Here is a slender volume, exquisitely printed, containing twenty-six poems--the one from which the book takes its name and twenty-five lyrics of amazing craftsmanship and power. It is called, unnecessarily. "Priapus and the Pool" Uncouth., essentially Roman divinity, Priapus seems of late to have gained many followers far afield both in literature and music. But those who grub in books for the unwholesome or the obscene (Vice Commissioners take note!) will be deeply disappointed by the sheer beauty of these poems. The title is inappropriate. The poems themselves are as lovely as any love-lyrics I know. Their cadences fall like sudden, cooling rain and bring "another April to the soul."

At times Mr. Alken's poems are almost pure music. Schumann, they remind one of, in their exuberance, their pulsing rhythms and sorrowful, lapsing melodies. Some of them are a little hard to follow, so intricately psychological they seem. But upon each re-reading they grow clearer--like music, honest music, which one hears, and wants to hear, again and again. Always the melody comes suddenly, strong and clear, to catch one at the throat:

"The viola ceased its resonant throbbing, the violin

Was silent, the flute was still.

The voice of the singer was suddenly hushed. Only

The silence seemed to thrill

With the last echo of music, hovering over

The nodding heads of the listeners bowed and few;

And I became aware of the long light through a window,

Of the silence of beauty, of the beauty of you,

Never so sharply known as when, beside you,

I dared not look to see

What thought shone out of your face, or H, like marble,

It hid its thought from me."

Many individual lines are alive with magic; through them all, however personal, however subjective, there breathes a low, universal voice that makes them, each and every one, yours or mine. The last lyric is one of the loneliest poems I know. Loveliest of all, however, is No. V, which I quote entire: