" He takes
leave of his people with bitter words, and goes out
"To the cool regions of the groves he loved........
Here came the king holding high feast at morn,
Rose-crowned; and ever, when the sun went down,
A hundred lamps beamed in the tranquil gloom,
From tree to tree, all thro' the twinkling grove,
Revealing all the tumult of the feast,
Flushed guests, and golden goblets foamed with wine;
While the deep-burnished foliage overhead
Splintered the silver arrows of the moon."--p. 7.
(a daring image, verging towards a conceit, though not absolutely
such, and the only one of that character that has struck us in the
volume.)
"So six long years he revelled, night and day:
And, when the mirth waxed loudest, with dull sound
Sometimes from the grove's centre echoes came,
To tell his wondering people of their king;
In the still night, across the steaming flats,
Mixed with the murmur of the moving Nile."--pp. 8, 9.
Here a Tennysonian influence is very perceptible, more especially in
the last quotation; and traces of the same will be found in "The
Forsaken Merman."
In this poem the story is conveyed by allusions and reminiscences
whilst the Merman makes his children call after her who had returned
to her own earth, hearing the Easter bells over the bay, and who is
not yet come back for all the voices calling "Margaret! Margaret!"
The piece is scarcely long enough or sufficiently distinct otherwise
than as a whole to allow of extract; but we cannot but express regret
that a poem far from common-place either in ubject or treatment
should conclude with such sing-song as
------"There dwells a loved one,
But cruel is she;
She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea.
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