The London Mercury, Vol. I, Nos. 1-6, November 1919 to April 1920Various
General
The London Mercury, Vol. I, Nos. 1-6, November 1919 to April 1920
Various
English literature -- Periodicals; London (England) -- Periodicals
These translations may be not without their influence on English
poetry; and though the Chinese spirit is not ours, the example of their
exactitude and economy will not be thrown away.
COLLECTED POEMS OF LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS. Secker. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.
In a note Lord Alfred Douglas observes that all great art is founded
on morality; and that "good poetry is made up of two things: style
and sincerity." These apophthegms are brief and unelaborate but
indisputable. Unfortunately he proceeds to say that poetry has never
sunk so low as now, and that "there is not a good poet among the lot,"
which suggests that he does not know where to look for poetry. He is
out of touch with the time, and it is unfortunate for him. Again and
again as we read his collection we feel that he is the last of the
pre-Raphaelites, clothing genuine feelings in a faded vesture, and
images and words gone stale. He has improved. His earliest poems might
well have been left out; his latest include several sonnets (notably
that beginning "I have been profligate of happiness") which have
been, and deserve to be, in the anthologies. But the last exactitude
of statement he seldom, as yet, has achieved; and his feelings about
persons come out much more strongly and convincingly than his feelings
about Nature or the eternal. This edition has a portrait.
FORGOTTEN PLACES. By IAN MACKENZIE. Chapman & Hall. 3_s._ 6_d._ net.
In the last four years many young men have died who would have helped
to make our age--as it will in any case be--glorious in song. Brooke
and Flecker and Edward Thomas had at least partly expressed themselves;
others, such as Wyndham Tennant and Julian Grenfell, had written one
or two perfect poems and justified the muse; but there were some,
whose talents only their friends knew, who might have ranked with the
first of these, and died before they had outgrown their boyhood. Ian
Mackenzie was one of these. He was in the H.L.I.; had a breakdown
in England (he had outgrown his strength) and died of pneumonia on
Armistice night, after hearing that peace had come. He was just twenty.
The present volume (his second) gathers up what was left over from his
first, and is prefaced by a memoir by Arthur Waugh, every word of which
will be echoed by those who knew Mackenzie, one of the handsomest,
sunniest, most candid boys in the world. He was twenty; and as yet
too young to hammer into form the large visions of his precocious
imagination, and the queer thoughts that engaged his intellect. The
reader who knew him will see in every line the promise of a great
maturity; the reader who did not know him will probably fail to see
more than a tumble of confused thoughts and images obscurely worded
in rhythms that are often ungainly. But even he may be arrested here
and there by a phrase beyond the common range of eighteen or nineteen.
There are several such in _Eyes_:
Eyes swim out like strange blue fishes
Recovering beauty from the dark.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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