The Definitive Edition of Rudyard Kipling 's Verse. (Hodder
and Stoughton. _25s.) -
Trus--surely rather expe_nsive--collected edition of Rudyard Kipling's verse has made a "positively last appearance." The excuse is a batch of two dozers poems previously excluded. Pre- sumably some of these were excluded by Kipling himself—" Ave Imperatrix," which was written when he was a schoolboy, and "Private Ortheris's Song," and there is no reason why the_author's wishes should not have been followed. It is fantastic, too, to include a one-line epitaph, "We have served- our day," from the Hall of the Institute of Journalists among the collected poems, and the massive volume of his bad work need not have been increa-ed by such a repulsive poem as "The Waster." But when these criticisms have been made the new edition justifies itself by twa magnificent occasional poems (and as an occasional poet no one has been Kipling's equal since Tennyson), the lines on King George V's Jubilee, and the ode for the Melbourne Shrine of Remembrance:
"Thronging as cities throng to watch a game, Or their own herds move southward with the year, Secretly, swiftly, from their ports they came, So that before half earth had heard their name Half earth had learned to speak of them with fear."
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