and which continues in a quaint fantasy of thought and expression that is entirely Mr. Graves's own, and is an original contribution to modern poetry. One of the best poems in the book is called Thunder at Night, and it describes two children into whose dreams the real thunderstorm outside their house enters. The boy is dreaming of a bear, the girl of monkeys and snakes. The hot, confused feeling of the night is vividly suggested and then the poem suddenly ends with a stanza that is a complete change in temperature and beautifully suggests the approaching dawn:
They cannot guess, could not be told
How soon comes careless day,
With birds and dandelions gold,
Wet grass, cool scents of May.
The book is well named Country Sentiment, for it has much of the beauty and the fragrance of the countryside.
LINES OF LIFE. By Henry W. Nevinson. Allen & Unwin. 3s. 6d.
THE PEDLAR, AND OTHER POEMS. By Ruth Manning-Sanders. Selwyn & Blount. 3s. 6d.
SKYLARK AND SWALLOW. By R. L. Gales. Erskine Macdonald. 5s.
Of the authors of these three books of verse Mr. Henry W. Nevinson is the only one who has made a reputation as a prose-writer, and it is not surprising that his work should show the widest range of thought and expression. His poems maintain a high level of accomplishment; here, for example, is a sonnet:
A German Winter.
On leagues of solid land the snow lies deep,
The snow falls crumbling from the leaden sky;
All but the fir is white; with timorous eye
Strange little birds in at the window peep,
From frozen forests come; black rivers creep,
Shrunk with the cold till half their bed is dry,
Along the ice-hung ozier reeds, and by
The wooden villages with gables steep,
Huddled around their spires.
Oh, far away
A purple mountain rises from the sand
The golden sand beneath the golden day;
Down the bright steep the waterfall plunges free
From ledge to radiant ledge, and on the strand
Sounds the long murmur of the eternal sea!