RECENT POETRY.* " Short is the date, alas ! of
modern rhymes ;
And 'tis but just to let them live betimes."
rOPE'S jeering jingle suggested itself irresistibly to our mind when we first looked upon the array of volumes that confront us for review, and wondered how in the space at our disposal we could discharge our duties to our readers and authors with any satisfaction to either. How can we praise one poot at • (I) Symphonic Symbolique. By Edmund John. London : E. Macdonald. [59. net.]-(2) Moods and Tenses. By H. L. Simpson. Same publisher and price.-(3) Poems. By D. F. G. Johnson. Cambridge : at the University Press. [4s. 6d. net.]-(4) Poems and Rhymes. By Jeffery Day. London : Sidgwick and Jackson. [3s. net.]-(5) Forgotten Places. By Ian Mackenzie. London : Chapman and Hall. 13s. 6d. net.]-(6) Magpies in Picardy. By T. P. C. Wilson. London : The Poetry Bookshop. [4s. net ]-(7) In Memoriam : Edward Thomas. London : The liforland Press. [2e. net.]- (8) Knights Adventurers. By L. E. Williams. London : Simpkln, Marshall. [ls. 6d. net.]-(0) The Rhymes of Arcot Orlaunch. By G. S. Maxwell. London : J. M. Dent. [2s. 6d. net.]-(10) The Four Years. By Laurence Blnyou. Londe p : E. Mathews. [7s. 6d. net.]-(11) France. By P. H. B. Lyon. Oxford : B. H. Blackwell. [is. 6d. net.]-(12) The Superhuman Antagonists, and other Poems. By Sir William Watson. London : Hodder and Stoughton. [6s. net.]-(13) The Fool Next Door. By N. D. Douglas. London : C. W. Daniel. [2s. net.]-(14) The Glow of Life. By Le Breton Martin. London: E. Macdonald. [3s. 6d. net.]-(15) New Poems. By C. G. D. Roberts. London : Constable. [2s. ed. net.]-(16) I Take the Road. By R. A. Foster-Mather, London : A. L. Humphreys. [2s. 6d. net.]-(17) The Creed of My Heart. By E. Holmes. London : Constable. [2s. net.]-(18) Fifteen Poems. By G. Crow. Oxford : B. H. Blackwell. [1s. 6d. net.] -(18) Footsteps and Fantasies. By C. J. Druce. Same publisher. [2s. ed. net.]-(20) Loyalties. By J. Drinkwater. London : Sidgwick and Jackson. [3s. net.l-(21) Roses, Loaves, and Old Rhymes. By A. 3fatheson. London : H. Milford. [4s. 6d. net.] -(22) The Tavern of Dreams. By C. Houghton. London : *rant Richards.
fitting length without doing an injustice to others perhaps equally deserving ? While if we allot to each his exact arith- nietical proportion, the reader shudders at the implied suggestion of a dead level of spiritless mediocrity, and the author's spirit revolts at finding the inspiration and labour of years dismissed in a couple of lines of pedestrian prose. But in criticism as in war " You must do the best you can," and we may begin our task with the work of some who are no longer to be moved by praise or blame. Of those who died in order that in these postponed days it might be possible to read poetry in freedom, Edmund John seems to us to have come nearest to great achieve- ment. His Symphonic Symboligue,I suggested, though not
inspired, by Tchaikovsky's Symphonic Pathetigue, is a wonderful picture of soul adventure. The subtly varying rhythms and the queer echoing cadences are adjusted with true craftsman's skill to help the imagination to completethe artist's design and emphasize the clear utterance of his passion. He was fortunate, too, in his illustrator : the drawings worthily supplement the text. Something of the same power of intensive dreiming is shown in Lieutenant Simpson's verses' but they are less obviously original and personal. They bear manifest traces of the influence of Rossetti and Wilde. So, too, Lieutenant Johnson's poems' are rather the work of the stylist and scholar than the native singer. Flight Commander Day,4 on the other hand, although the total bulk of his writings is small, managed to put his own individuality into the swinging rhymes he formed on Gilbertian models ; in his poetry, as in his life, he went " all out." Ian Mackenzie's verse 5 is slower in pace, and more introspective ; he sought more consciously for beautiful images and unhackneyed turns of expression, but his thought is equally manly and sincere. Captain Wilson a was much more sophisticated and mature than either ; ho knew better how to achieve literary effects without betraying the mechanism. One thing, however, all these dead soldier poets had in common : an intense delight