ge in the
enduring to be found by one so keenly aware of the flux within the soul
itself. The most powerful, the most austerely imagined poem in this book
is that entitled 'The Other,' which, apart from its intrinsic appeal,
shows that Edward Thomas had something at least of the power to create
the myth which is the poet's essential means of triangulating the
unknown of his emotion. Had he lived to perfect himself in the use of
this instrument, he might have been a great poet indeed. 'The Other'
tells of his pursuit of himself, and how he overtook his soul.

'And now I dare not follow after
Too close. I try to keep in sight,
Dreading his frown and worse his laughter,
I steal out of the wood to light;
I see the swift shoot from the rafter
By the window: ere I alight
I wait and hear the starlings wheeze
And nibble like ducks: I wait his flight.
He goes: I follow: no release
Until he ceases. Then I also shall cease.'

No; not a great poet, will be the final sentence, when the palimpsest is
read with the calm and undivided attention that is its due, but one who
had many (and among them the chief) of the qualities of a great poet.
Edward Thomas was like a musician who noted down themes that summon up
forgotten expectations. Whether the genius to work them out to the
limits of their scope and implication was in him we do not know. The
life of literature was a hard master to him; and perhaps the opportunity
he would eagerly have grasped was denied him by circumstance. But, if
his compositions do not, his themes will never fail--of so much we are
sure--to awaken unsuspected echoes even in unsuspecting minds.

[JANUARY 1919.

_Mr Yeats's Swan Song_

In the preface to _The Wild Swans at Coole_,[3] Mr W.B. Yeats speaks of
'the phantasmagoria through which alone I can express my convictions
about the world.' The challenge could hardly be more direct. At the
threshold we are confronted with a legend upon the door-post which gives
us the essential plan of all that we shall find in the house if we enter
in. There are, it is true, a few things capable of common use, verses
written in the seeming-strong vernacular of literary Dublin, as it were
a hospitable bench placed outside the door. They are indeed inside the
house, but by accident or for temporary shelter. They do not, as the
phrase goes, belong to the scheme, for they are direct transcriptions of
the common reality, whether found in the sensib