more concrete, more real. In _The Everlasting Mercy_ we have
beautiful passages of description, sharply exciting narration, while
the dramatic element is furnished by conversation--and what
conversation! It differs from ordinary poetry as the sermons of an
evangelist differ from the sermons of Bishops. Mr. Masefield is a
natural-born dramatist. He is never content to describe his
characters; he makes them talk, and talk their own language, and you
will never go far in his longer poems without seeing the characters
rise from the page, spring into life, and immediately you hear their
voices raised in angry altercation. It is as though he felt the
reality of his men and women so keenly that he cannot keep them down.
They refuse to remain quiet. They insist on taking the poem into their
own hands, and running away with it.

When we are reading _The Widow in the Bye Street_ we realize that
Mr. Masefield has studied with some profit the art of narrative verse
as displayed by Chaucer. The story begins directly, and many necessary
facts are revealed in the first stanza, in a manner so simple that for
the moment we forget that this apparent simplicity is artistic
excellence. The _Nun's Priest's Tale_ is a model of attack.

A poure wydwe, somdel stope in age,
Was whilom dwellynge in a narwe cottage,
Beside a grove, stondynge in a dale.
This wydwe, of which I telle yow my tale,
Syn thilke day that she was last a wyf,
In pacience ladde a ful symple lyf,
For litel was hir catel and hir rente.

Now if I could have only one of Mr. Masefield's books, I would take