THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN

London, England

4 January 1911

(page 4)

RECENT VERSE.

Mr. Victor B. Neuburg is a very lavish versifier, who seems, with a select company of associated (most of them, one imagines, still very young; different poems are dedicated to different members of the clique), to have made a kind of cult of primeval violence. Love-making appears to have an added halo in his eyes if it is associated with delirium or bloodshed. Here is a characteristic stanza from The Triumph of Pan, a piece which gives its name to his volume (“The Equinox,” pp. xvii. 181, 5s. net)—

. . . We are sick of dreaming

Of a dim past unknown;

Oh! for the sight once more of red blood streaming

Of rotting warrior-bone,

Of eagles hovering far

Around the field of war,

Of lust and love and longing breaking through

The chill gray garb of life to flame anew.

As will be seen, Mr. Neuburg has a “careless rapture” all his own; the carelessness, indeed, is just the trouble. His versification is remarkable, and there is something impressive in its mere fluency. Occasionally, when his subject gives him no loophole for bravado, he becomes a poet; but his work is only readable in small fragments; so luxurious, so rampant, a decadence quickly palls. On the whole, his book must be pronounced a quite grievous exhibition of recklessness and folly.