MR. FRANK TAYLOR.
[To THE Earns Or THE ''SrECTATor.n
Sis,—One of your readers does indeed "learn with sincere regret" of the death of Mr. Frank Taylor. Those who knew him personally will feel grateful to Miss D. K. Broster for her fine appreciation of his gifts of mind and character, while others who, like myself, knew him only through his poetry will fully share her sense of the loss to English literature through his all too early death. His lines on d'Artagnan, published in the Spectator of May llth, 1912, are an excellent example of the "felicity" of thought and phrase to which your correspondent refers. The same felicity and "spirit" are very apparent in his sacred poem of 1905. The subject was "Esther," and Mr. Taylor's treatment of it is strikingly original. I hope it may have been included in his recent volume, which I have not seen. If you have room for a quotation, the three stanzas describing Esther herself and the decree of King Ahasuerus are a good sample of the verve and vigour of the whole poem :—
" Not mine to set the battle in array,
Not mine to move sublime amid the spears, I might but attire as all weak women may,
Smiles for my sword, and for my buckler, tears ; I had scant language save the tender sigh, The laugh of dalliance, and love's broken cry. • Like the far moaning of the rain-storm's breath, Like the low wailing of long, winter seas,
The murmur of a lone race, marked for death, Sobbed upward from a hundred satrapies, 'Upward to me in this close harem mewed, Dwelling apart in splendid solitude. . .
The God before whose presence Esther bends, He is the God by whom this Empire rose ; The friends of Esther are the Great King's friends, The foes of Esther are the Great King's foes; Ye that were servants to the Agagite, Look to yourselves ! Up, Judah, now, and smite I "
I can only say again that many besides myself must have read Miss Broster's letter with most sincere regret.—I am, Sir, &c., W. H. SAYILE.
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