Page:Poetry, a magazine of verse, Volume 7 (October 1915-March 1916).djvu/198

POETRY: A Magazine of Verse

Collected Poems, by A. E. The Macmillan Co.

As one reads these poems one has a sense of hearing a deep sound in nature, a sound that becomes more and more significant as one listens to it. The leaves rustle, the fire crackles, a wind rises. But behind these noises is the far, deep sound of a river. How is it that these short poems—very many of them only of three stanzas—give one the sense of fullness and profundity? It is because they are all glimpses of the same river of vision.

No poet of our civilization is so cosmic as "A. E." Man for him is one with the world and one with the heavens. Everything he knows, everything he feels, has a history that is before the stars and suns. His own face reflected in an actual river recalls the brooding of the Spirit over the waters. The sorrow and hopelessness that has entered his own heart is the shadow of the dark age that the world has entered into. The thought in this stanza is not far fetched for him:

Behind these poems is a philosophy that has attracted to A. E. many disciples. His personal thought is explicit in A New World and The Man to the Angel: