we are in the broad free air of heaven The human touch is here also, but it does not come till all the rest is realised: And hearts that complain. The leaves rustle before the rain. Both passages are beautiful; in both a few lines suffice to draw the picture, a few notes to make the music and waken the emotion; but the results are quite different. Mrs. Hinkson is at her best out of doors. She exults in the beauty of Nature; nothing is too small, too near the sod for observation, for love and song. IN THE WIND IN THE TREES the piece called 'Leaves,' somewhat akin to that just now quoted, is full of subdued expression and fine suggestion, and yet it is radiant with colour. For Mrs. Hinkson has a keen sense of natural colour; naturally therefore she delights in it; colour is the music of the eye. To one who interprets the leaves so well, what songs have not the flowers to sing? Her own, therefore, are full of natural colour; they are full also of the perfumes of flower and field, and of the voices of the birds. Of these last the short poem entitled 'Larks' is only one instance. It is the silence of Nature that is dreadful, and the exact word is found by the poet, as (in 'Cruel Winter') The dear song-thrush is dead, The valley hath instead Only the silence. The silence aches all day In hills and valleys gray I must not leave without mention the songs of pathos and affection, many of them touching and sweet, which are to be found scattered through Mrs. Hinkson's volumes. I could wish, perhaps, that the author had exercised a little more literary economy; in so considerable an output not everything can be at the same high level. Yet sometimes the fault may lie with the reader or the critic. Thus, I have not spoken of the Miracle Plays, because I am not quite sure of myself, holding as I do that the medieval religious drama has not been successfully revived by any writer, even the greatest. Mrs. Hinkson certainly possesses the first necessary quality for such work, the right devotional spirit; but I am disposed to cavil at the form (or else, perhaps, at the title). The play-the play's the thing,' and in English-at all events, in this dying century-I doubt whether dramatic action and the dramatic spirit can be rendered in lyrical measures such as Mrs. Hinkson has here adopted. But this is the opinion of one who holds that Calderon and Metastasio cannot be translated into the English tongue without considerable loss. Every language has its limitations; yet it is sometimes well to strive against them, in the hope of ultimately broadening them, even but a little. Mrs. Hinkson has done gallant service in several spheres; but it will have been perceived that the present writer's preference is for those delightful swift glances into Nature and Nature's secrets of which THE WIND IN THE TREES is full; this at least is a booklet from which I would not willingly spare a page. It holds the secrets of the birds, the leaves, and the flowers; and the human voice, too, is deep and touching-the voice of the Irish poetess : Oh, green and fresh your English sod With daisies sprinkled over; But greener far were the fields I trod, Oh, well your skylark cleaves the blue And often, often, I'm longing still, GEORGE A. GREENE. Born in Dublin in the early sixties, Miss Katharine Tynan was for some time at school at a Dominican convent in Drogheda, which, however, she left at the age of fourteen: the rest of her education was gained at home, and mainly by her own energy and love of study, to which her father allowed full scope by permitting her a broad and varied course of reading in accordance with her tastes. With the exception of a few visits to London, Miss Tynan remained at home till her marriage in 1893 with Mr. Henry Hinkson, ex-Scholar of Trinity College, Dublin, and himself a well-known writer. She is now settled in London with her husband, and is engaged in constant literary work. Her poetical output is somewhat considerable for the comparatively short time during which it has appeared : it began in 1885 with the publication of LOUISE DE LA VALLIÈRE AND OTHER POEMS (Kegan Paul & Co.), which has been followed by SHAMROCKS, 1887; BALLADS AND LYRICS, 1892 (same publishers); CUCKOO SONGS (John Lane, 1894); MIRACLE PLAYS (idem, 1896); A LOVER'S BREAST-KNOT (Elkin Mathews, 1897); and THE WIND IN THE TREES (Grant Richards, 1898). Mrs. Tynan-Hinkson has also written a number of prose works. LARKS ALL day in exquisite air The song clomb an invisible stair, There was no bird, only a singing, I saw no staircase winding, winding, DAFFODIL WHO passes down the wintry street? A sudden flame of gold and sweet. With sword of emerald girt so meet, How are you here this wintry day? Your radiant fellows yet delay. No windflower dances scarlet gay, What land of cloth o' gold and green, Cloth o' gold with the green between, Was that you left but yestere'en To light a gloomy world and mean? King trumpeter to Flora queen, Blow, and the golden jousts begin. SUMMER-SWEET HONEY-SWEET, sweet as honey smell the lilies, Little censers of pale gold are the lilies, That the wind, sweet and sunny, sets a-swing. Smell the rose, sweet of sweets, all a-blowing! Hear the cuckoo call in dreams, low and sweet! Like a very John-a-Dreams coming, going. There's honey in the grass at our feet. There's honey in the leaf and the blossom, AUGUST WEATHER DEAD heat and windless air, And silence over all; Never a leaf astir, But the ripe apples fall; Plums are purple-red, Pears amber and brown; Thud! in the garden-bed Ripe apples fall down. Air like a cider-press With the bruised apples' scent; Some sleepy bird's content ; And the ripe apples fall. AN ISLAND FISHERMAN I GROAN as I put out My nets on the say, To hear the little girshas shout, Ochone! the childher pass Why would you go so fast With him you never knew? In all the throuble that is past I never frowned on you. The light o' my old eyes! The comfort o' my heart! Waitin' for me your mother lies In blessed Innishart. Her lone grave I keep From all the cold world wide, Ochone! my thoughts are wild : An ould man hungerin' for his child, |