BOOK REVIEWS - POETRY

3. London Poems (1866) to The Book of Orm (1871)

London Poems (1866)

Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper (26 August, 1866 - Issue 1240)

LITERATURE.
_____

LONDON POEMS.*

     In these “London Poems,” Mr. Robert Buchanan more than redeems the promise of his earlier appearances before the public. There is the stamp of real genius broadly and deeply pressed upon them. They are poems of humble life. The beauty is extracted from the least promising materials. The flowers of poesy are culled in the by-ways. There is deep heart-stirring romance to every imaginative mind, in the toil and moil, the garret tragedies, the thousand quaint forms of life, and thought, and feeling; in the trouble, the haste, the struggle, the splendour, and the rags of the Great City! Mr. Buchanan leans not to the bright and dazzling side, not to the Lady Vere de Veres; but rather goes arm-in-arm with kindly Tom Hood, when he sang of Peggy who hated the scent of her roses. The poet takes the by-way, the slum-life of London, as he finds it, and extracts what is good and beautiful out of lives that are the saddest imaginable. He has the courage of true genius.
     It has been objected to these “London Poems” that the stories or subjects of them belong as much to the first country or foreign town one could mention as to London. Were this absolutely so, the poet would be still praiseworthy for having shown a hard and unsympathetic world that there may be heroism slipshod by a coster’s barrow; and that verily “love is of the valley.” But it is unquestionably not true of all these poems that they are accidentally set in London.
     “Liz” is a Londoner, and could be of no other place. Her simple story of evil life wrought out through ignorance and poverty, and wrought out and redeemed by the underlying beauty of the woman’s nature, is an exquisite painting of London life and London habits among the poor. Joe has beaten her and neglected her, and she is dying, leaving a baby to his care. The close is painfully pathetic:—

There’s Joe! I hear his foot upon the stairs!—
He must be wet, poor lad!
He will be angry, like enough, to find
Another little life to clothe and keep.
But show him baby, Parson—speak him kind—
And tell him Doctor thinks I’m going to sleep.
A hard, hard life is his! He need be strong
And rough, to earn his bread and get along.
I think he will be sorry when I go,
And leave the little one and him behind.
I hope he’ll see another to his mind,
To keep him straight and tidy. Poor old Joe!

     The poet does noble work in the cause of suffering humanity, when out of all that is on the surface repulsive in poverty, and base and brutal in ignorance, he extracts the redeeming goodnesses; and shows the great human heart still at work, where to the sight of the dull surface spectator there is savagery, and squalor, and moral death. There is no danger in such teachings as are conveyed to the world in the utterances of a true genius and a Christian soul, let them be of the basest, the lowest of God’s creatures that ever breathed.
     Robert Buchanan wanders among the poverty-stricken and the sinful, whose sins, to the sight of respectability, are repulsive, more from their coarseness than from their unholiness. He shows a poor woman mated, but not wedded, to a wretched dwarf, who is a sorry fellow in all ways. We have the bare, bad facts, and to the ordinary eye they are of unpromising material enough whereon to base poetic utterance. Yet beauty is to be got out of them: beauty that shall melt the harsh judgments of the world, and tend to teach the uncharitable never to judge without reserve of any human life or act. “Barbara Gray,” in the sight of Mrs. Grundy, is a person not to be talked of, under any circumstances, in polite society. And society listens all too willingly to prim madam. Now, what says the poet?—

“Barbara Gray!
Pause, and remember what the world will say,”
I cried, and turning on the threshold fled,
When he was breathing on his dying bed;
     But when, with heart grown bold,
     I cross’d the threshold cold,
Here lay John Hamerton, and he was dead.

And all the house of death was chill and dim,
The dull old housekeeper was looking grim,
The hall-clock ticking slow, the dismal rain
Splashing by fits against the window-pane,
The garden shivering in the twilight dark,
Beyond, the bare trees of the empty park,
And faint gray light upon the great cold bed,
And I alone; and he I turn’d from,—dead.

Ay, “dwarf” they called this man who sleeping lies;
No lady shone upon him with her eyes,
No tender maiden heard his true-love vow,
And pressed her kisses on the great bold brow.
What cared John Hamerton? With light, light laugh,
He halted through the streets upon his staff;
Halt, lame, not beauteous, yet with winning grace
And sweetness in his pale and quiet face;
Fire, hell’s or heaven’s, in his eyes of blue;
Warm words of love upon his tongue thereto;
Could win a woman’s soul with what he said,
And I am here; and here he lieth dead.

I would not blush if the bad world saw now
How by his bed I stoop and kiss his brow!
Ay, kiss it, kiss it, o’er and o’er again,
With all the love that fills my heart and brain.

For where was man had stoop’d to me before,
Though I was maiden still, and girl no more?
Where was the spirit that had deigned to prize
The poor plain features and the envious eyes?
What lips had whisper’d warmly in mine ears,
When had I known the passion and the tears?
Till he I look on sleeping came unto me,
Found me among the shadows, stoop’d to woo me,
Seized on the heart that flutter’d withering here,
Strung it, and wrung it, with new joy and fear;
Yea, brought the rapturous light, and brought the day,
Waken’d the dead heart, withering away;
Put thorns and roses on the unhonour’d head,
That felt but roses till the roses fled!
Who, who, but he crept unto sunless ground,
Content to prize the faded face he found?
John Hamerton, I pardon all—sleep sound, my love, sleep sound!

What fool that crawls shall prate of shame and sin?
Did he not think me fair enough to win?
Yea, stoop and smile upon my face as none,
Living or dead, save he alone, had done?
Bring the bright blush unto my cheek, when ne’er
The full of life and love had mantled there?
And I am all alone; and here lies he,—
The only man that ever smiled on me.

