should write like a girl; the wonder is that a very young woman should possess the technical skill which is apparent throughout these poems. My regret, then, is not that the verses of "early youth" should express "transitory and early thoughts," but that the "verses written in maturer years" should be so few. It almost seems as though Mrs. Meynell had purposely deserted verse for prose. If so, one can only hope that, without detriment to "the other harmony," her poetic impulse may override a needlessly exclusive resolution. REGRETS. As, when the seaward ebbing tide doth pour The parting waves slip back to clasp the shore So in the tide of life that carries me From where thy true heart dwells, Waves of my thoughts and memories turn to thee With lessening farewells; Waving of hands; dreams, when the day forgets; The saddest of my verses; dim regrets; I would the day might come, so waited for, When I, returning, should fill up once more And fill thy loneliness that lies apart In still, persistent pain. Shall I content thee, O thou broken heart, And brims the little sea-shore lakes, and sets The silent pools, rivers and rivulets Among the inland hills? MISS E. NESBIT (MRS. BLAND) THERE is more feeling than art in the poetry of Miss E. Nesbit; but the feeling is often very genuine, and of the art one may at least say that it has ripened with every book the poetess has put forth. Miss Nesbit had from the first a remarkable fluency and a correct ear for metres. Unfortunately, her fluency was altogether too strong for her sense of style, which was originally very imperfect, and to this day leaves something to be desired. Her first collections of verse-Lays and Legends 1886 and 1892, and Leaves of Life 1888-are chiefly notable for the vigorous rhetoric of some of her revolutionary chants. She was caught on the wave, it would seem, of the Socialist movement of the 'eighties, and many of her poems breathe a deeply-felt sympathy with the toilers of the earth, and a burning sense of the inequality of social conditions. The following may serve as a specimen of her early work in this kind—a few quatrains from a poem entitled: Yes, we have learned to know, and not to shrink |