ONCE UPON A TIME

Poems. By Vernon Knowles. (Gardner, Barton. 5s. net.)

" I HAVE a pig and want a cow ; you have a cow and want a pig; let's exchange." To express some such simple story, as

that, was (if we are to believe our romantic historians) the first purpose of words. And occasionally, in these complex days, a healthy mood comes over us when we still declare

that the most and best that words can do is to tell a story ; for that they were made ; and the rest is worse than silence-- it is a vain groping in the dark. What philosophy is there, what morality, that is not best conveyed in the similitude of a tale ? So, at least, the Wise Men of the world have held : and they have been content to wrap up their wisdom in a coloured parable : it is only the impatient and foolishly sophisticated Disciples Who cry, " Master, show unto us the meaning.... 12

And those inquisitive Disciples were rapidly becoming the type of our age. We have come all too near to losing the Clear single-mindedness that can content itself with a tale. We leave such things to children ; and even they too soon grow scornful of such simplicity. The magic had all but gone out of the words, " Once, once upon a time. . . ." Theories are all we ask ; theories, and yet more theories. Even the " best " novels are little better than theses on This and That. And poetry, having thrown over the epic, is wasting itself in soul-burdened lyrics.

Judge my pleasure, then, to find that four of these five books of poetry dare to put their philosophy in story-form. If these books are to be taken as signs of the times, Shen-it is the poets who arc going to conduct its back to health and sanity. They have not forgotten after all, it appears, that

the best of us is childlike,. and that the sincerest request we can make of them is, " Tell us a tale ! " But this return to the story-form argues, I think, something else. It is easy to cultivate theories: ' They will sprout with alarming rapidity

at the least coaxing. But successfully to objectify experienee in the likeness of a story demands that the experience be burningly sincere. It implies that you have been true to your- self ; whereas theories usually imply that you have been true to everybody, except, Yourself; The Sitwells, particularly Miss Edith, have always shown a belief that the first purpose of words was the best : Mr. Osbert sometimes escaped into 'satire, and Mr. SaCheverell into emotional lyricism, but Miss Edith has never been afraid of a simplicity of , pitre story that came near to fairy-tale. An altogether admirable instance of this daring simplicity is provided in Widow Styles, one of the narrative lyrics in this present volume. It is as individual as ever—with that

individuality of expression that seems so easy to imitate, but so sorely betrays the imitator ; it seizes, on every occasion,

the alarmingly accurate word ; and bravely it withholds the insult of a moral. Poor Yourig People, joint compilation as it is, might well be taken as somewhat in the nature of a fiat ; it reveals the capabilities of- the -" Sitwell tradition," and

shows just how far it has develiiied to date. All three have thrown away so much of the crust of superficial meaning that has accumulated round words that in their hands they seem to show naked, sinuous, with something of their original strength.

Mr. Gibson, too, knows the appeal of a story. With him the shortest lyiic Must Piave -drama in it ;* and the longer of his poems are akin to ballads. I suppose, had he been born before the days of the printing-press, bad he been born when Song was not the conscious art that we kizioiv if to be, he would have been a poet of the people, composing another Two Sisters .o' Binnorie, another Lord Randal. Seldom are his poems purely descriptive, and when they are he contrives to give them just the twist of drama that' appeals to the pure

unsophisticated man in us :-

Z` Obedient to the will of men The giant blade descends again, Slicing the molten steel like cheese Just as the grimy pigmies please :

And something in me laughs to see One mass of metal quietly Slicing another at the will

Of bow-legged Mike and one-eyed Bill."

The difference between Mr. Gibson's dramatic songs and ballads is well illustrated in Mr. Hayward's delightful Ulster collection. Recent as some of the ballads are that he has included in his collection, they are yet true folk-lore ; they have suffered rough usage in passing from lip to lip, and they

have gathered an unmistakable and undefinable folks-quality in the journeying ; whereas Mr. Gibson's poems have the ring of conscious authorship still in them. The lyrical beauty that distinguishes such English folk-songs as Waly, Waly is alto-; gal= absent, apparently, from Ulster folk-songs ; but they

make up for the loss in an abundance of wry humour and. country drama.

" The plain story of Peter Rae," Mr. Dickson calls his poem. His long narrative is another example of this return to the sanity of the ,story-form. He is in open revolt : he scorns to sing in

" The cheap ironic chiming phrase Some moderns use, nor yet in praise Of stilly pregnant simple days : "

so he has recourse to a lively realism, and since no small part' of his story is concerned with Peter's reactions to the War,

it will be seen he has his opportunities. The story is vigorous, compelling, and remarkably outspoken ; yet Mr. Dickson seldom mistakes licence-for liberty, and even his most emo- tional passages do not spill o'er into sentimentality. Peter Rae is a notable poem, and I for one shall watch for Mr. Dickson's work.

Poems with the title Beauty or To Beauty awake my sus- picion ; and I confess that Mr. Knowles' eight examples do but confirm that my attitude is justified. To read some forty poems of such attenuated content as this collection shows, after Mr. Dickson's strenuously sincere narrative, is like hearing a drawing-room ballad of to-day immediately after a vigorous rendering of Helen of Kirconnell.

C. IIEN-wv WARREN.