Page:Poetry, a magazine of verse, Volume 7 (October 1915-March 1916).djvu/399

The Poetry of George Sterling Where the breath of the planet drives and the herded billows roll."

And so the poet went swimming:

Why doesn't this "get across?"—why is it just a little absurd? For surely there is a poem in a swim—for a poet who doesn't try to be sublime!

The truth is, this sort of pomposity has died the death. If the imagists have done nothing else, they have punctured the gas bag—English poetry will be henceforth more compact and stern—"as simple as prose," perhaps. Against the Victorian excesses we might quote the rhetorical advice of Tennyson's Ancient Sage in favor of another kind of temperance:

When Mr. Sterling learns to avoid the "luscious tongue" and the "honeyed wine," he may become the poet he was meant to be.

Indeed, there are a number of poems in the book which give us hope. The compactness of the sonnet form is evidently good discipline for this poet's muse, for I find six beautiful sonnets. It is perhaps distinction enough to have