Mr. Edmund Blunden has collected most of the verses he
has written since 1921, and the volume is published as English Poems (It. Cobden-Sanderson). They make a very good showing, and fill some hundred and twenty pages ; yet, as Mr. Blunden affirms, they are no " fruit of facility " :- " I strive for utterance. If half-ideas, verges of shadows and misty brightness, thus find their way into my story, I must often acquiesce, because I know by experience how such visitants come, and go, and often, however imperfectly visioned in the first place, do not return again save in low and dispirited murmurings."
We will allow ourselves the liberty of quoting one short poem before the book is sent for review :-
To JOY.
Is not this enough for moan
To see this babe all motherless - A babe beloved—thrust out alone
Upon death's wilderness ? Our tears fall, fall, fall—I would weep My blood away to make thee warm, Thou ne'er on earth host gone one step, Nor heard the breath o' the storm. How shall you go, my little child, Alone on that most wintry wild.
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