SOME RECENT VERSE.* THE visional recorded in Mr. Hardy's poems

are nearly all of the past— visions seen in the magic mirror which " works well in these night hours of ache," and reveals " tinots we never see ourselves once take When the world is awake." The mirror reveals the skeleton at the feast, unobserved of the feasters ; wordless ironies; unheeded warnings ; the dead in the quick. This " visioning power " of a " scathed and memoried man " brings little solace, though he recalls with something like pride his " starry thoughts " in the " seventies " which nothing could darken or destroy. His mood is often strangely sombre :— " I travel as a phantom now, For people do not wish to see In flesh and blood so bare a bough As Nature makes of me.

And thus I visit bodiless

Strange gloomy households oft at odds, And wonder if Man's consciousness Was a mistake of God's.

And next I meet you, and I pause, And think that if mistake it were, As some have said, 0 then it was One that I well can bear."

These ghostly journeyings form the theme of many poems, some with " sweet reverberances," but mostly tragic, grim, or macabre. The worst blows, the writer would fain believe, are not struck by man, but by the Immanent Doer That does not know, " Which in some age unguessed of us May lift Its blinding incubus, And see and own It grieves me I did thus and thus ! ' "

This strange surmise recurs in the vision of the spirits waiting for " one called God . . . to know how things have been going on in the world and below it," in the belief that though they " have reached feeling faster than he, he will overtake us anon, If the world goes on." Yet this notion of blind destiny is shot through at times with tenderness for the old faith and something like a longing that it might prove true—as in the poem on the oxen kneeling on Christmas Eve—or that the " fourth figure the Furnace showed " might reveal its " shape sublime in these latter days:, But there is little of hope or joy in these moments of vision, save in the beautiful little poem on the children irradiating the squalid railway waiting-room. Of the miscellaneous poems, that on Shakespeare after three hundred years is a noble tribute to Shakespeare's unnoticed passing and eternal influence. The group of " Poems of War and Patriotism " are noteworthy for their freedom from animosity. " The pity of it " is the dominant note. Mr. Hardy laments the decline of chivalry in war ; he wishes no richer malediction on the Kaiser than that he should feel compassion for his victims on his death-bed. Finally, we may note the lines " Afterwards," which suggest an epitaph on himself as one who • (1) Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses. By Thomas Hardy. London : Macmillan and Co. [66. net.]—(2) Work-a-Day Warriors. By Joseph Lee. Illustrations by the Author. London : John Murray. [2s. tid. net.]—(3) A Pother of Women, and other Poems. By Alice Mundt. London : Burns and Oates. [2a. net.]—(4) The Bubble, and other Poems. By Willoughby Weaving. Oxford : B. H. Blackwell. [4s. 6d. net.]—(5) Plain Song, 10144916. By Eden Phillpotts. London W. Heinemann. [3s. 6d. net.]--(6) Songs of Ulster and Balliol. By Frederick S. Boas. London : Constable and Co. [2s. net.]—(7) Poems. By Edward Thomas (" Edward Eastaway "). London : Selwyn and Blount. [Ss. 6d. net.)—(8) Poems, Scots and English. By John Buchan. London : T. C. and E. C. Jack. [3s. 6d. net.]—(9) The Day, and other Poems. By Henry Chappell. With an Introduction by Sir Herbert Warren, President of Magdalen College, Oxford. London : John Lane. [2e. 6d. net.]—(10)Poems of West and East. By V. Sackvillc- West. (the Hon. Mrs. Harold Nicolson). Same publisher. [Ss. 6d. net.]—(11) Hay Harvest, and oilier Poems, By Lucy Barton. Same publisher and price.

used to notice the glory of May and the ways of shy birds, who loved innocent creatures and had an eye for the mysteries of the full-starred heavens and an ear for the passing bell.

The poems of Lieutenant Joseph Lee,* of the K.R.R.—now a prisoner in Germany—need no introduction or recommendation

to readers of the Spectator. Four of them, including the splendidly chivalrous sonnet on " German Prisoners " and the moving stanzas `` Back to London," appeared in these columns, and there is not• one of the remainder which does not breathe the same spirit of fortitude, tenderness, good comradeship, and humour which marked

his previous volume, written when he was a sergeant in the Black Watch. The longest poem in the book, " A Shakespeare Tercentenary in the Trenches," tells how a " tattered corporal " found solace, in " the lodges of the dead," amid mud and muok and discomfort and danger, in the pages of a tattered volume. The quotations and the running commentary make up a wonderfully affecting and original contribution to Shakespearean criticism.

Mr. Lee shows us the British soldier much enduring, often complaining, but indomitable. He never loses sight of the redeeming tints that light the gloom of war, and he pays generous homage to the great qualities of the fighting Australian, the devotion ' of British nurses, brave Frenchwomen, and Indian stretcher- bearers. In lighter vein are the genial stanzas to the knitter of socks and the sender of a noble haggis—both tours de force of ingenious rhyming—the lines on " The Steel Helmet " and " The Tot of Rum." But whatever be the theme, grim or pathetic or jocular, Mr. Lee never strikes a jarring note. The things he has seen—wonderful, horrible, unexpected, grotesque—have never blurred his perspective or changed his view that " if only England live, Our life is but a little thing to give."

There are only fifteen short poems in Mrs. Meynell's booklet,' but they are all marked by that delicate and pensive elegance which is the peculiar note of her verge. Rapture, passion, the lyric cry may be wanting, but they do not lack a subdued fervour. Four poems are inspired by the war—the appeal to " fathers of women," in this " crippled world," to " approve, accept, know them daughters of men Now that your sons are dust "; the stanzas which seek to show that " the early dead in battle " enjoy a length of days equal to that of the old; the contrast between the glory of the summer of 1914 and the horrors of war ; and the beautiful lines on " Nurse Edith Cavell : Two o'clock the morning of October 12th, 1915 " " To her accustomed eyes The midnight-morning brought not such a dread As thrills the chance-awakened head that lies In trivial sleep on the habitual bed.

'Twas yet some hours ere light ; And many, many, many a break of day Had she outwatched the dying ; but this night Shortened her vigil was, briefer the way.

By dial of the clock • 'Twas day in the dark above her lonely head. This day thou shalt be with Me.' Ere the cock Announced that day she met the Immortal Dead."

Of the remaining pieces we may single out the lines on the Two

Shakespeare Tercentenaries inspired by the humiliating thought that, days with days, the writer's life was already longer than Shake- speare's ; and the spiritual fantasy on Christ's divine privilege " to be alone the sacrificed."

In his new volumed Mr. Willoughby Weaving gives fresh evidence of his finely imaginative insight and remarkable technical equip- ment. His distinction of style is sometimes marred by a fondness for recondite or odd phrases—e.g., " glode," " rinsey-sweet," " tetted," " flakily," " gibbous "—but he has a genuine gift of melodious and vivid expression, as when he writes of the " sump- tuous quiet " and the " cool, fire-coloured, odourless ways of autumn." In his choice of metres he rams from frugal miniature quatrains to long, rolling Swinburnian lines. The experiment in rhymed elegiacs, " The Son of Oceanus," with a truncated penta- meter, is peculiarly interesting. But Mr. Weaving is more than a technician or a scholar ; he is a writer of high aims, who combines a somewhat austere idealism with a profuse and not wholly unpremeditated art. Some of his most striking poems are inspired by the war, notably the three sonnets on the " high thoughts of a friend who had fallen for England " ; but it is not of war at close quarters, but seen in perspective or retrospect or in a dream, that Mr. Weaving writes.

Mr. Eden Phillpotts has not the unerring ease of tho born poet. Such a couplet as " All nations live by ideals ; but in need They linger with no ethic obsolete," has a certain prosaic aridity. And

the rhetorical quality of much of his verse and his use of literary epithets hardly accord with the title of Plain Song.5 But his

deep belief in the justice of our cause, his love of England and her " sane humanity and rule serene," triumph over these drawbacks, and more often than not the expression equals the thought. Perhaps the finest poem in the collection is that simply headed " War," which sets in vivid contrast those who make and those who feel it In the same vein is his appeal to the Spirit of Nations to make an end of secret diplomacy and " drag the dark spinners into heaven's

light." Throughout he is animated with a triple passion for Demo- cracy, Reason, and Humanity. Yet the rationalism of his paean, " Glory be to man on high," and his fervid belief in Humanism do not prevent him from sternly rebuking the short-sighted Pacificists who would a condone the will that wove this agony." The " Salute to the New Armies " is a glowing tribute to the " voluntary majesty " of men animated by a disinterested " will to Liberty." Of the poems with a personal motive we may note the Palinode to Lord Roberts and the fine elegies on Edith Cavell and Rupert Brooke. " The ever-living dead shine on within our hearts," and Mr. Phillpotts's verses will help to keep that flame alive.

Mr. Bosse has done well to collect this " sheaf of garnered lays " with their double appeal to a loyal Province and a famous College. Three of the Ulster poems will be familiar to the readers of the Spectator—" The Men of Ulster," the elegiac lines on Lord Dufferin and " Ulster on the Somme," with its beautiful concluding stanza in memory of a gallant young kinsman ;—

" For him no sombre requiem, No threnody of tears, Who bartered for Youth's diadem The dross of After-years."

Of the Oxford poems, " Balliol inter Arma " forms an admirable and heroic epilogue to " The Balliol Rooks " written thirty years earlier. Here is indeed a worthy eulogy of " scholar-chivalry," of the undying dead, " too great for pity, too high for praise." Nor must we fail to mention the dedicatory stanzas to " H. O'B. B.," in which the memories of " sunny and sombre days," " Where Isis and where Cherwell lave The daisy-dappled midland leas ; Or where into the northern seas The Lagan rolls her turbid wave," are linked with the lessons of the present hour.

The late Mr. Edward Thomas had a sense of the pageantry of the seasons and a gift of bringing it home to the purblind dwellers in towns which remind us of Richard Jefferies. Rural sights and sounds, the glory of the morning, clouds and sun and rain, the ways of birds and beasts, and the abiding simplicities of those who labour on the land form the theme of most of these poems.' They reveal faithful observation, an unaffected style, and above all a gentleness of spirit which enables us to realize how great was his sacrifice. He was•pre-eminently a lover of peace and of the country, but he loved England more.

Mr. John Buchans is as versatile in poetry as in prose, and he has a positively unfair advantage in being able to write with equal facility in the Doric of the Lowlands and the Attic of the lettered Southron. Scots, he tells us in his Preface, has never been to him a book tongue, and if proof be wanted, we need only refer to the audacious stanzas (reprinted from Blackwood)," Midian's Evil Day," en the historic decision of the House of Lords maintaining the claim of the " Wee Frees " in 1904; his free interpretation of the Shorter Catechism ; his delightful exercises in Theocritean adaptation ; and best of all the stirring trench poems with their insight into the great heart of the Scots soldier. In the English section we welcome the beautiful elegiac stanzas to his brother, prefixed to Mr. Buchan's Life of Montrose, and the lines on the view from the Pentlands reprinted from The Moon Endureth. It is, in fine, a varied and refreshing entertainment.

Sir Herbert Warren contributes a genial Introduction to the little volume of poernse by Mr. Herbert Chappell, a railway porter at Bath. The collection fully bears out Sir Herbert's view that " The Day " was not a miracle or a lucky accident.. The fine.hymn " God of Our Fathers " has the same resonance and high spirit, and other pieces, in other moods, patriotic, domestic, and-descriptive, reveal a genuine gift of sincere and pointed utterance.

Criticism is disarmed by a writer who confesses that her heart sinks as she compares har own achievement with the work of others. But Mrs. Harold Nicolson" shows a pretty gift for description in the group of pieces on the magic of . Constantinople, the iipoev or op.a Beira-4ov ipie aeXaecu Mkt= of Apollonius Rhodius. The earlier poems are mainly inspired by a semi-mutinous and semi-Pagan protest against the austerity of traditional wisdom, weeping poets, and those who " grovel to the Sunday priest." It is perhaps too late in the day to criticize " Cockney " rhymes, but Mrs. Nicolson's grammar is not above reproach ; " creep " is better as a verb than a noun, and " sole-spirited " is not a happy syno- nym for single-souled. But these are the faults of inexperience, and can be offset by some genuinely felicitous and promising lines—such as the first and last stanzas of the song, " My Spirit like a Shepherd Boy." Less ambitious but more finished are the poems" of Mrs. Baxton, who, without attaining to memorable utterance, shows a happy turn for graceful, fanciful, and intimate verse.