"BOOKS AND MY FOOD."
[To TRW EDITOR OF FRE "BPRCITA1OR."] SIE,—The people who "no longer care" for reading, according to the writer of the article "Books and My Food" (Spectator, September 18th), are to be commiserated, and surely still more those who no longer "care" for poetry. Not to care for the most beautiful thoughts in the most beautiful words— what a loss I I should like to protest, moreover, against the idea that " taking down a hook of poetry and reading it" con- stitutes a poetry-lover. The true poetry-lover has a mind stored with beautiful lines and exquisite verses, assimilated almost unconsciously from the days of early childhood. As he wanders by the sea, listening to the sound of breaking waves, he recollects that " Sophocles long ago beer(' it on the Aegean" he notes the high tide that "moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam." As he reads of all the deeds of heroism, splendid lines come rolling on his ear, from Shakespeare down to the lesser but stirring modern poets. Many a, alight, pathetic verse has been caught up, even from papers like your own, to haunt him. When the blackbird whistles in the early spring he will recall the touching adjuration to his comrades in the trenches of Julian Gronfell. "Sing well, for you may not sing another—Brother, sing.!" He can take here and there of the long, long line of immortals—,from Chaucer down to our own day. Beautiful poetry has no fashion. "Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird," The real lover of poetry is permeated with its magic and cannot imagine what life can be like without it.—I am, Sir, 81e., E. Mallen PHILLIPPS.
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