RECENT WAR POETRY. (To =a EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—In your notice of "Recent War Poetry" in your issue of January 20th you quote the following lines from a poem by Mr. F. W. Harvey:— " To see above the Severn plain, Unscabbarded against the sky, The blue high blade of Cotswold lie."
The same striking metaphor occurs in a Persian verse in the work entitled The Lights of Canopus, by Husain Vaiz Kashifi, translated into English by Edward Eastwick. The curve of a mountain crest behind which the sun is setting is likened to the blade of a scimitar cleaving a brazen buckler. In a note Eastwick comments on this as an instance of the fantastic lengths to which Persian poetic imagery is often stretched.--I am, Sir, 8c., F. H. TYRRELL, Lieut.-General, late Pent; n Translator to the Government of Madras. Edenhurst, Torquay.
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