Totally different is my second volume of verse—_The Sea is Kind_, by T. Sturge Moore (Houghton Mifflin). A letter from the publishers suggests that “like Noyes and Masefield, T. Sturge Moore may have a message to American lovers of poetry.” I am an American lover of poetry and an eager one; therefore, I was hopeful; but I am oppressed by the obligation of doing justice to the initial poem in the book, viz.: _The Sea is Kind_, because I cannot tell at all what it is about. Several people, by name Evarne and Plexaura, females, and Menaleas and Eucritos, males, seem to be talking high talk by the edge of the sea—about ships and storms and nymphs and kindred things. Evarne speaks at great length in rough pentameters, quoting others more obscure, if possible, than herself. The handsome scowler smiled. Then with a royal gesture of content Addressed our wonder. * * * * * “But devastation from mine inroads stretches “Across Euphrates further than they dare. “The industrious Ninevite, the huckster grey “With watching scored tale lengthen down his wall “Beneath his hatred Median debtor’s name, “Dread me, and hang near casement, over door, “To guard each southward-facing aperture, “Rude effigies smaller than this of me.— “Charm bootless ’gainst my veering pillared dust “Which chokes each sluice in vainly watered gardens, “Dessicates the velvet prudency of roses, “And leaves green gummy tendrils like to naught “But ravelled dry and dusty ends of cord”; and so on for a long, long while. It may be wonderful; I dare say it is. The last two-thirds of the volume is taken up with short poems arranged in groups addressed to various persons—Tagore, Yeats, and Moore, among them. There is more clarity here. One discerns an autobiographic wistfulness in these stanzas entitled: _A Poet in the Spring Regrets Having Wed So Late in Life_. Some things, that we shall never know, Are eloquent today, Belittling our experience, though We loved and were gay: For those, whose younger hands are free With a body not their own, Taste delicacies of intimacy Which we have not known. Primrose, narcissus, daffodil, In sudden April plenty, Flourish as tender fancies thrill Spouses at twenty! There seems something strangely improper about this, considering the strict propriety of the theme. One group of two is addressed to Charles Ricketts. _The Serpent_ begins Hail Pytho; thou lithe length of gleaming plates! and _The Panther_ thus: Consider now the Panther, such a beast. One question addressed to the Panther is: Dost, cloyed by rich meats spicy as the south, Expose thy fevered palate to the cool, Which, like snow melting in an emperor’s mouth, Helps make excess thy life’s ironic rule?