Primavera

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Primavera, by
Stephen Phillips,
Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
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Title: Primavera
Poems by Four Authors
Author: Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and
Arthur Shearly Cripps
Release Date: September 4, 2006 [EBook #19170]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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PRIMAVERA: POEMS
BY FOUR AUTHORS
PORTLAND MAINE PUBLISHED
BY THOMAS B MOSHER AT XLV
EXCHANGE STREET MDCCCC

PREFACE

_Primavera: Poems, by Four Authors. Oxford:
Published by B. H.
Blackwell, Broad Street.
MDCCCXC._ (Fcap 8vo, pp. 43.)
Such is the title of a little 'book of verses' that at the time found favour
in the eyes of a few discerning critics, and then, apparently, was
forgotten. As originally issued its dark brown paper wrapper was
adorned with a simple but effective woodcut design by Mr. Selwyn
Image, which we have reproduced on our first half-title. Even more
fortunate has been the discovery of a signed review in the pages of the
_Academy_ for August 9, 1890, by the late John Addington Symonds.
As a preface nothing could be better. And in this connexion the lines
which we prefix from Guarini are also singularly appropriate. For these
songs of Youth are still worth while; they thrill and fill us as of
yesterday with their haunting sense of vanished love, of
'Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu.'

PREFACE
This little book was written by four friends, three of them
under-graduates at Oxford, and all of them penetrated with the spirit of
the higher culture of our time. The poems, it is clear, have been
carefully selected; and, it is probable, have been diligently polished.
There is not one which is not remarkable for delicacy of style and
conscious aiming after excellence in art. Whether these qualities
promise well for future achievement and development is a question
open to debate. But there can be no doubt that in _Primavera_ we
possess another of those tiny
verse-books like _Ionica_, or Mr. Percy
Pinkerton's _Galeazzo_, which will not lose in freshness and in
perfume as the years go by.
The poems have the distinction of making one wish to be
acquainted
with their authors. Though they differ a good deal in mental tone,
perhaps also somewhat in literary merit, they
possess marked
common characteristics: a restrained refinement, a subdued reserve, a
gentle melancholy; the note of the latest Anglican æsthetic school. We

find no humour, no _Sturm und
Drang_, no inequalities and
incoherences of passion. Even where it is obvious that the emotion has
been intense, possibly of a rare and peculiar strain, as in Mr. Binyon's
"Testamentum Amoris" and Mr. Phillips's "To a Lost Love," the
expression of it obeys no violence of impulse. A tender tone of regret,
rather than of acute grief, steeps these stanzas (to quote one instance)

addressed to a friend removed into the spiritual world by death.
"Oh, thou art cold! In that high sphere
Thou art a thing apart,

Losing in saner happiness
This madness of the heart.
"And yet, at times, thou still shalt feel
A passing breath, a pain;

Disturb'd, as though a door in heaven
Had oped and closed again.
"And thou shalt shiver, while the hymns,
The solemn hymns, shall
cease;
A moment half remember me;
Then turn away to peace."
It would be invidious to institute critical comparisons between the
styles of these four friends and their respective merits. It may, however,
be remarked that Mr. Manmohan Ghose's work possesses a peculiar
interest on account of its really notable command of the subtleties of
English prosody and diction, combined with just a touch of foreign
feeling. The artful employment of imperfect rhymes in "Raymond and
Ida" illustrates what I mean. Occasionally, too, Mr. Ghose produces
exactly the right phrase by means of a felicitous simplicity. Notice the
line which I have italicised in the following stanza:
"In the deep West the heavens grow heavenlier,
Eve after eve; and
still
_The glorious stars remember to