Here, in his lonely dwelling-house he lies,
The light all faded from his winsome eyes:
Alone, alone, alone, he slumbers here,
With wife nor little child to shed a tear!
Little, indeed, to him did nature give;
Nor was he good and pure as some that live;
But pinch’d in body, warp’d in limb—
He hated the bad world that loved not him!

Barbara Gray!
Pause, and remember how he turn’d away;
Think of your wrongs, and of your sorrows. Nay!
Woman, think rather of the shame and wrong
Of pining lonely in the dark so long;
Think of the comfort in the grief he brought,
The revelation in the love he taught.
Then, Barbara Gray!
Blush not, nor heed what the cold world will say;
But kiss him, kiss him, o’er and o’er again,
In passion and in pain,
With all the love that fills your heart and brain!
Yea, kiss him, bless him, pray beside his bed,
For you have lived, and here your love lies dead.

     According to society’s hard reckoning, Barbara Gray is a bad woman. Does the poet perform a holy or an unholy office, when he cries, not all bad, and shows something of the angel travelling with and brightening the path of the harsh world’s outcast? Mr. Buchanan writes in his poetic introduction:—

And if I list to sing of sad things oft,
It is that sad things in this life of breath,
Are truest, sweetest, deepest.

     He will live, we trust, to hear thanks given to him from far and wide; for his stories of London by-ways are sweet, sad sermons (unlike most sermons, formally preached from pulpits), that will touch the hearts of men and women, and call up generous tears, and teach charity of thought, to many who have been wont to pass by lanes and courts with averted face, deeming them only foul abiding-places of unmixed wickedness. A sweeter picture than “the little milliner” does not, within our knowledge, exist. She is a London slave of the needle, yet is as innocent and fresh as Lucy, who “dwelt by the untrodden ways.”

And just because her heart was pure and glad,
She lack’d the pride that finer ladies had:
She had no scorn for those who lived amiss,
The weary women with their painted bliss;
It never struck her little brain, be sure,
She was so very much more fine and pure.

     What says church and chapel-going Clapham to this?
     Of Jane Lewson, the most important, the most artistic, and the most deeply poetic work in Mr. Buchanan’s volume, the poet says:—

                           Coldly she heard
The daily tale of human sin and wrong,
And the small thunders of the Sunday nights
In chapel.

     And her sisters listen, paying according to their well-wrought sum the price of the salvation of their souls. But we beseech the reader to make the acquaintance of Jane Lewson, and Liz, and Barbara Gray, and the rest of the poet’s gallery of humble folk, and learn that Christian charity is a lesson the true poet can teach at least as well as most of the reverend Ebenezers, who “thunder” on Sunday evenings, well-laced each in the “be-mummying wrappers” of his own sect.

     *London Poems. By Robert Buchanan, author of “Undertones.” 5s.—Alexander Strahan.

___

The New York Times (8 November, 1866)

LITERARY INTELLIGENCE,
_____

ROBERT BUCHANAN.
_____

LONDON POEMS. By ROBERT BUCHANAN. London and New-York: ALEXANDER STRAHAN.

     The first thing which strikes us in this book is the publisher’s name identified with “London and New-York.” Such is the present state of our laws relative to the manufacture of books that a London house can compete successfully, in our own market, and find it a lucrative enterprise to maintain branch houses on this side of the Atlantic. We merely note the facts, although they are a fruitful subject for comment, especially in connection with other facts stated by ANTHONY TROLLOPE in his recent paper read before the Social Science Congress at Manchester in regard to an International Copyright Law. All who cherish an intelligent and patriotic interest in the claims and progress of American literature and of popular education, in the broadest sense of the phrase—on this continent—should unite to secure a revision of our laws, taxes and tariffs, so far as literary property and book manufacture in the United States are concerned. Meantime, let us turn to the work before us.
     This is a very neat volume of neat rhymes. Its fair pages, clear type and versified narratives are winsome to the eye. The quotations from Greek, Latin and German indicate culture, and suggest intellectual discipline. The dedication to the accomplished editor of the Athenæum, now on a visit to this country, evinces a manly gratitude for early words of kindly recognition and literary encouragement. The plan and scope of the volume are well fitted to propitiate criticism, inasmuch as they include subjects open to daily observation and near to average sympathies,—subjects such as would naturally attract a young poet dwelling in a large city, and such as sympathetic observation can legitimately develop and illustrate; subjects, in a word, which might easily inspire a fresh and kindly bard; and therefore yielding a favorable contrast to those remote and conventional themes so often chosen by inexperienced but ambitious singers—not from affinity, but audacity. Thus predisposed in the author’s favor by the aspect and aim of the volume before us, we sit down to its perusal in a candid and gracious mood. We find a command of language and rhyme, a fluent, and, on the whole, natural expressiveness and considerable narrative skill; many of the stories are pleasant reading—much of the art displayed is pretty and graceful. There is a series of episodes or incidents, characters and phases of London life—drawn from its toilsome, poor, patient, reckless or ruined classes; and described in the simple language of colloquial heroics, easy ballad-metre or Wordsworthian blank verse. The titles give a not inadequate idea of the kind of local histories and anecdotes thus versified: Such as “The Little Milliner,” “Artist and Model,” “Attorney Sneak,” “Nell,” and “Liz.” Familiar and often literal in style, sometimes quite musical and usually ingenious either in the details or plot, these “London Poems” are quite readable, and we should think would be popular, especially among readers unfamiliar with English poetry—to whom they will have the charm of novelty. But those who have fondly explored and critically studied that rich and rare field of literature, and who vividly remember the salient characters and scenes of modern English fiction—these “London Poems” will prove reminiscent and familiar rather than fresh and impressive. The subjects, the scenes, the characters, the incidents, often the very ideas and expressions, recall DICKENS, CRABBE, HUNT, HOOD, Mrs. BROWNING, and others, who have sought to apply the “sad music of humanity” to the mysterious vicissitudes of humble toil, sin and indigence. “Barbara Gray,” “Nell” and “Liz,”—the “Blind Linnet” of the poor seamstress, the pet starling of the poor tailor, the frugal loves of the “Little Milliner,” and the poor clerk, and of the “Artist and Model”—are conceived in an identical vein, and narrated with more or less imitative skill—as some of CRABBE’S stories, passages of Aurora Leigh and the Princess, or the lyrics of metropolitan misery by HOOD. Despite this family likeness the stories are pleasantly told and prettily versified. The style of versification and narrative tact of the author may be fairly estimated by the following extracts from two of the Poems:

