Unheard Melodies

"Ix April of this year," writes Mr. Victor B. Neuberg in his Foreword to Symphony for Full Orchestra, "I was invited by the Sunday Referee to . become its Poetry-Editor. That paper," he continues, "proposed to be so original as to encourage verse-writing, and—if the Muse willed—to find new Poets, though Poets well-known were not to be excluded." Why, however, the Sunday Referee, having made this decision, chose Mr. Neuberg to approach the Muse on their behalf remains obscure. The Muse, in any case (or so it would appear from the results), was not at home, and those of the well-known poets who were not excluded must surely have been a trifle below form to have been bested by Miss Pamela Hansford Johnson for the honour of being the first Sunday Referee poet to receive publication in book forin. Mr. Neuberg', however, felt no such misgivings. "Poets realized," he tells us proudly, "that intelligent and professional interest (my italics) was being taken in their work ; and—as a coping merit—the work sent in was unprecedentedly good." So here is Symphony for Full Orchestra, the first, it is hoped (by Mr. Neuberg), of a long series of works by poets who win prizes in the Sunday Referee. And with this Mr. Neuberg bursts into professional praise of his first "find," in terms whose succulent nonsense is equalled only by the oddity of their syntax : "Facilely one could write panegyric upon Miss Johnson's work. I prefer to leave the reader to `.take it in heshe's own manner. If the reader be poet, or poet-lover, heshe will not easily let fade from memory this, her first book. . '• • To opulence of texture and a vigilant and fastidious tonality Miss Johnson adds a swift and pastern° colour-sense ; light in quality, with an undertone of tragicness. Her work seems to me, in a pluase, inevitably beautiful. Never lacking is that grey-peacock-like harmoniousness that certain picture-poetry brings as its Muse-dower. It is as a picture-poet that Miss Johnson has succeeded perfectly in recording the ' findings ' of a word-sense that reveals the perfectly-attuned ear. Be it noted, there is never a strain-sign ; every cadence felts in "abeo: lute and final appropriateness ; if Poetry be 'profundity made clear to the receiver' Pamela Hansford Johnson succeeds com- pletely as a Lyric Poet."

Poor Miss Johnson She has a lot to live up to, and it will not be wholly her fault if an odd " heshe " or two allows her first book to fade from memory a little quicker than Mr. Neuberg anticipates. For there are, in fact, only two state- ments in her patron's Foreword which are both intelligible and true : one is "Pamela Hansford Johnson's poems are now before the reader " ; and the other, "the quality of her work will surely be obvious to those who love poetry."

Equally obvious to the discerning, I am afraid, will be the quality of Miss Brittain, Miss Gibbons, Lord Gorell and Mr. Tessimond. Miss Brittain, it will be remembered, was the author of Testament of Youlk a successful prose work, and she modestly disclaims any special distinction in her verses. "They are published chiefly," she -explains, "for those readers Of Testament of Youth who have asked me where they can obtain

my long-defunct little volume, Verses of a V ..4.D." It would have been better if Miss Brittain had turned a deaf ear to these

enquiries. For the verses themselves, though innocent tnough as . juvenilia, display all the vices of adoleseent

poetics : sentimentality, romantic vagueness and an embarrass- ingly personal reference. A private drawer, not a bookshelf, was the proper place for them.

Miss Gibbons is almost equally diffuse, though more restrained and less private than Miss Brittain. Her weak- nesses are those of countless other writers with the intentions but not the equipment of a poet : over-simplicity, the inability to escape worn-out metaphors and symbols, and a complete lack of any rhythmic subtlety. Her poems, charming as, I am sure, many people will find them, abound in facile contrasts and too easy echoes ; and at her worst she can write :

"Now is the delicate time of the year

When buds are uncovered and roses appear, To nod in the gardens and dance on the sprays That grace the green hedges along the wild ways."

Lord Gorell also has paid too much attention to the poetry of the Past and too little to that of the present, and his verses carry a curiously archaic air about them. Domestic, tra- ditional and rather psalm-like, they are clearly the work of a Public School Man whose test of a poet's quality is nearly, if not quite, his record in the Great War. A notice on the jacket refers to the poet's markedly English "character and men- tions specifically his landscape," but beyond a great deal of talk about English voices, English scents (including fox ?) and an occasional reference to the Sussex Downs, there does not seem very much justification for this opinion.

Mr. Tessimond has little in common with the preceding yoets. Where they are traditional and derivative, he is modern and modish ; where they are sentimental, he is psycho- logical and slick. His imagery, unlike theirs, is more his own than another's, but none the better for it since, like theirs, it is imposed from without, not sprung from within. There is, in fact, nothing to choose between the naïf self-conscious intel- lectuality of :

"Stairs fly as straight as hawks ; Or else in spirals, curve out of curve, pausing

At a ledge to poise their wings before relaunching.

Stairs sway at the height of their flight Like a Melody in Tristan ; "

and the nag un-self-conscious emotionality.of Miss Brittain's :

"They come again, strange ghosts of days long dead, Wreathed with the shadowy joys that once we knew When withered hair was gold, and pale lips red."

It is only a question of two different ways of not writing poetry.

I. M. PARSONS.