A SOFT and flowered vision
Came on me as a breeze
In summer, and I saw
The souls of men like bees.
Up stairs of orchard foam
With balustrade of may,
Stagger, a mazy cluster,
Drunk with the scented day.
Then strong from newer honey,
With brighter pollen shod,
The little souls went buzzing
Up to the Hives of God.

SHERARD VINES
(NEW COLLEGE)

PERMISSION

NOT till, fallen swooning at the last
Round, heart-broken at the cruel pace,
Thrown out useless from my working place
Sickness, scorn, and bitterness to taste,
Not till hard days have me crucified
To a desk, the close nights to a bed
Comfortless, and all my gain unmade,
All the towers brought low that were my pride,
May I seek the silent golden tor,
Sleep beside long crumbled architraves,
See the desolate glory of the waves
Snarling, like tigers on a lone lee shore.

SUMMER

IN blatant light the grasses look
Like bronzen swords of green,
The hillock-tops simmer and smoke,
The stark road thrusts between.
No mild opacity of cloud
Transmutes the harshness, where
Like stars of newly spattered blood
Kempt cottage flowers stare.
A blast of Hell gets up to flout
The sharp metallic trees,
And hungry insects haste about
Their cruel purposes.

D. E. A. WALLACE
(SOMERVILLE)

RIVER-POOLS

Were I a shadow in a pool
I would not live, I would not fear to die;
But only, faint and cool,
I’d pass my days of unreality
In passive contemplation of the sky;
And no desire should shake me.
And no denial break me,
Ah, fool,
Thou art no shadow in a pool.
Were I a shadow in a pool
I could not love, I could not thrill with hate;
But, ashy-pale and cool,
Through endless meadows moving desolate
I would outgaze the sky dispassionate,
With never grief to move me.
And never friend to love me.
Glad fool,
Thou art no shadow in a pool!

LIFE AND I

LIFE and I are a pair of lovers:
Life is only as old as I.
Here he kissed me, with no one by,
Here the day long will we lie,
On a hillside swept with the calling of plovers,
Until the stooping midnight covers
Life and me with the star-wrought sky.
Life, come kiss me! Joy, come tell me,
Will you love me still to-morrow?
Will you ravish me and sell me,
Love of mine, to sorrow?
“Sweet, come kiss me! Sweet, come tell me
No misgivings of the morrow!
But ... there are two ways to spell me:
I am Joy—and Sorrow.”

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS. GUILDFORD, ENGLAND


FROM B. H. BLACKWELL’S LIST

Oxford Poetry, 1910-1913.

Out of Print.

Oxford Poetry, 1914-1916. Uniform with the 1910-1913 volume, 5s. net.

Oxford Poetry, 1914.

[Out of Print.

Oxford Poetry, 1915. Edited by G. D. H. C. and T. W. E. Uniform with the above, Roxburgh parchment, 2s. 6d. net; sewed, 1s. 6d. net.

[Third Impression.

Oxford Poetry, 1916. Edited by T. W. E., W. R. C., and A. L. H. Uniform with the above, Roxburgh parchment, 2s. 6d. net; sewed, 1s. 6d. net.

Oxford Poetry, 1917. Edited by T. W. E., W. R. C., and D. L. S. Uniform with the above. Roxburgh parchment, 2s. 6d. net; sewed, 1s. 6d. net.

[Second Impression.

DOROTHY L. SAYERS.

(Author of ‘Op. I.’)

Catholic Tales. Impl. 16mo, art wrapper, 3s. net.

These poems are startling. Inspired equally by the New Testament, the Fathers, and G. K. Chesterton, and written with intense conviction, their superficial blasphemy is likely to deceive even the elect.

L. and R.

Wine and Gall. Art wrapper, 1s. 6d. net.

The authors, whoever they may be, combine rare technical mastery with a refreshing but sane originality. They show that traditional form is quite adequate to express modern idea.

A. G. SHIRREFF, I.C.S.

(Author of ‘The Dilettante,’ and ‘The Tale of Florentius.’)

Tales of the Sarai. Crown 8vo, sewed, 2s. 6d. net.

‘Very delightful ... for humour we want nothing better. We have not derived more pleasure for some time from any book of verse.’—The Times.

EDITH SITWELL.

Wheels: An Anthology of Verse. Edited by Edith Sitwell. Impl. 16mo, boards with design, 3s. 6d. net.

‘They have not as a body very much in common.’—The Times.

‘The names of the poets are unfamiliar to us.’—Everyman.

‘Conceived in morbid eccentricity and executed in factitious gloom.... The fœtidness of the whole clings to the nostrils.’—The Pall Mall Gazette.

‘The poets ... present such identity of mood and even imagery that it might seem that the mood and its emotion had been agreed upon.’—The Oxford Chronicle.

‘The names speak for themselves.’—The Observer.

‘A readable volume of thoughtful poems by sensible people.... There is not a dull page, and scarcely one which does not, incidentally, picture some charming rural scene, as it ponders on the mysteries, joys, and pains of life.’—The Commonwealth.

‘Much achievement and more promise, and we have no doubt whatever that, fifty years hence, the publication of “Wheels” will be remembered as a notable event in the inner history of English literature.’—The Morning Post.

Wheels, 1917: A Second Cycle. Uniform with the above, 3s. 6d. net.

Wheels” is, in its way, as notable a phenomenon as “The Yellow Book.”The Globe.

Wheels, 1918: A Third Cycle. Uniform with the above, 4s. 6d. net.

[Now Ready.