KILMENY

Dark, dark lay the drifters against the red West,
As they shot their long meshes of steel overside;
And the oily green waters were rocking to rest

When Kilmeny went out, at the turn of the tide;
And nobody knew where that lassie would roam,
For the magic that called her was tapping unseen.
It was well-nigh a week ere Kilmeny came home,
And nobody knew where Kilmeny had been.

She'd a gun at her bow that was Newcastle's best,
And a gun at her stern that was fresh from the Clyde,
And a secret her skipper had never confessed,

Not even at dawn, to his newly-wed bride;

...

And a wireless that whispered above, like a gnome,
The laughter of London, the boasts of Berlin..
O, it may have been mermaids that lured her from home;
But nobody knew where Kilmeny had been.

It was dark when Kilmeny came home from her quest
With her bridge dabbled red where her skipper had died;
But she moved like a bride with a rose at her breast,
And Well done Kilmeny! the Admiral cried.
Now, at sixty-four fathom a conger may come
And nose at the bones of a drowned submarine;
But late in the evening Kilmeny came home,
And nobody knew where Kilmeny had been.

There's a wandering shadow that stares at the foam,

Though they sing all the night to old England, their queen. Late, late in the evening, Kilmeny came home;

And nobody knew where Kilmeny had been.

Alfred Noyes (1880- )

Perhaps the most notable poem occasioned by the close of the World War is Sandburg's “A. E. F.” It is hardly necessary to note that poets are not historians. The soldiers of the recent war were not allowed to keep their rifles as the soldiers of the Civil War seem to have done. Does not the effect obtained prove that this violation of historical fact is justified?

A. E. F.

There will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart,
The rifle grooves curling with flakes of rust.

A spider will make a silver string in the darkest, warmest corner of it.

The trigger and the range-finder, they too will be rusty.
And no hands will polish the gun, and it will hang on the wall.
Forefingers and thumbs will point absently and casually
toward it.

It will be spoken of among half-forgotten, wished-to-beforgotten things.

They will tell the spider: Go on, you're doing good work.

Carl Sandburg (1878-)

What shall we say, in conclusion, of the relative merits of contemporary poetry when compared with that of earlier periods? In making any such comparison, one should bear several things in mind. First, it is unfair to set off the work of a dozen living poets against the numerous poems written by scores of poets in various periods which cover many centuries. It would be fairer to compare the British poets of today with the Romantic poets of a century ago, or the living American poets with the New England poets of the last century. Yet even

then one must remember two things: first, that many of our living poets probably still have their best years ahead of them and, second, that the great output of contemporary verse is as yet unwinnowed by the hand of time. This is not the case with the poets of the Romantic Movement. Here we know at once who the great poets are: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. In the case of Wordsworth, for instance, we know that only about a fourth of what he wrote is worth reading today. Although he died at the age of eighty, practically all his best poems were composed in one decade, 1797-1807. In the case of a minor Romantic poet like Thomas Campbell, only three poems can be said to have lived: "Hohenlinden," "Ye Mariners of England," and "The Battle of the Baltic." No one now reads his long poems, The Pleasures of Hope and Gertrude of Wyoming. For Frost, Robinson, and Masefield, the sifting is yet to be done. Such anthologies as ours attempt it only tentatively and with trepidation. It is idle to say that all the poems of these poets are immortal; but who shall say just which of their poems will not be remembered?

The criticism of contemporary poetry is notoriously unreliable. Much of it is ignorant or partisan; much of it is mere advertising. One should be careful not to accept without question the estimates put upon the living poets by their publishers or their friends. Lord Byron attempted to forestall posterity's estimate of his fellowpoets. At the head of his list he placed Crabbe and Rogers, both almost forgotten; in the middle, Moore and Campbell; at the end, Wordsworth and Coleridge. Byron

could hardly have made a poorer guess, for though posterity has accepted his list, it reads it backwards.

While we shall, therefore, not attempt to estimate the achievement of the poets of today, we do wish to point out two things which they have undoubtedly accomplished. In the first place, they have put into their poetry much of contemporary life and thought. Equally important is the fact that they have helped to bring about an enormous revival of interest in poetry. While in this country in 1918, John Masefield said: "America is making ready for the coming of a great poet. In England, in the days before Chaucer, many people were reading and writing verse. Then he came. The same intense interest in poetry was shown again just before the coming of Shakespeare. And now, in this country, you are all writing poems or enjoying them. You are making ready for a master. A great poetic revival is in progress."

NOTES

CHAPTER I. THE STUDY OF POETRY

The following are excellent discussions of poetry:-Hazlitt: "On Poetry in General"; Arnold: Introduction to Ward's English Poets; Poe's lecture, "The Poetic Principle"; Theodore Watts-Dunton's article on Poetry in the Encyclopædia Britannica; and Max Eastman's The Enjoyment of Poetry. See Bibliography for other titles.

The following references throw further light upon the process of poetic composition:-W. L. Cross: "The Act of Composition," Atlantic Monthly, May, 1906; Lane Cooper: Methods and Aims in the Study of Literature, Section IV; Conrad Aiken: Scepticisms, Chapter II, "The Mechanism of Poetic Inspiration." Dorothy Canfield Fisher: “How ‘Flint and Fire' Started," in Benjamin A. Heydrick: Americans All, is an exceptionally interesting account of the composition of a short story. Compare also Poe's account of the writing of "The Raven" in "The Philosophy of Composition."

CHAPTER II. THE SONG

For further discussion of the song, see Mrs. Wodehouse's article on the Song in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians; Alfred Hayes: "The Relation of Music to Poetry," Atlantic Monthly, January, 1914; Prof. Percy H. Boynton's chapter on "Patriotic Songs and Hymns" in Volume IV of the Cambridge History of American Literature; Brander Matthews: "The Songs of the Civil War," in Pen and Ink; John Erskine: The Elizabethan Lyric, Chapter I. There is an interesting account of Stephen Collins Foster in Henry