Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/549

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Till every arm and spray and leaf is twined. And miles of trees, like brethren joined in love. Are drawn and laced; while round them and above, When all is knit, the creeper rests for days As gathering; might, and then one blinding blaze Of very glory sends, in wealth and strength, Of scarlet flowers o'er the forest's length!'

"There are deep springs of familiar feeling (as the mother's grief for the estrangement of her savage-hearted son) also touched in this poem, in which there is due artistic sense and enjoyment of the weirdness of the motive; and, in short, we could imagine ourselves recurring more than once to the story, and liking it better and better. 'The Dog Guard' is the next best story in the book;—a horrible fact, treated with tragic realism, and skilfully kept from being merely horrible. . . . Some of the best poems in the book are the preludes to the stories."

Boston Advertiser, "The first, and in many respects the best poem in the book, is 'The King of the Vasse,' which is a story of the very earliest settlement of Australia by Europeans, and before a convict settlement was established there. There is to it far greater care and finish than to any of the other long poems. In some parts it is weird and strange to a degree; in others it is pathetic,—everywhere it is simple, with a pleasant flow of rhythm, and closely true to nature. It is followed by 'The Dog Guard,' a poem which leaves an impression on the mind like Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner'—a subject which, but for great skill in the treatment, would have been repulsive. As it stands in the book it shows eminent descriptive power, and a certain freedom and daring that lifts it far above the common-place. Interspersed among the longer poems are short verses, which must answer the same purpose in the book as the organist's interludes, helping out the value of that which precedes, and that which follows. Some of these are more than excellent. They stand out as a peculiar feature of the