Gordon Bottomley – 1890’s poet

Mr. Gordon Bottomley's second volume, Poems at White Nights (At the Sign of the Unicorn), shows him still frequenting the darker woods of Faerie. One fragment in it is a dedication for some book of verses in which the receiver is bidden to read:

The dream I dreamed of England's prime,
Seeking within its outworn weed
The sweetness of that matin time.

But to no such pleasant theme does the muse address her in this volume written at "White Nights". For the most part we have simple pictures in rich half-tones of feeling or in grave symbolism. The are slight, but each has a clear artistic note, and beauty is never wanting. Sometimes the author shows an ear for the music of words not less fine than that of Mr. William Watson, his fellow-countryman, though he handles other subjects. In "A Pagan Maid," a poem of seven eight-line stanzas, instinct with charm, this musical sense has inspired alike the thought and the chosen words in a high degree. We quote the first three, not as  quite the best, but as quite sufficiently good, and making the subject plain:

The lambs are wakening on the hillside yonder;
A breaking sob is in the cuckoo's voice;
I part a tangle of springing corn asunder,
Scattering the dew, which falls mid a soft noise
Of skirts and rustling grass and rain, as onward
Over the meadows by the stream I pass
To that forgotten temple hidden downward,
Where sunshine never was,

Deep in a dim, hushed vale that none will enter,
Close to a foamless river's bloomless sedge,
In haunted woodland; while once more I venture
Past the low haze of bluebells in its edge,
Faint lyric languorous ever laugh and lighten
And stable shadows ever rise and fall
Amid the trees; my pale dew-purfled chiton
Wakes scents half mystical.

Within these waters, wan unworshipped naiads
Weed-lithely waver, swoon, and slowly cease;
Down the dense forest-aisles I heard lost dryads
Sob fitfully within their secret tress.

Not careful of exact rhyming - for we have "moan" and "gown" mated, a triplet made of "symposium," "Blossom," and "unbosom," and even "sough" used to chime with "bough" because of the similar spelling - Mr. Bottomley's art is of a kind to make melody of blank verse. As in an earlier volume, there is at least one piece that exhibits a potent sense of romance in tragedy - "At High Tide,"the story being that of a wronged woman who lures her lover to a shore from which there is no escape when the sea comes up. "A Passing of Faith" - the last protest of Set, a god of Egypt - is also a strong conception, if its brevity disappoints the imagination; and there is a notable short drama of "Marlowe's Death," which makes use of the fanciful idea that he was killed by the betrayer of a girl whom his friendship lifted into virtue. Among the sonnets we think of one, on "The Chamber Concert of Giorgione", not unworthy of Rossetti, and some others are hardly less beautiful. What has to be said by way of caution is that Mr. Bottomley's flight is unequal, so that it would probably be well for him to use a stern censorship for such play of the muse as does not please him best.