The end-papers of this volume bear a charming design of athletes throwing darts at targets, and it is to be observed that no one of them as yet has hit the bull's-eye. We do not know if the symbolism was deliberate, but it is apt, for the volume is full of potshots so wayward that we are usually uncertain as to which target these erratic slingers wish to hit. Music at least is not desired: most of the verses consist of strings of statements—if they are not disconnected the connections between them are not apparent to us—interesting neither severally nor jointly, and entirely without beauty of sound. Miss Edith Sitwell's verses, though incomprehensible, contain a good deal of vivid detail, pleasant because it reminds us of bright pictures. There is one poem by the late Wilfred Owen (Strange Meeting) which has a powerful, sombre beginning:
It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped,
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall.
With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached here from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange, friend," I said. "Here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said the other. "Save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also."
There are several other poems by him which have all the earnestness, and much of the force, of Mr. Sassoon's illustrations of the beastly cruelty of war. But the one poet included who is always arousing interest and curiosity is Mr. Aldous Huxley. Mr. Huxley, when these poems were written (though, in Leda, he seems already to be partly recovering), seems to have been in the same sort of revulsion against sentimentality as Rupert Brooke was in when his first book was being composed. He is anxious that we should not overlook the facts that there are noisome smells in the world, that many people are disgusting to see, and that even the most touching episode may be interrupted by an eructation: though, unlike Brooke, he does not usually even try to sing. There is something very familiar about the restaurant poem:
What negroid holiday makes free
With such priapic revelry?
What songs? What gongs? What nameless rites?
What gods like wooden stalagmites?
What reeking steam of kidney pie?
What blasts of Bantu melody?
Ragtime ... but when the wearied band
Swoons to a waltz, I take her hand,
And there we sit in blissful calm,
Quietly sweating palm to palm.
There is always strength about Mr. Huxley's epithets: he observes accurately and his language is hard, clear, and original. He conveys his unpleasing ruminations with such force that in several places we were incommoded by a rising in our gorge. But it is not in order to obtain sensations of that kind that we read poetry, and we shall not in idle hours beguile our leisure by repeating over and over the much-loved syllables of The Betrothal of Priapus. Mr. Huxley can see things with his own eyes, and has a powerful intelligence, and when he has discovered something to write about he may become a very good poet.
GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH ENTERS INTO HEAVEN, AND OTHER POEMS. By Nicholas Vachel Lindsay. With an Introduction by Robert Nichols. Chatto & Windus. 5s. net.
Mr. Vachel Lindsay is best known as the author of poems, notably poems inspired by negro camp-meetings, which are meant for recitation; they have intoxicating rhythms and the language full of gusto. The Congo, The Daniel Jazz, and others should certainly be introduced to the British public, and perhaps Messrs. Chatto propose to follow up this volume with another containing Mr. Lindsay's later work. It is a pity, however, that the present collection should have come first, for it contains little that is characteristic of Mr. Lindsay at his best, and little, therefore, that will show readers here how good he can be. The title-poem, though not as good as some of its successors, is the only one now published which shows what Mr. Lindsay can do. It describes the entrance of the late General Booth into Paradise at the head of the motley army whom he has saved:
Booth led boldly with his big bass drum—
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
The Saints smiled gravely and they said "He's come—
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
Walking lepers followed, rank on rank,
Lurching bravoes from the ditches dank,
Drabs from the alleyways and drug fiends pale—
Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail:
Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath,
Unwashed legions with the ways of Death—
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
The other poems are far more ordinary in form and banal in language. Mr. Lindsay, at this stage, was writing like other people, and his verse was redeemed from commonplaceness only by its sincerity and high spirits. He is an "uplifter" who is as jovial as Falstaff; he is probably the only poet on record, except Shelley, to be a teetotaller, and certainly the only one to take an active part in an anti-Saloon campaign. The second best poem in this book is an elegy, in couplets, on O. Henry; an elegy both romantic and truthful. Of the others an address to the U.S. Senate is decidedly racy. A senator whom Mr. Lindsay regarded as undesirable was elected. His verses on the occasion begin: