Part 11

* _Aroun’ the Boreens: A Little Book of Celtic Verse. By Agnes I. Hanrahan._ (Badger: $1.00 net.) A slight volume of Irish songs equal to the very best by Eva Gore-Booth or Mrs. Hinkson, and tipped with a more delicate art. The volume should be on every shelf beside Moira O’Neill’s _Songs of the Glens of Antrim_.

* _The Cry of Youth. By Harry Kemp._ (Kennerley: $1.25 net.) Terse ringing ballads of modern life with much of Buchanan’s quality and keen technique. Despite the propagandist note, which is less insistent than in most poetry of a socialistic tendency, Mr. Kemp has succeeded with some quiet reserve in making the reader feel the pity of lonely outcast life, and in expressing his philosophy in genuine poetry. The sincerity of his work is unquestionable, and the volume merits a critical attention on its merits which we should be anxious to assist. _The Cry of Youth_ is not written solely for an audience of poets and critics. It is genuine poetry of cruelly naked emotion borne unflinchingly.

* _Songs of the Dead End. By Patrick MacGill._ (Kennerley: $1.25 net.) Poetry of labor and poetry without a brief in about equal measure. Though the former is fine, Mr. MacGill’s best work is to be found in the latter. The poet has been a navvy, a miner, a switchman, a car-coupler, a tramp, and a plate-layer, and out of grinding poverty and toil his poetry has emerged. There is danger of a wrong emphasis on his social poetry. It is good, but not better than that of several others. The less premeditated lyrics will give the greatest pleasure to the reader, and to many of them one will turn again and again.

* _Philip the King, and Other Poems. By John Masefield._ (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) A one-act play in verse which is competent but would not be distinctive were it not for a superb ballad of the Armada, which challenges comparison with Drayton. Four other poems of strong beauty which redeem the rest of the volume, and make it necessary to poetry lovers. The notable war-poem entitled _August, 1914_, is included.

* _The Wine-Press: A Tale of War. By Alfred Noyes._ (Stokes: $.60 net.) A tale of the horror of war and its blind futility, whose scene is laid in the Balkans. It is told with all of Mr. Noyes’s art and its awful lesson should be particularly timely in the midst of the present struggle. The poem is a hymn to liberty passionately voiced, and brings death and suffering home in relentless poetry.

* _Songs of Labor, and Other Poems. By Morris Rosenfeld. Translated from the Yiddish by Rose Pastor Stokes and Helena Frank._ (Badger: $.75 net.) An excellent translation of the poems of an American Yiddish poet of poignant beauty, whose work has hitherto not been accessible to English readers except in an incomplete prose version. The present translation includes many poems now published for the first time, and is adorned with two remarkable illustrations in black and white which reveal new possibilities in line. A volume which deserves to go through many editions.

* _Poems. By Clinton Scollard._ (Houghton-Mifflin: $1.25 net.) A selection of Mr. Scollard’s best poems from his numerous volumes. It should serve to define his place in American poetry, which is beside Mr. Cawein. Delicate fancy and a love of nature which is not vague are united to an opulence of expression which has not always done Mr. Scollard service, but which in almost every poem in this volume results in giving the pleasure of fine poetic sensation to the discriminating reader.

_Songs and Sonnets for England in War Time._ (Lane: $.75 net.) A collection of the best poems by English poets inspired by the war, issued for the benefit of the Prince of Wales Fund. The total profits of the volume are turned over to this fund for relief work, and the purchaser will not only procure a volume whose significance will be more and more realised as time passes, but will be contributing in small measure to this charitable work.

* _Challenge. By Louis Untermeyer._ (Century Co.: $1.00 net) One of the most significant new volumes of the year. With much of Shelley’s social enthusiasm and a genuine inspiration, he sings the strength and weakness of our democracy with the eagerness of youth. This is a volume whose significance will grow as the years go by, and it should be associated with Mr. Oppenheim’s new volume on which comment will be found elsewhere. Although democracy is the substance of his song, yet the feeling for beauty’s essence which here finds lyrical expression is the most substantially satisfying quality of his work.

III. SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF SIGNIFICANT BOOKS OF POETRY FOR A LARGE LIBRARY

* _Earth Triumphant, and Other Tales in Verse. By Conrad Aiken._ (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) Three narrative poems of distinction, followed by shorter poems interpreting the philosophy of youth. They suggest comparison with the longer poems of John Masefield, but have a firm independent technique of their own. With genuine beauty they relate tales which reveal the heart of modern life in various phases of youth, and contain a reading of earth which differs in essentials from that of Meredith. The volume deserves a wider audience than the usual public which cares for poetry. It has a message which every American will appreciate, and if it helps to spread an interest in poetry among new circles of readers, it will only be fulfilling its mission. It is a distinguished first book of verse.

_Poems. By Walter Conrad Arensberg._ (Houghton-Mifflin: $1.00 net.) The most artistic volume of poetry this year in its technique. Aloofness, controlled emotion, conscious art, are the characteristics of his poetry. Despite an occasional _bizarrerie_, despite echoes of Verlaine and Laforgue, Mr. Arensberg is a classicist. His technique is faultless. Each line is not only exquisite in itself, but it is perfectly coördinated with every other line. If these poems leave the reader cold, they offer an abundant intellectual compensation for the “thrills” of other poets. The special qualities of his verse are unique in American poetry, and will surely appeal to a discriminating circle, though his work is unlikely to become popular.

_The Minor Poems of Joseph Beaumont. Edited by Eloise Robinson._ (Houghton-Mifflin: $5.00 net.) An authoritative text of Joseph Beaumont’s minor poems edited from a manuscript in the possession of Professor George Herbert Palmer. The poems are preceded by a critical introduction and followed by a brief but careful textual apparatus. While Beaumont was a very minor poet, the fact remains that he was a significant member of the group of metaphysical poets of whom Vaughan was the greatest, and this volume must take its place in any collection of English poetry which claims to be even reasonably complete.

_The Falconer of God, and Other Poems. By William Rose Benét._ (Yale University Press: $1.25 net.) Mr. Benét’s second collection marks an advance in facility combined with a greater restraint and reticence. It includes many fine ballads, and several dramatic soliloquies only surpassed this year by those in Miss Burr’s new volume. Although there is much which is experimental in the book, it is successful experiment, and Mr. Benét’s range of expression is continually broadening.

* _Auguries. By Laurence Binyon._ (Lane: $1.00 net.) One of the most satisfying collections of verse of a noteworthy poet who is too little known and appreciated in this country. Its grave classical beauty will never assure it popularity, but at its best it is worthy to stand beside Mr. Bridges, and it contains no poem that is not excellent. _Ferry Hinksey_ is a lyric which no future anthologist can overlook. Next to Mr. Arensberg’s poems, the most satisfying new volume artistically of the year. It demands silence and complete surrender.

_Broad-Sheet Ballads. With An Introduction by Padraic Colum._ (Norman, Remington: $.75 net.) A narrow, but good, selection of the best of the Broad-Sheet Ballads which occupy so definite a place in Irish poetry. These waifs and strays have been gathered previously in various collections, but never before in a volume calculated to appeal to the general public. An introduction telling the story of this form of art and the characteristics of its audiences and appeal to them is prefixed.

* _Syrinx: Pastels of Hellas. By Mitchell S. Buck._ (Claire-Marie: $1.25 net.) A volume of prose poems of reticent Pagan art, suggestive of the best work of Pierre Louys. Unique in American poetry, and really beautiful.

_In the High Hills. By Maxwell Struthers Burt._ (Houghton-Mifflin: $1.25 net.) The verse in this volume is of a kind that has eminent qualities without eminent distinction. The earnestness and sincerity of Mr. Burt’s poetic moods give to his poetry those sound qualities which at least compel attention, if they do not excite the emotions. The elements of poetry are not fused with imaginative heat in his work, and hence it lacks magic, but it reflects the gentlemanly feeling of a lover of poetry in verse which demands respect.

_The Sun-Thief, and Other Poems. By Rhys Carpenter._ (Oxford University Press: $1.75 net.) Competent academic verse on classical models, including a new version of the Prometheus legend.

_The Poet and Nature: What He Saw and What He Heard. By Madison Cawein._ (John P. Morton & Co.: Louisville, Kentucky. $1.50.) A volume of prose and verse designed to encourage a love of poetry in children. The first half of the volume is in the form of a juvenile story with previously published lyrics of Mr. Cawein interspersed as examples of poetic beauty: the second half of the volume consists of hitherto uncollected poems of nature by Mr. Cawein now gathered together under the title of _The Morning Road_. This part of the volume should give especial pleasure to Mr. Cawein’s readers.

_Green Days and Blue Days. By Patrick R. Chalmers._ (Norman, Remington: $1.00 net.) A pleasant volume of light verse by a contributor to _Punch_. The verses do not pretend to be more than agreeable diversions, and reflect the lighter moods of life happily and in delicate numbers.

_At the Shrine, and Other Poems. By George Herbert Clarke._ (Stewart and Kidd: $1.25 net.) A pleasant unassuming collection of somewhat academic verse reflecting a life of scholarly leisure. The closing section of letters in verse to departed novelists is particularly happy, recalling at no great distance the similar work of Austin Dobson.

* _Path Flower. By Olive Tilford Dargan._ (Scribner: $1.25 net.) With this volume of lyrical poems Olive Tilford Dargan definitely takes her place as one of our foremost younger poets. With much of Francis Thompson’s vision of an overarching heaven and a shadowed earth, and also much of Thompson’s mannerism, she is herself in the best of these poems, in which she treats high themes with high artistic fervor. Her feeling for landscape is English in its delicacy, and she has interpreted the influence of nature on human life and its incidence with clear insight and sympathy. No one will deny Mrs. Dargan’s poetic inspiration or the refinement of her vision.

_Florence on a Certain Night, and Other Poems. By Coningsby Dawson._ (Holt: $1.25 net.) A volume of undistinguished literary verse by a distinguished novelist.

* _America and Other Poems. By W. J. Dawson._ (Lane: $1.25 net.) The expression of an ideal America as seen by one with an alien tradition. The volume includes several fine ballad narratives, notably “The Kiss,” “Salome,” and the swift sure rhythmic “Last Ride of the Sheik Abdullah;” above all, “Blake’s Homecoming,” a member of the royal line of English ballads. In addition to competent lyrics on various themes, special attention should be called to the poems of childhood and the delicately imagined meditative poems of religious feeling. So many religious poems rely wholly on a good intention, “more fit to pave Hell than cause rejoicing in Heaven,” as a French critic says, that exceptions should be noted. The volume marks an appreciable advance over Dr. Dawson’s previous collections.

_A Pageant of the Thirteenth Century for the Seven Hundredth Anniversary of Roger Bacon. The Text by John Erskine._ (Columbia University Press.) A pageant reflecting the culture and endeavor of the thirteenth century in every field. The text is in verse of fine texture and imaginative expression by Professor Erskine of Columbia University. While the pageant itself has been deferred because of the war, it is still possible to enjoy the text, and to look forward to the pageant’s representation in the near future.

_Lux Juventutis: A Book of Verse. By Katharine A. Esdaile._ (Houghton-Mifflin: $1.25 net.) The first volume of a young English poet who shows considerable promise. It is characterised by classical restraint and a fine feeling for form, and does not lack singing quality.

* _Sonnets from the Patagonian. By Donald Evans._ (Claire-Marie: $1.25 net.) Eighteen impressionistic sonnets of exotic workmanship, suggesting the fantasy of Laforgue, but more extremely composed in disembodied words. They rely on tone color for much of their effect, and are bizarre to the point of irony. However, they grow on the reader as he becomes familiar with them, and their consummate art is unquestionable.

* _Sonnets of a Portrait-Painter. By Arthur Davison Ficke._ (Kennerley: $1.00 net.) A sequence of fifty-seven sonnets in an undeservedly neglected form, which do not recall too definitely Meredith’s _Modern Love_. They are extremely subtle and their intellectual content is very closely woven, so that they will prove difficult reading, but they repay careful study, and in many sonnets the lyric impulse has happily overmastered the poet completely. A collection which is worthy of several readings.

* _Arrows in the Gale. By Arturo Giovannitti._ (Hillacre Bookhouse, Riverside, Connecticut: $1.25 net.) One of the more important volumes of new verse this year. A passionate voicing of social injustice in imaginative strophes, which introduce a new poetic form with considerable art. _The Cage_, when printed in the Atlantic Monthly, last year, was called the most significant poem published in that periodical since Moody’s _Ode in Time of Hesitation_. The volume claims a hearing as fine poetry rather than as an expression of Syndicalism. There is an appreciative introduction by Helen Keller which is good criticism.

* _My Lady’s Book. By Gerald Gould._ (Kennerley: $1.00 net.) Twenty lyrics of pure song quality which are almost faultless in their perfection, though in a minor key. A volume to afford pure delight by its unaffected lyric quality.

