Excerpt from Confessional: And Other Poems

Mr. Wilfrid Thorley's verses, therefore, must await their rhapsodist, but are very proper for his ministry when he comes. If I were asked to justify such share as I may have had in their publication, I should point the challenger to page 61, and say, without faltering, that the writer of the Chant for Reapers is a true poet, whose true feeling cannot be otherwise expressed. Mr. Thorley has achieved there a beautiful rhythm, quite original in our tongue. He has obtained, without straining his English in the least, much of the quality of Latin Elegiacs, rendering it, so to speak, rather than imitating it, by getting the lovely reluctance of the pentameter in the fourth line of his stanza rather than in every other line. So far he has succeeded; but in that he has steeped the whole in that wistful melancholy which is of the essence of the real pagan religion, he has produced a poem, and a beautiful poem. It is, perhaps, the core of his book; it is, perhaps the nearest that he can get to self-revelation; for elsewhere he has to tell of struggle anddoubt, of defeat and surrender: the world be sets him, and he hopes or despairs of the battle. Here he seems to me to have reached, for the moment, a time of truce. He can stand up in the midst of his reaping, with the cut corn behind him, and the standing corn still to be harvested - stand up and wonder, and say his prayers. There is melancholy in this chant, but not despair; and there is piety in it. It is inseparable from its music, and its music haunts the bearer, and sets him praying too. Others of his pagan chants are beautiful, but not quite so beautiful as this. The Dead Dryad, on page 52, is an elegy accomplished in versifica tion, clearly visualised, and perfectly sincere. The poet finds her in a wood, with a wounded side, dead, but newly dead. He muses upon her pure beauties, tells them over tenderly, hymns her functions in our life and her own, and mourns her undoing. The whole is done as delicately as may be, but in a verse whose structure and strength need not shirk com parison with that of Mr. Swinburne, from whom probably it was derived. Mr. Thorley need not, and will not, take shame from that. All poets are inspired by their brothers, but they add to what they take; and so the lute ishanded on from generation to generation. It is not given to every man to stray into Arcady. A poet may go through this troublesome world from his cradle to his grave and not know that the dryads also live and die you may say it is a habit of mind or a habit of body that wins you the familiarity of these spirits of natural fact. Whatever it be, your state is the more gracious for it, and there is no doubt at all in my mind but that Mr. Thorley possesses it. I consider these two poems great gain to our ledge on Parnassus.

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