Irish Jesuit Province

A New Anthology of Modern Verse, 1920-40 by C. Day-Lewis; L. A. G. StrongReview by: M. B.The Irish Monthly, Vol. 70, No. 824 (Feb., 1942), pp. 85-86Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20514984 .

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BOOK RE VIEWS 8"

,custom of heaping ridicule on his texts, too-this and that is " puerile ",

.and so forth-is not the scientific or the scholarly tenmper. The Greek

myths are often " puerile ", yet gave a Pindar and a Horace substance for

their poetry. Ve wish, tlherefore, that Dr. Macalister would be content to set forth his text and translation, lea-vingr it to our intelligence to see that a fairy-story i's not a news-report.

Apart fromi) this criticisimi of the Professor's harping oni absurdities and

precipitate formulilation of theories, we are iimimieasurably grateful for his work, whiclh is m{or-e important than he hlimself seems to realise. We find

bhis texts wort-hy of mluch closer study than puerilities would be, and suggest to all students of history that their ideas of earlv Ireland would be far from the trutlh if thiey should neglect [he study of these fine volumes-these

monuments of myivtlh and dini history, of philology, and of the racial mind. A. de B.

A New Anthiology of Modern Verse, 1920-40. Chosen by C. Day-LJewis and L. A. G. Strong. (Methuen. 6/-.)

Yes. It. is. It openly professes to be the legitimate, the lineal descendant of Sil Algernon Methueni's epochl-nmaking, precious, little blue volume, that " Anthology of Mlodern Poetry " wherefrom the Georgiana

poets made their bow to so miany young people who had never so mluch as heard that there were poets since Tennyson and Browning died or at any rate since the octogenarian Hardy and the no less archaic Swinburne learnedi their prosody. What a shock it was, wh}at bliss! The present volume is again small enough for the pocket, yet is 200 pages packed with music, passion and hear t-searching with the same noble disregard for copyright expenses. Will it, move the youth to-day as its predecessor moved the youth of the post-war generation? It is impossible to say. Few probably of the great arinmy who mnade the little blue book their manual are still -under arms, fewer will be able to recapture froin new voices the first finie thrush bong. It is possible that the stronger their devotion to the

Georgians "

the deeper their memories of the blue book, whispered at a fireside, shouted on the seashore, argued over in smoke-filled studies or on hikes across the mountains, the less easily will they respond to a new invitation. But how fortunate those who can, and how doubly fortunate those in whom Youth and the Poetic Fire freshly kindled are waiting for this book. Let there be no mistake about this. Poetry is never inopportune. Neither War nor Famine can greatly interfere with its processes, which are as uncontrollably fervent as the spark of the

seasons, Resurrection and Flower-time and Harvest endlessly surprising.

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86 THE IRISH MONTHLY

It would be a poor tribute to the promise of such a book to review its contents exhaustively or to pretend to have read it within a year or more of its publication. Here, thierefore, only a few first impressions are recorded. The introduction-to take first things first is excellent. In the modern muanner popularised by the radio, Day-Lewis and Strong attack gallantly the difficulties we old stagers feel in much contemporary work its obscurity is adequately explained or explained away, its propagandist

not to say " Red " tendenev touched upon, though that disappointment is unhealed. The editors are not trying to be clever. They will not perhaps charm so many readers as Robert Lynd in the preface to the blue book charmed by his own evident relish of the bouquet and sparkle of the Pierian spring, for they seem to assume that we have all an inborn and not an acquired taste for nectar. But they are honest and helpful and as anti highbrow as possible.

They boast thiat they lhave cast their net wide, and they have certainly reached out to both ends of the era of uneasy peace. Walter de la

Mare's " To K. M." (Katherine Mansfield) looks out at the reviewer from his own scrap-book on the now almost forgotten pale green paper of the old

Westminster Gazette, while Herbert Read with " Bombing Casualties " is right up to the unpleasant minute. It is almost surprising to find how

many of the old poets are there, some for work which seems almost hackneyed already, Bridges anid Masefield; Sturge-Mfoore and Turner; Sassoon and Abercrombie, even Housman and Hardy. But Auden and

McNiece, Eliot and Roy Campbell themriselves now occupy a nmiddle distance to make way for Stepheni Spender, Thomas Dylan and John Betjeman, the young pretenders as those of the blue-book epoch may think of them. But at least these must enjoy Stevie Smith's little poem about them. (Though

Graham Greenis Old Aige of a Georgian anticipated him by twenty years.) Naturally, tthe frish poets selected interest us especially. There are

sadly few new iianaes. Yeats, of course, whom the editors acknowledge as the master of theIm all, but thien only Colum and Campbell, Stephens and A. E:., the dead F. R. Higgins, the no longer young Oliver Gogarty, Austin Clarke whose flaimie was illuminatin-g the halls of LUC.D. when the small blue book appeared and Seuimias O'Sullivan. Not miiuclh novelty there. Surely, the Anthologists have lost touch since the Treatv.

M.D.

The Spark in the Reeds. By S. C. Mt. (The Catholic Club. 2/6.) This is an attractive and original story of the foundation- of a Trappist

Monastery in the England of the Seconid Spring. The foundation is begun and fails in post-Penal Days and is achieved in the spacious evening of Quen

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