Miscellany

Abstract

MR. COLIN TOLLY'S budget of sonnets calls for notice in these pages, as poetry inspired or influenced by science will become more and more common as the ideas of science are gradually absorbed and form part of our ordinary mental equipment. This process is going on all the time, and we have often noticed it before. At the moment the due expression of these ideas is peculiarly difficult for two main reasons. One is the extraordinary spate of new discoveries and theories; the other, the prevailing unrest and dissatisfaction with the general state of the world in which these ideas are shooting up. Both these contemporary features find a striking demonstration in Mr. Tolly's verse. He is at grips with all kinds of problems and mysteries as well as the simpler but dominating thoughts of evolution and death which haunt him throughout. Often there are quite moving and common human emotions; more often one is tortured by doubts and mystical longings for a state of joyous peace beyond the whirl of atoms and of bewildering problems.

Janus-Man in Starry Night

By Colin Tolly. Pp. viii + 101. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1935.) 5s.