A range varying from dreams to satire is not unusual among our present day versifiers. Donald Davidson's "An Outland Piper" has these two extremes and most of the intermediaries in the thirty-three short poems that comprise this small volume. But chiefly it has music.
"Must I have done with music?
These things would have it so.
But there is certain magic
For those who walk in woe.
The apple Eve has bitten
Is mortal sweet within,
And Cain was not quite smitten
To earth, because of sin.
Then if, upon my roof-tree,
The raven croaks too-long,
I'll sing a stave of Heaven
And put him in my song."
When Mr. Davidson is sad he listens to music, when he is joyous he sings or plays some old archaic song. His muse is not one of the Goddesses of Poetry; but rather he bows down before the musical one. For him nature is not a sight; it is a sound, and a melodious and harmonious sound it is. At times some echoes of this sweet soft music creep into his verse. At other times he thinks of it but cannot embody it. Indeed he tells us himself
"I am not what my lips explain,
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