But it is not only her keen search for truth and an equally keen eye for the exact word that make these poems distinctive. A sharp color sense, a surprising whimsicality, a translation of the ordinary in terms of the beautiful, illumine such poems as “Sinfonia Domestica,” “Clothes,” “Autumn.” In the last named, with its brilliant combination of painting and housewifery, Mrs. Untermeyer has reproduced her early environment with a bright pungency; “Verhaeren’s Flemish _genre_ pictures are no better,” writes Amy Lowell. Several of her purely pictorial poems establish a swift kinship between the most romantic and most prosaic objects. The tiny “Moonrise” is an example; so is “High Tide,” that, in one extended metaphor, turns the mere fact of a physical law into a most arresting and noble fancy. _Dreams Out of Darkness_ (1921) is a ripening of this author’s powers with a richer musical undercurrent. This increase of melody is manifest on every page, possibly most striking in “Lake Song,” which, beneath its symbolism, is one of the most liquid unrhymed lyrics of the period. HIGH TIDE I edged back against the night. The sea growled assault on the wave-bitten shore. And the breakers, Like young and impatient hounds, Sprang with rough joy on the shrinking sand. Sprang—but were drawn back slowly With a long, relentless pull, Whimpering, into the dark. Then I saw who held them captive; And I saw how they were bound With a broad and quivering leash of light, Held by the moon, As, calm and unsmiling, She walked the deep fields of the sky. AUTUMN (_To My Mother_) How memory cuts away the years, And how clean the picture comes Of autumn days, brisk and busy; Charged with keen sunshine. And you, stirred with activity, The spirit of those energetic days. There was our back-yard, So plain and stripped of green, With even the weeds carefully pulled away From the crooked red bricks that made the walk, And the earth on either side so black.