It must be confessed that the very title of Mr. Graves's new book awakes in us a feeling of pleasure. Mr. Graves has a flair for titles. We remember his Beside the Brazier and Fairies and Fusiliers with a sense that the author has always succeeded in getting a suggestion of his individual quality into the names of his books. In the volume before us Mr. Graves repeats some of his former successes. The poem A Frosty Night is a good example of that dialogue form which Mr. Graves uses with great skill, and in which we may see the influence of the old ballads:
Mother.
Alice, dear, what ails you,
Dazed and white and shaken?
Has the chill night numbed you?
Is it fright you have taken?
Alice.
Mother, I am very well,
I felt never better.
Mother, do not hold me so,
Let me write my letter.
It is a quiet beginning, and it looks very easy to do, but that appearance is deceptive. To write with economy and in an almost conversational tone without becoming flat and banal is extremely difficult, but Mr. Graves's hand rarely loses its cunning in those awkward passages of low emotional pitch which are unavoidable in any sort of narrative verse. When the pitch rises he has a remarkably sure touch and can give us a vivid picture without any of the elaborate, detailed word-painting which is the bane of so much modern poetry. What could be finer, for example, than the stanzas that follow those already quoted:
Mother.
Sweet, my dear, what ails you?
Alice.
No, but I am well;
The night was cold and frosty,
There's no more to tell.