442 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



we shall all find sufficient asphodel, at least, everywhere about 

 us, for both. Then we may see again in that deserted vale : 



'Tis Apollo comes leading 



His choir, the Nine. 

 — The leader is fairest, 



But all are divine. 



. . . We may perhaps distinguish two kinds of poetry, the 

 silvern, which is perfect, and the golden, which is perfect and 

 wise. The latter is the rarer ; for it must contain, generally 

 in allegory, the richest colour of human thought. The war is 

 creating much good work of this type, but by far the finest 

 which I have seen — which will especially interest scientific 

 minds — is Mr. Masefield's Sonnets and Poems. At first sight 

 the poems would appear to have no lien with the war, but the 

 key is given by the author's stanzas in this number of Science 

 Progress. On opening the little book, we think we have only 

 a casket of loose pearls ; but on lifting them one by one we find 

 them all to be strung on that most delicate and rare of threads, 

 the theme of Beauty — as revealed in the last of the stanzas 

 referred to. The stringing has been done so exquisitely that we 

 cannot always see the filament for the beads — as in a garden web 

 in the morning sunlight. Really however the thridding is the 

 thing itself — we are recalled from the horrors of the present 

 gloomy day of night to that ideal which perhaps comprises all 

 that is good in us and for us. 



But there is another aspect of the poems which is naturally 

 of especial interest to myself. Many of them are based upon a 

 cosmogony of mind which was suggested by me to the poet years 

 ago, and which will be found briefly described in Science 

 Progress for July last — now set by him in beautiful lines : 



What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt 

 Held in cohesion by unresting cells 

 Which work they know not why, which never halt, 

 Myself unwitting where their master dwells. 



If, pressing past the guards in those grey gates, 

 The brain's most folded intertwisted shell, 

 I might attain to that which alters fates, 

 The King, the supreme self, the Master Cell ; 

 Then, on Man's earthly peak, I might behold 

 The unearthly self beyond, unguessed, untold. 



Sonnets 14 and 19 continue the theme. 



