Abstract
MR. HALLOWES in his recent book has raised again an oft-discussed question and given some interesting illustrations of its possible solution. The question is how far can poetry express and keep pace with the discoveries of science. The illustrations are drawn from poems of Mr. Hallowes himself, when on the Geological Survey of India in the years 1905-23. In speaking of these, it will be sufficient here to point out that Mr. Hallowes has at least three of the essentials for carrying out the work to which he rightly attaches high importance. He has an observant eye, a passionate love of Nature and a profound sense of one of the greatest truths which modern science has revealed, namely, that the earth and all that it contains are subject to incessant change, and that what we see, though the result of these changes, is often to the superficial glance quite different. It is due to this apparently paradoxical transformation that Mr. Hallowes owes some of his most telling word-pictures; for example, “From rock once molten fire blue speedwells bloom”. Such pictures of transformation are, as we might expect, frequent in the work of a man who from the starting point of geology sets out on the work of a poet of science.
The Poetical Works of Kenneth Knight Hallowes. Vol. 1: 1896–1934.
Pp. xvi + 212 + 2 plates. (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1934.) 7s. 6d. net.
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MARVIN, F. The Poetical Works of Kenneth Knight Hallowes Vol 1: 1896–1934. Nature 135, 49 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135049a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135049a0