in the quiet countryside of England, whose memory haunted them with its wistful mellowness whenever their mints had leisure to turn from the distasteful business of war. No one of recent years expressed this appeal of Nature so intimately as Edward Thomas, to whom some of his friends who shared his life on both sides have paid a fitting tribute ; 7 but Lieutenant Williams,' without attempting anything like the detail upon which Thomas loved to dwell, is almost equally successful in conjuring up the emotion. His lyrical use of proper names is unfailingly musical, and yet we never feel that they were chosen for their melody but always for the wealth of their associations. Last on our list of warrior singers comes Lieutenant Maxwell,' whose captivating rhymes, frankly comic extravaganza and parody in the straightforward style of The Ingold.sby Legends, were sung with applause in the ward- room of H.M.S. ` Arrogant ' on the night before she went into action at Zeebrugge. As we have heartily commended Mr. Binyon's war poems already, we need not now do more than call attention to the volume 0 in which we find them collected ; he sustains the dignity of his subject without effort, and dis- tinguishes unerringly between force and violence. We cannot say quite the same for last year's Newdigate prize poem," if only because the topic made some obvious allusions inevitable, but Mr. Lyon has infused a very creditable amount of originality into his treatment of them.
Sir William Watson's latest volume " affords us a convenient transition-ground to our next group of writers, for although a largo part of it deals with the war, the major poem from which it takes its name concerns the eternal conflict between the powers of darkness and light. The work shows no decadence from the sinewy strength of the author's previous achievements, his
[3s. 6d. net.)-(23) Triptych. By Elsa Lorraine. Oxford : 13. H. Blackwell. [3s. net.]-(24) Led Livvy. By J. S. Fletcher. London : Sidgwick and Jackson. [29. 6d. net.]-(25) The Dales of Arcady. By D. A. Ratcliffe. London : -E. Macdonald. [3s. ed. net.]-(26) The Harbingers. By E. C. Blunden. Framfield : G. A. Blunden.-(27) An Exile's Lute. By E. II. Harris. London : E. Macdonald. [38. 6d. net.]-(28) Lyrics of the Nile. By an Anglo-Egyptian Civil Servant. London : The Essex House Press. [7s. 6d. net.]-(29) Echoes from the Greek Anthology. By J. G. Legge. London : Constable. [2a. 6d. net.]-(30) Greek Songs in the Manner of Anacreon. Trans- lated by R. Aldington. London: The Epist. [2s. 6d. net.1-(31) The Poems of Anyte of Tegea. Same translator and publisher. [2s. net.]-(32) Images. Same author and publisher. [3s. 6d. net.]-(33)2°as. By Helen and Bernard Bosanquet. Oxford : B. H. Blackwell. [3s. ed. net.]-(34) Poems and Translations. By H. W. Finch. London : A. L. Humphreys. [5s. net.)-- (35) Wheels. Edited by E. Sitwell. Oxford : 73. H. Blackwell. [4s. 6d. net.] -(36) The Monthly Chapbook, No. I. Edited by 71. Monro. London : The Poetry Bookshop. [is. net.]-(37) The House of the Winds. By E. J. Brady. London : Harrap. [4s. &I. net.] 38) Dylan. By T. E. Ellis. London : Simpkin, Marshall. [5s. net.]-(39 ) In the Name of Time. By Michael Field. London : The Poetry Bookshop. • (43. net.]-(40) Collected Plays and Poems. By Gale Nouns Rice. 2 vols. New York : The Century Co. [7s. &I. net.]-(41) Earth and New Earth. Same author and publisher. [8s. net.] -(42) Trails Sunward. Same author, publisher, and price.-(43) Wraiths and Realities. Same author, publisher, and price. optimism is still unabated, and his younger rivals might well study his me of epithet and his well-judged condensation. Mr. Douglas " is busied with the same great theme, but he ° approaches it by a different route ; he attempts the Browning dramatic monologue, but not, we are afraid, with Browning's insight, and his rendering of the creed of Pacificism is remarkable rather for its energy than its persuasiveness. Mr. Martin " has a kindlier and braver gospel ; his poetry is essentially personal, but it expresses, sonietimes with rare distinction, feelings and desires for the elemental things that lie at the root of all life. With him we may class Mr. Roberts," whose gift is eminently lyrical, Mr. Foster-Melliar," Mr. Holmes," and