SONNET TO HILAIRE BELLOC No one may span you for
a hundred years, No one appraise you but the very wise : Fragments of your great song enchant our ears, The length of your great stride eludes our eyes ; Your peaks stand high above our valley's murk. Distance of time alone can give the view Of that long mountain-range which is your work And of the four true men made one in you.
Down from your height cascades and torrents flow, Multiple springs of loveliness and laughter, To stay and comfort those who follow after When you and we have gone with last year's snow.
For me, you are the poet forstalline Of "Tarantella" and the "Praise of Wine."
H. S. MACKINTOSH.
" Farewell to Juliet " will appear in a forthcoming volume, All the Verse of Hilaire Belloc Now First Collected, to be edited by Mr. W. N. Roughead and published by the Nonesuch Press in November. " Sonnet to Hilaire Belloc " will be included in Mr. Mackintosh's forthcoming volume Ballades and Other Verse to be published by Rupert Hart-Davis in the autumn. Mr. Mackintosh knew Hilaire Belloc well, and his book will contain two further poems written to his old friend.
The Spectator is indebted to the wcutori of Hilaire Belloc and to Mr. H. S. Mackintosh for permission to print the new poems above.
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