THE PROFESSION OF POETRY
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judgment that thinks both interesting "war poets," with Owen, of
course, rather the better of the two. Rosenberg surely was a poet of no
merit whatsoever; and Owen-in spite of passages lush as Brooke, of
touching haste and inexperience, of a compulsive eagerness to push home
all his points, to make his readers see beyond possibility of misunder–
standing what the war was-surely was a poet in the true sense of the
word, someone who has shown to us one of those worlds which, after we
have been shown it, we call the real world. The best criticism of Owen I
have ever read was Yvor Winters' review in an old
Hound and Horn;
it is worth looking up. One does not get a fair idea of Owen from
anthologies, which always include a number of bad and sentimental
poems, omit some of the best ones, and, naturally, are unable to do
anything with the good passages of mediocre ones. He was occasionally
a good poet-and would, surely, have become a better; I should like to
finish this review by quoting lines I have often remembered, a stanza
from "Exposure" and the last stanza of "The Send-Off":
Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed
With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;
For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;
Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed,-
We turn back to our dying.
* * *
Shall they return to beatings of great bells
In wild train-loads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May
creep back, silent, to still village wells
Up half-known roads.
