POETS AND POETRY.
A GOOD BEGINNING.* Ma. PETER QUEMCELL is the youngest of the seven poets whose work has this year appeared for the first time in Georgian Poetry. He has, I believe, but just left his public school. The son of the joint authors of that most charming of studies, The History of Everyday Things, he shows every promise of becoming that significantly rare being the distinguished child of distinguished parents. Most of the verse in the volume which the Golden Cockerel Press has just issued is already familiar to those who, like the present writer, consider themselves as poetical tipsters. Some of it has appeared through such channels as Public School Verse, the Oxford Fortnightly and the Spectator. But now that we see Mr. Quennell's work in quantity it appears much more considerable than it did in isolated fragments. Much of it is exceedingly odd, much of it a little absurd, but none of it dull or dusty.
He has a freshness of outlook and touch and a power of taking the reader with him into his strange world which are marks of the true poet. He is also intensely individual, and this makes his already rather difficult atmosphere the harder to catch. The Masque of the Three Beasts and The Masque of the Thin Horses are, one would imagine, early works ; they have an oddity which is engaging in its simplicity, but on the whole these two show much less promise than the lyrics. There is even a faint flavour of The Young Visiters about them which is wholly absent from the other compositions.
The following poem, with its touch of autobiography, is interesting. The general sense will, perhaps, seem at first sight a little difficult to catch hold of. This is a pity, as it takes away from the first emotional impact which the poem ought to produce though not from the effects which follow after the reader has given it some consideration.
" While I have vision, while the glowing bodied, Drunken with light, untroubled clouds, with all this told sphered sky, Are flushed, above trees where the dew falls secretly,
Where no man goes, where beasts move silently,
As gently as light feathered winds that fall
Chill among hollows filled with sighing grass,
While I have vision, while my mind is borne A finger's length above reality, Like that small pfgiofug bird that drifts and drops Among these soft lapped hollows, Robed gods, whose passing fills calm nights with sudden wind, Whose spears still bar our twilight, Bend and fill wind-shaken, troubled spaces with some peace, With clear untroubled Beauty, That I may live, not chill and shrilling through perpetual day, Remote, amazed, larklike, but may hold The hours as firm, warm fruit, This finger's length above reality."
The epithets, " Remote, Amazid, Larklike," are exactly applicable to Mr. Quennell's present work.
All lovers of poetry will sincerely wish him the perception which he here solicits. It must for a year or two remain a question whether the beautiful clear treble of Masques and Poems will be succeeded by a more permanent note. But even if the man, instead of acquiring the desired further • Masques aad Poems. By Peter QuennelL The Golden Cockerel Press, Waltham fiaunt Lawrence. Berkshire. 17. &I new insight, sees the vision fade into the light of common day, the youth will still have left work of great and uncommon beauty
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