Mr. Crow." Mr. Druce 19 looks at the universe more cynically than any of these ; he refuses to accept facile solutions of the old problems of good and evil, but he has, in our opinion, the truest poetic utterance ; there is an astringent quality in his verse and a command over his subject and his medium which make us look forward to his next production with much curiosity. The individual element is characteristic of Mr. Drinkwater's writings 2° also ; he presents points of view rather than dis- cussions, but more than Mr. Druce he has the faculty of entering into alien habits of thought, and his workmanship is, if possible, more carefully considered. More conventional and orthodox but equally sincere is the poetry of Miss Matheson," which is impregnated with the Christianity of love ; and the same spirit, with greater imaginative ornament but less intensity, is felt in The Tavern of Dreams.22 Triptych t' expresses emotion rather than thought, but we place it here on account of its intrinsic subjectivity ; its verse is symbolic and difficult, but it possesses the beauty of mysticism as well as its vagueness.
Mr. J. S. Fletcher is well known for his skill in handling the Yorkshire dialect in prose ; in Leet Livvy 24 he uses it to admirable effect in verse, unfolding a grim tragedy in one of the most powerful narrative poems we have read in the last decade. Miss Ratcliffe 25 celebrates the same country of the Dales in more literary but not less tuneful lyrics ; in her un- affected lines she captures the breeziness of morning on the open moorlands. Mr. Blunden n dwells lovingly on a more pastoral country, and Mr. Harris " rejoices in the mountains and legends of wild Wales. The Lyrics of the Nile take us further afield, but it is only the names that are foreign ; the rhetoric and the reasoning are very much like what we get from the younger and more enthusiastic Socialists at home.
Egypt brings us to Greece, and so to Mr. Legge's poems from the Anthology." He is faithful to his original in word and spirit, but in matching the " tightness " of the Greek with English equivalents he has, we think, imported a sense of con- striction from which loss literal translations are free. Mr. Aldington pleases us better : in his unmetrical versions of the Anacreontics so and the poems of Anyte " he is exact without being pedantic ; and in his original poems 32 he sings as a Greek might be supposed to sing who was taken from the Athens of Pericles and turned loose in the London of the County Council. Mr. Bosanquet's renderings of Goethe " are, we fear, rather those of a thinker and a scholar than a poet. Mr. Finch's translations," on the other hand, could take high rank as originals ; they are charmingly melodic, and (we may remark incidentally) their production does credit to their printer and publisher alike. Two new anthologies como next on our list for mention : Wheels,35 which is determinedly modern and wayward and contains some very remarkable poems by Mr. Sherard Vines, and The Monthly Clutpbook,36 in which no fewer than twenty-three contemporary poets, including Mr. Sassoon, Mr. W. H. Davies, Miss Rose Macaulay, and Mr. De La Mare are represented. To Mr. Brady," who follows stoutly in the Kipling tradition ; to Dylan,38 which is an interesting experiment in the use of irregular rhymed verse for dramatic purposes ; and to In the Name of Time,39 which is the last posthumous work of the two ladies who collaborated under ,tho name of " Michael Field," we can do no more than refer.
One author, an American, remainoo 41 42 43 Mr. Rice's fertility would entitle him to consideration even if the quality of his work wore low ; but the quality is high. It is seen at its best in his poetic dramas, which maintain an astonish- ing elevation and intensity of passion ; his blank verse never slips into pedestrian grooves ; but his visionary and philosophical poems are very nearly as fine. He has a thorough mastery of form, and, notwithstanding the ease of his verse, it is never mechanical or slip-shod. His facility is his danger• ; were he
content to " roll all His strength and sweetness up into one ball," he might become the Verdi of his art instead of approximating perilously to its Donizotti.
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