i8 
LAINU & WATER 
August lb, 1917 
Books to Read 
By Lucian Oldershaw 
A NUMBER of books of verse— mostly of in- 
dilierent quality — have accumulated on my desk. 
In bulk they oppress me, like a visit to the Koyal 
..Academy. So many people doing things with all 
their might and so little achieved of any pcrrnanent value ! 
Yet, after all, what does "permanent value" mean ; and what, 
particularly in the arts, do permanent values matter ? We 
are here to-day and gone to-morrow. Meanwhile, let us strive 
manfully to achieve ourselves ; and let us applaud and en- 
courage the efforts of others, letting permanent values 
take care of themselves and believing ail ett'ort tu be of value 
to the individual and the race. Ab()\'e all let us sing the songs 
of our contemporaries, and especially of those young and brave 
men who march out singing to meet death. 
* * * * * , 
" Should any sorrowing for the loss of sucli another bright 
young life find comfort in these verses which, however im- 
perfect from a literary point of view tiiey may be, are still 
the true expression of the faith held by the best of England's 
sons so nobly doing their duty to-<iay, the object of their 
publicati<m will have been achieved." So " D.M.B.," in 
introducing Robert Harold Beckh's Swallows in Storm and 
Sunlight (Chapman and Hall, 3s. 6d. net), and there is 
little to add to this by way either of criticism or recommenda- 
tion. Beckh, a scholar of Haileybury and Jesus College, 
Cambridge, where he had done well alike in work and in 
games, and intended to become a missionary,'. After a year 
at Cambridge he " joined up "' in August, 1914, and two 
years later fell in action in France. Here are the poems, 
very appropriately described by the way in their collective 
title, of happ3' and hopeful youth. Beckh's last verses con- 
tain the following lines : — 
Come danger, come Death, 
Set teeth and brace bacJc. 
Still woo Mother Earth 
Tho' her brows be bent black. 
With a smile full of mirth. 
And she'll soon p.ay vou back, 
In the coin that j-ou're worth. 
* * * Hi « 
"Youth" is the theme of an effective epigram by M. St. Clare 
Byrne in Aldebran, a new volume in Mr. B. H. Blackwell's 
valuable " Adventurers All " Series (2s. net). 
At fifteen, Horace, 
Sixteen, Tom Paine, 
Seventeen. Plato, 
Nineteen. Montaigne. 
And now I look back 
And, to tell the truth. 
Stand aghast 
At the age of youth ! 
This, however, is a parenthesis in a volume of lyrics with a 
distinctive note of their own and a strain of haunting melody. 
Some of the verses have the daintiness of Herrick, to whom 
one of the pleasantest is addressed. Others show the 
influence of W. B. Yeats. Here is the closing stanza of 
the threnody, A^os idem mortales . . .," perhaps the 
finest poem in the book. 
When they shall come to tell me you are dead 
I will be very quiet : 1 shall know 
Instantly, then, the place where I n\u.';t go. 
The thing (hat I must do. The words you .said 
I must ponder on in the very deepest heart : 
I must remember all you ever did 
Of loveliness, and tlie deep honour hid 
In your whole life, and all the little part 
We shared tcgelher, both of sonow, laughter, 
And age-old foolishness, all unforgotten, 
I will tell over to myself all day 
Your wonder and your beauty . . . and then after, 
With peace of you from my long day begotten, 
Quietly, strong with you, go on my way. 
♦ * * • • 
Another volume of impassioned poems inspired by a fiorv 
enthusiasm for I'-reedom comes from the pen of Henry l^i van 
Binns. November: Poems in War Time (A. C. Fifield.'^s. 
net) is the third volume of verse that this poet has published 
since the war began, and it will serve to strengthen the growing 
opinion that his is one of the greater voices of our time. 
With splendid imagerj' fetched from near and far, and in 
full resounding tones, he delivers the great message of the 
age. I forbear to quote from the poems, because the most 
characteristic of them, such as Freedom's Fellowship, have 
a cumulative effect which would be lost in passages torn 
from their context. The book ends with a dialogue between 
Shelley and Mary Shelley on the subject of Emilia Viviani, 
called The Price of Freedom. Shelley sums up : " Freedom 
is a perfect and final thing even as death and birth are in their 
order final. And Freedom goes beyond them. It is eternal 
life. It is immediate participation in the integrity of (lod 
Him.self." But Mary has the last word : " But never without 
justice ; never without wanting to pay the price." 
• « « 41 « 
Freedom, treated in a lighter vein, is also the subject of 
Reddie Mallett's Freedom Songs (Waters and Co., is. net). 
These songs have a good swing about them and express now 
with strong indignation and again with racy humour, an 
Englishman's love of liberty and scorn of tyranny. Among 
the humorous verses I specially enjoyed, " What I ses to 
Jellicoe," the supposed yarn of a sailor pulling a good lady's 
leg, a poem which should make an excellent recitation. 
After an extravagant tale of penetrating the Kiel'Canal and 
removing the Kaiser on his yacht, it ends : — 
" — .1 sixpence ? — Thank you kindly, Mum — 
I will have just a tot o' rum ; 
I always ses drink makes a ioo^ ; 
But you're so kind, I'll break my rool, 
Same when Jack ses, ' Jim, com-' balow ! — 
' I'm on / ' 1 ses to Jellicoe." 
* * * * * 
Two other books of light verse are worth attention. One 
is Odes to Trifles (John Lane, 3s. 6d. net), in which R. M. 
Eassie of the Canadian Expeditionary Force writes gaily of 
life on the Western Front in the spirit of these quatrains : 
A tin of Ticklers between us four 
A loaf of bread, and bully-beef galore 
Beside us lying in the booby-hutch ; 
What can a bloomin' soier wish for more ? 
And nightly thro' the darkness there will come 
A Quarter-Master-Sergeant "going some" 
Bearing a jar upon his shoulder, and 
He bids us taste of it, and 'tis the Rum 
The other is Lyrics for Sport (B. H. Blackwell, is. 3a. net), 
by R. P. Keigwin, who has made some reputation as a writer 
of occasional verse. He deals with cricket, golf, "football 
(both amatenr and professional) , and rackets ; and writes 
useful mnemonic verses for Naval Cadets. The lady 
(American, I gather), who has such a name as Atossa, can 
hardly complain of this delightbil epitaph : 
< Pause, friend, and read, that vou may know 
How fares the good Atossa 
Her 'at has vanished long ago. 
But here repose her ossa. 
***** 
Finally, here is a collection of poems to illustrate South 
African life. In Gold Dust from South African Poetry (A. C. 
Fifield, IS. 6d. net), Mr. E. H. Crouch has aimed at making 
" a collection which shall truthfully convey to those who 
may not be living in this land of sunshine, or who may not 
be familiar with its varied and interesting aspects, a fair idea 
of the scenes and life which go to make this sub-Continent so 
lascinating." It is indeed a kind of geography in verse, and 
very alluring verse too, much of it. In it vou may hear 
" the creaking croon of the disselboom " in "that excellent 
anonymous poem, " The Song of the Ox-Wagon," may listen 
to the weird lullaby of a Kalfir mother, or the " Voices of the 
'Veldt," may accompany in fancy the big-game hunter or 
watch the southern stars with A. "S. Cripps. 
All night a-orof upon our shleep, 
A million warders stare. 
What do the stars of England know 
Of us the sons she bare — 
That all a million scornful eyes 
NVor England's honour care f 
i GOGGLES 
I WIND-SCRCCNS 
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^ THE ONUY <^ 
SAFETY GLASS 
