POETS AND POETRY.

MR. NICHOLS' " AITRELIA." t

Mn. ROBERT Nicaoas' virtues are many. Oftener than his reader has a right to expect—for every poet has a fixed allow- ance of failures per successful set of verses—he achieves lim. pidity, perfect poetic fusion. In a great deal of the poetry that

• The Foolish Lovers. By St. John G. Ervine. London : Collins. 178. 6d. uet.] t Anrelia. and other Poems. By Robert Nichols. London : Chatto and Windus. [53. net.]

we are quite ready to enjoy the thought and the medium are still distinct. Throw a pinch of salt into a tumbler of water, and for a moment the grains sink visibly ; there is salt, there is water, but in another moment there is salt-water. Mr. Nichols' The Sprig of Lime " and " Night Rhapsody " are salt-water.

They and some fragments of other poems approach perfection. Therefore it is that Mr. Nichols' work must be judged by abso- lute standards. When a poet has attained to a certain mastery we can no longer soothe our aesthetic consciences by saying that his work is marvellously good for, say, a first-lieutenant or a bombardier, excuses with which the critic—sated with blood—is apt to whitewash the lenient judgments of laziness. We must begin to ask ourselves why each particular poem misses perfection. We must inquire why, though we read and re-read an individual poem, the grains are still visible, what quality is it that keeps them in suspension.

What are Mr. Nichols' faults ? They are many and diverse.

Sometimes the difficulty is that his grains of salt belong to somebody else. For example, in " The Deliverer," as they sink down to the bottom of the tumbler, they spell " John Masefield" and " Lascelles Abercrombie." In the sixteenth sonnet to Aurelia, the legend is Rupert Brooke." There has been very little assimilation. We can find the very sonnet " Helen and Menelaus IL"— " And you poor drivelling, disregarded crone, Bide blinking at memory between drowsy fits."

" Oft she weeps, gummy-eyed and impotent."

A different fault is his ability to write slovenly verse. For example, in " Two „Friends, Two Nights," the thought is a sound one, but it has not been hammered out. He has been content with a poem before it was half forged. The fault is not in individual lines, but in conception. Perhaps the key to this trouble lies in a certain vanity, a certain egotism which Mr. Nichols displays naively enough in some of his poems. Every now and then he produces the impression of flinging a piece of work at the reader and saying, "This is a poem by Robert Nichols ; read and be thankful." It is a fault of taste, for it is arguable that no one human being is much more egotistical than another ; merely some men have grace or skill enough to hide the long ears of our common nature.

Lastly, he has too little sense of humour, the fair blossom of a sense of proportion. Satire in his hands might, the reader imagines, become invective—it would never become banter. It might be terrible, but it would not be amusing.

But all these are the faults of youth, and, with some of its faults, Mr. Nichols has all of its virtues. He is adaptable, he is re- sourceful, he is restlessly eager to try new methods, to pour his soul into an unaccustomed vessel. He has force, eloquence, fire, and passion, and he has a terribilitet which will remind the reader of Donne, in whose work Mr. Nichols has obviously steeped himself, though he does not imitate him.

He has considerable power of characterization. For example, the charming conversation in the present volume between the poet and his friend, Mr. Robert Graves, called " Winter Over- night." He seems to have got Mr. Graves' point of view exactly. One of the best war poems he ever wrpte is included in the present volume, " Burial Party at Passchendaele." It is in its way a masterpiece in the manner which his earlier work and that of Mr. Sassoon made familiar to us.

Very different, again, is " The Flower of Flame," in the first two verses of which we have—to pursue our original analogy— another salt-water poem, one in which fusion is perfect :- " As round the cliff I came alone

The whole bay bared its blaze to me ;

Loud sung the wind, the wild sun shone, The tumbled clouds fled scattering on, Light shattered on wave and winking stone."

We have already -paid our homage to Mr. Nichols' " Sprig of Lime," with its beautiful elegiac note and eloquent felicity of phrase. Perhaps some readers may feel that the later " Night Rhapsody " is almost more exquisite :—

How beautiful it is to wake at night, When over all there reigns the ultimate spell Of complete silence, darkness absolute, To feel the world, tilted on axle-tree, In slow gyration, with no sensible sound.

Unless to ears of unimagined beings, Resident incorporeal or stretched

In vigilance of ecstasy among

Ethereal paths and the celestial maze. The rumour of our onward course now brings A steady rustle, as of some strange ship

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Darkling with soundless sail all set and amply filled By volume of an ever-constant air, At fullest night, through seas for ever calm, swept lovely and unknown for ever on.

How beautiful to wake at night, Within the room grown strange, and still, and week And live a century while in the dark The dripping wheel of silence slowly turns."

There never lived a poet who would not have been proud to have written such lines. They have achieved completeness, they have an independent life of their own. The world is the richer for a fragment which has the perfection of growth and the aspiration of art.