To Miss Seaton.
“Do you know Emerson’s poems? I think they are wonderful. ‘Each and All’ I think is deep and beautiful. There is always a kind of beaminess, like a dancing of light in light, in his poems. I do think, though, that he depends too much on inspiration; and though they always have a solid texture of thought, they sometimes seem thin in colour or sensuousness.”
To Miss Seaton.
“I saw Olive Schreiner last night. She’s an extraordinary woman—full of life. I had a little picture for her from a dear friend of hers in Africa I stayed with while I was there. She was so pleased with my pictures of Kaffirs. Who is your best living English poet? I’ve found somebody miles and miles above everybody—a young man, Lascelles Abercrombie—a mighty poet and brother to Browning.”
Other references in letters show how deep at this time Mr. Abercrombie’s influence was. Rosenberg calls his “Hymn of Love” the finest poem of our time.
He has now joined the Army, and writes from Bury St. Edmunds.
To Edward Marsh (1915).
“I have just joined the Bantams, and am down here amongst a horrible rabble. Falstaff’s scarecrows were nothing to these. Three out of every four have been scavengers, the fourth is a ticket-of-leave. But that is nothing; though while I’m waiting for my kit I’m roughing it a bit, having come down without even a towel. I dry myself with my pocket-handkerchief. I don’t know whether I will be shifted as soon as I get my rig-out.”
The next was written in hospital at Bury.