POET AND PACIFIST

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 141, 6 March 1942, Page 8

POET AND PACIFIST

A DAY’S JOURNEY. Poems by Basil Dowling. Printed by the Caxton Press, Christchurch, |t is difficult to know what to say about Mr, Dowling, or rather how to start in athim, A Day’s Journey demands consideration from two angles; to consider it solely as a "slim volume" of verse or solely as a passionate exposition of a Christian’s attitude to war would be doing it an injustice. Christ, the man of peace "doomed to be shot for cowardice at dawn," "the child Christ crucified," Christ in a court of justice, "mocked and thorny-browed," is the theme of several verses. It would not be the place here to enter into a discussion of the rights and wrongs of his message; it is enough to say that he pleads with irony, simple conviction, and some passion. Many of the other poems, which are concerned with such subjects as "Hay time in Somerset," " My Son, Six Weeks Old," "Scenes of Childhood," and "Age," are uneven in quality, The description of a thunderstorm at night has laboured highlights and an ugly rhyme to round it off: .+. A few stars unquenched Shine clear again, and people open shutters, While storm water rushes down the gutters. But there is a sure touch in " Posting a Letter." Conceived by love or not, Written in truth, or lied, This letter that I slide Into its narrow slot As final an act shall be . As a stone dropped in the sea, or suicide, And there is a depth and intensity of feeling that Wilde did not permit to come to the surface in the " Ballad of

Reading Gaol" in his reaction to the small square within a prison where men are hanged. The rain which falls there ne’er will sluice away that blood stopped, unshed, By the looped, terrible tourniquet; or drown my pity and horror. An uneven collection, not all of it maturely worked out; but an interesting one, and worth while for perhaps five poems, Z

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