that New York harbour in the night has something of the glory of fairyland.

No, it will not do to say that Mr. Untermeyer is original in his preoccupation with beauty; it would be almost as true to say that the chief feature in his work is the English language.

What is notable in him is the combination of three things; an immense love of life, a romantic interpretation of material things, and a remarkable talent for parody and burlesque.

Sex and Death-the obsessions of so many young poets-are not particularly conspicuous in the poetry of this healthy, happy young man. He writes about swimming, climbing the palisades, willow-trees, children playing in the street. Familiar objects become mysterious and thoughtprovoking in the light of his fancy. His imagination provides him with no end of fun; he needs no melancholy solitary pilgrimage in the gloaming to give him a pair of rimes; a country farm or a city slum is quite enough. I like his affectionate salutation to the willow; I like his interpretation of a side street. His greatest tour de force is his poem, Still Life. Of all painted pictures, with the one exception of dead fish, the conventional overturned basket of fruit is to me the most barren of meaning, the least inspiring, in suggestion a blank. Yet somehow Mr. Untermeyer, looking at a bowl of fruit, sees something I certainly never saw and do not ever expect to see

except on this printed page, something that a bowl of fruit has for me in the same proportion as the stump of a cigar-something dynamic.

I do not understand why so many Americans plaster the walls of their dining-rooms with pictures of overset fruit-baskets and of dead fish, with their ugly mouths open; but in "still life” this paradoxical poet sees something full of demoniacal energy. O Death, where is thy sting?

Never have I beheld such fierce contempt,
Nor heard a voice so full of vehement life
As this that shouted from a bowl of fruit,
High-pitched, malignant, lusty and perverse-
Brutal with a triumphant restlessness.

But the fruit in the basket is dead. The energy, the fierce vehemence and the lusty shout are not in the bowl, but in the soul. Subjectivity can no further go.

It is rather curious, that when our poet can behold such passion in a willow-tree or in a mess of plucked fruit, he should be so blind to it in the heart of an old maid; though to be honest, the heroine of his poem is meant for an individual rather than a type. If there is one object on earth that a healthy young man cannot understand, it is an old maid. Who can forget that terrible outburst of the aunt in Une Vie? "Nobody ever cared to ask if my feet were wet!" Mr. Untermeyer will live and learn. He is not contemptuous; he is full of pity, but it is the pity of ig

norance.

Great joys or sorrows never came
To set her placid soul astir;

Youth's leaping torch, Love's sudden flame
Were never even lit for her.

Don't you believe it, Mr. Untermeyer!

Even in his "serious" volumes of verse, there is much satire and saline humour; so that his delightful book of parodies, called and Other

Poets is as spontaneous a product of his Muse as his utterances ex cathedra. The twenty-seven poems, called The Banquet of the Bards, with which the book begins, are excellent fooling and genuine criticism. He wrote these things for his own amusement, one reason why they amuse us. A roll-call of twenty-seven contemporary poets, where each one comes forward and "speaks his piece," is decidedly worth having. John Masefield "tells the true story of Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son"; William Butler Yeats "gives a Keltic version of Three Wise Men in Gotham"; Robert Frost "relates the Death of the Tired Man,” and so on. I had rather possess this volume than any other by the author; it is almost worthy to rank with the immortal Fly Leaves. Furthermore, in his serious work Mr. Untermeyer has only begun to fight.

And while we are considering poems "in lighter vein," let us not forget the three famous initials signed to a column in the Chicago Tribune, Don Marquis of the Evening Sun, who can be either grave or gay but cannot be ungraceful, and

the universally beloved Captain Franklin P. Adams, whose Conning Tower increased the circulation of the New York Tribune and the blood of its readers. Brightest and best of the sons of the Colyumnists, his classic Muse made the Evening Mail an evening blessing, sending the suburbanites home to their wives "always in good humour"; then, like Jupiter and Venus, he changed from evening star to morning star, and gave many thousands a new zest for the day's work. Skilful indeed was his appropriation of the methods of Tom Sawyer; as Tom got his fence whitewashed by arousing an eager competition among the boys to do his work for him, each toiler firmly persuaded that he was the recipient rather than the bestower of a favour, so F. P. A. incited hundreds of well-paid literary artists to compete with one another for the privilege of writing his column without money and without price.

His two books of verse, By and Large and Weights and Measures, have fairly earned a place in contemporary American literature; and the influence of his column toward precision and dignity in the use of the English language has made him one of the best teachers of English composition in the country.

CHAPTER X

SARA TEASDALE, ALAN SEEGER, AND OTHERS

Sara Teasdale-her poems of love her youth-her finished art-Fannie Stearns Davis-her thoughtful verse―Theodosia Garrison-her war poem-war poetry of Mary Carolyn Davies -Harriet Monroe her services-her original work—Alice Corbin-her philosophy-Sarah Cleghorn-poet of the country village Jessie B. Rittenhouse-critic and poet-Margaret Widdemer-poet of the factories-Carl Sandburg-poet of Chicago-his career-his defects-J. C. Underwood-poet of city noises-T. S. Eliot-J. G. Neihardt-love poems-C. W. Stork-Contemporary Verse-M. L. Fisher-The Sonnet-S. Middleton-J. P. Bishop-W. A. Bradley-nature poems-W. Griffith-City Pastorals-John Erskine-W. E. Leonard-W. T. Whitsett-Helen Hay Whitney-Corinne Roosevelt Robinson-M. Nicholson-his left hand-Witter Bynner-a country poet-H. Hagedorn-Percy Mackaye-his theories-his possibilities-J. G. Fletcher-monotony of free verse-Conrad Aiken-his gift of melody-W. A. Percy-the best American poem of 1917-Alan Seeger-an Elizabethan-an inspired poet.

Sara Teasdale (Mrs. Filsinger) was born at St. Louis (pronounced Lewis), on the eighth of August, 1884. Her first book appeared when she was twenty-three, and made an impression. In 1911 she published Helen of Troy, and Other Poems; in 1915 a volume of original lyrics called Rivers to the Sea; some of these were reprinted, together with new material, in Love