Mr. Fenollosa's [East and West: The Discovery of America, and Other Poems.] consists of two long and very ambitious poems, and a number of minor pieces. The titular poem is a sort of versified Culturgeschiehte, philosophical and mystical, in spirit not unlike Mr. Block's "El Nuevo Mundo," which we reviewed a year or so ago. In this poem, says the author, "I have endeavored to condense my experiences of two hemispheres, and my study of their history." The poem is in five parts. The first considers the early meeting of East and West, brought about by the conquests of Alexander. Then follow "The Separated East" and "The Separated West," themes of which the author has conceived in the following terms: "Eastern culture, slowly elaborated, has held to ideals whose refinement seems markedly feminine. For it social institutions are the positive harmonies of a life of brotherhood. Western culture, on the contrary, has held to ideals whose strength seems markedly masculine. For it law is the compromise of Liberty with her own excesses, while conquest, science, and industry are but parallel channels for the overflow of hungry personality. But this one-sidedness has been partly compensated by the religious life of each. The violence of the West has been softened by the feminine faith of love, renunciation, obedience, salvation from without. It is the very impersonality of her great ecclesiastical institute which offers to man a refuge from self. On the other hand, the peaceful impotence of the East has been spurred by her martial faith of spiritual knighthood, self-reliance, salvation from within. The intense individuality of her esoteric discipline upholds the fertile tranquillity of her surface. This stupendous double antithesis seems to me the most significant fact in all history. The future union of the types may thus be symbolized as a twofold marriage." In "The Present Meeting of East and West," the author deals with "the first attempts to assimilate alien ideals," which "have led to the irony of a quadruple confusion, analogous to the disruption of Alexander's conquest." But there is to be another and more intimate union, brought about in some mysterious way by the art of music, and in a manner foreshadowed in some sort by the compositions of Herr Brahms. Here, we must confess, we are unable to follow the argument. And the poem ends with a rapturous song of "The Future Union of East and West." This is a good deal of philosophical machinery with which to burden a composition of fifteen hundred lines, and the work is too ambitious to be wholly successful. But it abounds in strong passages, such as the finely imaginative struggle of the archangels, who

"Met as mountains meet, when Titans cast
 Pelion on Ossa, and their fragments spurt
 Through startled space a jet of asteroids,"

or the stanzas to Hangehow, where (among other things),

"In a tangle of leaves with silken sleeves
Thy poets sing on the terraced beach,
Where the blue-flagged taverns with mossy eaves
Are starred by the pink of the blossoming peach,"

or the following fine epitome of the Viking conquests:

"Now shot from polar coasts see meteors flash,
Long lines of Viking ships, with low black hulls
Like vultures, plunging through the Northern seas,
Hovering like gulls in track of channel storms,
Scouring for prey the long white sunlit cliffs;
Wailing their chant to Odin like wild winds
Surging through organ pipes of naked fjords,
Wooing Valhalla to Northumbrian hills
Or primrose-garnished banks of lovely Seine.
Now, drunk with richer wine of vanquished worlds,
Wielding the cross as once their bolt of Thor,
They skirt with gorgeous sweep Hispania's curves,
Through pillared gateway of the land-locked sea
Set in its rifted coasts of gilded cloud,
  A blue enamelled dragon! Now they break,
  Those strange Norse champions of a Hebrew god,
The threatening onsets of the Saracen,
  Dispersed like storms which strew with wrecks thy coast,
  Nurse of a hundred races, Sicily!"

We should like to quote also the fine description of the destruction of the Summer Palace in 1859, but Mr. Fenollosa's other poems claim our remaining space. Of these, the most important is "The Discovery of America," described as "a symphonic poem," in four movements, and in a great variety of metres. Since both the manner and the matter of the author constantly invite musical comparisons, we will remark that the suggestion of Liszt is here very evident. A passage from the soliloquy of Columbus may be reproduced:

"And yet I knew; and yet I dimly guessed
When as a guileless boy
I climbed the steep Ligurian cliffs in lusty joy,
And gazed far off upon the dimpled breast
Of blue-eyed seas that slumbered in the West.
For was I not compelled
As by a great hand held
To gaze, and gaze, and gaze

Through tender brooding miles of purple haze,
Till soft-winged isles
Seemed lifting orange bosoms to the sun's last smiles,
  And my light will, a feather free,
  Was blown like a trembling bird far out to sea
By storm-winds, Alpine-brewed, of passionate prophecy?"

The poem from which this extract is taken must certainly be reckoned among the most notable inspired by the recent quadri-centennial year. As for Mr. Fenollosa's minor poems, they are always interesting, and often satisfying. We will end our examples with the lines to "Fuji at Sunrise":

"Startling the cool gray depths of morning air
She throws aside her counterpane of clouds,
And stands half folded in her silken shrouds
With calm white breast and snowy shoulder bare.
High o'er her head a flush all pink and rare
Thrills her with foregleam of an unknown bliss,
A virgin pure who waits the bridal kiss,
  Faint with expectant joy she fears to share.
Lo, now he comes, the dazzling prince of day!
Flings his full glory o'er her radiant breast;
Enfolds her to the rapture of his rest,
Transfigured in the throbbing of his ray.
O fly, my soul, where love's warm transports are;
And seek eternal bliss in yon pink kindling star."

Lest this review would seem to have abrogated the traditional fault-finding function of criticism, we will close by remarking the false quantity in the author's use of "Granicus." But this defect is at least partly atoned for by his getting "Himálya" right, which few succeed in doing.