The weet saut wind is blawing
Upon the misty shore: 
As, like a stormy snawing,
The deid go streaming o’er:—­
The wan drown’d deid sail wildly
Frae out each drumly wave: 
It’s O and O for the weary sea,
And O for a quiet grave.

This is simply a very clever pastiche, nothing more, and our language is not likely to be permanently enriched by such words as ‘weet,’ ‘saut,’ ‘blawing,’ and ‘snawing.’  Even ‘drumly,’ an adjective of which Mr. Sharp is so fond that he uses it both in prose and verse, seems to me to be hardly an adequate basis for a new romantic movement.

However, Mr. Sharp does not always write in dialect.  The Son of Allan can be read without any difficulty, and Phantasy can be read with pleasure.  They are both very charming poems in their way, and none the less charming because the cadences of the one recall Sister Helen, and the motive of the other reminds us of La Belle Dame sans Merci.  But those who wish thoroughly to enjoy Mr. Sharp’s poems should not read his preface; just as those who approve of the preface should avoid reading the poems.  I cannot help saying that I think the preface a great mistake.  The work that follows it is quite inadequate, and there seems little use in heralding a dawn that rose long ago, and proclaiming a Renaissance whose first-fruits, if we are to judge them by any high standard of perfection, are of so ordinary a character.

* * * * *

Miss Mary Robinson has also written a preface to her little volume, Poems, Ballads, and a Garden Play, but the preface is not very serious, and does not propose any drastic change or any immediate revolution in English literature.  Miss Robinson’s poems have always the charm of delicate music and graceful expression; but they are, perhaps, weakest where they try to be strong, and certainly least satisfying where they seek to satisfy.  Her fanciful flower-crowned Muse, with her tripping steps and pretty, wilful ways, should not write Antiphons to the Unknowable, or try to grapple with abstract intellectual problems.  Hers is not the hand to unveil mysteries, nor hers the strength for the solving of secrets.  She should never leave her garden, and as for her wandering out into the desert to ask the Sphinx questions, that should be sternly forbidden to her.  Durer’s Melancolia, that serves as the frontispiece to this dainty book, looks sadly out of place.  Her seat is with the sibyls, not with the nymphs.  What has she to do with shepherdesses piping about Darwinism and ‘The Eternal Mind’?

However, if the Songs of the Inner Life are not very successful, the Spring Songs are delightful.  They follow each other like wind-blown petals, and make one feel how much more charming flower is than fruit, apple-blossom than apple.  There are some artistic temperaments that should never come to maturity, that should always remain in the region of promise and should dread autumn with its harvesting more than winter with its frosts.  Such seems to me the temperament that this volume reveals.  The first poem of the second series, La Belle au Bois Dormant, is worth all the more serious and thoughtful work, and has far more chance of being remembered.  It is not always to high aim and lofty ambition that the prize is given.  If Daphne had gone to meet Apollo, she would never have known what laurels are.