Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/302

244 than his poems 'For Aline'; always there is charm, tenderness, playfulness in his verses about children; he was exquisitely sensitive to the beauty of the world and a conscious artist in conjuring its magic into his lines, but he saw no reason why the poet should not be still a sensible, practical human creature, and is merciless in his lines 'To a Young Poet who Killed Himself,' and was never blind to the fact that even the loveliest words fall short of the loveliness of things:

Before the war came he had won wide recognition as a poet and a high and assured position among American journalists. 'For a sapling poet,' says Mr. Holliday, 'within a few short years and by the hard business of words, to attain to a secretary and a butler and a family of, at length, four children, is a modern Arabian Night's Tale.' He was not given to heroics nor to letting his emotions run away with his judgment, but the grim struggle in Europe stirred him profoundly,