RECENT VERSE.* IT would be hard to find poets more

opposite in poetical temperament than the two who come first on our list. Mr. Binyon notinappropriately dedicates his new book to Mr.

.LAuguria. By Laurence Blnyon. London: William Heinemann.Pe. 6d. net. -(2) The Wine-Press Tole of War. By Alfred Noyes. London; W. Blue ood and Sons. [45. Sd. net.]-(3) Songs of Aphrodite, and other Pone. By Margaret Sackvillo. London: Elkin Mathews. 14x. 6d. net.]- - (4) Cor Cordium. By Alfred Williams. London Erskine Macdonald. [3s. 6d. net] (5) Cromwell, and other Poems. By John Drinkwater. London: David Nutt. [5a. net Poems. By R. C. Phillimore. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. [2. Oil net ] -(7) Lone Trium_phant, and other Poems. By R. Gorell Barnes. London: Longman* and Co. [a. 6d. not] -(8) In Oral, and Gold. By A. F. Gerald. Orford: B. H. Blackwell. [Is. net.]-(9) Songs in Soil, and other Chantors. By C. Fox Smith. London: Elkin Mathews. [1. net.J- (10) Breadond Circuses. By Helen Parry Eden. London:John Lane. [Ss. 6d. net] 111) Panora. Rr It S. Vere.Hodge. London: Max Goschen. [23. 6d. net.]-(12) and other Poems. By Bernard W. Henderson. Loudon: Robert Bridges, for he has much of the Laureate's exact scholarship and fine conscience. He calls it Auguries,' mean- ing thereby, as we read him, that be offers not robust and rounded verses, but guesses and half-caught visions," shadowy recollections," the work rather of a seer than a "maker." The eober melody of his verse is always perfectly attuned to his thought, and often it seems to attain the delicate insubstan• tiality of music :- " Strangeness of longing, beauty, pain!

I was aware Of all your secret, soft as rain.

In the dim air.

For life it was that sang aloud

To the lone dew, Brave in the night and sweet in the cloud; My heart knew."

For those who have the key to his secret world Mr. Binyon Is a singer with the true magic. He can give us wonderful silver-point pictures in town and country, where each detail contributes to the impression. "Thunder on the Downs," for instance, has the fidelity of a chapter of Richard Jefferies, and "The Tram" shows this lover of beauty an adept likewise at the grimmest ugliness. But the pictures are never drawn for their own sake, for the whole world to him is matter for his subtle meditations. His simplest verses carry a weight of thought. And though he is a searcher rather than a finder. one who is waiting till

"All this crust of sense shall break And the world of wonder pierce no through,"

yet there is a grave comfort in his quest. His faith is as sincere and resolute as Wordsworth's, and the close of " Malham Cove" is not only fine poetry, but true philosophy, Mr. Noyes in The Wine-Press' has selected several tales of horror from the Balkan War, which he uses as a text from which to preach a peace crusade to the nations. The book is full of his splendid rhetoric, his lilting and torrential rhythms, and his power of high-coloured picturesqueness ; but we cannot feel that he is completely successful. There can be no question of his furious sincerity; perhaps be is too much in earnest to escape the numerous pitfalls from which his Muse is always in danger. The real tragic irony of the situation with which he deals is the split among the Balkan Allies, but this seems to be less in the foreground than the ordinary horrors of war, which are not in themselves neces- sarily an argument for Mr. Noyes's gospel. It seems to us that, in spite of many fine things, the total effect of the book is unsatisfactory; the drama hovers on the edge of melodrama, and the pictures have something of the crude rapidity of a kinematograph.

Lady Margaret Ssckville and Mr. Alfred Williams make another interesting contrast. The firsts has little to learn so far as the mere literary side of her art is concerned. She is amazingly accomplished. A quick sense of beauty, the love of the best in literature, and a perfect ear for cadences give every line a curious perfection. She tells the old classical stories of Syrinx, Phaedra, and Orpheus, generally with some added subtlety ; and she has tales of her own, too, such as "The Victim " and "The Flight," which are remarkable for their imaginative strength. One or two of her lyrics, like " Quando veniret ver meum," are exquisite in fancy and music. Almost all that she has written is lovely, but nothing is quite final; the pieces have the air of exercises in moods from which the writer stands somewhat aloof. Technically, too, she is inclined to overuse certain beautiful and uncommon epithets till they become a little trite. Her fault, if it be a fault, is that she is too literary, too steeped in the thoughts and dreams of others, too apt to seek her material from art, so that what she gives us is rather a skilled version of an old theme than a new tale or song. Mr. Alfred Williams's Car Cordium,4 without a tithe of Lady Margaret Ssckville's skill, is impressive from its sheer sincerity. Here is a man who Methuen and Co. 12s. 6d. net1-(13) Strolloso.11ights. By Nora C. Usher The Author, 28 College Road, leleworth.-(14) Irish Poems B Katharine Tynan. London: Sidgerlok and Jackson. [3s. 6d. net ]-(L5) Madge Lisso, and other Poems. By lie ra Sigerson Shorter. Dublin : Manual! and Co. [1. not]-(16/ The Secret Hill. By Ruth and Celia Duffle. Same publishers and price.-(17) trishry. By Joseph Campbell. Same publiahen. [2a. ed. net] -(18) Broad-Sheet Ballads. With an Introduction by Pulraic Colum. Same publishers and price.- (19) The Hater. By W. G. Hole. London: Erskine Macdonald. (2a. 6d. net.]-(29) Schoen By Sir Donald MacAliater, K.C.B. Glasgow : I.MacLehose and Son. [2a. 8d. net.]-(21) Lyrics from the Chines.. By Helen WaddelL London: Countable and Co. [2. ed. net]--(22) Founded on PiCii011. By Lady Sybil Grant. London and Boon. [Ss. 6d. not.]- :23) Lanyard Lyrics. By R. P. Keigwiu. London Simpkins Marshall. and Co. [Be. 6d. anti-ISO) So Huse S. Amuse. By Wilfrid Blair. Oxford: B. H. Blackwell. [Ss. ad. net.] Writes because it is a joy to him to set down first-hand experiences. He has the courage to be old-fashioned in style. The autobiographical poems, " Hiatoria Cordis " and "Retrospection," suggest no writer more modern than Cowper. The serious manliness and good sense of these pieces are qualities so rare in the verse of to-day that when we find them they have a sort of exotic piquancy. The lyrics are real lyrics, sometimes trite, often jingly, but always suggesting music and dancing feet, and there are times when Mr. Williams wears with grace the mantle of the Jacobeans, as in "Blame you me ?" and " All things delight in sleep." Here are two stanzas as a proof of his quality :—

"All things delight in sleep, Morning to eve inclines,

Slowly the purple-woven shadows creep,

And heaven moves onward with its myriad signs Above the watery deep.

At noon among the hills, The shepherd makes complaint, At even, to the murmur of soft bells, Leads his flock downward to the valley faint With blowing daffodils."

Mr. Drinkwater and Mr. Phillimore provide still another pair of contrasts. Mr. Drinkwater,' whose admirable work we have often praised, is ardent, receptive, felicitous, and not too emulous of strange metres and odd conceptions. His music and his thought are alike of the centre. In poems such as "Sealed" and "Reckoning" he gives us lyrics which have not forgotten that melody is the essence of the lyrical, and such a picture as "In Lady Street" is wholly charming. His series of poems, "Cromwell," is less successful His blank verse is too languid to represent the stress of battle, and the rugged figure of the Protector is scarcely reproduced in his sedate and finished pictures. His paraphrase of Cromwell's words after Edgehill is really less poetical than the prose original Only in the closing scenes do we feel the grandeur of that epic career. But let us hasten to praise the "Epilogue "

"But if you are immoderate men, Zealots of joy, the salt and sting And savour of life upon you—then We call you to our counselling.

And we will hew the holy boughs

To make us level rows of oars,

And we will set our shining prows For strange and unadventured shores.

Where the great tideways swiftliest run We will be stronger than the strong, And sack the cities of the sun, And spend our booty in a song,"

Mr. Phillimore,' as Mr. Masefield points out in his introduc- tion, has the quality of personality. He is always interesting, even when be is crabbed and fantastic. Here is none of the ordinary buoyancy of poetry, but an odd critical faculty, quick to note the ironies of life, impatient of make-believe, but strong in a kind of saturnine happiness. It is bracing, anti- septic work, and we welcome his originality. "The Epic of Peat," "A Confession," and "Sir Breuse sans Pitie" are good examples of his talent; better still is the "Invocation to Milton," and the fine poem beginning "To us she was a beautiful thing." Another side of life, a gay, whimsical side, is to be found in his poems about children, "Dunwich," and especially " To all Land Children," where the point of view is true and uncommon :— " I would rather play with a conger-cel,

If only because such a beast can feel When I pinch his tail, than with all the flowers

That do nothing but grow through the livelong hours."

Mr. Gorell Barnes in Love Triumphant7 has for the chief motive of bis song the passion for immortality, which is exemplified in-his title-poem, and more beautifully in "Life." He has some good sonnets, and a stately ode, "To a Bank of Primroses," and he sings with grace and vigour such themes as coal and the express train. Mr. Gerald's In Gray and Golds is a pleasant collection of musical and cultivated verses, and in one, "The Reaper's Song," he achieves a haunting and uncommon melody. His sonnets, too, are excellent in thought and workmanship. It is idle to commend to readers of the Spectator the delightful songs of Miss Fox Smith. Her Songs in &fig are true chanties, with their outland rhythms and clear directness as of the singing voice. She has many notes: the eternal Wanderlust of " The Traveller" and "The Old Whale"; the far-away magic of " The Coast of Barbary "; the homesickness of " The Long Road Home" and "News from the North "; the delicate imaginative charm of "Romance " and " Ghosts in a Garden." In Miss Pox Smith's verses the fancy and the tune are alike wholly satisfying, and he must be a dull soul who does not for long carry these gypsy rhythms in his head. Mrs. Eden's Bread and Circuses" shows high skill in two very different forms—humour and satire on the one band, and a tender and subtle observation of childhood on the other. In the first vein we have " A Lady of Fashion on the Death of her Dog " and other topical skits, and the brilliant "To a Town Crier" and "The Vegetarian's Daughter." In the second there are the Betsey-Jane poems, all so delightful that we shall not particularize, and the poignant "Epitaph on a Child." To give further proof of versatility she prints a stately elegy. Mrs. Eden has many gifts, but not the least is her command of terse and epigrammatic verse, which bears an eighteenth- century polish :— "How pitiful you scan the vagabond

Who cries his ferns as though each arid frond Sprang from his arid heart, And list the lamentable sweep complain, Urging in wrath against the slanting rain

The sable of his cart."

Mr. Vere-Hodge in Pantoia" has many pleasant exercises in various modes, and one poem, " The Flying Man," which . is probably the first to tell in verse of any literary value of an aviator's experiences. In At Oxford" a distinguished historian abandons prose for verse which is permeated throughout with a sense of history brought into close touch with the present. "At Carlisle" is a good instance, and Mr. Henderson does not lack, as "Surrender" shows, a spice of honest wrath and wholesome satire. The Oxford which he draws for us is no fairy city, but a place of homely doubts and disappointments ; but both in his realism and his fancy there is a large and manly wisdom. Miss Nora Helices Swallow Flights" is a book of little lyrics, very simple and tuneful, and her poem on the death of the late King, " The Final Peace," is one of the best of the many tributes that we have seen.

Of the five Irish volumes on our list, " Katharine Tynan's " Irish Poems" stands first in accomplishment. She has few notes and many mannerisms, but in a peculiar limpid grace she has no equal. " The Green Ribbon," "The Ass Speaks," "Thanksgiving," and "Light" show at its best her gentle mysticism and the delicacy and chime of her rhythms. Beauti ful, too, are the memorial verses on George Wyndham :—

" Traveller from the realms of gold, Sidney's brother, Raleigh's twin, From this cynic world and old

Some strange jest bath placed him in,

Eldorado and the morn

Unto these he shall return."

We prefer some of the shorter pieces in Mrs. Sigerson Shorter's Madge Linsey" to the title-poem, especially such lyrics as " Build no Roof-tree " and " The Spies," and the fine ballad note of "The Nameless One." The authors of The Secret Hill" draw their inspiration, like "Moira O'Neill," from the glens of Antrim, and they have to the full that sense of loss and distance, that consciousnees of the unseen accom- paniments of life, which we find in the best Celtic poetry. "The Mad Mother's Song," "Mother of Exiles," "Little Things," " Padraig," and very especially "God's Fool," are fine in themselves and full of abundant promise. Mr. Joseph Campbell's /rishry is a set of sketches of types of occupa- tion and character in Ireland, done with insight and subtlety and with rare beauty of phrase. "The Cobbler," the three poems called " Priests," "The Orangeman," and " The News- paper-Seller," are cunningly etched portraits, in which every atom of detail tells, and the whole is lifted into poetry by some sudden dramatic word or cadence. Mr. Padraic Comm has done a good work in his Broad-Sheet Ballads," for he has saved from forgetfulness many great and delightful songs and given us authentic texts of some more familiar. There are all sorts—pastoral, amorous, bacchanalian, political, and the last are the best. Men of all parties may take pleasure in the manly and downright "Boyne Water," the stirring "Shan Van Vocht," the profoundly humorous " Peeler and the Goat," and the unforgettable " Wearin' o' the Green," surely the most haunting song ever inspired by politics.

There is only one drama on our list, Mr. W. G. Hole's The:. Master," which, as Mr. Stephen Phillips notes in his Introduc- tion, is more in the nature of a masque. It attempts to show the reception which Christ might have met at the bands of the Church in the seventeenth century—how all the clouds of doubt and suspicion which existed in Judaea must have been reproduced by the official guardians of the Christian faith. It is a. striking conception, elaborated with great reticence and power and a quick sense of beauty. Not the least dramatic element is the silence of Christ. Si Donald MacAlister has done well to reprint his Echoes,* in which he translates from and into Scots, Gaelic, German, French, Norse, Welsh Romani, and modern Greek. Before such a talent the unlettered critic can only how his head, but be can at least admire the skill of the German versions of Oliver Wendell Holmes and the delightful Scots verses. Sir Donald MacAlister writes the Doric with an ease and an idiomatic vigour which are all too rare to-day north of Tweed. Miss Waddell's Lyrics from the Chinese,° some of them dating from the twelfth century B.c., are interesting historically and not less interesting as poetry. She gives us the oldest drinking song in the world, an early version of Omar's philosophy of the rose, and a song of the rights of woman some centuries before the Christian era. How much is Chinese and how much the translator we do net know, but the poetic value of these little poems is very high.

Last on our list come three books of humorous verse. Lady Sybil Grant's Founded on Fictions' is a collection of modern Bab Ballads, skilfully rhymed and full of a not too recon- dite fun, the spirit of which is admirably caught by Mr. George Morrow's illustrations. Mr. Keigwin's Lanyard Lyrics° is concerned with the Royal Naval College, Osborne, and much of it may be occult to the general reader; but anyone can appreciate the vigour of the pieces and the ballad of Rugby football, " The Sport of Circum- stances," is one of the not very large list of good verses inspired by that noble game. Mr. Wilfrid Blair's Sa Muse S'Amuse a stands on a plane by itself. In a day when much good humorous verse is written Mr. Blair need fear few rivals. His parody of Stevenson, "An M.P.'s Garden of Verses," is delightful in its cool audacity and its exact echo of famous cadences. Admirable, too, is the series inspired by his friend "Thomas," especially "Tres See" ; the agreeable insanity of " The House on Holiday "; the cricket match done in the epic style ; Stalky's school-song in his maker's manner; and that masterpiece of ingenuity, " Potted Parnassus." We quote one stately sonnet, "Sartorial" "Dear Sir, yet once more must we pluck the pen,

And once more write you with fore'd fingers rude. Bitter constraint compels us to allude

To what has doubtless passed from out your ken, To wit, the Summer Snit i £5-10-0,

Supplied long since: for, till we emit intrude, We leave the droadless debtor unpursued, Being all-patient with our gentlemen.

The goods decay, the goods decay and fade; Ay, after many a summer even our Superior fabrics lose their pile and pass. Our patience passes, too: we must be paid Forthwith, Dear Sir ; else wholly from our power This goes into Another's hand. Alas !"