LONDON IN 1864.

Lo! I stand at the gateway of Honor,
     And see the lights flashing within,
And I murmur these songs of the city,
     Its sorrow, its joy, and its sin;
And the sweetness is heavy upon me,
     Though grown of the past and its wrong;
My losses are sure if that sweetness
     Be felt in the soul of the song.
I murmur these songs of the city,
     And cast them as bread on the sea;
And mine eyes are dim with the singing
     That is all in the world to me!

*     *     *     *     *     *

THE LITTLE MILLINER.

*     *     *     *     *     *

     ’Twas when the Spring was coming, when the snow
Had melted, and fresh winds began to blow,
And girls were selling violets in the town,
That suddenly a fever struck me down.
The world was changed, the sense of life was pain’d,
And nothing but a shadow-land remained;
Death came in a dark mist and look’d at me,
I felt his breathing, though I could not see,
But heavily I lay and did not stir,
And had strange images and dreams of her. 
Then came a vacancy: with feeble breath,
I shiver’d under the cold touch of Death,
And swoon’d among strange visions of the dead,
When a voice call’d from Heaven, and he fled;
And suddenly I waken’d, as it seem’d,
From a deep sleep wherein I had not dream’d.

     And it was night, and I could see and hear,
And I was in the room I held so dear,
And unaware, stretch’d out upon my bed,
I hearken’d for a footstep overhead.

     But all was hush’d. I look’d around the room,
And slowly made out shapes amid the gloom.
The wall was redden’d by a rosy light,
A faint fire flicker’d, and I knew ’twas night,
Because below there was a sound of feet
Dying away along the quiet street,—
When, turning my pale face and sighing low,
I saw a vision in the quiet glow:
A little figure, in a cotton gown,
Looking upon the fire and stooping down,
Her side to me, her face illumed, she eyed 
Two chestnuts burning slowly, side by side,—
Her lips apart, her clear eyes strain’d to see,
Her little hands clasp’d tight around her knee,
The firelight gleaming on her golden head,
And tinting her white neck to rosy red,
Her features bright, and beautiful, and pure,
With childish fear and yearning half demure.

     Oh, sweet, sweet dream! I thought, and strain’d mine eyes,
Fearing to break the spell with words and sighs.

     Softly she stoop’d, her dear face sweetly fair,
And sweeter since a light like love was there,
Brightening, watching, more and more elate,
As the nuts glow’d together in the grate,
Crackling with little jets of fiery light,
Till side by side they turn’d to ashes white,—
Then up she leapt, her face cast off its fear
For rapture that itself was radiance clear,
And would have clapp’d her little hands in glee,
But, pausing, bit her lips and peep’d at me,
And met the face that yearn’d on her so whitely,
And gave a cry and trembled, blushing brightly,  
While, raised on elbow, as she turn’d to flee,
“Polly!” I cried,—and grew as red as she!

     It was no dream!—for soon my thoughts were clear,
And she could tell me all, and I could hear:
How in my sickness friendless I had lain,
How the hard people pitied not my pain;
How, in despite of what bad people said,
She left her labours, stopp’d beside my bed,
And nursed me, thinking sadly I would die;
How, in the end, the danger pass’d me by;
How she had sought to steal away before
The sickness pass’d, and I was strong once more.
By fits she told the story in mine ear,
And troubled all the telling with a fear
Lest by my cold man’s heart she should be chid,
Lest I should think her bold in what she did;
But, lying on my bed, I dared to say,
How I had watch’d and loved her many a day,
How dear she was to me, and dearer still
For that strange kindness done while I was ill,
And how I could but think that Heaven above
Had done it all to bind our lives in love.
And Polly cried, turning her face away,   
And seem’d afraid, and answer’d “yea” nor “nay;”
Then stealing close, with little pants and sighs,
Look’d on my pale thin face and earnest eyes,
And seem’d in act to fling her arms about
My neck, then, blushing, paused, in fluttering doubt,
Last, sprang upon my heart, sighing and sobbing,—
That I might feel how gladly hers was throbbing!

     It is not as a creditable caterer to public taste or the rhymed requisites of the day that we challenge ROBERT BUCHANAN’S originality—but as a new aspirant for the Laurel, as a young poet whose promise should be hailed with cordiality but not without discrimination. The miscellaneous poems appended to the “London Poems” are chiefly ballads, which have the old ring of LOCKHART’S, and sometimes remind us of ROBERT BROWNING. In subject and legend, more or less striking, they are often skillfully versified and gracefully turned.
     We have dwelt, in this and previous instances, upon the rifacimento school of modern poets, because we honor the craft and delight in the glory of the Muse—and would fain see her wooed with absolute freshness and freedom and not second-hand, and by virtue of sympathetic and artistic facility, rather than individual emprise and affinity. “These,” says ROBERT BUCHANAN, in his preface, “are the last of my Poems of Probation wherein I have fairly hinted what I am trying to assimilate in mind and thought.” So be it; only let the assimilation be directly from inward experience or outward observation—not through the medium of other, however gifted, interpreters of nature and of life.

