In spite of their vividness and exactitude, they make us think of a good passage of prose slightly spoiled. Mr. Gibson has not continued in the vein, and is confined here to a few momentary impressions, mostly in the sonnet form.
But if we dismiss this tendency from those we imply when we speak of "Georgian," poetry, if we admit too that Mr. W. H. Davies is often not characteristic but a poet who might have appeared at almost any time (as, in another way, is Mr. John Drinkwater), what are we to take for our definition? If we are ever to devise one, we must somehow reconcile and bring under one heading a bundle of qualities, which seem to have but little in common when they are separately described. Yet that there is some common term, some central motive, is suggested by the fact that the pieces in this book which may be thought to be on a lower level than the rest, those by Mr. Moult and Mrs. Shove, are yet not wholly out of place. These writers have been touched in some degree by the spirit of the time, which manifests itself with more power and originality in poets so diverse as Mr. de la Mare, Mr. Sassoon, and Mr. Turner. But it is likely that for some time we shall have to content ourselves with such vague recognitions of spirit, without attempting to be more precise in definition.
We must at all events include Mr. Monro's curious and good poem, Man Carrying Bale, which by its title gives a faint suggestion of some sorts of modern painting, and is actuated by the same desire, to flash suddenly a light on a familiar thing from an unfamiliar angle:
The tough hand closes gently on the load,
Out of the mind, a voice
Calls "Lift!" and the arms, remembering well their work,
Lengthen and pause for help.
Then a slow ripple flows from head to foot
While all the muscles call to one another:
"Lift!" and the bulging bale
Floats like a butterfly in June.
With this may be associated Mr. Davies' remarkable piece, A Child's Pet:
When I sailed out of Baltimore
With twice a thousand head of sheep,
They would not eat, they would not drink,
But bleated o'er the deep.
Inside the pens we crawled each day,
To sort the living from the dead;
And when we reached the Mersey's mouth,
Had lost five hundred head.
Yet every night and day one sheep,
That had no fear of man or sea,
Stuck through the bars its pleading face,
And it was stroked by me.
And to the sheep-man standing near,
"You see," I said, "this one tame sheep:
It seems a child has lost her pet,
And cried herself to sleep."