And must the Senator from Illinois
Be this squat thing, with blinking, half-closed eyes?
This brazen gutter idol, reared to power
Upon a leering pyramid of lies?
That is what met the eyes of the newly-elected when he opened his local paper on the morning after the poll.
A TREASURY OF WAR POETRY, BRITISH AND AMERICAN POEMS OF THE WORLD WAR: 1914–1919. Edited by George Herbert Clarke. Hodder & Stoughton. 10s. 6d. net.
If this be a treasury it contains not merely gold and silver, but copper, nickel, Britannia metal, brass, and lead. Even if all the good poems inspired by the war were brought together they would not make a book of over four hundred closely-printed pages. Mr. Clarke is Professor of English in the University of Tennessee. His collection, amongst those who are sufficiently undiscriminating to like it, may promote Anglo-American friendship; if it does it will have justified its existence. Otherwise its only value consists in its reproduction of certain poems which are not, we think, to be found elsewhere. We believe that the Poet Laureate's Wounded (which appeared in the Times) is one of these. It is a very lusty poem inspired by Trafalgar Square in sunshine: wounded lads lolling by the lions and Nelson standing above. It ends:
The gentle unjealous Shakespeare, I trow,
In his country grave of peaceful fame,
Must feel exiled from life and glow,
If he thinks of this man with his warrior claim,
Who looketh on London as if 'twere his own
As he standeth in stone, aloft and alone,
Sailing the sky, with one arm and one eye.
This poem—it is not the only one—was overlooked by those who were recently yelping at Mr. Bridges for having written nothing about the war.