For the first time, now for the first time seen.
Mr. Lawrence has solved the problem of vers libre for himself, by writing in a rhymed metre which usually defies all scansion, but which gives a queer, and most satisfactory effect, of elasticity and strength. For this reason, and for its novelty, Mr. Lawrence’s manner is very interesting, but his matter is still more so. Read The Mowers, a common tragedy, but put so newly and strikingly that it comes upon one with all its original force.
Fireflies in the Corn and A Woman to Her Dead Husband are new in subject as well as in presentation, and they have a bald reality about them which I have never met in any other poem. But never once does Mr. Lawrence make the mistake of being only a realist; he never ceases to be a poet. In Fireflies in the Corn there are these lines:
And those bright fireflies wafting in between
And over the swaying cornstalks, just above
And all their dark-feathered helmets, like little green
Stars, come low and wandering here for love
Of this dark earth.
The Ballad of Another Ophelia is probably his best poem. In it we see his peculiar style at its very best.
Mr. Lawrence is the singer of truth, the lover of humanity. His inclusion into the Imagist group shows that the school is broad and real enough not to desire to shut itself up in the cupboard of precocity, as in the beginning there was some fear of its doing.