Another remarkable poet whose early death was a blow to English literature, James Elroy Flecker, was born in London, November 5, 1884. Possibly due to his low vitality, Flecker found little to interest him but a classical reaction against realism in verse, a delight in verbal craftsmanship, and a passion for technical perfection—especially the deliberate technique of the French Parnassians whom he worshipped. Flecker was opposed to any art that was emotional or that " taught " anything. "The poet's business," he declared, "is not to save the soul of man, but to make it worth saving."

The advent of the war began to make Flecker's verse more personal and romantic. The tuberculosis that finally killed him at Davos Platz, Switzerland, January 3, 1915, forced him from an Olympian disinterest to a deep concern with life and death. He passionately denied that he was weary of living as the pallid poets are," and he was attempting higher flights of song when his singing ceased altogether.

His two colorful volumes are The Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913) and The Old Ships (1915).

THE OLD SHIPS

I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep
Beyond the village which men still call Tyre,
With leaden age o'ercargoed, dipping deep
For Famagusta and the hidden sun

That rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire;
And all those ships were certainly so old-
Who knows how oft with squat and noisy gun,
Questing brown slaves or Syrian oranges,

The pirate Genoese

Hell-raked them till they rolled

Blood, water, fruit and corpses up the hold.
But now through friendly seas they softly run,
Painted the mid-sea blue or shore-sea green,
Still patterned with the vine and grapes in gold.

But I have seen,

Pointing her shapely shadows from the dawn.
And image tumbled on a rose-swept bay,
A drowsy ship of some yet older day;
And, wonder's breath indrawn,

Thought I-who knows-who knows-but in that

same

(Fished up beyond Aeaea, patched up new
-Stern painted brighter blue-)

That talkative, bald-headed seaman came
(Twelve patient comrades sweating at the oar)
From Troy's doom-crimson shore,

And with great lies about his wooden horse
Set the crew laughing, and forgot his course.

It was so old a ship-who knows, who knows?
-And yet so beautiful, I watched in vain
To see the mast burst open with a rose,
And the whole deck put on its leaves again.

D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Lawrence, born in 1885, is one of the most psychologically intense of the modern poets. This intensity, ranging from a febrile morbidity to an exalted and almost frenzied mysticism, is seen even in his prose works-particularly in his short stories, The Prussian Officer (1917), his

analytical Sons and Lovers (1913), and the rhapsodic novel, The Rainbow (1915).

As a poet he is often caught in the net of his own emotions; his passion thickens his utterance and distorts his rhythms, which sometimes seem purposely harsh and bitter-flavored. But within his range he is as powerful as he is poignant. His most notable volumes of poetry are Amores (1916), Look! We Have Come Through! (1918), and New Poems (1920).

PEOPLE

The great gold apples of light
Hang from the street's long bough
Dripping their light

On the faces that drift below,
On the faces that drift and blow
Down the night-time, out of sight
In the wind's sad sough.

The ripeness of these apples of night
Distilling over me

Makes sickening the white

Ghost-flux of faces that hie

Them endlessly, endlessly by
Without meaning or reason why

They ever should be.

PIANO

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings

And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside

And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

John Freeman

John Freeman, born in 1885, has published several volumes of pleasantly descriptive verse. The two most distinctive are Stone Trees (1916) and Memories of Childhood (1919).

STONE TREES

Last night a sword-light in the sky
Flashed a swift terror on the dark.
In that sharp light the fields did lie
Naked and stone-like; each tree stood
Like a tranced woman, bound and stark.
Far off the wood

With darkness ridged the riven dark.

And cows astonished stared with fear,
And sheep crept to the knees of cows,
And conies to their burrows slid,
And rooks were still in rigid boughs,
And all things else were still or hid.
From all the wood

Came but the owl's hoot, ghostly, clear.

In that cold trance the earth was held
It seemed an age, or time was nought.
Sure never from that stone-like field
Sprang golden corn, nor from those chill
Grey granite trees was music wrought.
In all the wood

Even the tall poplar hung stone still.

It seemed an age, or time was none
Slowly the earth heaved out of sleep
And shivered, and the trees of stone
Bent and sighed in the gusty wind,
And rain swept as birds flocking sweep.
Far off the wood

Rolled the slow thunders on the wind.

From all the wood came no brave bird,
No song broke through the close-fall'n night,
Nor any sound from cowering herd:
Only a dog's long lonely howl

When from the window poured pale light.
And from the wood

The hoot came ghostly of the owl.