Today he takes my neighbour's wife, And leaves a little child To lie upon his breast and cry Like the Night-wind, so wild. And every hour its voice is heard-- Tell me where is she gone! Death cannot play that game with me-- If I do live alone. The feather-weight pocket-volumes of verse that this poet puts forth, each containing a crop of tiny poems--have an excellent virtue--they are interesting, good companions for a day in the country. There is always sufficient momentum in page 28 to carry you on to page 29--something that cannot be said of all books. English literature suffered a loss in the death of Edward Thomas, who was killed in France on the ninth of April, 1917. He was born on the third of March, 1878, and had published a long list of literary critiques, biographies, interpretations of nature, and introspective essays. He took many solitary journeys afoot; his books _The South Country_, _The Heart of England_, and others, show both observation and reflection. Although English by birth and education, he had in his veins Welsh and Spanish blood. In 1917 a tiny volume of his poems appeared. These are unlike any other verse of the past or present. They cannot be called great poetry, but they are original, imaginative, whimsical, and reveal a rich personality. Indeed we feel in reading these rimes that the author was greater than anything he wrote or could write. The difficulty in articulation comes apparently from a mind so full that it cannot run freely off the end of a pen. Shyness was undoubtedly characteristic of the man, as it often is of minute observers of nature. I am not at all surprised to learn from one who knew him of his "temperamental melancholy." He was austere and aloof; but exactly the type of mind that would give all he had to those who possessed his confidence. It must have been a privilege to know him intimately. I have said that his poems resemble the work of no other poet; this is true; but there is a certain kinship between him and Robert Frost, indicated not only in the verses, but in the fact that his book is dedicated to the American. His death accentuates the range of the dragnet of war. This intellectual, quiet, introspective, slightly ironical temperament would seem almost ideally unfitted for the trenches. Yet, although no soldier by instinct, and having a family dependent upon his writings for support, he gave himself freely to the Great Cause. He never speaks in his verses of his own sacrifice, and indeed says little about the war; but the first poem in the volume expresses the universal call. Rise up, rise up, And, as the trumpet blowing Chases the dreams of men, As the dawn glowing The stars that left unlit The land and water, Rise up and scatter The dew that covers The print of last night's lovers-- Scatter it, scatter it!