LAUREATE VERSE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 551, 13 January 1950, Page 13

LAUREATE VERSE

ON THE HILL, by John Masefield; O. M. \ 3 ear London, 1949, Australian price, OHN MASEFIELD, laureate or no, is / sure enough of his place in English letters-as much for his prose as for his verse; though péchaps the time is long past since a new volume of poems by: the author of The Everlasting Mercy could be awaited with much literary excitement. Some poets of our time (notably W. B: Yeats-and Mr. Eliot and Dr. Sitwell seem to be following him in this) have dazzled with a final period of notable brilliance: the Poet Laureate, in this last volume, gives us no surprises. But On the Hill-though it is unlikely to achieve any spectacular sale of 70,000 copies in the strange manner of the last volume of Mr. Masefield’s distinguished predecessor — will be welcomed almost as an old friend by those who are already at home in Mr. Masefield’s country. The liveliest pieces in this new collection are Jouncer’s Tump and A Tale of Country Things-two narrative poems in ballad metre that have something of the rare zest of Reynard the Fox. Two short sea-shanties, Sailorman Bold and The Wind of the Sea, are authentic Masefield in an earlier style. For the rest, the title poem is religious allegory: and there are a number of re-handlings of French, Spanish and Greek themes (some part-translations) to round off the volume. If there is nothing here that startles there is much that will give real and lasting pleasure; and the final ver-dict-not least on the treatment of religious or romantic material-might well be Rupert Brooke’s on Dr. Johnson; "An

Englishman, by God?

J.

B.