14 DECEMBER 1912, Page 24

SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.

[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as have not been reserved for review in other forms.] Poems. By William Allingham. Selected and arranged by Helen Allingham. (Macmillan and Co. 2s. 6d. net.)—One or two of Allingham's poems are still to be recalled with pleasure. Such, for instance, is the charming fairy song "Up the Airy Mountain." Another of them has been quoted as an unconscious example of the Chinese " stop-short " poems, in which the words "stop short " but the sense goes on inside the head of the reader. Allingham's would have been a very good specimen if only he had stopped short enough :—

Here the Chinese poet would have left off. But Allingham un- luckily adds three more lines to point his own not very interesting moral :—

" What a little thing To remember for years— To remember with tears I" " Four ducks on a pond, A grass-bank beyond, A blue sky of spring, White clouds on the wing—"