_Poems. By Katharine Howard._ (Sherman, French: $1.00 net.) Minor verse in _vers libre_, which is frequently pleasing and always individual. It is the expression of a whimsical personality who wears her singing robes lightly, and who is most successful in verse of macabre suggestion.

* _Des Imagistes: An Anthology._ (Boni: $1.00.) The best collection of “imagiste” poetry, in which the work of Ford Madox Hueffer, F. S. Flint, Amy Lowell, and others is represented. There are many poems in the volume which will give pleasure, but as a collection it is uneven and rather tenuous. The work of F. S. Flint which it contains justifies the volume’s purchase.

_The Thresher’s Wife. By Harry Kemp._ (Boni: $.40 net.) A narrative poem well told in the manner of Masefield, whose influence upon it has been great.

* _Trees, and Other Poems. By Joyce Kilmer._ (Doran: $1.00 net.) The spirit of youth and grave faith expressed in lyric numbers. This slight little book defines a personality of poetic interest. The book shows less alien influence than most recent American poetry, and is quite individual in its affirmations. Though unassuming, the book will not meet with just treatment unless we recognize the fine lyric accomplishment of such poems as _Trees_ and _Martin_. Is this volume the prelude of a little Catholic Renaissance in American poetry?

* _The Shadow of Ætna. By Louie V. Ledoux._ (Putnam: $1.00 net.) Severely chaste poetry on classical models of distinguished beauty. They reveal fine intellectual feeling that recalls Shelley in its intensity and Arnold in its disciplined reticence. They have all the warmth of life seen against an eternal background, and a passionate message which cannot go unheeded.

* _The Sharing. By Agnes Lee._ (Sherman, French: $1.00 net.) Agnes Lee’s new book has all her familiar qualities, but in addition it presents a new criticism of life which reveals a feeling for human values akin in many respects to that of Browning. In its brevity and search for the polished word, it suggests the sculptor’s art, and many of these poems would have pleased Landor for their freight of suggestion and elemental simplicity.

* _Sword Blades and Poppy Seed. By Amy Lowell._ (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) A volume, not only of interesting experiment in _vers libre_ and exotic rhythms, but of notable accomplishment in poetry. Though associated with the “imagiste” school of English poetry, Miss Lowell’s talent is independent of it, and in her narrative and lyric poems alike one feels an artistic firmness and restraint which results in clear vision clearly sung. Best of all, this “imagiste” poetry is healthy and able to fight for its existence. In so far as it is derivative from French influences it adds a new note to English verse, and reveals a subtle use of free cadenced rhythms which is fully responsive to the mood and feeling of the poem. Far more genuine and spontaneous than Miss Lowell’s first volume.

_The Passing Singer and Other Poems. By Samuel Henry Marcus._ (Stratford Pub. Co.: $1.00 net.) A modest first volume which is likely to receive less attention than it deserves. Mr. Marcus has not yet found himself in poetry, but he sings the present condition of humanity sincerely and passionately. When he sings it simply, he will be more satisfying, but this volume will give pleasure to any one who really cares for poetry.

* _Poems. By Edward Sandford Martin._ (Scribner: $1.50 net.) The collected verse of the Editor of _Life_. Mellow Horatian philosophy and wit not yet frost-bitten by a man whom Dr. Johnson would have pronounced clubbable and with whom Boswells must feel uncomfortable.

_You and I. By Harriet Monroe._ (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) A bulky volume of verse by the editor of _Poetry: A Magazine Of Verse_. In it the social note is voiced strongly, and expression is given to many phases of modern effort, but its intellectual content rather overshadows its lyric quality.

* _The Sea is Kind. By T. Sturge Moore._ (Houghton-Mifflin: $1.50 net.) This is the first collection issued in America of the poems of an English craftsman of great distinction and power, whose chief weakness is an over-proportion of intellectual substance. He lacks the glow of beauty, and perhaps of beauty’s realization, but his work is literary craftsmanship of the highest order, and his metrical experiments are almost as significant as those of Mr. Bridges. Altogether the artistic product of a richly stored mind without aspiration or imaginative vision.

* _Saloon Sonnets: With Sunday Flutings. By Allen Norton._ (Claire-Marie: $1.25 net.) A volume less bizarre than its title implies. The sonnets bear evidence of _ueberkultur_, but occasionally surprise the reader by their pleasant lyric charm. They do not lack virility and enthusiasm.

