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THE ABERDEEN PRESS AND JOURNAL Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Scotland 21 March 1921 (page 7)
NEW BOOKS.
SUSSEX SONGS.
Swift Wings: Songs in Sussex. [By Victor B. Neuburg] The Vine Press, Steyning. 6s.
Despite a grave tendency to overworked alliteration which, while pleasing at first glance if well done, wearies on excessive repetition, there are some genuine lyrical lines in this slender volume of sonnets and pastoral poems by an unnamed author. An ardent lover of Sussex’s wind-swept wolds and shady vales, he gives in richly impressionistic and ripely rounded verses vivid descriptions of such old-world places as Coombes, Saddlescombe, and old Steyne, enthuses with an artist’s eye for tone and beauty over the moonlit seascape, reflects tenderly and reminiscently on the achievements of such Sussex men as the poet Collins, the prose-writer Jeffries, and produces in plenty descriptions of pastoral scenes that are alluring, lucent, cool. “The Sea-Breeze” is an excellent example of effective alliteration, and “Old Steyne” and “Hove Street” exquisite examples of word-painting.
The Vine Press also issued “Lillygay” [By Victor B. Neuburg] (5s), an anthology of anonymous poems edited and compiled by the author of “Swift Wings,” with some excellent woodcuts contributed by Eric and Percy West. Decidedly unusual and perhaps rather daring in the eyes of the “unce’ guid,” these old-world ballads have a racy character and rich promise about them that is original and attractive. Here are collected such ancient masterpieces as “Johnnie Faa,” “The Gowans Sae Gae,” “Burd Ellen,” and “Elore Lo,” the innocent, light-hearted amorism of “Bonfire Song” and “Rantum Tantum,” the by no means mealy-mouthed “Sick Dick,” which is as clever as it is funny, and the exquisite “Lyke-Wake Dirge,” with its dire, forbidding Catholicism. Most of these poems tell of bygone times and manners, but a few at least, such as the lovely “Colophon,” are modern in tone and in expression. They are, as the prologue says: “Tonguefuls of words, but new words of a new world, newly coloured by the angel of a new time. |