Appreciations, with an Essay on Style.  By Walter Pater, Fellow of Brasenose College. (Macmillan and Co.)

PRIMAVERA

(Pall Mall Gazette, May 24, 1890.)

In the summer term Oxford teaches the exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any University can teach, and possibly as the first-fruits of the dreaming in grey cloister and silent garden, which either makes or mars a man, there has just appeared in that lovely city a dainty and delightful volume of poems by four friends.  These new young singers are Mr. Laurence Binyon, who has just gained the Newdigate; Mr. Manmohan Ghose, a young Indian of brilliant scholarship and high literary attainments who gives some culture to Christ Church; Mr. Stephen Phillips, whose recent performance of the Ghost in Hamlet at the Globe Theatre was so admirable in its dignity and elocution; and Mr. Arthur Cripps, of Trinity.  Particular interest attaches naturally to Mr. Ghose’s work.  Born in India, of purely Indian parentage, he has been brought up entirely in England, and was educated at St. Paul’s School, and his verses show us how quick and subtle are the intellectual sympathies of the Oriental mind, and suggest how close is the bond of union that may some day bind India to us by other methods than those of commerce and military strength.

There is something charming in finding a young Indian using our language with such care for music and words as Mr. Ghose does.  Here is one of his songs: 

   Over thy head, in joyful wanderings
      Through heaven’s wide spaces, free,
   Birds fly with music in their wings;
      And from the blue, rough sea
      The fishes flash and leap;
   There is a life of loveliest things
      O’er thee, so fast asleep.

   In the deep West the heavens grow heavenlier,
      Eve after eve; and still
   The glorious stars remember to appear;
      The roses on the hill
      Are fragrant as before: 
   Only thy face, of all that’s dear,
      I shall see nevermore!

It has its faults.  It has a great many faults.  But the lines we have set in italics are lovely.  The temper of Keats, the moods of Matthew Arnold, have influenced Mr. Ghose, and what better influence could a beginner have?  Here are some stanzas from another of Mr. Ghose’s poems: 

   Deep-shaded will I lie, and deeper yet
      In night, where not a leaf its neighbour knows;
   Forget the shining of the stars, forget
      The vernal visitation of the rose;
   And, far from all delights, prepare my heart’s repose.

   ’O crave not silence thou! too soon, too sure,
      Shall Autumn come, and through these branches weep: 
   Some birds shall cease, and flowers no more endure;
      And thou beneath the mould unwilling creep,
   And silent soon shalt be in that eternal sleep.