1924-02-02 — Page 9

BATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1924

BOOKS

THE BEST POEMS OF 1922. would, undoubtedly, take a high

Mr Moult's selections for his anthology have been down from barl-English-and-America sources

greater variety is made possible by this method of calling from periodents on each side of the water, and a distinctive collection is the result. The dedication is to Alice Meynoll, and she has made in rce stanzas called "The Poet and His Book, a fitting retura :----

Here are my thoughts, alive within

this fold,

My simple sheep. Their sher

herd, I grow wise Ka dearly, gravely, deeply I bobold

Their different eyes.

distant pastures in their blood!

Ob streamy

From watersheds that fed them

for this prison! Lights from loft, midsummer subs

in drenus,

Set and arisen).

They wamler out. hut all return

anew,

The small ones, to this heart to-

which they chung: **And these but are with young."

the fruitful fow

That are with young.

musient Always felicitons in -expression of her the glits, when has she ever been more happily lucid Ban in theso perfectly wrought stanzas?

Joseph Auslander'a "Is This the Lark has a well-deserved place in M. Moult's compilation." Mr. Auslander's verse steadily improves, and this rich flowering is the result of a conscientious and painstalong artistry, which ho bas never allowed to descond to please a spatar and

The music rises a swells in fervid measures, and the poem

gure.

THE CHINA MAIL.

Sapphire-shadowed, deep-bocomed,

long-limbed, Mountaine lie in the garden of the

sky, Evening is a passion flower, morn-

ing is a mee

A

George do not coalesce with Regers Clarke takes Kaghackia and Vincennos.' Hero her hand falls too weightily. Nothing is this hit prose, howevar artfully inserted within beautifully descriptive poetry.

3. C. Squire, Richard Aldington nud John Drinkwater are fittingly represented by work, which, if not

seem-

their best, is by no means Ent- worthy of them."

Evelyn Underhill contributes place with the other carlier ark skiltully fashioned song, lyrics but for one fault. It is a triflingly shoplo expression of a simple too raminiscent, and to quote them, but in reality the result of Shelley's well-known lince some

a consumate artistry. what takes away from the perforni anco, otherwise spontaneous and inspiring-

Is this the lark

Lord Shakespeare heard Out of the dark

Of dawn Is this the bird That stirred... Lord Shakespeare's heart!

Is this the bird whose wing, Whose rupturous antheming, Rose up, soured radiant, becain Sharp dume

To Shelley listening, And-made him sing,

Throbbing alone, aloof, favoredly

apart,

His profuse strains of unpremeditat.

ed art!

To think that. I should hear his

now

Telling that single fiery rift, vì

heaven a wild lark comes !

The fresh cool scent of earth yearus

at the plough;

In short, keen, rapid furries the

wood-pecker drums.

To think that I should hear that

mad thing aiding Along a smoking opal ladder! Hear that inevitable deluge of music |

riding

Into the sun, richer now-fuinter

now-mudder!

To think that I should hear and

know

The song that Shelley heard, and

Shakespeare, long ago!

Mary Johnston's Virginiana is an achievement in free verse, pic turesque and with many lovely glowing lines. It would be a thin of greater beauty did not the bis. torical element enter into it a little too heavily.

......WHITSUN. HVB..

Come with birds voices when the Yet lovelier in departure and more

light grows dim

dear;

While the warm Aush hangs still at

Heaven's rim.

south of London river, a link forged when the Bermondsey Bookshop al 60, Bartmondsoy-street, gave to all free access to the best literature...

JOSEPH CONRAD,

A PEN PORTRAIT, But this review, though born in Bermondsey, will not be confined

Be is not so tall as he scotna. He either in its contents or appeal to

He paces an any one place or district. The con-is very restless. tributions, which will include imaginary quarterdeck and occa song, working men frana every sionally, pours through the little from working men from every windows of his quaint house as if capital in Europe, will be unique in this respect, that they will comprise searching the weather. A caged een the work of some of the lending lion. I thought. His phrug and play writers of the day, together with of hands are Gallic, or Polish, as articles descriptive of the life, work, you please, and his eyes, shining or and ninbitions of those living across clouded, are not of our race, they the bridges. Among the contri-are Slavic; oven the slightly muffled butors to the first, second, and third voice is Slavic. One of the most numbers are Colonel Amery, First beautiful language is the Polish Lord of the Admiralty, Osbort the Treach of the Slav tongues as it Burdett, Alee Paterson, Gilbert has been called. When Mr. Couad Frankau, Pett Ridge, Arlington speaks English, which he does with Robinson, J. A. Spender. H. W rapidity and cleness of enuncia Massingban, Stacey Aumonier, T. tion, you can bear, rither overlear, Swinnerton, Norman Angell, A. A. the foreign crilence, the soft slur Milne, C. S. Evans, Louis Golding, ring of sibilants so characteristic of Gordon and Donald Maxwell, and Polish speech; in a word, he is more Alfred Ollivant.

foreign looking than I had expected. He speaks French with fheney aid purity, and he often lapsed into it during our conversation. Like

1

BITS FROM BOOKS BOOKS RECOMMENDED.

