MR. BELLOC'S POEMS. [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—"
The great advantage of this collection of Mr. Belloc's poetical works," your reviewer tells us, in his notice of February 9th, " is that there is scarcely any poetry in it at all." I confess when I read this, in the words of the poet in question, " I gasped and stretched my eyes " ; but I do not wish to trouble you with my views, nor to pit my opinion against that of your reviewer. May I, nevertheless, point out how differently the same book may sometimes affect different people ? Shortly before reading this review I was going through some papers relating to the late Lady Constance Lytton. Commenting on these very poems when the bulk of them appeared in 1908, Lady Constance wrote that never had she come across a book which seemed to her so full of TO= poetry.
Your reviewer quotes with approbation the opening lines of the " Dedicatory Ode." The rest of the ode is, he says, " diffuse and not very interesting." Among other things it contains these stanzas :— " The quiet evening kept her tryst ; Beneath an open sky we rode, And passed into a wandering mist Along the perfect Evenlode.
The tender Evenlode that makes Her meadows hush to hear the sound Of waters mingling in the brakes, And binds my heart to English ground.
A lovely river, all alone, She lingers in the hills and holds A hundred little towns of stones, Forgotten in the western wolds."
H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth,' Gibraltar.
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