Back to the Bibliography, Poetry or London Poems

_____

Wayside Posies: original poems of the country life (1866)
(Edited by Robert Buchanan)

The Daily News (26 November, 1866 - Issue 6415)

ILLUSTRATED BOOKS.
_____

     We have had occasion, in previous years, to protest against certain strange heresies in designing and wood engraving which have recently crept up; and we must renew that protest in connexion with the illustrations to Wayside Posies: Original Poems of the Country Life, edited by Robert Buchanan (Routledge and Sons). The “pictures,” as they are rather ostentatiously called in the title-page, are by G. J. Pinwell, J. W. North, and Frederick Walker; and they have been engraved by the Brothers Dalziel, who have done more than any other living wood engravers to encourage this false style of art. Mr. Pinwell, among the designers, is also, by this time, rather and old offender, and we must say that in the present volume he has surpassed himself. Let us not, however, be understood to deny the ability possessed by all the gentlemen concerned in the production of these illustrations. It is not want of cleverness, of observation, or of invention, which makes them err. They are the victims of an absurd hobby, which appears to rest on the ultimate principle that art should be made as ugly as possible, and that rather than not be ugly, nature and fact should be falsified. They have set themselves to imitate the asceticism of the old painters before Raphael, and, not having the aid of colour (which the early Italian artists employed to excess, thus in some degree correcting the rigidity of their forms), they produce a result which is often absolutely repellent. Realism is what they are evidently aiming at; but the “reality” is not real. It is a pretence. They omit all the air and light, all the soft, tender gradations of nature, all the poetry and vital glow of earth, sea, and sky, and reduce the breathing whole to a dry anatomy—a harsh affair of outlines. Even on this ground, many of their sketches are imperfect. The work is slovenly without freedom, and minute without exactness. Everything— we are speaking of the worst specimens, and especially of Mr. Pinwell’s productions—is brought up to the surface; the atmosphere is nowhere; there is no light, because no shadow; and the texture of everything is reduced to a uniform appearance, which is that of very coarse frayed cloth or frieze. Large blotches of white are left for the high lights, and in many of the landscapes the ground seems to be covered with snow, though the leaves on the trees indicate anything but winter. In the sketch called “Spring,” where the trees are bare, we supposed that snow really was intended, until we read the accompanying verses, and found that the far-stretching glare of the fields is meant for

The white of the midday sun,
That softens them into a dream.

Mr. J. W. North is the artist, and we will make bold to tell him that, though his sketch is clever and striking in itself, it is an absurdity for what it pretends to be. The same thing appears in many of the other illustrations, and in the darker subjects nothing can be more oppressive than the prevailing darkness, which is not the duskiness of nature, but a mere morbid fancy of the artist. he determination to be ugly at all costs is shown in many places, but in none more obviously than in Mr. Pinwell’s illustration to “Kitty Morris.” The poem describes Kitty as a radiant young beauty, whom the supposed utterer of the verses does not know how to approach, because he is only a lad. In the sketch Kitty is a very plain, commonplace, middle-aged woman, engaged at some dairy work or other in a wretched, squalid, outhouse, while the “lad,” who seems to be a mature man, and rather an ill-favoured one, as far as we can see him, looks on loutishly. The best things in the volume are the bits of scenery by Mr. North, which, though not devoid of the prevailing affectation, are sometimes striking and truthful. For instance, the glare of light on the sea in the engraving on page 18 is very remarkable; but it is too obviously copied from some recent photographs. Of the poems contained in the volume (which are original and anonymous) we can only say that some are very fair, and others very poor and sentimental.

___

Notes and Queries (Vol. 10 3rd S. (259) 15 December, 1866 - p.486)

Wayside Posies: Original Poems of the Country Life. Edited by Robert Buchanan. Pictures by G. J. Pinwell, J. W. North, and Frederick Walker. Engraved by the Brothers Dalziel. (Routledge.)

     This is a Christmas Book edited by a true poet, who rejoicing in the belief, that—

“There are flowers along the peasant’s path
     That kings might stoop to pull,”—

has culled a goodly nosegay of graceful little poems which have for their theme the pleasures of home life, and the riches which are garnered in the domestic affections. The poems are illustrated by nearly fifty engravings by the Brothers Dalziel from the designs of Messrs. Pinwell, North, and Walker; and the volume forms a very handsome and appropriate Gift Book for those who, eschewing the sensational spirit which marks and mars so much of the literature of the present day, prefer a book calculated to stimulate home duties and elevate home affections.

Back to the Bibliography or Poetry.

_____

Ballad Stories of the Affections: from the Scandinavian (1866)

The Daily News (15 January, 1867 - Issue 6458)

Literature.
_____

Ballad Stories of the Affections. From the Scandinavian. By ROBERT BUCHANAN, author of “London Poems,” “Idylls of Inverburn,” &c. With illustrations by eminent artists, engraved by the Brothers Dalziel. London: Routledge and Sons.

