have the testimony and warning before them of some one who knew, having seen and felt and suffered, and in his suffering told what he endured in no uncertain voice.

Mr Sassoon is at one again with all the other poets of his time when he comes to write about his dead comrades. The unanimity with which the modern soldier-poets sing of the mingling of their lost companions with the glories of nature is worth the psychic's earnest attention: it is a phenomenon not the least marvellous in an age of amazing discoveries :

Their faces are the fair, unshrouded night,

And planets are their eyes, their ageless dreams.
Tenderly stooping earthward from their height,
They wander in the dusk with chanting streams :
And they are dawn-lit trees, with arms up-flung,
To hail the burning heavens they left unsung.

His anger at the war itself is as nothing compared with the fury into which he lashes himself when he writes of the way that the war is treated at home, in the music-halls for example. Perhaps the supreme example of this is to be found in Blighters :

The House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin
And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks
Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din ;
"We're sure the Kaiser loves the dear old Tanks!
I'd like to see a Tank come down the stalls,
Lurching to rag-time tunes, or "Home, Sweet Home,"
And there'd be no more jokes in music-halls
To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.

In a poem, entitled Stretcher Case, "dedicated to Edward Marsh," he depicts the impression which England makes on the returned casualty in a quite new light:

But was he back in Blighty? Slow he turned,
Till in his heart thanksgiving leapt and burned.
There shone the blue serene, the prosperous land,
Trees, cows, and hedges; skipping these, he scanned
Large, friendly names that change not with the year,
Lung Tonic, Mustard, Liver Pills, and Beer.

But it is not only upon the war that Mr Sassoon dwells he has that deep passion for beauty without which no poet can hope for a permanent place in our hearts, beauty whether expressed in the petals of a rose or a sky at dawn or any other natural glory: this on rain is typical :

Rain; he could hear it rustling through the dark;
Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;
Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers
That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps
Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace

Gently and slowly washing life away.

This is not only beautiful, but true. Mr Sassoon fulfils Wordsworth's conditions of keeping his eye on the object, and he heightens his effect by the strict accuracy of each stroke.

Many poets have (of late) tried to describe in poetry the romance of the train, but in Morning Express Mr Sassoon has, I think, eclipsed the others, partly because of his literal precision, his selection, and his simplicity, partly also because of his economy in the use of words: it is a severely reticent picture, austere, exact, and withal beautiful. There is something of the Pre-Raphaelite in his work here :

Along the wind-swept platform, pinched and white
The travellers stand in pools of wintry light,
Offering themselves to morn's long, slanting arrows.
The train's due; porters trundle laden barrows.

The train steams in, volleying resplendent clouds
Of sun-blown vapour.

Boys, indolent-eyed, from baskets leaning back,
Question each face; a man with a hammer steals
Stooping from coach to coach; with clang and clack,
Touches and tests and listens to the wheels

. . .

the monster grunts: "Enough!" Tightening his load of links with pant and puff. Under the arch, then forth into blue day, Glide the processional windows on their way, And glimpse the stately folk who sit at ease To view the world like kings taking the seas In prosperous weather: drifting banners tell Their progress to the counties: with them goes The clamour of their journeying.

But by far the most precious quality about Mr Sassoon is that in spite of his righteous anger there is behind all this an indomitable courage and a splendid optimism

I keep such music in my brain

No din this side of death can quell,

Glory exulting over pain,

And beauty, garlanded in hell.

Like his own old huntsman and Rupert Brooke he shows very clearly that he is a real lover of life, and furthermore that he is a devout lover of life.

Where's the use of life and being glad
If God's not in your gladness?

For

he asks not once nor twice but many times in these poems; "Jesus keep me joyful when I pray." There is an ever-present hopefulness and joy in his work which charms us and rings all the truer because we feel so certain that this hopefulness and this joy are not an insecure refuge, built upon insincerity and lies, but found after many searchings of heart and much

striving to winnow the chaff from the wheat in the harvest of life.

Poets of his calibre are rare indeed: so many of those who showed promise of great things, like Francis Ledwidge and Rupert Brooke, are now silent. It will be the fervent wish of all those who read Mr Sassoon's work that he may be spared to fulfil the prophecies which the critics have ventured upon with regard to his powers, and continue to sing even more sweetly, more surely now that peace has returned.

Even now, above the tumult and the din of the aftermath of war, his voice rings out, irrepressible, strangely elated and clear:

The world's my field, and I'm the lark,

Alone with upward song, alone with light.

Are we not justified in hoping for even more haunting melodies, even grander poems when quietude descends upon the land?

IV

ROBERT NICHOLS

N any discussion or criticism of modern art it

I

is impossible to avoid imagining what the artist

would have achieved had he not been swept into the swirl and eddy of war. In the Napoleonic era it seemed possible to pursue one's craft as though no world-shaking conflict were taking place. Not so to-day. Far too many of our most promising young writers have been killed, cut off in the middle of their song.

No man can pretend to view life as he saw it a few years ago whether we like it or not our very souls are altogether changed, in many instances not for the better. It is, however, a truism that the poet thrives best when he is suffering most; consequently not a few whose names were unknown in 1914 found themselves on the battlefield and leapt into fame as poets.

High among these I would place Robert Nichols. So new a poet is he that you will search in vain for his name in any anthology published before Mr Edward Marsh included some of his work in the third volume of Georgian Poetry (1915-1917).

But in the volume of poems called Ardours and Endurances there is sufficient warrant for my assertion that he is one of the major poets of the day.

At the end of the most ambitious poem of the book (it occupies nearly seventy pages), A Faun's Holiday, he writes: