NOTABLE POEMS IN ADVOCATE

In their promise Mr. Cummings' poems are the notable contributions to this number of the Advocate. In their achievement they are most uneven. The four lines describing the "white-fingered star" are entirely delightful. They are, perhaps, more to be treasured than anything else in this issue. Elsewhere Mr. Cummings' images have at times a gemlike quality. Witness:

"When from her couch of poppy petals peers

The sleepy morning". . . .

In general, however, the poems give the impression of jewels too richly set. Gem is juxtaposed to gem without regard to total effect. The above metaphor is inserted in a simile and the sentence in which they occur contains some half dozen other similar brilliants. This galaxy tends to obscure rather than clarify the fact that Nicolette looked forth from a tower and dropped by a cord to the earth below. Incidentally the cord in this procedure becomes a "thread of lustre" and Nicolette "a drop of radiance." The mediaeval romancer in his description of this episode had instincts which were truer because simpler. Though Mr. Cummings' imagination makes Swinburne's seem sluggish, the glimpse of any imagination whatever is too rare a joy to permit of cavil. Let us trust that this one may for a time be set to tend a Greek temple--or even to learn how Keats did it.

Mr. Green's philosophic poem nowhere reaches the power of its inspiring phase. In it the reader passes through a fog-wrapped, lifeless sea rather than through one of aimless action. The story called "The Cross Roads" takes us over an equally uninteresting land route. We may perhaps read to the end to discover whether the unconscious man may be the murderer's victim recrudescent. We are not greatly gratified at the final revelation, since it has been intimated that the notices are everywhere. Mr. Rogers' personages are more amusing in their names and their slang than in their craft. The German tag with the questioning accent is a high point of humour. It is to be feared, however, that to the reviewer of "Man and Superman" it might seem like "one of the harmless stupidities with which Shaw covers his essentially undramatic plot."

The editor with no hesitant hand draws aside the curtain to reveal such figures as that of the "Dismal Science," surrounded by her ill-fed devotees. The tableau has its lesson.