Shorter Notices
IN his magazine New Verse, Mr. Grigson often used to insist that for poets "the world of objects is our constant discipline," or, as he says in the present introduction, the truest and deepest poets all have good eyes. The poems collected here are nearly all visionary in this meaning of the word, rather than mystical and passing beyond the world of sense. He believes that even in the poems of Blake and "those poets who incline in a superb way to unite only ear and thought . . . the way in which a bare word like 'hell' or 'tree' or 'green' may stir you with its emotion probably .derives from an earlier clear-sightedness." Whether this ig true or not, it was obviously an excellent idea to invite Mr. Grigson to make this kind of anthology, and readers of his recent selection, The Romantics, may well be surprised that once again he has managed to collect so many unfamiliar poems of great beauty. It is obviously a mis- take for the anthologist to try and discipline his personal prefer- ences, and this book, leaning rather heavily for some tastes on Crabbe and William Barnes, certainly. achieves a unity of its own ; though occasionally the magnificent passages from Dryden make some of Mr. Grigson's minor nineteenth-century poets look a little silly. The six poems by John Clare, some not previously printed, are exquisitely fresh, and the Auden, Hopkins, D. H. Lawrence and Yeats could not have been better chosen. Mr. Grigson's taste in moderns is so good that one would be glad of more, but presum- ably this would be difficult on grounds of expense alone. The hook includes such different " visions " as Whitman's prose description of wounded men under the moon, and Thomas Hardy's "A Thunderstorm in Town," which has all the period-charm of a
Sickert or of "The Beach at Walberswick." Befnre seeing the book, one might perhaps fear that the very originality of Mr. Craxton's talent would be too excessive for decorating an anthology, but, in fact, all the lithographs are successful and some beautiful. The production and lay-out of the book are admirable.
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