The Golden Room, and Other Poems by Wilfrid Gibson (p. 297)

The Golden Room, and Other Poems, by Wilfrid Gibson.

The Macmillan Company. ,

This volume contains Wilfrid Gibson's output since the

publication of his Collected Poems of 1925. It shows him

continuing in the rather grey monotone of his earlier

realistic verse. It is quite possible to find oneself wholly

out of sympathy with this slow unadventurous work,

lacking in the qualities of freshness and enthusiasm which

we admire in the author's English contemporaries, W. H.

Davies, Edward Thomas, and Sassoon. He adheres very

closely to everyday experiences, to prosaic themes sug-

gested by commonplace English life and character,

occasionally to political and nationalistic events, some-

times with greater success to observations in nature or in

out-of-door life. One is forced to remember that Gibson's

war-time chronicles were patient and sincere, uninformed

by the passionate eloquence of Brooke or Sassoon but

nevertheless real and discerning. His defect, however, lies

in the fact that he has attempted to make up in bulk

and in thoroughness of treatment for what he lacks in

native imagination and enthusiasm. Consequently he

has far overwritten himself and tired his readers. The

Golden Room contains many lines of beauty and many

observations of real acuteness, but the general effect is

one of exhaustion and prosiness. It confirms, rather than

revises, the verdict which discriminating critics passed

on his collected works.