Books: Bright Doom

THE BRIGHT DOOM—John Hall Wheelock—Scribner ($2). Poet Wheelock has been so often patted for his “ecstasy,” that now he writes such vague, silly, categories as this:

There are three tremblings sweet

to think upon:

The trembling of a poplar-leaf in

the wind,

The trembling of a woman in the

moment of love

And the trembling of the stars. . . .

This mediocre quatrain would be unfairly quoted without also four of his more typical sadly cadenced verses:

My heart is a dark forest where no

voice is heard,

Nor sound of foot by day or night

—nor echo, borne

Down the long aisles and shadowy

arches, of a horn,

Trembling—nor cry of beast nor

call of any bird.

Doomed to lack the range and the essentially new concepts of a great poet, Mr. Wheelock with his sixth book again proves himself capable of valuing these limitations and of creating, within them, poetry that possesses a sure delicate beauty and bright depth of truth.