VOICES

London, England

Autumn 1921

(pages 150-151)

REVIEWS OF NEW BOOKS

     SONGS OF THE GROVES. Vine Press, Steyning. 7s. 6d. net.

[ . . . ]

From the Vine Press, Steyning, Sussex, comes another volume of anonymous [Victor B. Neuburg] verse, half-sensuous, half-mystical, in a format pleasant to handle. It is likely that these Songs of the Groves, together with previous fruit of the Vine, will be much sought after and gain currency among collectors if only for the evidence they give of loving handicraft. This same handicraft is as yet, however, a little too experimental; there is too much variety of type, and a rather maddening use of chain O's; also (extraordinary blunder) a lavish use of fullstops after titles, even on the spine of the book.

The verse is accomplished and imbued with classic feeling, but too often it is marred by a facility of phrase not unconnected with, we suspect, with the author's desire to impart mystical instruction:

A single Flame fills all the earth;

A single Sun fills all the blue;

A single death, a single birth,

Suffice us not. Let me with you

Discover if there be a way

Separate from that path, above

The plains of earth; the high gods say,

There is a Way: the Way of Love.

Thus the last stanza of Plato's Love-Song, which, interesting in thought, loses poetry in argument.