Seagulls, and other Poems. By Enid Welsford. (G. P:Putnam's Sons.
4s. net.)—This volume, with its thousand or so lines, i3 the work of a child. Children sometimes echo the voices they have heard with extraordinary accuracy. Such verse we have here front time to time. But we have more. We have in " The Nursery King" a piece of genuine, ringing fun, not at all a common effort of juvenile genius., which loves for the most part factitious melancholy. We have, too, what semis to us the most remarkable thing in the volume, the "Legend of Evening." A mother tells her daughter the story of Trafalgar :- "'Twos a bitter price to pan dear, 'Twits a bitter thing to buy ;
But they bought the sea with their blood, dear, And a home in the far-off sky." The thought haunts the child.
" The question she ne'er ceased asking, What can I do for the deep ? "-
till she wanders down to the shore and is drowned. That looks like a genuine glimpse into a child's mind. Many children have such fancies, but they commonly lose them when they begin to read. There are many mute Miltons under four; one who keeps the early. power of fancy may well prove a real genius.
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