Nay, if by chance you hear of any such, no, not to your best friend, What was my Lord of Devon telling you? I follow your good counsel, gracious uncle. Quiet as a dead body. I do not care to know; but this I charge you, That you shall marry him, make him King belike. You should be plain and open with me, niece. You should not play upon me. Eliz. No, good uncle. [GARDINER now enters and summons ELIZABETH to the QUEEN'S presence.] Howard. See This comes of parleying with my Lord of Devon. Your time will come. Uncle, Half fright me. He can not touch you save that you turn traitor ; You are one They'd smile you into treason, some of them. [I] To sleep, to die — I shall die of it, cousin. I still will do mine utmost with the Pope. Pole. Pole. Ah, cousin, I remember How I would dandle you upon my knee Labor-in-vain. Peace, cousin, peace ! I am sad at heart myself. Dug from the grave that yawns for us beyond ; And there is one Death stands behind the Bride Strewn in your palace. Look you here, the Pope This last I dare not read it her. [Aside. Why do you bring me these? Do you mean to drive me mad ? How these poor libels trouble you. Your pardon, Why, who said that? I know not- true enough! And heard these two, there might be sport for him. [Aside. There lurks a silent dagger, listening [Sir Nicholas HEATH enters and announces the loss of Calais.] Mary. I hoped I had served God with all my might; I am a by-word: Heretic and rebel Philip gone! [She picks up a paper and reads] My people hate me and desire my death. Mary. My husband hates me and desires my death. Mary. I hate myself and I desire my death. One of her pleasant songs? Alice, my child, Was lightened by young David's harp. And never knew a Philip. Give me the lute. [She sings.] Low, lute, low ! Low, dear lute, low! Take it away! not low enough for me ! Even for that he hates me. A low voice [Sits on the ground.] There, am I low enough now ? The question which presents itself to the thoughtful reader, is, since Mr. Tennyson saw fit, not to write a tragedy, but to dramatise a period of English history, why did he choose this period when others, so much better adapted to dramatic purposes, lay within his reach ? The reason for this preference, if we can find it, will give us the true motive, the dominant idea, of the work. The impression left upon the reader's mind, as the final result of the work, is that he has had placed before him, very vividly, a time when cruelty, misery, and humiliation spread like a heavy pall over all England, all in consequence of the fact that Mary was a bigoted Catholic and looked to the interests of Rome rather than those of her own people. And we are forced to the conclusion that the Poet Laureate has produced this work as his contribution to the antiCatholic movement of the day. With this movement in its political and religious aspects, the literary critic has nothing to do ; but from the stand-point of literary criticism, we protest against the subordination of art to such a motive. Art may rightfully be called in as an ally to religion or patriotism, but she may not be made a drudge and souffre-douleur to polemics and politics. Mr. Tennyson is a great poet, and we would never speak of him but with respect; but we can not avoid the conclusion that in this drama he has not been wholly loyal to his art; and if so, his punishment will be the final verdict that as a whole, Queen Mary is a great poet's great mistake. W. H. B. The Mountain of the Lovers, with other Poems of Nature and Tradi tion. By Paul H. Hayne. New York : E. J. Hale & Son. One of the sweetest of our Southern poets has enriched us with a volume of poems again. It is a voice from the South, delicately suggestive of its blooming savannabs, the witchery of its pines and the charm of its landscape. To say that Mr. Hayne has a subtle sense of natural beauty would be to express the truth in halves. His whole nature seems steeped in a rich sensibility to outer phases of landscape. This volume abounds in observation ; and though it does not exhibit striking originality, extreme novelty of theme, or great variety of treatment, it is still redolent of an airy grace and tenderness which are none the less pleasing because they seem to be getting more and more rare. For our part we prefer those short suggestive little poems in this volume into which Mr. Hayne has breathed the whole soul of the moment, to the two longer ones with which it opens. There is a charm in some of these tiny Bohemians which it is difficult to analyse ; while the longer narrative poems, though daintily and poetically treated, lack the grace and warmth of the landscape bits, the sonnets, or the fine odes to Henry Timrod and Canon Kingsley. The sonnets are particularly noteworthy. Mr. Hayne succeeds in throwing into this difficult form poetry and feeling enough to make it live and glow. He is especially fond of noticing peculiarities of nature - the storm, the star, the setting sun - and framing them like delicate etchings in the ivory frame-work of a sonnet. His sonnets are poetic miniatures from which peep faces, experiences, scenery, remembrances; and these faces, experiences and remembrances are dipped and idealised in a light peculiar to Mr. Hayne's genius. There is a fervor in his utterance which is altogether Southern. It is the scenery of the South that he celebrates: his skies have a Georgian richness ; his beloved pines echo the music and mystery of tropic latitudes; his imagery is dyed in the warm hues of a land of perpetual midsummer. There are many felicities of language which both ring in the ears and reproduce before the eye. There are favorite words that recur continually, and display not so much a poverty of diction as a peculiar fascination in them for the poet. It is easy to see that Mr. Hayne is a dreamer, a liver apart from the garish world, a dweller in the purple Debateable Lands, a worshipper of mystical and ideal worlds, a lotos-eater is not a lover of the poetry of the afternoon. He loves music hidden away among the trees mountains capped in clouds sunshine muffled in mist — mist that is a golden haze wherein all this swims in dim and indistinguishable gold. On the first page is a dedication to the most gifted of Southern poets — Mrs. Margaret J. Preston. What he says of the day on which the poem was written may be applied to the poem itself — Flushed like a Dryad's tender face With early spring-time's happiest grace. Mr. Hayne excels in dedicatory poems, as witness this and the poem to his wife preceding The Wife of Brittany. The Mountain of the Lovers, while not so attractive to us as the rich tropical coloring of The Vengeance of the Goddess Diana - a subject which Morris, under the title The Lady of the Land, has also treated, but later than Hayne — nevertheless contains many fine lines. Mr. Hayne loves these antique legends, about which he may twine garlands and shake incense and breathe sweetness. It is evident that he prefers skeletonlegends already existing in ancient chronicles, which he may luxuriantly clothe with the wealth of his own fancy, to new ones of his own invention. He follows the retrospective tendency of his age, and with Tennyson, Browning, and Morris, works up the faded canvasses of the past into fresh and beaming realities. Our stiff language, in his hands, acquires a flexibility and melody that disclose a most musical ear as well as long and earnest study. It is not every year that Mr. Hayne gives us a volume of poems, and hence he can afford to put the utmost possible polish on those which, at rare intervals, he is kind enough to publish. In our restricted limits it is difficult to give the reader a just notion of the contents of the book. The Vengeance of the Goddess Diana, the author tells us, was published sixteen years ago in a volume of comparatively youthful poems, but reappears now increased by many lines. Its subject is just the opposite of Keats's Lamia. Such pictorial passages as Thro’ breezy paths and beds of blossoming thyme Played like an airy peal of elfin bells – and a broad stretch of lawns And wavering on the dead-still atmosphere – Of spiritual life its mournful minor flows, Yet locked for aye from sleep's divine repose. A something strange and rare occur. |
