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Collected Poems by Andrew Young. (Jonathan Cape, 10/6) 

This new collection of Andrew Young's poems will delight not only his present readers and disciples, but also the larger number of those whose taste directs them not into the main channels of contemporary verse but rather into the quieter by-ways of nature—or countryside poetry, from Drayton and Tusser to Sackville-West and Norman Nicholson. Part of this collection appeared in an earlier edition of collected poems, published nearly fifteen years ago : to these Mr. Young has added two later books of verse, and his 'mystery' play NICODEMUS. The combination is striking. In the play, the verse is nerveless, almost flabby (Mr. Young uses the conventional iambic pentameter with very little variation) and the action is so slow as to reduce the intended meditative mood to a drowsy dream. Here, it seems, the Presbyterian divine dominates over the priest and poet, inhibiting each from full and free exercise of his office. Not of this stuff is true religious drama made : God is not glorified by inhibitions.

In the poems, however, there is a splendid interplay of poet and priest, recalling the earlier practice of Anglican parsons like George Herbert, before the decay of culture and religion reduced this to the piety of a Keble or the moralism of a Kingsley. Sometimes the poet may try too much to compensate for the stern Calvinist formation and err towards a sentimental pantheism ...

'As though the earth had worn so thin
I saw the living spirit within,
Its beauty almost pain to bear'—

Usually, however, Mr. Young shows as keen an observation of natural phenomena as Gilbert White, a sharp accuracy of description shot through with an authentically religious sensibility. This may not be poetry of the greater sort, which should express and enlighten men's deepest experience. But it is an indispensable and (we hope) imperishable element in our national literature, conserving the sense of man's place in the universe through his kinship with all created things. It lights the path toward the fulfilment of his nature and destiny by means of a reverent apprehension of the Creator's operation through His creatures.