DUNSTER HOUSE OFFERS NEW AIKEN POEMS

Here is a slender volume, exquisitely printed, containing twenty-six poems--the one from which the book takes its name and twenty-five lyrics of amazing craftsmanship and power. It is called, unnecessarily. "Priapus and the Pool" Uncouth., essentially Roman divinity, Priapus seems of late to have gained many followers far afield both in literature and music. But those who grub in books for the unwholesome or the obscene (Vice Commissioners take note!) will be deeply disappointed by the sheer beauty of these poems. The title is inappropriate. The poems themselves are as lovely as any love-lyrics I know. Their cadences fall like sudden, cooling rain and bring "another April to the soul."

At times Mr. Alken's poems are almost pure music. Schumann, they remind one of, in their exuberance, their pulsing rhythms and sorrowful, lapsing melodies. Some of them are a little hard to follow, so intricately psychological they seem. But upon each re-reading they grow clearer--like music, honest music, which one hears, and wants to hear, again and again. Always the melody comes suddenly, strong and clear, to catch one at the throat:

"The viola ceased its resonant throbbing, the violin

Was silent, the flute was still.

The voice of the singer was suddenly hushed. Only

The silence seemed to thrill

With the last echo of music, hovering over

The nodding heads of the listeners bowed and few;

And I became aware of the long light through a window,

Of the silence of beauty, of the beauty of you,

Never so sharply known as when, beside you,

I dared not look to see

What thought shone out of your face, or H, like marble,

It hid its thought from me."

Many individual lines are alive with magic; through them all, however personal, however subjective, there breathes a low, universal voice that makes them, each and every one, yours or mine. The last lyric is one of the loneliest poems I know. Loveliest of all, however, is No. V, which I quote entire:

"This is the shape of the leaf, and this of the flower,

And this the pale bole of the tree

Which watches its bough in a pool of unwavering water

In a land we shall never see.

The thrush on the bough is silent, the dew falls softly,

In the evening is hardly a sound.

And the three beautiful pilgrims who come here together

Touch lightly the dust of the ground--

Touch it with feet that trouble the dust but as wings do,

Come shyly together, are still,

Like dancers who wait, in a pause of the music, for music

The exquisite silence to fill

This is the thought of the first, and this of the second,

And this the grave thought of the third:

'Linger we thus for a moment, palely expectant,

And silence will end, and the bird

'Sing the pure phrase, sweet phrase, clear phrase in the twilight

To fill the blue bell of the world;

And we, who on music so leaflike have drifted together.

Leaflike apart shall be whirled

'Into what but the beauty of silence, silence forever?'

This is the shape of the tree,

And the flower, and the leaf, and the three pale beautiful pilgrims;

This is what you are to me."