The publication of The Flowering of the Rod brings to a close H. D.'s war trilogy, which has received less attention than it merits. "War trilogy" … requires some qualification. It is true that the poem, which will be considered here in toto, begins amid the ruins of London, in the flaming terror of the Blitz, but it is equally true that it ends in an ox-stall in Bethlehem. The war was the occasion, it is not the subject-matter of the poem. Neither is "trilogy" wholly satisfactory, since it implies more of temporal continuity and progressive narrative line than the three parts possess. The relation between the parts seems to me more that of a triptych than of a trilogy, each book being a compositional unit, though conceptually and emotionally enriched by association with its companion units; each composition, furthermore, embodying a dream or vision. This formal arrangement...