"The Great Adventure"

by Kendall Banning '02. The Marchbanks Press, New York, 1926. pp. 44.

This slender volume is a collection of 29 lyrics gathered from various magazines in which they had previously been published. A few even date from Mr. Banning's undergraduate days and the old Dartmouth Literary Magazine. A quotation on the title-page, "For life itself is but an Interlude; a brief adventure of the soul between the miracles of Birth and Death," indicates the reason for the title and in a very general way the nature of the themes treated.

Most of the poems are slight, with a very youthful point of view. They sing mainly of the deathlessness of romantic love and the loveliness of romantic death. "Names of lovers, pair by pair," fill the pages; Aucassin and Nicolette, Tristan and Iseult, Columbine and Pierrot are pegs to hang little love-songs on.

But what these lyrics lack in depth they make up in music. Airy, iridescent, they sing themselves as easily as bubbles are blown. With the single exception of the impossible couplet which concludes "Requiem," there is not a harsh or halting phrase in them. Evidently—perhaps too evidently—Kipling and Hovey have been Banning's rhythmic masters.

The most pleasing lyric of them all is "Once, on a Time," which, if my memory fails me not, first saw the light of day in the Dartmouth Magazine 25 years ago. Its sheer simplicity, both of theme and music, give it a charm that artificiality denies to most of its companion poems. The whole volume, however, will give any reader a pleasant half-hour.