMillan ) idtlio title of a little poem in octosyllabic measure which reaches us from America , and reminds uo of the poems of description , and of quiet , indolent , happy contemplation , grave with a kind of pleasant moralising , which wore common in England in tho " Dpdsley ' s Miscellany" days . The poetry is small ; but it is ohoerful , open , sunshiny , and observant of common things with a cultivated eye . It is singular to see ao complete a reproduction ol" a stjLc that has passed . Wo cou-cludc ( though perhaps -with some violence to our headmgi
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_ S 06 T H E £ ¦ E A D EL , _^_[^ ° - 366 ^ Satubday
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Leader (1850-1860), March 28, 1857, page 306, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2186/page/18/
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