FROM THE HOME FRONT.*
The public stock of harmless pleasures has been so often enriched by Sir Owen Seaman that it is almost superfluous now to say anything further in his praise. The present collection of his verse displays all the familiar merits : a craftsmanship so elastic that it is adequate equally to the gravest and the lightest subjects, and so exquisite that it seems only natural and easy ; an urbane humour which twinkles and surprines continually but with so many modes of attack that the surprise is never antici- pated and forestalled ; an unerring taste in selecting from tine resources of his vocabulary the precise word appropriate in intensity and connotation to the idea it is needed to express. Slang and colloquialisms elide into their appointed places in hie stanzas, as apparently inevitably as if they grew there ; and the touch of the master-parodist, appears with explosive effect in slight, but diabolically ingenious, pen-erelong of time-honoured phrases to a novel sad ignominious service. We do not believe that Tennyson himself could forbear to chuckle if hesaw his own property masquerading in :-
'• A private citizen should never cheer,
Or drink delight of battle with his beer."
The author of Borrowed Plumes has proved frequently that his mastery of expression is not confined to the pedestrian aspect of life, but that, on a compelling occasion, he can treat a lofty subject with fitting dignity. His powers on this side are here worthily exerted in the lines " To the Memory of Field•Marehal Earl Kitchener" and on " The Soul of a Nation." From the latter (which were written in April, 1918, when it looked as if the • .Ras the How FIVOL Venom by Sir Owen Seaman. Lawton ottostobk. aoLl
German attempt to break through were on the point of success) we extract two quatrains :— " Thither our eyes are turned, our hearts are straining, Where those wo love, whoise courage laughs at fear, Amid the storm of steel around them raining, Go to thoir death for all we hold most doer.
. . 0 England, staunch of nerve and strong of sinew, Bost when you face the odds and stand at bay, Now show a watching world what stuff is in you! Now make your soldiers proud of you today ! "
Few men hare a better right thus to apostrophize England than Sir Owen Seaman himself. Under his leadership, Punch has lived manfully up to its finest traditions and lightened for every one the gloom of the years during which smiling gallantry alone could jest without offence.
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