A BOOK OF VERSE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 December 1940, Page 4

A BOOK OF VERSE

“HER FINEST HOUR AND OTHER POEMS.” In this little book of verse its author, the Rev. A. T. Thompson, M.A., 8.D., has given poetic expression to thoughts awakened in widely varying human experience. The name poem, Hei Finest Hour,” is a full-hearted salute to Britain as a nation upholding, well and worthily, in a time of supreme crisis, all that is best in her traditions. “Churchill” is in the same general category. In his other poems, Mr. Thompson ranges from religious and philosophical meditation to the simple portrayal and praise of natural beauty in flower or waterfall or changing season. He has written his verses ashore and at sea, in lands both old and new. Some of his poems express the emotions inspired by a pilgrimage to the homeland of our race and to such national shrines as the grave of Thomas Gray, in Stoke Poges churchyard and the tomb of the Venerable Bede, in Durham Cathedral. Mr. Thompson has not despised simpler themes of everyday life. The Housekeener’s Lament” is a little masterpiece of its kind, and “That Boy of Mine” has an affecting quality of its own. , « ' Mr. Thompson s poems are of a pleasant scholarly quality. They bearwitness throughout to delicate and sensitive powers of perception and are marked by a felicitous and telling choice of word and phrase and an undertone of melody. They breathe, too, a fine humanity and all of them—even the poem on “Pain" —strike the note of a brave and undimmed enthusiasm for all that is uplifting, good and true.