HUMANI NIHIL . . .

A DISTINCTION is often made between those poets whose poetry is their central work and those with whom it is a by-product. Dr. Gogarty, full though his life has been, does not need to shelter behind it. Athlete, practising physician, Senator, and wit, he has written a poetry which these activities spontaneously nourish : a poetry natural, gay, direct, and full of feeling, the be;t of which will stand-up well in-any company. — This needs;_ernp)iisis-beeatise;.desPiWthilitigU' it feCqi)iitinen- dation with which the book comes to us—Mr. Yeats calls Dr. Gogarty "one of the great lyric poets of our age "—there , is still a suggestion that here is the work of a gifted amateur. Mr Horace Reynolds, in an amusing introduction, present, the poet to us as a character, almost as a card, and there is in the poems themselves a misleading simplicity, a casual ';air, which can easily hide' the cool, supple structure of brain-work and craftsmanship beneath. It was Idft to A. E. to disciii•er and describe the poet's quality : "I take so much pleasure in my friend's poetry because it is the opposite to my own. It gives to me some gay and gallant life which was not in my own birthright. He is never the professiona4 ktoet made dull by the dignity of recognised genius. He has never hWe a business of beauty ; and, because he is disinterested in his dealings with it, the Muse has gone with him on his walks and revealed to him some airs and graces she kept secret from other lovers who were too an shy or too awed by her to laugh d be natural in her p My first respects to the poetry of Dr. Gogarty were paid fifteen years ago, when, an enthusiastic anthologist, I found to my delight, in an American magazine, the following unpre- tentious verses :

EARTH AND SEA.

It does me good to see the ships

Back safely from the deep sea main ; To see the slender mizzen tips,

And all the ropes that stood strain ;

To hear the old men shout "Ahoy," Glad-hearted at the journey's end, And fix the favourite to the buoy, Who had the wind and sea to friend ; To meet, when sails are lashed to spars, The men for whom Earth's free from care, And Heaven a dock with certain stars, And Hell a word with which to swear.

Here is much that is characteristic : simplicity, humanity, sense of light and colour, a pleasant, shirt-sleeved ease, and something rarer, which for want of a better name I. must call accuracy. They appear in a score of poems Reflection, which tells of a canal voyage, The Mill at Naul, To My Portrait by Augustus John, the well-known Non Dolet, and many another. But the poet has deeper- notes, is in the -opening to the fine Aeternae Lucis Redditor, an address to Robert Yelverton Tyrrell:

Old Friend, long dead, who yet can thrive .

More in my heart than men alive Because in you the flame lived more Than ever since the days of yore When, everywhere that Rome was known, The post-triumphal silence shone, And in the vespertinal hush The trumpets yielded to the thrush : Because those days you could restore

Aeternae lucis Redditor.

And in the ending :

'Twat you and me and me and those Irremeable the River flows Since we beheld with joy and awe The light by which blind Homer saw.

And not aiam in this our time - Shall sound magnanimous the rhyme ; The wolves have torn our pleasant folds, And the Great Wall no Icingef holds:

• But Love can bridge-the Stygian shore, Aeternae lucis Redditor.

In fact, it will not do, to take the poetry of this witty man arid -Wiakea: parOdisl,:as he empts us to take it in his lines - - upon- Petronius Arbiter.

Proconsul of Bithynia, • Who loved to turn the might to day, Yet for your ease had more to show Than others for their push and go. Teach us to save the soul's expense, • And win to Fame through indolence.

• Whatever fame these poems win, it will not be throi ,gh ' indolence. That is the one pose of which Dr. Gogarty is • guilty. I have long admired his poetry. It is, I think, a little on the near side of greamess : but here, id bulk, and with the' addition of his- latest "work, it "shOWs 'the that rtoo had • I - fallen into the trap, and underestimated it. _ . _ . _ _ _ L. _A. G. STRONG.