These are instances of Mr Fletcher's power to create beautiful impressions with a few words. And sometimes I think he uses too many! That is, certain words or phrases impede the impression rather than add to it. This is a minor defect, but its correction would contribute greater strength to his style. Mr. Fletcher's sea-symphony, Sand and Spray, is a spirited experiment. Although there are delightful movements in it, I do not feel that its effect as a whole is so fine as that of his Blue Symphony, perhaps because motion and sound and color strive constantly for mastery one above the other and are not finally resolved as they might be in music. The symphonic poem demands a poet's full strength. Sidney Lanier's Marshes of Glynn was a deliberate attempt to achieve the effect of music in poetry. It was rhythmic, but it remained descriptive and objective. Less obviously, Whitman's When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloomed, and Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking are symphonic poems that achieve a perfect synthesis.
Many of the finest Irradiations were published in Poetry in 1913. This, however, is one that will be new to our readers:
The balancing of gaudy broad pavilions
Of summer against the insolent breeze:
The bellying of the sides of striped tents,
Swelling taut, shuddering in quick collapse,
Silent under the silence of the sky.
Earth is streaked and spotted
With great splashes and dapples of sunlight:
The sun throws an immense circle of hot light upon the world,
Rolling slowly in ponderous rhythm
Darkly, musically forward.
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