Fretworki

Laud and Sea Tales for Scouts and

Guidos. By Budyard Kipling Macmillan. 48.

The English Secret and Other

Essays. By Basil de Séline, oquet. Oxford University Prose 10. Gd.

G. P. Huntley has his own viewḤ on the subject of work." Ho once said to me, you know, Jupp, old sport, my favourite hobby is fret work, yes, that it-fretwork. 1 work on Monday, and fret all the rest of the week The Gaiety Realities and Shania. By I R Stage Door, by James Jupp. (Jonathan Cope,) 168. net.

Fold by an Idlet."

"Marriage is an netion too freely practised and too seldom adequately considered "

Men will be men. They'll never be civilised whore women are con- cerned, most of thom."

makes enchantment of the days. A To be a little in love is fun, and little in love, a little taste of that hot, blinding cup--but only enough to stimulate, not to blind. One is so often a litle in love..."-Told by an Idiot, by Rose Macaulay. (Collins.), 75. 6d. net.

"Gilbertianism."*

The Bookshop out, of which the review has grown was started three years ago in a little house in Ber- tomondsey-street, not primarily as any another big man, he asked a portrait in a word was peculiarly

And the one star shines clear. "Though the swift_night haste

awakening day. Stay thou and stir not, brooding

on the deep; Thy secret lore, thy living word let

BAY

Within the genees' aleep.

Softer than daw. But when the

place where books could be bought, but where they could be read, and the love of good literature fostered A coloured sign and encouraged. swings an invitation above a narrow doorway, which opens to the wel come of a cosy room, where all kinds of the best books nestle together on the shelves. Upstairs there is a general room, where all may come and talk, make them lan-selves at home and listen to lectures and debates. Every Sunday night in the winter there is a debate or lecture. On weekdays there are elocution and French classes, and helpful talks on books.

mountain, wind Blows down the world, 0 Spirit,

show thy power!

Quicken the dreams within the

quid mind,

And bring thy seed be lower.

Thato are many other porms of charan and datinction in this anthology, although it possesses the morit of not being top, exhaustive. A slender gazhird of choice flowers.

BERMONDSEY BOOK.".

"'

AND THE BOOKSHOP WITH

THE COLOURED SIGN.

The issue in December last of the first number of the "Bermondsey Boxk," a quarterly review devoted to all phases of life and literature; was something quite new among contemporary periodicals. The Bermondsey Book" is to make its appeal, primarily as a link between the two worlds which lis north and

I underwent

Jaeks. Williams and Norgate

b.

A Second Scrap Book, By Georg H. G. Wells.

Saintsbury, Maenhillan. 78. Ud. By Ivor Brown, Nisbet... 24:

Jane Austen: By Leonis Villard.

Intro, by H. Brimley Johnson. Routledge. 108. 6d.

One Hundred Years of the Chinese in Singapore. By Song Ong Siang. Murray, 369.

Ching.

By Emile Hovelague. Franstated by Mrs. Lawrencs

Binyon. Dent. 79, 64.

Wild Life in Devan. By Douglas

Gordon. Murray. 74. 64 The Animal Kingdom. By J.

Stuart Thomson. The Sheldon Press. 68.

A Tract on Monetary Reform. By John Maynard Keynes: Mac- millan. 79. Bd. Musical Criticism. By M. D. Cal. Oxford University, Pruss. 68. 6d.

vocoressi.

WB, Gilbert was a master of small talk. His knack of painting.

his own, and sometimes pretty, as the Rume when he said of that rata apis, u real old lady, all ince it brocade and sloping shoulders: Sille belong's The Youngest Draina. By Ashley to the early Keepsake period."

Dukes, Benn. 88. 6d. There was uncomplimentary dis The Path to the Sun. By Notta cussion of a, matron of too ample

Syrett. Hutchinson. 76. 6d. proportions, when Gilbert put in The Itoperturbable Duchess. By toleruntly: 'After all, she's quite J. D. Beresford. Cailing. nice, only I prefer a woman to be as long as she is broad. He in-Doomsland. variably had a lady on each side at dinner at his own house. Once,

more questions than he answered saine. experience with Walt Whitmiun at Camden, who was an adept in the gentle art of pumping visitors. In the case of Joseph Cond his curiosity is prompted by las boundless sympathy for all things human. He is, as you may have summised by his writings, the most human and lovable of rien, He takes an interest in everything except bad art, which moves him to

were

On Reading Chesterton..

