Not yet thirty, Mr. Aiken is widely known; but the duration of his fame will depend upon his future work. He has thus far shown the power to write melodious music, to paint nature pictures in warm colours; he is ever on the quest of Beauty. His sensible preface to _Earth Triumphant_ calls attention to certain similarities between his style in verse-narrative and that of John Masefield. But he is not a copier, and his work is his own. Some poets are on the earth; some are in the air; some, like Shelley, are in the aether. Conrad Aiken is firmly, gladly on the earth. He believes that our only paradise is here and now. He surely has the gift of singing speech, but his poetry lacks intellectual content. In the volume _Nocturne of Remembered Spring_ (1917), there is a dreamy charm, like the hesitating notes of Chopin. Although his contribution to the advance of poetry is not important, he has the equipment of a poet. When he has more to say, he will have no difficulty in making us listen; for he understands the magic of words. Thus far his poems are something like librettos; they don't mean much without the music. Let him remember the bitter cry of old Henry Vaughan: every artist, racked by labour-pains, will understand what Vaughan meant by calling this piece _Anguish_: O! 'tis an easy thing To write and sing; But to write true, unfeigned verse Is very hard! O God, disperse These weights, and give my spirit leave To act as well as to conceive Among our young American poets there are few who have inherited in richer or purer measure than William Alexander Percy. He was born at Greenville, Mississippi, on the fourth of May, 1885, and studied at the University of the South and at the Harvard Law School. He is now in military service. In 1915, his volume of poems, _Sappho in Leukas_, attracted immediately the attention of discriminating critics. The prologue shows that noble devotion to art, that high faith in it, entirely beyond the understanding of the Philistine, but which awakens an instant and accurate vibration in the heart of every lover of poetry. O singing heart, think not of aught save song; Beauty can do no wrong. Let but th' inviolable music shake Golden on golden flake, Down to the human throng, And one, one surely, will look up, and hear and wake. Weigh not the rapture; measure not nor sift God's dark, delirious gift; But deaf to immortality or gain, Give as the shining rain, Thy music pure and swift, And here or there, sometime, somewhere, 'twill reach the grain.