Of some contemporary poets ‘modernist’ is used merely to describe a certain independence in them, without definitely associating them with modernism as a literary cause: though content to stay in the main stream of poetry, they make judicious splashes to show that they are aware of the date. This has been the tactical position adopted by some poets whose modernism consists in an aloof moderateness or sensibleness in all directions--a studied inaction--and by others who have had neither the courage nor the capacity to go the whole way with modernism and yet have not wished to be left behind. In the first class belong such poets as Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Frost. Mr. Frost’s nature-poems are unaffected nature-poems and, with the exception of a few of Frank Prewett’s, perhaps the only real, that is, unliterary, ones since Clare’s. (Edmund Blunden’s show accurate observation but grow more and more literary.) The following is from Mr. Frost’s _Runaway_, describing a foal afraid of his first sight of snow. The faint modernism of this poem consists in its complete casualness and matter-of-factness: Once when the snow of the year was beginning to fall We stopped by a mountain pasture to say “Whose colt?” A little Morgan had one forefoot on the wall, The other curled at his breast. He dipped his head And snorted at us. And then he had to bolt.... And now he comes again with a clatter of stone And mounts the wall again with whited eyes And all his tail that isn’t hair up straight. He shudders his coat as if to throw off flies.... Mr. Sassoon, who has, like Mr. Frost, never troubled to keep up with literary fashions and who, when he occasionally yields to the temptation of poeticalness, adopts the manner of a generation ago, writes as follows about a Founder’s Feast held in one of the greater Colleges at Cambridge University shortly after the War ended. The poem carries on the indignation of his war-poems against the General Staff. Modernism in Mr. Sassoon is an intelligent, satiric reaction to contemporary political and social Bluffs; it is not a literary policy--which is why, in fact, professed literary modernists patronize him: .... Gowns, rose and scarlet in flamingo ranks, Adorned the dais that shone with ancient silver; And guests of honour gazed far down the Hall With precognition of returning thanks. There beamed the urbanest Law-lord on the Bench, Debating with the Provost (ceremonious In flushed degrees of vintage scholarship) The politics of Plato--and the French But on the Provost’s left, in gold and blue Sat ... O my God! ... great Major-General Bluff Enough enough enough enough enough!