_The Sister of the Wind. By Grace Fallow Norton._ (Houghton-Mifflin: $1.00 net.) A new volume by the author of _Little Gray Songs from St. Joseph’s_ which is most disappointing. In a poet of Miss Norton’s quality, it is inevitable that there should be always something to repay the reader, but this volume is singularly unrepresentative of Miss Norton’s real powers.

_Celtic Memories. By Norreys Jephson O’Conor._ (Lane: $1.00 net.) A first volume of some promise by a recent graduate of Harvard, whose Irish feeling is drawn directly from experience, but whose expression is still drawn chiefly from books.

* _The Ebon Muse and Other Poems by Léon Laviaux. Englished by John Myers O’Hara._ (Smith and Sale: $2.00 net.) Translations from the work of a young Creole poet, glorifying the “fille de couleur” in love poetry of original beauty. Differing from Latin and Oriental passion alike, it reveals a type of feminine beauty which is wholly new to Northern readers.

* _An Epilogue To the Praise of Angus and Other Poems. By Seumas O’Sullivan._ (Norman, Remington Co.: $.75 net.) A thin sheaf of delicate poems by one of the foremost poets of the New Ireland. Akin in certain aspects of his vision to “Æ,” who does not surpass him, his verses have more singing quality, and he is a successful experimenter in various new verse forms which reproduce cadences in ancient Irish music.

* _One Woman to Another, and Other Poems. By Corinne Roosevelt Robinson._ (Scribner: $1.25 net.) Dramatic monologues and sonnets of sharply etched lines whose competence is unquestionable, and a more satisfying reality of human feeling than in Mrs. Robinson’s previous volume. The volume will give much intellectual and some emotional pleasure, and in two or three lyrics the poet has achieved high ground.

* _Beyond the Breakers, and other Poems. By George Sterling._ (Robertson: $1.25 net.) This is Mr. Sterling’s first thoroughly satisfying book. It includes the superb “Ode on the Centenary of the Birth of Robert Browning,” and poems of such importance as “Tidal, King of Nations,” “Willy Pitcher,” “The Mission Swallows,” “Past the Panes,” and “You Never Can Tell.” We must call particular attention to the vision of the noble ode entitled “Beyond the Sunset.” With less opulent diction and heady imagination than Mr. Sterling’s earlier volumes, _Beyond the Breakers_ shows a disciplined vision expressed with a disciplined technique.

_Open Water. By Arthur Stringer._ (Lane: $1.00 net) A collection of delicate pictures expressing many frail and drifting moods phrased in _vers libre_ not yet quite sure of itself. The volume contains much quiet beauty, and is prefaced by a plea for _vers libre_ of considerable documentary and critical value. A volume which the lover of poetry can scarcely neglect.

_Idylls of Greece. Third Series. By Howard V. Sutherland._ (Fitzgerald: $1.00 net) Modest idylls of Greek fable telling with some passages of beauty the tales of “Idas and Marpessa,” “Rhodanthe,” “Sappho and Phaon,” and “Œnone.” The blank verse, though not firm, is of well-wrought texture, and Mr. Sutherland expresses feelingly the fleeting beauty of Pagan love and Hellenic landscape. Mr. Sutherland’s three volumes merit more attention than they have received.

_The Poems of François Villon. Translated by H. De Vere Stacpoole._ (Lane: $1.50 net) A convenient edition of Villon’s best work, in which a reasonably accurate text of the two Testaments and the best of the Ballades and Rondels is printed, together with a running commentary, a vivid introduction, and translations of some of the shorter poems with dubious success. However, the volume is the best popular service to Villon that has yet been performed in this country, and should be on the library shelf.

* _Little Verse for a Little Clan. By F.D.W._ (Published Privately: Not for Sale.) A slight little volume of thirty-five pages of delicate workmanship, which contain poems that make the book rank among the very best of the year. I know of very few books written by Americans which would afford the pleasure to discriminating readers that this volume would offer were it to be published in a form accessible to all. It is as delicate, at its best, as Beeching and Mackail’s _Love in Idleness_, and will please all lovers of _A Shropshire Lad_. It is just the sort of book which Mr. Mosher used to delight in finding for the American public. I shall be glad to give further information about it to inquirers.