VERSE, AMERICAN - AND ENGLISH,

THE American lecture habit has brought together the. oet and his listeners in a way of which Walt Whitman, neglected in is own day, only dreamed. Mr. Vachel Lindsay has lectured *d recited in endless towns, colleges and Universities in the United States. He has tramped across that great continent with " Rhymes to be traded for Bread " as a wandering scholar of the Middle Ages. The poems by which he became known here, some years ago, actually express a collective feeling : our phrase " Dear Reader " has become with him - " Dear Audience."

These Collected Poems are of fascinating interest. Their metre, though syncopated, is direct and forcible ; rhyme is used for emphasis ; their best effects are attained by sound rather than image. Their primitive appeal and sincerity have been mistaken by the sophisticated as humorous in intention. But the well-known " General Booth Enters Heaven " and " Daniel " actually express the collective religious impulses of simple people. This has been sung powerfully by Mr. Lindsay in his " Congo "

"Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room, Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable, Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, Pounded on the table, Beat 'an empty barrel with the handle of a broom, Hard as they were able,

Boom, boom, BOOM.

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BooM.—A deep rolling bass. THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision.

I could not turn from their revel in _derision.

THEN I SAW THE CONGO CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK, More delibmne.

CUTTING THROUGH-THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK."

-Solemnly chanted.

- The game poems and the dance poems (which 'recall the origin of the ballad) have been performed in experiment by various societies ; and the College " Yells," if they are less " spontaneous, show a growing endeavour to make poetry practical and public once more. The only public form left to us, the ode, has become academic owing to lack of an actual audience. Mr. Lindsay's poem, " Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan," with its' realism, its clamour of the hustings, its general emotion of electioneering. Such a poem might well turn a campaign in favour of a candidate.

Popularity has its dieadvintages, and Mr. Lindsay, having become associated by report with ragtime and humour, protests—perhaps in- vain—against -his fate, 'for hE is an -artist with a mission-Of beauty. In his 3OVeliest poem, " The Chinese Nightingale," all the richness of the East blossoms in simple but strangely haunting refrains such as :— "4 Spring came on forever, Spring came on forever,'

Said the Chinese..nightingale."

The poem expresses that strong Oriental influence in modern American poetry which 'is understandable in a country that looks from the last West, across the Pacific to the rising sun. But it is the spiritual content of Mr. Lindsay's work that is .least known and which is manifest in this collected edition. In vision he has a distinct leaning towards Swedenbor- gianism ; in symbolic drawings or "'hieroglyphics," illustra- tive of certain poems, he .recalls Blake. He sees-Springfield, Ohio, the city of his birth, illumined by: an inner or prophetic ;light.

The dangers of the apocalyptic mood are obvious, yet in his zeal the poet is perhaps truly racial : in the sweep and :surge of his emotions, in his fine enthusiasms, exuberance, _courage, be comes, like a-keen wind from the prairies, to make .us tingle with new rhythms.

- Coach into Pumpkin adds a notable volume to The Yale Series of Younger Poets." Not all readers will like Miss Dorothy Reid, but there is no question about her cleverness. She is a romantic, inveighing with rapier wit against the "dry-as-dust Professor and ".Miss Matter of Fact." But she is modern to the core, and, while mainly preoccupied with the subtleties of love, has no use for sentimentality and etherealization. In " Idol " she rejoices unashamedly in the feet of clay, and " To An Idealist " expresses her scorn for the passion that is too insubstantial to have reality at all:

" I know you love me, yes, That wasn't what I meant.

Love me a little less And I will be content.

I cannot look above, Or glance below my feet Or round me, but your love Encircles me complete.

So high it cannot hear, So wide it cannot touch— If I should disappear It wouldn't matter much ! "

This little poem is thoroughly typical of Miss Reid's caustic irony and neat economy of technique.

Mr. Chard Smith, another American poet, is of austerer mood and more traditional in style. The major part of his book is filled by a sonnet-sequence in memory of his wife. Before such grief as is here celebrated, criticism can only bow silently. The following chwacteristic sonnet may, however, be allowed to speak for itself :—

" There was a time I was afraid to die, And though I knew there was a soul in me Immortal as the starlight on the sea, I dreaded earth beneath me and the sky. But now my love has gone before and found That altar where no symbols rise between Our wedded souls : I loathe my fleshly screen, And suddenly am homesick for the grave.

She waits, with all our dreams for wedding host, Beside that altar, while my love breaks through Wall after wall of fear, until we two.

Touch eyes across the sea, from coast to coast. I stand here at the brink I dreaded most ; For I can do the thing that she could do."

Mr. Martineau is essentially British. His book is dedicated to that " Incomparable Sportsman, the English Preparatory Schoolboy," and his jolly, lilting songs of the classroom and the cricket-field will appeal equally to youngsters and to those who are growing " gouty of foot and rheumatic of shoulder." Here are his " infallible " instructions for making " Paper Darts "

" It's fine to make a paper dart !

I'll show you, if you'd like to see : Fold the sheet double for a start, Turn in the corners evenly.

Then turn again—a double fold—

And press that down—you see the wings

Bend them both outwards; then you hold

The centre part ; you'll find that brings The two wings level ; smooth them flat :

Now lift it just a bit, and throw— Not quite so hard, but—just like that

You've only got to let it go . . . That's jolly fine ! Look how it flies, And inks old Simpkin's exercise 1 "