MR. BERNARD GILBERT is one of the discoveries of the War. For
years, it seems, he has been writing poetry, but it is only
recently that an inapprehensive country has awakened to the
fact. Now he is taking his rightful place among our foremost
singers. What William Barnes was to Dorset, what T. E. Brown was
to the Manx people--this is Mr. Gilbert to the folk of his
native county of Lincoln. He has interpreted their lives, their
sorrows, their aspirations, with a surprising fidelity. Mr.
Gilbert never loses his grip upon realities. One feels that he
knows the men of whom he writes in their most intimate moods;
knows, too, their defects, which he does not shrink from
recording. There is little of the dreamy idealism of the South
in the peasant people of Lincolnshire. The outwardly respectable
chapel-goer who asks himself, in a moment of introspection
But why not have a good time here?
Why should the Devil have all the beer?
is true to type. But he has, too, his softer moods. Fidelity in
friendship, courage, resource and perseverance--these are
typical of the men of the Fens.
TO
MORLEY ROBERTS
_Acknowledgments to the Editors of the:_
_English Review_
_New Age_
_Colour_
_Westminster Gazette_
_New Witness_
_To-Day_
_Clarion_
_Australian Triad_
_Bystander_
_Musical Student_
_and Nash's Magazine_
_in whose columns these verses have appeared during 1917._