Mr Aldington is a sophisticated, a cultivated, even a bookish poet. He has translated Anyte of Tegea, the Latin Poets of the Renaissance, and even that astounding farrago of poetry and buffoonery called Les Chansons de Maldoror. Recently he has given us, in the columns of _The Egoist_, a glimpse at his library which ranges from Euripides, via Apuleius, Hooker and Crowley, to Ford Madox Hueffer! “And is it for this I have laboured?” he cries. “To be the object of derision of some bibliophile looking at his books as cynically and disgustedly as I look at mine?” No, it is not for this. It is for a handful of strange and satisfying poems that Mr Aldington has laboured. Every artist knows that it takes a great deal of life, an immense amount of experience and appreciation, to make even a little art. Life is like a many-faceted prism. We must walk around it, observe it on every side, see it not as we ourselves would care to see it, but as others have seen it, before we can induce it to show a new side to our efforts, to cast a few rays which it has not already cast before. Matthew Arnold, who was one of the few English critics able to look at literature from the standpoint of its historical development, declared that poetry was a criticism of life. And so it is. The task of a modern poet is not to shut his eyes to the past, but to see the work of the generations that preceded him as an uncompleted structure, the living intention of whose builders is again born in him, and seeks fruition in the additions he can make to it. In this sense Mr Aldington is a modern poet. He is a poet for the well-read, intelligent, cultivated man or woman. The first poem of his I can remember seeing in print was the one entitled _Choricos_: The ancient songs Pass deathward mournfully. Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths Regretful eyes, and drooping breasts and wings, Symbols of ancient songs, Mournfully passing Down to the great white surges Watched by none— And we turn from the Kyprian’s breasts, And we turn from thee, Phoibos Apollon— And we turn from the fiery day, And the lips that were over-sweet; For silently, Brushing the fields with red-shod feet, With purple robe, Searing the grass as with a sudden flame, Death, Thou hast come upon us. O Death, Thou art the silence of beauty, And we look no more for the morning, We yearn no more for the sun— We kneel before thee; And thou, leaning towards us, Caressingly layest upon us Flowers from thy thin cold hands, And smiling as a chaste woman, Knowing love in her heart, Thou seelest our eyes And the illimitable quietude Comes gently upon us. There is nothing in all the literature I know which can be safely set beside this poem (of which I have only quoted a few fragments) except a few lines of Leopardi: