phrases of negro dialect are a deep disappointment. A familiarity with negros and the fact that the adaptations are intentional cannot absolve such Aryan doggerel as:
"And we fell by the altar
And we fell by the aisle,
And found our Savior
In just a little while."
Such lines are startlingly at variance with real negro parallelism as we have it in:
"Oh, Hell am deep 'n Hell am wide
an' you can't touch bottom on either side"
and are incompatible with that perfect fragment of negro cadence which Mr Lindsay has combined with it, "Every time I hear the spirit moving in my heart I'll pray." A stentorianly emphatic combining of the elements of the black genius and the white, but emphasizes their incompatibility. In The Congo, the "Baboon butler in the agate door," "And hats that were covered with diamond-dust" are pale substitutes for
"Baboon butler at the door,
Diamond carpet on the floor."
In the Booker Washington Trilogy,
"the oak secure,
Weaving its leafy lure,
Dreaming by fountains pure
Ten thousand years"
recalls The Charge of the Light Brigade. The Daniel, and Simon Legree have intermittently fantasy and beat, but the refrain, fabricated or authentic, "Let Samson be coming into your mind" is inexplicable from any point of view. In stage directions, the most expert craftsmen such as Shaw and Yeats barely escape pedantry and one feels that however necessary to Mr Lindsay's conception
