To ----

(Winter 1916)

Thou lover of fire, how cold is it in the grave? Would I could bring thee fuel and light thee a fire as of old! Alas! how I think of thee there, shivering out in the cold, Till my own bright fire lacketh the heat which it gave!

Oh, would I could see thee again, as in days gone by, Sitting hands over the fire, or poking it to a bright blaze And clearing the cloggy ash from the bars in thy careful ways! Oh, art thou the more cold or here by the fire am I?

B. H. Blackwell, the Oxford publisher, seems to have made a good many "finds"; besides producing some of the work of Mr. Nichols and Mr. Weaving--both poets now have American publishers as well--the four volumes Oxford Verse, running from 1910 to 1917, contain many excellent things. And in addition to these, there are original adventures in the art of poetry, sometimes merely bizarre, but interesting as experiments, exhibited in the two volumes Wheels 1916, and Wheels 1917, and also in the books called Initiates: a Series of Poetry by Proved Hands.