CONTENTS

Portrait of the Author by Pamela Bianco[Frontispiece]
Preface[7]
Gipsy-Night[9]
The Horse Trough[11]
Martha[12]
Gratitude[15]
Vagrancy[17]
Storm[20]
Tramp[23]
Epitaph[26]
Glaucopis[27]
Poets, Painters, Puddings[28]
Isaac Ball[30]
Dirge[32]
The Singing Furies[34]
The Ruin[36]
Judy[38]
Winter[40]
The Moonlit Journey[41]
A Song of the Walking Road[42]
The Sermon[44]
The Rolling Saint[45]
Weald[48]
The Jumping Bean[50]
Old Cat Care[52]
Cottager is given the Bird[53]
A Man[55]
Moon-struck[56]
Enigma[58]
Lament for Gaza[59]
The Image[60]
Felo de Se[61]
The Birds-nester[63]

Preface

Probably the most important contribution to modern poetical theory is Mr. Robert Graves’ book On English Poetry. He grounds it upon Man as a Neurotic Animal. Poetry is to the poet, he argues, what dreams are to the ordinary man: a symbolical way, that is, of resolving those complexes which deadlock of emotion has produced. If this book meets with the success it deserves, it is probable that there will be a great deal of psycho-analytical criticism afloat, that the symbolic test will become the sole criterion of distinguishing the true from the fake poem; until some sort of ‘Metamorphic’ school arise, who defeat this by consciously faking their symbolism. I do not wish to oppose this thesis, but only to suggest that though true, it is only a partial truth: and that to make it the sole criterion of poetry would be damning: that as well as being a neurotic animal, Man is a Communicative Animal, and a Pattern-making Animal: that poetry cannot be traced simply to a sort of automatic psycho-therapy, but that these and many other causes are co-responsible. Indeed, though many of these poems may still prove poems within the meaning of Mr. Graves’ Act, I should be sorry that they should be read with no other purpose than indecently to detect my neuroses.

R. H.

North Wales, 1922