     Most Scotchmen have a marked affinity with the old Scandinavian genius. The Norse blood yet beats strongly in their hearts, modifies their characters, and directs their tastes. We in the south, have certainly as large a share of Danish and Norwegian pedigree as our neighbours across the Tweed; but it has been qualified in a greater degree by an older civilization, by closer contact with the central nations of Europe, by a softer climate and more luxuriant vegetation, and by the traditions of the Roman occupation of this part of the island, extending over a period of about four hundred years. Scotland has been left to the undivided influence of the Celt and the Scandinavian; and the modern Scotchman is very much one or the other, according as he comes from the Highlands or the Lowlands. The old Scotch ballads, which originated and were brought to perfection in the border country, or not far beyond it, partook largely of the Norse element, and modern Scotch poetry has a good deal of the same character. It is lyrical, passionate, picturesque, strong even to violence, and dealing rather with the simple elements of emotion than with the complexities of character. Mr. Buchanan himself has shown mist of these tendencies in his original poems. He has the northern gloom and ruggedness, the northern love of wild and supernatural subjects, side by side with something prosaic and literal, almost to the forbidding. His mind has, therefore, been naturally attracted by the old legends and ballads of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and it may be taken for granted that he has translated the present work con amore. He regrets he has not been at liberty to render his originals in “broad old Scotch, the only really fitting equivalent for old Danish;” but he feared to bewilder English readers, and has therefore only introduced Scotch words occasionally, and merely such as are familiar to most readers, even in the south. The poems with which he has here presented us are for the most part antique, and of unknown authorship; but a few are from modern writers of name and fame, such as Oehlenschlager. Many of the former exhibit great power, and bear unmistakable marks of their Scandinavian parentage. Love, sorrow, jealousy, revenge—the tumult of battle, and the quiet of the mossy churchyard—coarse northern revelry, and ghastly doings of spectre, and troll and dwarf, and merman—such are the threads, whether gloomy or bright, but more often the former than the latter, of which these ballad tales are woven. We cannot deny that there is a sameness in them. The motives of the characters, moreover, are sometimes so different from those of modern men and women as to be removed beyond the pale of our sympathies; and the savage ways of the wild, ice-bound people are not in themselves attractive. But the stories form a good addition to our ballad literature, and it would not be surprising if some of them were to get into general circulation, as legends of the nursery and of the juvenile library. Some of the modern poems—such as “The Lead-melting” of Claudius Rosenhoff—ought not to have been included in the volume, because they are quite distinct in spirit from the ancient ballads, and are not “stories” at all, but sentiments. Occasionally, even in the veritable old ballads, Mr. Buchanan, if we mistake not, has wandered by inadvertence into the modern manner; as in “Axeland Walborg,” where we find this stanza descriptive of the education of a young girl:

She turns into a maiden fair,
     And maidenly things is taught;
And strange old songs and ancient lore
Sweeten her face with thought.

This is very beautiful; but it is so much in the conscious, analytical, meditative, or purely literary spirit of modern times that we suspect it to be an interpolation by Mr. Buchanan himself. Generally, however, the tone is mediæval and the imitation good, though, of course, not without the drawback that it is an imitation, and nothing more.
     The illustrations to the volume are by Messrs. G. J. Pinwell, E. Dalziel, T. Dalziel, W. Small, A. B. Houghton, J. Lawson, and J. D. Watson, and, though undoubtedly clever in some of the faces and figures, are deformed by all the worst affectations of those artists—by their most wanton defiance of proportion, perspective, texture, and the general truth of things.

Back to the Bibliography, Poetry or Ballad Stories of the Affections: from the Scandinavian.

_____

North Coast and Other Poems (1867)

Notes and Queries (Vol. 12 3rd S. (305) 2 November, 1867 - p.365)

The North Coast, and other Poems, by Robert Buchanan. With Illustrations by Wolf, Dalziel, Houghton, Pinwell,Zwecker, Small, and E. Dalziel. Engraved by the Brothers Dalziel. (Routledge).

     The first Christmas book which has reached us has, in addition to its beauty, a strong claim on our attention from the novelty of its character. Instead of seeking to win public favour by reproducing, with all the luxury of type and paper and corresponding artistic embellishment, some well-established masterpiece of English Poetry, or an anthology contributed by the popular writers of the day, Messrs. Routledge have found, in a collection of original poems by Mr. Buchanan, an admirable Christmas Book. Mr. Buchanan is a true Poet. Gifted with deep sympathy for human sufferings and human trials, a deep sense of the pathetic, and great dramatic power, his thoughts find utterance in verses of great melody. These Poems will, we think, add to Mr. Buchanan’s reputation; and admirable as are the numerous illustrations with which the volume is enriched, the Poems themselves will, we are sure, prove the most attractive portion of this very handsome volume.

___

The Examiner (9 November, 1867 - Issue 3119)

GIFT-BOOKS.

     The first drops have fallen of the coming shower of Christmas books. Messrs Routledge were first in the field, with the best we have yet seen, a volume of poetry by Mr Robert Buchanan, ‘North Coast and other Poems’, all new but a piece or two, and some of it up to the highest mark reached in his former books. The illustrations to this volume are free from the defects—or the merits which we look on as defects—that have characterized some of the Christmas books upon which Messrs Dalziel have spent their best work in former years. There is no wilful ugliness or obtrusive pre-Raphaelitism. The illustrations to ‘Meg Blane,’ by Messrs T. Dalziel and A. B. Houghton, are very true, and Mr Houghton’s contain much of the pathos of the story. Mr. T. Dalziel is a liberal contributor of illustrations; we do not think we have ever before seen so much of his good work in one volume, and admired it so thoroughly. Mr Houghton has been his chief collaborator, but there are six pictures by Mr G. J. Pinwell; three, two of deer, and one a moorhen among sedge, by Mr Wolf, prince of book illustrators when the question if of bird or beast, and a good reindeer picture by Mr Zwecker. Add two pictures by Mr W. Small, and the catalogue is complete of artists who have embellished this beautiful Christmas book with pictures worthy of good verse.

