All this, I think, is a good sign.  It means that poetry is interesting people sufficiently to make them wish to argue about it.  Better a breeze—­even a somewhat excessive breeze—­than stagnant air.  It is good both for poets and for the reading public.  It prevents the poets from resting on their wings, as they might be tempted to do by a consistent calm of praise.  It compels them to examine their work more critically.  Anyhow, “fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,” and a reasonable amount of sharp censure will do a true poet more good than harm.  It will not necessarily injure even his sales.  I understand the latest volume of Georgian Poetry is already in greater demand than its predecessor.

It is a good anthology of the poetry of the last two years without being an ideal anthology.  Some good poets and some good poems have been omitted.  And they have been omitted, in some instances, in favour of inferior work.  Many of us would prefer an anthology of the best poems rather than an anthology of authors.  At the same time, with all its faults, Georgian Poetry still remains the best guide we possess to the poetic activities of the time.  I am glad to see that the editor includes the work of a woman in his new volume.  This helps to make it more representative than the previous selections.  But there are several other living women who are better poets, at the lowest estimate, than at least a quarter of the men who have gained admission.

Mr. W.H.  Davies is by now a veteran among the Georgians, and one cannot easily imagine a presence more welcome in a book of verse.  Among poets he is a bird singing in a hedge.  He communicates the same sense of freshness while he sings.  He has also the quick eye of a bird.  He is, for all his fairy music, on the look-out for things that will gratify his appetite.  He looks to the earth rather than the sky, though he is by no means deaf to the lark that

  Raves in his windy heights above a cloud.

At the same time, at his best, he says nothing about his appetite, and sings in the free spirit of a child at play.  His best poems are songs of innocence.  At least, that is the predominant element in them.  He warned the public in a recent book that he is not so innocent as he sounds.  But his genius certainly is.  He has written greater poems than any that are included in the present selection. Birds, however, is a beautiful example of his gift for joy.  We need not fear for contemporary poetry while the hedges contain a poet such as Mr. Davies.

Mr. de la Mare does not sing from a hedge.  He is a child of the arts.  He plays an instrument.  His music is the music of a lute of which some of the strings have been broken.  It is so extraordinarily sweet, indeed, that one has to explain him to oneself as the perfect master of an imperfect instrument.  He is at times like Watts’s figure of Hope listening to the faint music of the single string that remains