of the spoken word particular information may be, when he asks us "to keep as lightfooted as possible," to read "orotund fashion," "with heavy buzzing bass," et cetera, one can but feel, unfairly or not, that he is subordinating a poorly endowed audience to wit which he proposes to furnish.
Some of Mr Lindsay's work would lead one to infer that "a man is out on three wide balls but walks on four good strikes." The literary reader tends not to be compensated by moral fervour for technical misapprehensions, but there is life in any kind of beauty and in these poems avoidance of grossness and the entirely vengeful, is fortifying. Why I Voted the Socialist Ticket is full of contagious vigour:
"I am unjust, but I can strive for justice.
My life's unkind, but I can vote for kindness.
I, the unloving, say life should be lovely.
I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness,"
but in his Curse for Kings, Mr Lindsay gives the effect of an emotional pacifism which is incompatible with earnestness.
This whole book is a weapon in a strenuous battlefield," Mr Lindsay says; "practically every copy will be first opened on the lap of some person . . . trying to follow me as I recite as one follows the translation of the opera libretto." He is not to be refuted. There is a perhaps not very exact analogy between him in his rôle of undismayed, national interpreter, and a certain young eagle conveyed by American naval officers to the Philippines, styled "an American rooster," and pitted invariably with mortal consequence against Philippine gamecocks.
If a reader felt no responsibility for a writer, and were merely culling felicities, certain of Mr Lindsay's poems would undoubtedly give complete pleasure; disregarding as a whole the poem, How a Little Girl Danced, there is a fine accuracy in the lines:
"With foot like the snow, and with step like the rain."
There is suggested fragility in the poem game of yellow butterflies:
"They shiver by the shallow pools. . . .
They drink and drink. A frail pretense!"