I

a vibrating indignation, and he is when surrounded by quite a bevy, extremely sympathetic when speak- he was asked why he was incon ing of the work of bis contem-stant, and he answered: 'Because, porries, What a lesson for the am too good to be true.-W. S. eritia with the barbod-wing method Gilbert: His Life and Letters, by would be the remarks of Conrad Sidney Dark and Rowland Grey upon art and artists! Naturally, he (Methuen.) 158. net, bas his gods, bis half-gods, and his nujor detestations. The Bible and Flaubert.

his companions throughout the many years he voyaged in strange, southern seas. From the Bible he absorbed his

lish; from the supple sluiting prose racy, idiomatic, and dispasonic Eng- of the great French writer he learn ed the art of writing sentences, their

and comely shape,

vigorous, zhythmic gait, their colour, per fume; the passionato music of words and their hateful power. He also

He is a studied other masters. admirer of Poe Hawthome, Walt Whitman, and Henry James among

For many in Bermondsey and from other parts the bookshop pro- vides a little retreat in which the world of work and worry and the hard problems of ways and means, become for a few hours but the shadow of a dren. In the reading of books, the endless discussions of life and literature, and the intimate

brought beauty and warmth to the talks about those which have world, there is to be found the secret of its success. If is the hope of those who founded the bookshop and are responsible for the publica- tion of the book, that other shops of the same kind may be opened in all the poorer quarters of London, so that the love of literature may become a compon, bond, not only between all peoples, but all classes American writers. of peoplog.

-J. H.

7s. Gd.

By Shane Leslio. Chatto and Windus. 78. 6d. The Richest Man By Edward Shanks. Collins. 7. 8. Island of the Innocent. By Grant. · Overtun. Gyldendal. 79. 6d. La Bodega. By Vicente Blasco Ibanez. Fisher Unwin. 78. 6d. By Alice When It Was Inne.

Lowther. Hogarth Press, 48. The Ladies of Lyndon, By Mar- garet Kennedy. Heinemann. 7a. 6d. Erewhon.

A

On

By Samuel Butler.. Cape: 125. Gd:

Traveller in Little Things. Birda

of La Plata. By W. H. Hud-

son. Dent. Callected Edition.

Life and Letters.

Balthasar.

By Anatole Francs., Lane. 2s. 6d. each.

"At one moment one wants to kneel before G. K. Chesterton, at another to kick him. While read- ing The Napoleon of Notting Hill vals: Let us all go mad!". That is I caught myself exclaining at inter

the effect he has on me as often as not. In finishing a chapter by him I sometimes experience quite shock nt the discovery that I am not standing on my head. And then I am assailed by misgivings. Perhaps the world is topsy-turvy after all, idiot. Which may be another way and he is its supreme prophet. No of saving that he is quintessentially doubt the truth lies somewhere half- English-A Persian Critic, by way between those extremes. For Hesketh Pearson. (Chapman Chesterton is half-god, half-village. Doča.) 38. 6d.

THE GREATEST PICTURÈ EVER MADE

MES.

Wallace Reid

Human Wreckagë

A SMASHING PHOTODRAMA THAT

WILL ROCK THE WORLD TO ITS VERY FOUNDATION

FASCINATINGLY DRAMATIC REELS-9

CROSS-SECTION of throbbing human experience. Here, is drama bullt out of the very fabric of life. Stripped of reserve, born of the nobility of woman's soul, and dedicated to the cause of saving other lives from the un- speakable curse of narcotics.

Played by a perfect cast, including Mrs. V

KIRKWOOD, BESSIE LOVE and

WALLACE REID JAMES host of other HUMAN

WRECKAGE" is not only the most crashing blow eyer delivered against the inrcotic evil-not only the most gigento, theatrical arteretion over prod

REAL! You must see it! T

Lloyd Pulls Gaints.

Lloyd. Pulls Laughs,

Giant

See the biggest Man

in' the world and get

the biggest laughs in

world:

HALF ROAGH

PRUDENTE

Harold Lloyd

"Why Worry?"

HIS LATEST SIX REEL

Pathecomedy

Lloyd Bakes. The World

LAUGH!

He, tickles Away Your Worries and You: Forget Your Ills, Pills, Bills and Chills.

LLOYD'S LAUGHS 'LINGER LONGER !. Tickling the Town Soon