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041 - The Poets' Corner--II · Reviews

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  Speaker 1: Section forty of reviews by Oscar Wilde. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: This reading by Carl Manchester, two thousand and seven, reviews
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  Speaker 1: by Oscar Wilde, edited by Robert Ross forty. The Poet's
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  Speaker 1: Corner Too, pall Mar Gazette, March eighth, eighteen thirty seven.
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  Speaker 1: A little schoolboy was once asked to explain the difference
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  Speaker 1: between prose and poetry. After some consideration, he replied, Blue
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  Speaker 1: Violets is prose and violet's blue is poetry. The distinction,
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  Speaker 1: we admit is not exhaustive, but it seems to be
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  Speaker 1: the one that is extremely popular with our minor poets.
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  Speaker 1: Opening at random the Queen's Innocent, we come across passages
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  Speaker 1: like this full gladly I would sit of such a
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  Speaker 1: potent majus at the feat and this the third. While
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  Speaker 1: yet a youth espoused a lady noble but not royal,
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  Speaker 1: one only son who gave him Faramond lines that apparently
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  Speaker 1: rest their claim to be regarded as poetry on their
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  Speaker 1: unnecessary and awkward inversions. Yet this poem is not without beauty,
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  Speaker 1: and the character of Nardi, the little Prince, who is
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  Speaker 1: treated as the court fool, shows a delicate grace of fancy,
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  Speaker 1: and is both tender and true. The most delightful thing
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  Speaker 1: in the whole volume is a little lyric called April,
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  Speaker 1: which is like a picture set to music. The Chimney
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  Speaker 1: Piece of Bruges is a narrative poem in blank verse,
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  Speaker 1: and tells us of a young artist who, having been
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  Speaker 1: unjustly convicted of his wife's murder, spends his life in
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  Speaker 1: carving on the great chimney piece of the prison, the
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  Speaker 1: whole story of his love and suffering. The poem is
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  Speaker 1: full of color, but the blank verse is somewhat heavy
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  Speaker 1: in movement. There are some pretty things in the book,
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  Speaker 1: and a poet without hysterics is rare. Dr Dawson Burns
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  Speaker 1: Oliver Cromwell is a pleasant panegyric on the Protector and
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  Speaker 1: reads like a prize poem by a nice sixth form boy.
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  Speaker 1: The verse on the good old Times should be sent
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  Speaker 1: as a leaflet to all tories of mister Chaplin's school.
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  Speaker 1: And the lines on Bunker's Hill beginning I stand on
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  Speaker 1: Bunker's towering pile are sure to be popular in America. K. E.
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  Speaker 1: V's Little Volume is a series of poems on the Saints.
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  Speaker 1: Each poem is preceded by a brief biography of the
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  Speaker 1: saint it celebrates, which is a very necessary precaution, as
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  Speaker 1: few of them ever existed. It does not display much
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  Speaker 1: poetic power, and such lines as these on Saint Stephen
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  Speaker 1: did ever man before so fall asleep a cruel shower
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  Speaker 1: of stones, his only bed for lullaby, The curses loud
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  Speaker 1: and deep. His covering with blood red may be said
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  Speaker 1: to add another horror to martyrdom. Still, it is a
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  Speaker 1: thoroughly well intentioned book and eminently suitable for invalids. Mister
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  Speaker 1: Foskett's poems are very serious and deliberate. One of the
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  Speaker 1: best of them, Harold Glynd, is a cantata for total abstainers,
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  Speaker 1: and has already been set to music. A Hindu Tragedy
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  Speaker 1: is the story of an enthusiastic Brahmin reformer who tries
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  Speaker 1: to break down the prohibition against widow's marrying, and there
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  Speaker 1: are other interesting tales. Mister Foscott has apparently forgotten to
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  Speaker 1: insert the rhymes in his sonnet to Wordsworth but as
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  Speaker 1: he tells us elsewhere that Poesy is uninspired by art,
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  Speaker 1: perhaps he is only heralding a new and formless form.
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  Speaker 1: He is always sincere in his feelings, and his apostrophe
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  Speaker 1: to canon Farah is equalled only by his apostrophe to Shakespeare.