___

The Argosy (1 December, 1867 - p.80)

     Writing in view of Christmas, we may, perhaps, shortly mention some Christmas Books. There is, first, “North Coast Poems,” by Robert Buchanan—a beautiful drawing-room volume, on which much care and pains have been spent, and with good result. Here and there we regret to see that the artists have followed and exaggerated a hard and wholly false realism into which Mr. Buchanan has recently fallen headlong, and which the men of the pencil might well have studied to relieve. One specimen of the hard and ungrateful work we may indicate—the illustration to the “Scottish Eclogue,” which, perhaps, faithfully enough reflects the artist’s conception, but which overcomes one with a feeling of disgust. Here the ideal medium, through which alone any form of life can be seen truly, has escaped the poet’s clasp, leaving only the rough garment behind it; and the artist has followed suit, with due result—a repulsive picture. But a few of the poems are fine, and, generally, the illustrations are equal to them—the landscapes and sea-pieces being exceedingly beautiful.

___

The Times (12 December, 1867 - p.5)

     Mr. Robert Buchanan has every reason to be well pleased with the manner in which his latest collection of poems has been put before the public. (North Coast and other Poems. Routledge and Sons.) The illustrations are by the Brothers Dalziel, J. Wolf, A. B. Houghton, and other artists, and they are all of great merit. The sea sketches to “Meg Blane” are vivid and powerful, and two drawings, of first-rate excellence, among others, accompany the poems called the “Exiles of Oona”—one on page 211, by Mr. W. Small, and the other on page 213, by Mr. J. Wolf. The poems are fully worthy of the care which has been expended upon them.

Back to the Bibliography, Poetry or North Coast and Other Poems.

_____

The Book of Orm: a prelude to the epic (1870)

The Examiner (28 May, 1870 - Issue 3252)

     The Book of Orm. By Robert Buchanan. Strahan and Co.

     Mr Buchanan is favourably known to the public by his ‘Undertones’—a series of colour-pictures of the old Greek legends—and by several volumes of narrative-poetry, in which, with great cleverness, a number of rough and uncultivated men and women are made to assume the sensitiveness and utter the language of finer natures. He now adventures upon the region of theology and mysticism; and we observe, from an advertisement, that his next effort is to be an epic. This vacillation of purpose may be the result either of immaturity or of a grave doubt on the part of the writer as to which is his proper bent. That is a problem which we cannot assist him in solving—a young man must almost of necessity chop and change about until he discovers where his greatest strength lies. To say that Mr Buchanan’s work is full of promise would be offering an insult to an author who has written so much and written so well; and yet we cannot help thinking that this tremulousness and indecision point to a certain lack of development. Indeed, Mr Buchanan’s ‘Undertones’ seem to us to have more originality and complete work in them than anything he has written since; and we are bound to confess that the present work—undeniably picturesque and expressive as it is in parts—has less than any of his other books of this character. We do not think Mr Buchanan has been in this instance fortunate in his choice of a subject. The Christian religion was not particularly in want of his help; even if it were possible for him to have said something new on a theme that the greatest intellects of the world have puzzled over. Mr Buchanan’s method of treatment is short and simple. If a reader were to lose sight of the picturesque writing of the ‘Book of Orm,’ and merely state its argument, he would probably put the matter in this way: “In the beginning two and two were five. But a veil was drawn over that circumstance, and men of science, philosophers, and such people, came to consider that two and two were four. This is a mistake; for I, the poet, can see through the veil, and I give you my word that two and two are five. If you do not agree with me, you are an ass and an unbeliever, fit for nothing but the bottomless pit.” Now we have heard something of this way of reasoning before; and we do not think it mends matters much. We admit, however, that it is very unfair to ask of mystical poetry what it really means; and, to do justice to the ‘Book of Orm,’ we must look at its power of harmonious sounds, its occasional felicities of epithet, and to frequent glimpses of nature of a very vivid and refreshing kind. If Mr Buchanan does not paint large and impressive pictures, he shows, at least, that he is alive to the colours and forms of a landscape; and we have many happy phrases in this book descriptive of the misty aspect of Highland scenery. Mr Buchanan should, however, avoid the constant use of the word “scream,” which comes into these imaginative pictures at most unseasonable times. Everything in his writings “screams,”—from a partridge to a mountain—although it is only the ear of a poet that has ever heard either give forth such a peculiar note. But for the line which describes Blaabhein (the mountain, we presume, which Alexander Smith called Blavin) as uttering

“An indistinct and senile scream,”

the sonnet referring to this mountain would be very good indeed. Very good, too, is the companion sonnet, called “The Hills on their Thrones.” With all desire to do justice to the “Book of Orm,” we must acknowledge our preference for those parts of it which are most widely disconnected from its principal topic—the doings and sayings of the Celtic seer. Some portions of the latter (for instance, the verses entitled “Roses”) may express some meaning of the author; but they will be to the vast majority of readers merely unintelligible. We are bound to speak thus of the book, because Mr Buchanan is an author who deserves criticism; and the best we can hope for him is that in the epic forthcoming (to which the book is stated to be a prelude) he will put forward some of that strength which we know he possesses.

___

Glasgow Herald (16 June, 1870 - Issue 9502)

LITERATURE.
_____

THE BOOK OF ORM: A Prelude to the Epic. By Robert Buchanan. London: Strahan & Co.

