modern American verse is sharp, vigorously
experimental; full of youth and its occasional--and natural--crudities.
English verse is smoother, more matured and, molded by centuries of
literature, richer in associations and surer in artistry. Where the
American output is often rude, extremely varied and uncoordinated (being
the expression of partly indigenous, partly naturalized and largely
unassimilated ideas, emotions, and races), the English product is
formulated, precise and, in spite of its fluctuations, true to its past.
It goes back to traditions as old as Chaucer (witness the narratives of
Masefield and Gibson) or tendencies as classic as Drayton, Herrick and
Blake--as in the frank lyrics of A. E. Housman, the artless lyricism of
Ralph Hodgson, the naif wonder of W. H. Davies. And if English poetry
may be compared to a broad and luxuriating river (while American poetry
might be described as a sudden rush of unconnected mountain torrents,
valley streams and city sluices), it will be inspiring to observe how
its course has been temporarily deflected in the last forty years; how
it has swung away from one tendency toward another; and how, for all its
bends and twists, it has lost neither its strength nor its nobility.

L. U.

New York City.
January, 1920.

MODERN BRITISH POETRY

_Thomas Hardy_

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840, and has for years been famous on both
sides of the Atlantic as a writer of intense and sombre novels. His
_Tess of the D'Urbervilles_ and _Jude the Obscure_ are possibly his
best known, although his _Wessex Tales_ and _Life's Little Ironies_
are no less imposing.

It was not until he was almost sixty, in 1898 to be precise, that
Hardy abandoned prose and challenged attention as a poet. _The
Dynasts_, a drama of the Napoleonic Wars, is in three parts, nineteen
acts and one hundred and thirty scenes, a massive and most amazing
contribution to contemporary art. It is the apotheosis of Hardy the
novelist. Lascelles Abercrombie calls this work, which is partly a
historical play, partly a visionary drama, "the biggest and most
consistent exhibition of fatalism in literature." While its powerful
simplicity and tragic impressiveness overshadow his shorter poems,
many of his terse lyrics reveal the same vigor and impact of a strong
personality. His collected poems were published by The Macmillan
Company in 1919 and reveal another phase of one of the greatest living
writers of Englis