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.