LARKS, NIGHTINGALES, AND POETS: AN ESSAY AND AN ANTHOLOGY,

by Albert R. Chandler 'OB. Published by the author at University Hall, Ohio State University. Columbus, Ohio, 1937. p. viii plus 190.

In this pleasant volume, the result of many years of reading and study in a field apart from his chosen vocation of the teaching of philosophy, Professor Chandler has traced for us the poets' treatment of the songs of the nightingale and the lark from Homer to T. S. Eliot and Paul Oehser and has illustrated the many changes in literary technique and in attitude toward nature that have occurred over this long range of time by an anthology of one hundred and ten poems. These poems have been chosen from twelve different languages, and the non-English ones are given both in their original forms and in translations. In the many cases where no published translations were available, Professor Chandler has made his own versions, and in so doing has shown a happy faculty for apt poetic rendering.

The author modestly disclaims any more scholarly aim than giving to his readers a similar pleasure to that he has himself found in his work of compilation and comment. The result, however, will prove of real instruction to any student of poetry, for this unique study of the poetic use of a single and very limited theme throughout so long a period of time throws an interesting light on the nature of poetry itself. The actual songs and behaviors of these two birds have remained the same throughout the centuries, but the interpretation of them by the poets has varied greatly. Traditions, conventions, and poetic moods have influenced in widely varying fashion the responses that poets have given to these identical stimuli. Epoch nationality, and personality can never be ignored in literary study, but here in this particular treatment their influence stands out with unusual clarity.

Both the essay and the poems are accompanied by scholarly notes on sources and interpretations. The volume concludes with two valuable appendices, of which one, on "Scylla and the Lark," elucidates a hitherto unexplained passage in Ronsard's "L'Alouette," and the other, on "The Nightingale and Thorn," traces the origin of this favorite Elizabethan conceit farther back than has been done previously.