Welsh Journals

I suggest to the Group Theatre, if it survives the War, that it find someone with an elementary knowledge of the Theatre who will chose plays with some coherence of action, of scene, containing utterable dialogue rather than prose- masterpieces. In offering stuff like Danton's Death, they are doing the Experi- mental Theatre a grave disservice. NIGEL HESELTINE. BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF MODERN WELSH AUTHORS No. 6. WQLUAM) H(ENRY) DAVIES, 1871 Born in a public house at Newport, Monmouthshire, of Welsh parentage. Obliged to leave school at an early age. Apprenticed to a picture-frame maker. Lived as a tramp in America for six years. Worked on cattle boats. Picked fruit. At thirty, lost his right leg as a result of a fall from a train. Returned to England peddled, begged, lived in lodging houses. Became a poet at thirty- four. The Soul's Destroyer attracted the attention of Bernard Shaw. Editor of The Forum, 1921. Has contributed to numerous English magazines. Holds an Hon. Litt.D. from the University of Wales. Nature and the suffering poor are the themes of Davies' poems. There are echoes of earlier poets, especially of Wordsworth and the Elizabethan lyricists. A veritable innocent" abroad in an increasingly urban world, Davies has contrived to keep his spirit fresh and clear from the impurities of modern sophistication. Genuinely in revolt against the ugliness and impersonality of urban life, Davies finds in the cultivation of tender feelings about the beauty of nature and of animal life the satisfaction that a more complex and exacting world cannot offer. And his artistry is as artless as his ideas and emotions. At its best, it has a spontaneity and lucidity, a simplicity and charming directness that we associate, however erroneously, with childhood. But, at its worst (and Davies seems almost devoid of the power of self-criticism), his verse runs dangerously near to doggerel, and the honesty and sweetness of his spirit hardly furnish less idyllic natures more than a sense of vicarious escape. For the inepti- tudes, the false simplicity, the cockney unreality of Georgian poetry, Davies, in particular must be blamed. BIBLIOGRAPHY Poems. The Soul's Destroyer and other Poems, 1905 New Poems, 1907 (pub. 1906); Nature Poems and others, 1908; Farewell to poesy and other pieces, 1910; Songs of Joy and others, 1911 Foliage, various poems, 1913; The Bird of Paradise and other poems, 1914; Child lovers and other poems, 1916; Col- lected poems, 1916 (Am. ed., The Collected poems of William H. Davies); Forty new poems, 1918; Raptures, a book of poems, 1918; The Song of Life and other poems, 1920; The Captive Lion and other poems, 1921 The Hour of Magic and other poems, 1922; Collected poems, Second Series, 1923; Secrets, 1924; A Poet's Alphabet, 1925; The Song of Love, 1926; A Poet's Calendar, 1927