118
PARTISAN R EVIEW
tails which are themselves characteristic, a generalized nature, a gen–
eralized mythology, with a consequent remoteness of tone even at
moments that should be dramatically urgent, a tone that seems dis–
tantly to reflect and echo a long swell of the sea-
and
l-!
ere where the walls end and the ruinous tower
L eans with its uninhabitable black
Long builded stones above the ultimate sea
. ..
W e were th e first that found that famous country :
W e marched by a king's name : we crossed the szerras:
Unkn own hardships we suffered: ;:unger :
Death by the stone knife', thirst: we fared by th e
Bitter streams: we came at last to that water :
Towers were steep upon th e flutt ering air .
..
The first of these passages comes from "The Hamlet," the second from
"Conquistador." Both these poems are ambitious, well-conceived and
in places very moving, yet at last the singleness of tone (in "The Ham–
let" there is also some imitation Shakespeare, though ) fails in or even
defeats its purpose; all becomes too distant, dreamy, too much ab–
stracted and generalized.
I have not yet spoken of the recent poems, first collected here,
nor of the new play, "The Trojan Horse." Of the play I cannot say
much: its language is more spare and active than much that precedes
it ; as poetry it reads not very well, perhaps, but one has learned that
such language may be extremely well suited to declama tion, and that
given a competent performance it is likely to surprise by a vigor and
tension not always easily seen on the printed page.
Nor will I say more than a few words of the la test poetry. There
is an implicit assumption, when poems are "Collected," that the returns
are now in, that all is over and the vote may safely be counted. In
this instance I doubt it is so. The new poems seem to return to the
privacy and seriousness of the earlier ones, but with a more energetic
rhythm, a stripped ferocity reminiscent in places of late poems by
Yeats. Some brief poems here are fine, though not always fully so–
in "Out of Sleep Awakened," for example, the moralizing last couplet
seems to spoil-, and those pages in this book suggest the hope that
this poet has turned from empty and angry public declamation to
reach again "The real encounter kept at night / Alone where none will
praise our art."