“WHICH things are an allegory,” would be a fitting text to Mr Buchanan’s new volume. A plain man reading the book—if we can imagine plain men attracted to “The Book of Orm” at all—would be apt to scratch his head, and inquire what it all meant. Probably, the plain man’s bewilderment would be the measure of his understanding. Yet we can imagine very clever readers puzzling over some of these poems, and honestly wondering what evil spirit it was that tempted Mr Buchanan to disguise what meaning he had in forms that almost no common reader can be expected to understand, or will take the trouble to penetrate. The central figure in the work is Orm the Celt, out of whom, or round whom, the various visions, songs, psalms, and serious satires issue and flicker like poetic nebulæ:—

There is a mortal, and his name is Orm,
Born in the evening of the world, and looking
Back from the sunset to the gates of morning.

In a couple of preliminary text-verses, the poet says:—

Read these faint runes of Mystery,
O Celt, at home and o’er the sea;
The bond is loosed—the poor are free—
The world’s great future rests with thee!

Till the soil—bid cities rise—
Be strong, O Celt—be rich, be wise—
But still, with those divine grave eyes,
Respect the realm of mysteries.

Evidently, if these lines mean anything, the poet is of opinion that the Celtic race are a chosen people, since, as he says, the world’s great future rests with them. Or by “Celt” does he mean some special representative feature in the whole race of man, possessed perhaps in greatest abundance by the Celtic people? One of the great predominating features in the Celtic race is their inextinguishable belief in the supernatural, and in all the mysteries issuing, or which are supposed to issue thence. It is to the “Celt, at home and o’er the sea,” that the book seems, figuratively, addressed; and it is, if one may say so, to the mystical and supernatural ear of the Celtic people, or the Celtic spirit in general humanity, that the poet (or Orm, in the sunset of life) chants his “mystical lore.” Let the Celt—or the Celtic in man—till the soil, build cities, grow rich, and become wise; but, with all their getting and growing, if they wish to remain great, let them still “respect the realm of mysteries.”
     This is very well, so far. There is little fear that the “Celt,” either as a race of men, or as an attribute of man, will cease yet awhile, at least to believe in the realm of mysteries. In any proper sense, however, respect for mysteries can only come with knowledge—the knowledge which enables a man to distinguish between the hallucinations of ignorant or morbid imagination, and those genuine problems of existence which the profoundest human genius armed with the highest culture can never expect to solve. We can only respect mysteries when we have proved that they are not human inventions and delusions. There is much still unknown that is not mystery; and though human progress has been over the ruins of so-called mysteries, the realm of genuine mystery has not been thereby diminished. When the “Book of Orm” has been read, a suspicion lurks in the mind of the reader that it is all a poetic delusion, or views of facts veiled in a mist of words, and much twisted in the veiling. One thing can be justly said, namely, that, while the poet counsels those to whom the visions are addressed to “respect the realm of mystery,” he himself does not show a good example in that species of duty. Towards the higher mysteries, the “Book of Orm” seems in some respects the most disrespectful volume of verse that ever issued from the brain of Celt or sinner. All the problems that have ever tortured the soul of religion, the mind of philosophy, or the spirit of poetry, appear and disappear through Orm’s visions in a manner the most fantastic and audacious. Here are a couple of examples from “Songs of Seeking”:—

              DOOM.

Master, if there be Doom,
     All men are bereaven!
If, in the universe,
One Spirit receive the curse,
     Alas for Heaven!
If there be Doom for one,
     Thou, Master, art undone.

Were I a Soul in heaven,
     Afar from pain,
Yea, on Thy breast of snow,
At the scream of one below
     I should scream again.
Art thou less piteous than
     The conception of a Man?

 

                   GOD’S DREAM.

I hear a voice, “How should God pardon sin?
How should He save the sinner with the sinless?
That would be ill: the Lord my God is just.”

Further I hear, “How should God pardon lust?
How should He comfort the adulteress?
That would be foul: the Lord my God is pure.”

Further I hear, “How should God pardon blood?
How should the murtherer have a place in heaven
Beside the innocent life he took away?”

And God is on his throne; and in a dream
Sees mortals making figures out of clay,
Shapen like men, and calling them God’s angels.

And sees the shapes look up into His eyes,
Exclaiming, “Thou dost ill to save this man;
Damn Thou this woman, and curse this cut-throat, Lord!”

God dreams this, and His dreaming is the world;
And thou and I are dreams within His dream;
And nothing dieth God hath dreamt or thought.

The “Song of the Veil,” and the “Lifting of the Veil” contain some fine lines and images; but the kind of verse adopted is poor and unmelodious—a happy-go-lucky, hop-step-and-jump sort of measure—much better adapted for nursery rhyming than for singing of the profoundest religious mysteries. Among the poems called “The Devil’s Mystics,” there are things which have been written or dreamed in Orm’s most Satanic and satirical mood. With all their cleverness, however, and some of them are very clever, there is hardly a gleam of true poetry in any of them. From one called “The Seeds,” which is allegorical of the creation of living things, from the grass to man, we quote some verses:—

When standing in the perfect light
     I saw the first-born Mortal rise—
The flower of things he stood his height
     With melancholy eyes.
“Grow, Seed! blossom, Brain!
     Deepen, deepen, into pain!”

From all the rest he drew apart,
And stood erect on the green sod,
Holding his hand upon his heart,
     And looking up at God!
“Grow, Seed! blossom, Brain!
     Deepen, deepen, into pain!”

He stood so terrible, so dread,
     With right hand lifted pale and proud,
God feared the thing he fashionëd,
     And fled into a cloud.
“Grow, Seed! blossom, Brain!
     Deepen, deepen, into pain!”

And since that day He hid away
     Man hath not seen the Face that fled,
And the wild question of that day
     Hath not been answerëd.
“Grow, Seed! blossom, Brain!
Deepen, deepen, into pain!”

And since that day, with cloudy face,
     Of his own handiwork afraid,
God from His heavenly hiding-place
     Peers on the thing He made.
“Grow, Seed! blossom, Brain!
Deepen, deepen, into pain!”

That is pretty bold for Orm the Celt, not to mention the poet at all.
     In the middle of the book occur a number of sonnets, which one should hardly have expected from a Celt like Orm—the sonnet being the most unceltic of all forms of composition. They are of very unequal merit; but a few are strong, and some are very fine, though the following is the only one which looks like an inspiration:—

             CRY OF THE LITTLE BROOK.

Christ help me! whither would my dark thoughts run!
     I look around me, trembling fearfully;
The dreadful silence of the Silent One
     Freezes my lips, and all is sad to see.
     Hark! hark! what small voice murmurs “God made me!”
It is the Brooklet, singing all alone,
Sparkling with pleasure that is all its own,
     And running, self-contented, sweet, and free.
O Brooklet, born where never grass is green,
     Finding the stony hill and flowing fleet,
Thou comest as a Messenger serene,
     With shining wings and silver-sandal’d feet;
Faint falls thy music on a Soul unclean,
     And, in a moment, all the World looks sweet!

     The last poem in the volume—“The Vision of the Man Accursed”—is the one which shows most power, if it does not contain most poetry. It is definite and complete. Its plan is unique and perfect, its aim is grand, and its effect is truly great. The “man accursed” is the only man unsaved at the Judgment Day. He has sinned all sins—killed his mother and horribly abused his wife. He is so very bad that there seems no hope for him. It is asked, however, whether any spirit in heaven will go out and lighten the burden, by sharing the exile, of the detestable creature. His mother and wife go out, and, by their tender ministries, soften the man’s heart, so that he weeps, and is at last saved. The poem is worked out with great force, and points apparently to the final redemption of all mankind.
     We may mention, in conclusion, that “The Book of Orm” is only “a Prelude to the Epic.” But for this statement we should be inclined to say that for once Mr Buchanan had made a mistake. Probably, however, the Epic may throw light on, and save, the “Book of Orm;” but if the Prelude is to be regarded as an indication of the Epic, then there is danger of a double blunder. Two such books as this could do little good to the reputation of a worse poet than Mr Buchanan, and they might easily spoil the reputation of a better. These words do not preclude us from saying that there is much fine poetry sprinkled up and down the volume; but, as a whole, the work falls very far short of what we were fairly warranted in expecting. Moreover, the spirit of the poems is not genuinely Celtic—although, curiously enough, the book is dated “Coruisk,” a fiendish-looking loch amid tremendous mountains in Isle of Skye, seven or eight miles from any human habitation—pretty much as if a poet were to date a volume from “Ben Nevis” or “The Devil’s Staircase,” in Glencoe. We feel bound to say that, had Mr Buchanan filled his volume with poems equal in greatness of conception, clearness of thought, and definiteness of purpose to “The Man Accursed,” it might have won a distinct place in our poetic literature. Still, in spite of many distortions of unintelligible theology and metaphysics, the “Book of Orm” is worth reading. There are noble, pious, poetic, and profound things in it, which the earnest student may profitably search for, and probably find.

___

The Scotsman (28 July, 1870 - p. 6)

THE BOOK OF ORM: A Prelude to the Epic. By Robert Buchanan. Strahan & Co.

“READ these faint runes of mystery.” We have done so, and with what feeling? There is but one way of expressing it, and it is by saying that “The Book of Orm” impresses one precisely as music heard at a distance. Too far away to catch the meaning of the sound, unable to follow the rises and falls and modulations, the ear is gratified by the stream of pleasingly monotonous sound, and may extract greater delight from this soothing monotony than from the quick and fatiguing successions of varied notes. And the indistinct imagery, the vague meaning, the repetitions, of “The Book of Orm” act precisely like distant music. We know not very well what is meant; we nevertheless listen with a pleasure felt we hardly know why. Take, for example, these verses:—

“Yet mark me closely!
     Strongly I swear,
Seen or seen not,
     The Face is there:
When the Veil is clearest
     And sunniest,
Closest and nearest
     The Face is prest;
But when, grown weary
With long downlooking,
The Face withdrawing
     For a time is gone,
The great Veil darkens,
And ye see full clearly
Glittering numberless
     The gems thereon.
For the lamp of his features
Divinely burning,
Shines, and suffuses
     The Veil with light,
And the Face, drawn backward
With that deep sighing
Ye hear in the gloaming,
     Leaves ye the Night.
     Thus it befell to men
Graveward they journeyed,
From waking to sleeping,
     In doubt and in fear,
Evermore hoping,
Evermore seeking,
Nevermore guessing
     The Master so near:
Making strange idols,
Rearing fair Temples,
Crying, denying,
Questioning, dreaming,
Nevermore certain
     Of God and his grace,—
Evermore craving
To look on a token,
To gaze on the Face.”

“The Book of Orm” we can imagine delighting one of mystical mind. He could dream what he liked into these vague words. There are so much raw material to be worked up into whatever shape he pleases, and one may make of it what one pleases.

Back to the Bibliography, Poetry or The Book of Orm.

_____

Book Reviews - Poetry continued

Napoleon Fallen (1871) to The Drama of Kings (1871)