Dubious, Facing three ways, Welcoming wayfarers, He whom the sea-orchard shelters from the west, From the east Weathers sea-wind; Fronts the great dunes. Wind rushes Over the dunes, And the coarse, salt-crusted grass Answers. Heu, It whips round my ankles!—etc., etc. I am not willing to have that poem read quickly and cursorarily, as one reads a column of newspaper print. It must be read with some of the close, intense attention with which it was written. Each word and phrase were most carefully considered and arranged. The reader must remember that the object of such writing is not to convey information but to create in the reader a mood, an emotion, a sense of atmosphere. Mr. Yeats is right when he complains that newspapers have spoiled our sense of poetry; we expect poetry to tell us some piece of news, and indeed poetry has no news to tell anyone. Its object is simply to arouse an emotion, and no emotion is ever aroused in a person who skims through a piece of poetry as he skims through a journal. When I read that poem I have evoked in me a picture—like a picture of Courbet or Boudin—of a white sea roaring on to yellow sands under a bright sky, with the wind sweeping and whistling in the dunes. And I have a feeling that it is a magic sort of picture, of somewhere a great way off, where it would not surprise me to find the image of a god at the cross-roads, with the offerings of simple people about the pedestal. And at the same time I always remember bathing from some sand-dunes near Rye, in Sussex, on a very windy afternoon, when the sand blinded me and the sharp grass cut my ankles as I ran down to the water. I cannot, of course, tell what sort of an effect such writing has on other people. It may be that I am especially sensitive to it. But let me quote another of the author’s poems, conveying a totally different mood. SITALKAS Thou art come at length More beautiful than any cool god In a chamber under Lycia’s far coast, Than any high god who touches us not Here in the seeded grass. Aye, than Argestes, Scattering the broken leaves.