Poems of the past and present / by Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall.

  • Radclyffe Hall
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Poems of the past and present / by Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    146/150 (page 128)
    “Miss Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall has just brought out a new volume of poems called * A Sheaf of Verses,’ which is full of tuneful numbers written with spontaneous and imaginative talent. Her muse is a varied one, grave and gay, but always sincere ; and her poems reveal a nature capable of deep feel- ing, to which she is able to give full emotional expression. Miss Radclyffe-Hall’s first book, ‘ ’Twixt Earth and Stars,’ achieved a well-merited isuccess, and several of the poems it contained have been set to music. Amongst these were ‘ Italian Spring’ and • On the Lagoon,’ by Mr. Hubert Bath, and * Shall I Complain ? ’ by Mr. Easthrope Martin.” The Lady. “ Miss Radclyffe-Hall’s verses, without being exactly love poems, are principally occupied with aspects of the passion of love. Men write love poems, women write about love. A man, though he be as individual as Donne, or as unlike his fellows as Chapman, when stirred by a beauty to his verse, is primitive and universal. A woman, though she may be more moved than the other, is in the same case conventional, personal, herself. The passion is something intimate—her secret, a thing to be looked at shyly when none else looks, then locked up like the cup in the poem. The pleasure given to us by these poems is not derived from the poems so much as from the illustration which they give of the truth just stated. They are neat statements of the woman’s point of view.’’—The Daily News. “ Minor poets abound nowadays, but among the many volumes of verse issued fone rarely finds the true poetical thought and expression that distinguish ‘ A Sheaf of Verses,’ by Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall. There is a touch of sadness in nearly all the verses, or rather they all voice the wistful unrest which inevitably characterises the idealist, as in ' A Complaint ’ : * Must we for ever see the golden portal, Yet ne’er in glad abandon enter in ? Dear heart, if loving be so great a sin. Why have the gods decreed that man be mortal ? ’ In many of the Nature poems the note is joyous, exhilarating, and some of the lyrics are light and graceful. The little book is aptly ‘dedicated to sad days and glad days.’ (John and Edward Bumpus.) ”—The Lady.