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The Spike or Victoria College Review October 1930

"The Blind Crowder"

page 48

"The Blind Crowder"

The short dramatic sketch called "The Blind Crowder" which constitutes twenty of the brief twenty-two pages composing a memorial volume of the verse of Eric Lee Palmer, poet and graduate of Victoria College, who met his death at so early an age and under such tragic circumstances, is a little study in light and darkness, in sunshine and mist. "We are born sick of shadows," says Raleigh in the play, and the author balances against the gay, sunlit figure of Penruddick about to sail in the Golden Venture "through the rich tropics to the golden coast"; the melancholy of Garth, fugitive from his father's gloomy country-house, and one who had lived "long hooded with grey despair." The playing of a blind crowder or fiddler, changes Garth's despair to hope, and he resolves to sail with Raleigh and Penruddock, to escape from mists to sunshine. The volume is more remarkable for its promise than for actual poetic achievement. There is just that choking of dramatic action by poetic excellences, which seems to indicate that, had time permitted maturity, he would have given us something closer knit. The diction varies, as it must in poetic drama, from the very high

"I never had a brother nor a friend
Nor any mother but the shaking house,"

to the more pedestrian

"He! a horsey country squire,
Grasping and blunt: his commonsense itself
Seemed scolding all my dreams."

"The Blind Crowder" is strongly reminiscent of Beddoes, though healthier in spirit, and the last quotation might have come straight from "Death's Jest-Book." Copies of this interesting little volume may be obtained by leaving a note for the Editor, "Spike," in the letter-rack.

—C.W.