Poetry

The Cicadas and Other Poems. By Aldous Huxley. (Chatto and Windus. 5s.)

Snow. Poems by Humbert Wolfe. (Gollancz. 6s.) The Collected Satires and Poems of Osbert Sitwell. (Duck- worth. 8s. 6d.) Village Symphony and Other Poems. By Robert Gathorne- Hardy. (Collins. Os.) ALL the world's a variety stage, according to Mr. Aldous Huxley, and as our tickets are complimentary, we may greet every turn with ironical applause. Van Mogen Mogen, professor of mysteries, will conjure to our liking : we may choose rabbits or yards of ridiculous ribbon according to our philosophy or beliefs :

" Observe this hat, ladies and gentlemen ; Empty, observe, empty as the universe, Before the Head for which this Hat is made Was or could think." Beauty, despite spotlight and orchestral effects, is not what it seems : we yield but to another delusion :

" ' Divine, divine 1'

The god-intoxicated shout goes up. Divine Zenocrate ! '

Father,' the terrible infant's voice is shrill, Say, father, why does the lady wear no skirts ' "

Mr. Huxley has written little verse in recent years, but

he remains the enfant terrible of our age, insisting on an answer to his arch questions. His scepticism may well include the higher mathematics, but he gives science and the Devil their due in order that we may be disconcerted.

The pious reprove our pleasures by telling us that we are a pinch of dust ; Mr. Huxley checks our high-flown emotions by pointing out that chemically we are composed of " salt and iron, water and touchless air." In his formal and satiric use of classical mythology, Mr. Huxley seems to have returned to the eighteenth century, but his mockery has not the

harshness of the age of reason when French scepticism was a weapon of progress rather than the refuge of troubled hearts. Poetry, in fact, finds Mr. Huxley unarmed, and, taken unawares, he can indulge in romantic and modern regrets :

" Where are the gods of dancing and desire,

Anger and joy, laughter and tears and wine, Those other mysteries of fire and flame, Those more divine than Death's—ah, where are they ? "

The same note of romantic scepticism is to be found in Mr. Ilumbert Wolfe's poem on Diirer's " Praying Hands " :

" They are forgotten like the burnt moth, The old lost gods that no men use- Zoroaster, Moloch, Ashtaroth,

And Helene Zeus.

But Mr. Wolfe finds consolation in the supplicating hands of humanity and trusts the larger hope. Mr. Huxley respects the sonnet form and reserves for it his deeper emotions, his moods of melancholy. Mr. Wolfe, on the other hand, finds in the sonnet a modern ease and swiftness. He can juggle

with a double rhyme and take his lines in an imaginative stride :

" When birds were still at twilight in February I watched while rain was flogging Thames with looped And windy thongs, diagonally dull, How suddenly through gloom and sleet and flurry With motion, bright as torches, rose and stooped The Phoenix resurrections of a gull."

Comparison between these two books indicates that

modernism is really a matter ' of conflicting or divergent moods.

In his Collected Poems Mr. Martin Armstrong has happily given us dates, and it is interesting to note that imagination

has quickened in his later poems. His poem " Bugles " is surely modern enough in its exotic colouring :

" Mournful and clear and golden on the dusk The sudden fire of bugles. Fervid flights Of burning wings flash up from the dark hill Where like a growth of giant lilies glow The lighted tents."

He can write fancifully of the " cup that cheers," transport

us to Assam and Darjeeling's towers, dip a dainty spoon into the tea-caddy and find :

" Black and brittle shreds, as small As claws of sparrows."

But the basis of his inspiration is essentially English, and be never forgets the comforts of winter at home. " Miss Thompson goes Shopping", the delightful story of an old maid who clutched her purse and yet succumbed to the

horrible temptation of buying a new pair of slippers, is already on the way to popularity and fully deserves to be known by everyone. Mr. Armstrong may be regarded as a Georgian poet, yet one can find common ground between his work and that of Mr. Osbert Sitwell. " England

Reclaimed," which is included in this volume, takes us into demesnes where fountain Tritons still seem outlandish and landscape gardening gives new possibilities to English horizons. But Mr. Fred Nutch, Mr. Goodbeare, and his wife who washed clothes on Monday and baked conscient- iously on Tuesday are homely figures, despite the exotic analogies which the poet delights in discovering in the familiar. The satires are more direct, and one can sympathize with Mr. Sitwell's revolt against social insincerity and the stupid cruelty which is so often masked by politeness. But

free verse forms escape our memory, and the best of verse is always memorable in every sense of the word. Mr.

Armstrong, on the other hand, aids our poor memories and gives us lines to dance in our heads :

" Loudly, sweetly sang the slippers In the basket with the kippers."

There is no rusticity in Village Symphony, by the author of that interesting poem " John Donne Sits for his Portrait." Like Blake, Mr. Gathorne-Hardy can find Eden in an English back garden. His long poem, " Paradisus Dubitantis," is a poet's Erewhon, and it is typically modern in its satire, for the poet is accompanied on his mysterious journey by the incomparable spirit of Baron Munchau.sen, most joyous of liars ! Mr. Anthony Crossley prefaces his Tragedy Under Lucifer with a lengthy and stimulating " Defence of Modern Poetry." His poem takes place in a forest of Phrygia between Latmus and the sea, but Mr. Crossley as yet keeps to the beaten track of song, despite his theories, and has not ventured

into the thickets. Mr. Max Eastman, the American poet, tells us that modern verse must deal with :

" The stark equation, the quick theorem, The mind's electric," but he neglects Euclid and Edison for the more conventional roses and raptures of song. Electric shocks, however, abound in " Firehead," an immensely long poem by Miss Lola Ridge. The subject of this American poem is Calvary, but it is no more religious than the highly coloured Crucifixions of the Baroque period in art. Its tactile imagery reminds one of D. H. Lawrence. At times is seems extraordinarily good, and at times very bad.

AUSTIN CLARKE.