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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 3

Poems, By Wrax All Hall

Poems, By Wrax All Hall.

Did these assume to represent in perfection of poetry the last effort of a great and finished poet, we could not give them unqualified praise, nor the commendation that is now fairly due to them. No poet of long experience in his art would have admitted lines that by some accident have been allowed to remain amongst generally superior verse; and the device of repeating certain phrases has been employed until it has lost all its force. On the other hand, to counterbalance these defects, there is much muscular thought, and downright utterance, often of a graceful sort, of many things that were precisely what wanted saying effectively.

"A Love Story; or, the Curse of Creeds," for instance, represents a phase of life, ideally treated, that must be of commoner and yet commoner occurrence in real life whilst the wrecks of the old religions are being broken up and borne away. Two lovers are separated by the persistent clinging of a pure-minded English girl to the faith which had been instilled into her, until the arguments which her Ernest has adduced, and her own reasonings and reflections are at length triumphant.

The strongest swell of true poetic impulse is in "Germ."

And the bravo and stalwart spirits
Of the grand and mighty dead,
Moving on our shadowed midnight,
Like white cloud-racks o'er our heads;
Follow, follow where they beckon,
Graves beneath, but God o'erhead!

* * * * * * *

Come, bestir thee, ancient mother,
Mix more lighting with thy clod,
page 80 Give thee birth to mighty spirits,
That shall lead us to our God!
Toll the knell of superstition
Spread the banner truth abroad!
Spell God's love, and not, his vengeance,
In thy myriad tinted Flowers,
Wreathe thee hopes like yellow sunbeams
Round these aching hearts of ours;
Let Heaven's jubilante reach us
In the songs of summer bowers.
Let us see the true millennium
Coming up "the steep of time,"
Bearing proudly Truth's white banner
Lettered by the stars sublime.

* * * * * * *

* * * * * * *

We can, therefore, welcome Wraxall Hall as a useful member of the band of thinkers and speakers who will help to usher in a new era of more genuine religious feeling, and more generous social sympathies, and hopefully look for yet other song from her.