Full Stature

EARTH MOODS--Hervey Allen--Harper ($2.00). With the sure, strong voice that is none but his own, Poet Allen now sings as "a watcher of the high-skies" of the earth's aging, "the expressions of time upon the face of the planet." As well as the poet's eye and ear, he has the historian's precision, the astronomer's detachment:

That faint trumpeting that dies away Like the lowing of monstrous star-cattle Marks the passing of the mastodon ....

Who has heard the crack of Carthaginian whips

Upon the backs of frozen elephants,

The roar of war horns in the Maritime Alps,

The snake drums of Numidian cavalry?

Who has seen the Punic triremes walk the sea

Like water-spiders, to the yell of slaves?

A poet also of the other world, he gibbers Spider, Spider, of madness, "hairy-lipped, a crab from Hades." Arabia Felix and The Tower of Genghis Khan are old opiates. He is a man for hot color--read Whim Alley; and sweet peace--see Old Meadows. If there are full-stature poets in the U. S., and it is demonstrable that there are, Hervey Allen, young Charleston, S. C, schoolteacher, is well to the fore in their company.