14 APRIL 1917, Page 17

Selected Poems. By Rupert Brooke. (Sidgwiek and Jackson. 3s. ed.

net.)—The unnamed editor of this choice selection from Rupert Brooke's two volumes of verse has done his work admirably. All, or nearly all, the noteworthy poems are included, and they aro arrangel in what appears to be a rough chronological order, so that the young poet's development through ten years is clearly shown. The metrical facility and the verbal richness are chastened and perfected ; the juvenile fancies give place to graver and more spiritual moods, ending in the great outburst of patriotic devotion by which, if by nothing else, Rupert Brooke has won a lasting place in English poetry. It is sadly tantalizing to think of what he might have done had not the war claimed him, or had he survived the conflict which revealed his full powers to himself and to the world. But " The Old Mill, Grantchester " and the South Sea poems stamped him as a true poet—a young modern poet quite unlike the poets of the generation before him—and further speculation is vain.