A Reading by Miss SACKVILLE WEST from
Dr. ROBERT BRIDGE'S Poem
ON hia eighty-fifth birthday, the Poet
Laureate published a poem longer and finer than anything he had ever written before. ' It is '-to quote the Times — the out-pouring of the accumulated wisdom, experience, scholarship, and poetic craftsmanship of one of the richest and mellowest spirits of our time.' ' The Testament of Beauty,' which is dedicated to the King, is a philosophical poem of more than 4,000 lines ; it is the good fruit of a long life ; it should serve to remind the pessimists that, even today, ' mighty spirits ore abroad.' Though philosophical, the poem is starred throughout with beautiful passages of natural description such as we expect from this master-painter's hand; for the rest, it ranges over the whole gamut of life-not omiting, incidentally, a tribute to broadcasting. Unthinking critics have not been slow to complain of our Poet Laureate's ' inactivity' : but Dr Bridges, from the dignified isolation of a great mind and heart, has bided his time and now, at the conclusions of his long life, he has given to the world a poem calculated to restore our faith in the power of poetry and our belief that the age of Titans is not dead.