POETRY CHRONICLE
there is a final quatrain.
If
the main theme should seem to anyone
out-dated, I trust that the substance of the last two quatrains (as quoted
now in an age when for many attentive to the developments of science
the future has ceased to exist) will not:
This was the generous Poets scope
And all an English Pen can hope:
To make the fair approve his Flame
That can so far extend their Fame.
Verse thus design'd has no ill fate
If it arrive but at the Date
Of fading Beauty, if it prove
But as lo.ng liv'd as present love.
The final quatrain's exquisite run-over can
be
heard justly, of course,
only at the end of the whole poem; but even as mangled here it may
convey some of its mastery.
Now I am far from wishing to produce Henry Reed as Waller. But if
Reed can
be
listened to with the general present situation in mind as
I have described it (subject to correction by critics who know it better),
understanding may
be
quickened. His first book
A Map of Verona and
other Poems,
published recently in England and more recently here,
contains a poem called "Lessons of the War" or a suite so called com–
posed of distinct poems, three of them; the first, entitled "Naming of
Parts," begins as follows:
Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morni112g,
We shaJl have what to do after firing. But today,
Today we have naming of parts. ]aponica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And today we have naming of parts.
This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
WhC112 you are given your slilngs. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.
In these stanzas, it seems to me, we actually hear a style creating itself.
It is as
if
the poet said to himself: "All these other poets. They are
Flat? I will out-flat them. Whom can I learn from? Eliot, Eliot's Quartet–
style, and Auden, a little, who holds unrhymed stanzas together with
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