A LETTER TO ROBERT FROST AND OTHERS, the first book of poems by Robert S. Hillyer, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric, is now before the public. How poetry lovers will take to Mr. Hillyer's latest work is unpredictable, for in his lambic couplets he has attempted to sound that soothing harmony of compassion tinged with soft, self-childing satire so elusive for the reader to hear yet so pleasant when once heard and held in memory. Whether he succeeds without appearing to descend to the prosaic and the trivial depends entirely on the individual reader.

Most readers today are casual readers, and a casual perusal of Mr. Hillyer's poems will only make one feel that in many passages he has tried to imitate the criticisms of wilder moderns and in a manner faintly reminiscent of Pope:

"There by the wall a maiden poet stands, Her gestures undulant on languid hands; Each finger nail a crimson petal, seen Through a pale garnishing of nicotine. Her draperies, like downward vapor, tremble, As one by one her courtiers assemble."

But underneath a soothing harmony does pervade the whole, and lacking that harmony the verses might not be worthy of the poet.

Addressing Robert Frost, Mr. Hillyer's theme combines a gentle scolding of the state of literature and affairs with his friendship for Frest:

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall;

Your apples and my pines knew none at all,

But grow together in that ghostly lot

Where your Vermont meets my Connecticut . . . .

In war, where no one wins but the machine,

I pondered as I brought the wounded in:

Of these three choices--death, deformity,

Or patched for war again, who should not die?

And now the final triumph: the star actor

In "Steel: a Tragedy" makes God a tractor."

And then something of himself:

"Heigh-ho, I've seen worse things than morbid youth.

Inscribes in his dark diary. The truth

Remains that my few perfect moments seem

Eternal, and the bad ones but a dream."

We meet "Kitty, Copey, and Bliss" again in. "A Letter to Charles Townsend Copeland." To countless college men this poem will mean much; to the uninitiated, it may seem slightly nostalgic, and Mr. Hillyer, realizing the fact, chides himself for reminiscing too early in his life.

In "A Letter to James B. Munn," Mr. Hillyer discusses the conflict within him between the poet and the academic scholar. Also there are letters to Bernard De Vote, Peyton Randolph Campbell, Queen Nefertiti, and the author's son. Only in "A Letter to Queen Nefertiti" does he abandon his pleasantly familiar tone and adopt a more racy and a more lyrical theme:

"The granite coflin lid heaves up a crack,

Two mad eyes glitter as they pierce the black.

Slowly the goddess writhes from the embrace

Of heavy death, and drops with cat-like grace

To the cold tiles of darkness, while her sight

Widens its yellow orbit to the night."

Mr. Hillyer is a man who has long held that the roots of true poetry are thrust deep in the traditions of centuries. His is not the frigid, classical view of the pedant, however, for he knows that poetry changes with the decades. But poetry to him is sacred, and in an age of frantic, formless compositions whose only worth lies in the white heat at which they are forged, Mr. Hillyer's poetry strikes a sure note. A sincere consideration of "A Letter to Robert Frest and Others" proves that Mr. Hillyer's poetry will stand the test of time.