THE MOON ALSO RISES.

Poems by ElliotAdams White '12. New York: PageantPress International Corp., 1969. 73 pp.$3.95.

Last year Elliott White surprised his friends with A Sheaf of Oatstraw. Surprised them, because though they knew him to be a man of wide reading, erudition in many different fields, and keen perceptions, they had not guessed the poet in him. The present book shows the wide reading and the erudition as in "Men of Concord" and in such lines as:

So spoke Protagoras The measure of all things is Man. So Einstein spoke:

The Earth "pulls" not the Moon, Nor billiard pockets of a slanted table Draw the ball such fantasies Are human muscle-stretching In the head, filling a universe With pushes and pulls not there.

The poems show perceptiveness, thought, and feeling. One section of the book is devoted to Canterbury - not England but a Vermont village not to be found on the map. This section I might facetiously describe as a White-Frost section: several narrative poems have the same feeling for nature, something of the shrewd humor, though little of the tragic starkness of Northof Boston. This is not to dismiss them as merely imitative (few poets are without overtones of other poets) but simply to characterize them.

What I liked best, though, were the shorter poems: vignettes of nature, people, and places; gnomic utterances; this, for instance:

INN'S EASE

(XVII Century)

For my nag a quart of oats with hay; For me a smoking roast with ale.

An old feather bed on an old bedstead Is warm and soft to limbs like lead, Saddle-lamed.

And rum for two and a chamber-lass Are snug and warm To a body chilled with rain.

Or this:

AGE

Ecclesiastes told the truth of age - Lowtide of courage, trembling hands, Inertia, memory fails - "desire shall fail," And vanities that plagued shall plague no more.

Less keen enjoyment though of mellower tone, So that the quiet and the calm bring joy. Then why not tell the truth of Age?

Finally:

EPITAPH

To her cool hours no violence or passion came, No stormy pain of love or wind of fierce desire, So tranquil lived and tranquil folded hands in death— So doomed long time to mourn and moan by Lethe sedge, Her emptiness unfilled, her hunger not forgot.

Mr. Morse is Professor of English, Emeritus.