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  Speaker 1: The Pilgrimage of Memory suffers a good deal by being
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  Speaker 1: printed as poetry, and mister Barker should republish it at
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  Speaker 1: once as a prose work. Take, for instance, this description
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  Speaker 1: of a lady on a runaway horse. Her screams alarmed
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  Speaker 1: the square, who, seeing the peril of his daughter, rode
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  Speaker 1: frantic after her. I saw at once the danger, and,
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  Speaker 1: stepping from the footpath, showed myself before the startled animal,
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  Speaker 1: which forwith slackened pace and darting up adroitly, I seized
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  Speaker 1: the rain, and in another moment had released the maiden's
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  Speaker 1: foot and held her all insensible within my arms. Poor girl,
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  Speaker 1: her head and face were sorely bruised, and I tried
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  Speaker 1: hard to staunch the blood which flowed from many a
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  Speaker 1: scalp wound, and wipe away the dust that disfigured her
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  Speaker 1: lovely features. In another moment, the squire was by my side,
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  Speaker 1: poor child, He cried alarmed. Is she dead? No, sir,
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  Speaker 1: not dead, I think, said I, but sorely bruised and injured.
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  Speaker 1: There is clearly nothing to be gained by dividing the
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  Speaker 1: sentences of this simple and straightforward narrative into lines of
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  Speaker 1: unequal length and mister Barker's own arrangement of the meter.
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  Speaker 1: In another moment, the squire was by my side, poor child,
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  Speaker 1: he cried alarmed. Is she dead? No, sir, not dead,
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  Speaker 1: I think, said I, but sorely bruised and injured. Seems
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  Speaker 1: to us to be quite inferior to ours. We beg
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  Speaker 1: that the second edition of The Pilgrimage of Memory may
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  Speaker 1: be issued as a novel. In prose, Mister Gladstone Turner
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  Speaker 1: believes that we are on the verge of a great
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  Speaker 1: social cataclysm, and warns us that our cradles are even
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  Speaker 1: now being rocked by slumbering volcanoes. We hope that there
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  Speaker 1: is no truth in this statement, and that it is
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  Speaker 1: merely a startling metaphor introduced for the sake of effect.
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  Speaker 1: For elsewhere in the volume there is a great deal
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  Speaker 1: of beauty, which we should be sorry to think was
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  Speaker 1: doomed to immediate extinction. The choice, for instance, is a
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  Speaker 1: charming poem, and the sonnet on Evening would be almost
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  Speaker 1: perfect if it were not for an unpleasant assonance in
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  Speaker 1: the fifth line. Indeed, so good is much of mister
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  Speaker 1: Gladstone Turner's work that we trust he will give up
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  Speaker 1: rhyming real to steal and feel. As such, bad habits
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  Speaker 1: are apt to grow on careless poets and to blunt
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  Speaker 1: their ear for music. Novalis is a fivac tragedy in
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  Speaker 1: blank verse. Most plays that are written to be read,
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  Speaker 1: not to be acted, miss that condensation and directness of expression,
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  Speaker 1: which is one of the secrets of true dramatic diction,
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  Speaker 1: and mister Swartz's tragedy is consequently somewhat verbose. Still, it
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  Speaker 1: is full of fine lines and noble scenes. It is
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  Speaker 1: essentially a work of art, And though as far as
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  Speaker 1: language is concerned, the personages all speak through the lips
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  Speaker 1: of the poet, yet in passion and purpose their characters
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  Speaker 1: are clearly differentiated, and the Queen Novalis and her lover
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  Speaker 1: Julio are drawn with real psychological power. We hope that
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  Speaker 1: someday mister Swartz will write a play for the stage
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  Speaker 1: as he has the dramatic instinct and the dramatic imagination,
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  Speaker 1: and can make life pass into literature without robbing it
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  Speaker 1: of its reality. One The Queen's Innocent with other poems
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  Speaker 1: by Elise Cooper David Start. Two The Chimney Piece of
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  Speaker 1: Bruges and other poems by Constancy Dixon, Elliot Stock. Three
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  Speaker 1: Oliver Cromwell and other poems by Dawson Burns, D. D.
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  Speaker 1: Partridge and Co. Four The Circle of Saints by K. E. V.
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  Speaker 1: Swan Sonnenshein and Co. Five Poems by Edward Foscott Keegan Paul. Six,
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  Speaker 1: The Pilgrimage of Memory by John Thomas Barker, Simpkin, Marshall
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  Speaker 1: and Co. Seven Irata by G. Gladstone Turner, Longman's Green
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  Speaker 1: and Co. Eight Nivalis by J. M. W. Swartz, Keegan Paul.
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  Speaker 1: End of Section forty