SOURCE: "To Spain with a Violin and a Tin of Treacle Biscuits," in The New York Times Book Review, October 12, 1969, pp. 4-5.

Mitchell is an English novelist. In the following review, he expresses ambivalence for As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning.

Readers of The Edge of Day, Laurie Lee's enchanting memoir of an English west-country childhood, may remember that it ends with the adolescent Laurie sitting on his bed, making up poems. Just about a generation later, an adolescent myself, I thought he was one of the great poets of our time. Lines like:

       Blown bubble-film of blue, the sky wraps round
       Weeds of warm light whose every root and rod
       Splutters with soapy green, and all the world
       Sweats with the bead of summer in its bud

made me dizzy with delight. The physical world seemed dew-bright on the page. Growing up only a village or...