Where the breath of the planet drives and the herded billows roll."
And so the poet went swimming:
The great embrace of ocean was closer then love's can be;
Its clasp was sharp on my limbs, yet went I supple and free.
The breast of the deep upheaved as a mother's under a child—
Terrible, tender, strong, imperial, undefiled.
Why doesn't this "get across?"—why is it just a little absurd? For surely there is a poem in a swim—for a poet who doesn't try to be sublime!
The truth is, this sort of pomposity has died the death. If the imagists have done nothing else, they have punctured the gas bag—English poetry will be henceforth more compact and stern—"as simple as prose," perhaps. Against the Victorian excesses we might quote the rhetorical advice of Tennyson's Ancient Sage in favor of another kind of temperance:
Nor care
To vex the noon with fiery gems, or fold
Thy presence in the silk of sumptuous looms;
Nor roll thy viands on a luscious tongue,
Nor drown thyself, like flies, in honeyed wine.
When Mr. Sterling learns to avoid the "luscious tongue" and the "honeyed wine," he may become the poet he was meant to be.
Indeed, there are a number of poems in the book which give us hope. The compactness of the sonnet form is evidently good discipline for this poet's muse, for I find six beautiful sonnets. It is perhaps distinction enough to have
[311]
