OVER THE BRAZIER.*

Mn. ROBERT GRAVES'S verses have a quality which renders them

memorable. Though in many ways they conform to the new fashions of literary attack, soon to grow old and conventional, they have a touch of true originality, both in the s yle and in the thoughts underlying the style. Mr. Graves is one of those lucky men who are able to see and describe things with a difference. His poems (1 he will pardon us for saying anything so appallingly commonplace) have all the faults of youth, but they have also a great many of its virtues.

He overstrains the note constantly, but, lucky poet 1 this does not matter in 1910. He is writing of the sounds and scenes of battle, and these almost compel a forced note. You have got to shout to make your voice heard above the din and rattle of the machine gun, the hoarse scream and whine of the shell, and the crescendos of the rest of the orchestra of death and destruction. If there is a fever in his spirit which sometimes makes him over-fierce, who can wonder that

A lad fresh from school, transplanted into the trenches, is thus affected ?

" When the Poles crash, and water is the world" (and that is no exaggerated picture of flooded trenches during a bombardment), how can the poet help dipping his brush in the colours of earthquake and eclipse ? The poem " It's a Queer Time," though not the best in the book, is one of the best, and gives exactly the atmosphere we are attributing to Mr. Graves :- "It's hard to know if you're alive or dead When steel and fire go roaring through your head.

One moment you'll be crouching at your gun

Traversing, mowing heaps down half in fun : The next, you choke and clutch at your right breast—

No time to think—leave all—and off you go . . . To Treasure Island where the Spice winds blow,

To lovely groves of mango, quince and limo—

Breathe no goodbye, but ho, for the Red West k It's a queer time.

You' re charging madly

somehow something gives and your feet drag. ti them yelling ' Fag ! ' W You fall and strike your head; yet feel no pain And find . . . you're digging tunnels through the hay In the Big Barn, 'cause it's a rainy day. Oh springy hay, and lovely beams to climb ! You're back in the old sailor suit again. It's a queer time.

Over the Brazier. By Robert Graves. London : The roetry Bookshop. (8d. net.] Lks.tbOrt. net.J

Or you'll be dozing safe in your dug-out- A great roar—the trench shakes and falls about— You're struggling, gasping, struggling, then . . . hullo Elsie comes tripping gaily down the trench, Hanky to nose—that lyddite makes a stench— Getting her pinafore all over grime. Funny ! because she died ten years ago ! It's a queer time.

The trouble is, things happen much too quick ; Up jump the Bosches, rifles thump and click,

You stagger, and the whole scene fades away :

Even good Christians don't like passing straight From Tipperary or their Hymn of Hate To Alleluiah-chanting, and the chime Of golden harps . . . and . . . I'm not well to-day . • .

It's a queer time."

In the case of poems like those before us quotation is better than criticism, and we shall therefore fill such space as the paper famine allows us with Mr. Graves's verse :-

" Tan SHADOW OF DEATH.

Here's an end to my art !

I must die and I know it,

With battle murder at my heart—

Sad death for a poet !

Oh -my songs never sung, And my plays to darkness blown I I am still so young, so young, And life was my own.

Some bad fairy stole The baby I nursed : Was this my pretty little soul, This changeling accursed ?

To fight and kill is wrong—

To stay at home wronger : Oh soul, little play and song, I may father no longer ! "

Equally good are " A Renascence " and " The Morning before the Battle," but we must leave our readers to find out these for them- selves, and also the haunting and fascinating though rather terrible nursery poems.

We shall take leave of Mr. Graves's book by quoting a strange and rather brutal poem, but one which has in it a touch of true pathos. It fascinates and is intolerable, but it will raise an echo in many a young man's heart. How fierce, and yet at the same time how fastidious, is the soul of the boy :—

" OH, AND On I

Oh, and oh !

The world's a muddle, The clouds are untidy, Moon lopsidey, Shining in a puddle. Down dirty streets in stench and smoke The pale townsfolk Crawl and kiss and cuddle, In doorways hug and huddle ; Loutish he And sluttish she

In loathsome love together press

And unbelievable ugliness.

These spiders spin a loathly woof !

I walk aloof, Head burning and heart snarling, Tread feverish quick ; My love is sick ;

Far away lives my. darling." J. ST. L. S.