unbroken.  There is always some element of hope, or of some kindred excuse for joy, even in his deepest melancholy.  But it is the joy of a spirit, not of a “super-tramp.”  Prospero might have summoned just such a spirit through the air to make music for him.  And Mr. de la Mare’s is a spirit perceptible to the ear rather than to the eye.  One need not count him the equal of Campion in order to feel that he has something of Campion’s beautiful genius for making airs out of words.  He has little enough of the Keatsian genius for choosing the word that has the most meaning for the seeing imagination.  But there is a secret melody in his words that, when once one has recognized it, one can never forget.

How different the Georgian poets are from each other may be seen if we compare three of the best poems in this book, all of them on similar subjects—­Mr. Davies’s Birds, Mr. de la Mare’s Linnet, and Mr. Squire’s Birds.  Mr. Squire would feel as out of place in a hedge as would Mr. de la Mare.  He has an aquiline love of soaring and surveying immense tracts with keen eyes.  He loves to explore both time and the map, but he does this without losing his eyehold on the details of the Noah’s Ark of life on the earth beneath him.  He does not lose himself in vaporous abstractions; his eye, as well as his mind, is extraordinarily interesting.  This poem of his, Birds, is peopled with birds.  We see them in flight and in their nests.  At the same time, the philosophic wonder of Mr. Squire’s poem separates him from Mr. Davies and Mr. de la Mare.  Mr. Davies, I fancy, loves most to look at birds; Mr. de la Mare to listen to birds; Mr. Squire to brood over them with the philosophic imagination.  It would, of course, be absurd to offer this as a final statement of the poetic attitude of the three writers.  It is merely an attempt to differentiate among them with the help of a prominent characteristic of each.

The other poets in the collection include Mr. Robert Graves (with his pleasant bias towards nursery rhymes), Mr. Sassoon (with his sensitive, passionate satire), and Mr. Edward Shanks (with his trembling responsiveness to beauty).  It is the first time that Mr. Shanks appears among the Georgians, and his Night Piece and Glow-worm both show how exquisite is his sensibility.  He differs from the other poets by his quasi-analytic method.  He seems to be analyzing the beauty of the evening in both these poems.  Mrs. Shove’s A Man Dreams that He is the Creator is a charming example of fancy toying with a great theme.

(3) THE YOUNG SATIRISTS