Freed of my separate hideous entity,
Blown with the wingéd dust from whence I came!
They struggle together, and Man plunges over the cliff. Thought, “assuming a sudden intenser magnitude, rises out of the dust of Man” (the stage directions seem a little confused here) and shouts:
At last to conquer after æons of strife—
The reeling stars man’s silent sepulchre.
There are graceful lines and pictures, occasionally a good simile. Technically the lines are too smooth, too neatly finished, each in its little five-iambic jacket. The lyrics lack singing quality. There is a tedious list, two pages, of famous ladies—Helen, Sappho, Salammbo, from Eve to the Virgin Mary—as Man cries to Past, “What woman are you in disguise?” Swinburne did this gorgeously somewhere, making each speak; but these do not—they do not even live.
Totally different is my second volume of verse—The Sea is Kind, by T. Sturge Moore (Houghton Mifflin). A letter from the publishers suggests that “like Noyes and Masefield, T. Sturge Moore may have a message to American lovers of poetry.” I am an American lover of poetry and an eager one; therefore, I was hopeful; but I am oppressed by the obligation of doing justice to the initial poem in the book, viz.: The Sea is Kind, because I cannot tell at all what it is about. Several people, by name Evarne and Plexaura, females, and Menaleas and Eucritos, males, seem to be talking high talk by the edge of the sea—about ships and storms and nymphs and kindred things. Evarne speaks at great length in rough pentameters, quoting others more obscure, if possible, than herself.
The handsome scowler smiled.
Then with a royal gesture of content
Addressed our wonder.