It is not an enviable thing to be the child
of a famous person, for such an inheritance can weigh down the second generation with. a sense of deadly finality. Miss Viola Meynell has Rot succumbed. She stands as an individual on her own feet. The Frozen Ocean, her new book of poems (Martin Seeker, 78. 6d.) is the work of a true and inspired artist. Her vision is original and far-carrying, .and she has the hard- won faculty of expressing it in simple verse. She says, for instance, of the whale, that :-
" So distant were his parts that they Sent but a dull faint message to his brain. He knew not his own flesh, as great kings may Not know the farther places where they reign."
These poems are not mere presentations of personal emotions. Imagination, that glorious power which moves unrelated to our poor experience, burns in Miss Meynell's work. Such a poem as " Arab Love " soars right out of the self of the writer, and has a racial genius. Here is a stanza.
" He had a young man's melancholy . Some grave days that rose.
He had craft and guile for an enemy—
When one came close; He looked not at the shining lance In his foe's right hand, But kept his subtle stolen glance For its shadow on the sand."
The whole book is worth quoting ; but we can do no more than heartily recommend it. By some coincidence, a selection of her mother's poems comes from the Nonesuch Press (8s. 641.).
Alice Meynell has been claimed as a great poet by many important critics, from Ruskin to Chesterton. We have no need to paint the rose. Enough to wonder how that fine artist kept her spirit so sensitive through a life of constant overwork as a journalist, and through the bearing and upbringing of eight children.
• * *
Previous page
