12 JANUARY 1934, Page 20

Poem

IT is not what they acted,

Nor their scenes so often said, Nor what our sensible eye repeats, Performing on its mental screen.

Such photographs we forget : Significance eludes The hundred times said word.

What lives, is a single gesture.

How he stood at the window, How she lifted her head, Pity and anger.

These we set in our living windows, Human as eloquent flowers, As proud as stag, envied like birds: Man, bird, stag, flowers, With voices to refresh The drought of love's unconscious root. STEPHEN SPENDER.