POETS AND POETRY.

SOME NEW VERSE.* Mn. SQUIRE'S American poems' are rather disappointing. The most considerable poem in the book is his " Stock- yard." This is a good essay, and gives, I should say, an accurate and exact account of the gigantic Chicago slaughter- houses. But somehow, with all the real feeling and for all the technical ability in it, it remains an essay rather than a poem, and never takes the poet's finger's-breadth flight above the real. However, Mr. Squire has written so much that is good that he has more than earned the right to give us an unsuccessful experimental poem now and then.

A good many of the poems in Mr. Church's collection have already appeared in the Spectator—some of the ".Bee Songs, " A Wild Night," "'The Lantern," " The Tide," for example. These, however, are the occasional pieces. The poem which gives its title to the volume—" Philip "—is a long, religious poem, more ambitious, and to my mind less successful, than the others. Philip lies on his death-bed and describes to his son the effect made on his mind by the presence of Jesus. He tries to convey the glamour, the indescribable attraction, then to show his own doubts and the darkness of priesthood against which Jesus struggled in His lifetime. One of the incidents of the poem is a remark of Philip's that the priests are quite capable of taking this eager-hearted, young man's religion and imposing upon it their own dark, narrow humour. The poem reveals an attractive personality to the reader, and it is graceful, competent and sincere. " The Lantern " is much more successful :— " She swings the lantern. Night around her Swings out, swings in ; the roadside falls. Under her feet abysmal darkness sinks ; Then from the pit, to meet her feet, Earth rises, sombre stones and steady soil Loom up, stare at the lantern, then . . . Sink, sink again as it swings.

On she tramps, towering above the lantern, All her daylight beauty lifted away, Underlit, and drenched with the dye, The smudgy gold of the drowsy beams from the lantern."

A study of Mr. Osbert Sitwell's Out of the Flante3 reveals a strength in bulk unexpected in a writer whom those who admire him praise for elegance and satiric cleverness. This effect of strength comes really from the title piece, a poem part of which our readers have already had an opportunity of seeing. A city such as Seville or Naples is contrasted with London or Glasgow.

"From my window in the Northern city

I can hear the rattle and roar of the town, As the carts go lumbering over the bridges, As the men in dark clothes hurry over the bridges.

They do not parade their hearts here, They bury them at their lives' beginning.

They must hurry or they will be late for their work ;

Their work is their bread.

Without bread, how can they work ? They have no time for pleasure, Nor is work any pleasure to them. Their faces are masked with weariness, Drab with their working."

Attractive are two garden pieces, " Neptune. in Chains " and " Fountains." These two, like " Out of the Flame,"

are entirely traditional in spirit although written in free verse. Clever and amusing, but in his familiar manner (which annoys so many people), are " Parade" and "Bacchanalia." A religious poem at the end re-echoes the genuine sensibility of " Out of the Flame," as does the satire " An Old-Fashioned Sportsman."

The " Five Portraits and a Group " are probably amusing only to those who know the personalities, though the " Chant

of the War-Horse " tells of a type so common that there are very few readers who will not enjoy the poem. His readers will congratulate Mr. Sitwell on a book which should lift him from the notoriety which he has (so much) enjoyed to a very real consideration as a poet.

• (1) .9werican Poems and Others. By J. C. Squire. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 15s. net.'--(2) Philip. By Richard Church. Oxford Basil Blackwell. (2s. ed. net.)—(3) Out of the Flame. By Osbert Sitwell. London: clrant Richards. I6s. net.1—(4) Subliumry. By Nancy Cunard. London : Hodder and Stoughton. Os. net.1----(5) The Feather Bed. By Robert Graves, Richmond: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, Lb; net") Miss Nancy Cunard's poems4 seem to me commonplace. There is no great skill to set off the usual topics beloved of those who are young and modern. There is a poem about the -Eiffel Tower restaurant, a slightly shocking poem, one about youthful desolation, and some jazz verses and a permeating sense of effort not to be for one moment young- ladyish. There are also some poems in French, one of which shows a certain power of characterization (" Les Jeunes "). Miss Cunard might perhaps write amusing short stories.

Mr. Graves's new poem, "The Feather Bed,"b. is a dramatic narrative, or rather a nightmare, and we must.warn intending readers that it is not only sometimes coarse in phraseology, but that its theology may well shock all but bible Christians. It is the aecount of the half-dreaming, half-waking 'rebellions and nurseries of a young man who learns that the girl whom he loves is about to become a nun. Mr. Graves assures any reader who may be shocked that he has no anti-constitu-

tional intentions, hut that the poem is a "study of a fatigued mind in a fatigued body and under the stress of an abnormal conflict." The author does not himself imagine convent life to be what it here seems to be, nor would the hero •of the poem believe it in-a more normal .mood, "'but that staggering rebuff to the young man's typical bullying attitude in love leads him to invent this monstrous libel in compen- sation ; which libel is merely flattery to his wounded pride."

The poetry has for the most part a satiric vigour and is very well condensed. The girl's letter is quoted :-

"' Good-bye, but now forget all that we were Or said, or did to each other, here's good-bye. Send no more letters now, only forget We ever met . . and the letter maunders on In the unformed and uncompromising hand That witnesses against her, yet provides Extenuation and a grudging praise. Rachel to 'be a nun Postulate now For her novitiate in a red brick convent Praying, studying, wearing uniform, She serves the times of a tyra.nnic bell, Rising to praise God in the early hours (With atmosphere of filters and stone stairs, Distemper, crucifixes and red ,drugget, Dusty hot-water pipes, a legacy-library. . . ."

There is also a rather -attractive Miltonic prologue describing the young man wandering about on the mountain bewildered first by a genuine physical mist and then by the mist of anger in his mind. At last, drenched and utterly worn-out, he gets to the musty inn where the reverie takes .-place. 'Does this book show that Mr. Graves is going to take to writing short stories ? I rather hope it does. I felt in this piece that force of habit that has something to do with its being in verse, and a careful, elegant prose such as he knows how to employ would have served his turn better.

A. Wim.rems-Firas.