A Great Anthology.

“Great Poems of the English Language,” compiled by Walliace Alwin Briggs (Harrap, London). Here surely is a volume of English verse which gives the lie to those captious critics who assert that it is impossible for an anthology to be both comprehensive and select. To fill fifteen hundred pages with poems in the English language, of which it can be said that not one poem included should have been left out, is surely something of an achievement. If it has a fault at all it is in its too select selection of the older poets. One is not far through its pages before he comes to the great Scots poet, Burns, and the poets of his day and generation, which might give the uninitiated the impression that there was little poetry written worth while prior to the latter half of the eighteenth century. Had Mr. Briggs been a little less generous to living poets, he would have found room for several Old World poems, which we think ought not to have been left out of a collection as authoritative as this undoubtedly is. Others may prize the volume all the more because of its sparing indulgence of the older poets and its open-handed liberality towards those of more modern times and of the present day. If the selections from Burns are the compiler's own selections, unaided and unguided by some person or persons from North the Border, we must congratulate him on the excellency of his taste, and also on the quality of his critical acumen. Of course every discerning reader will find some particular poem missing that he would have liked to have seen included (we confess to missing more than one), but that does not in any way detract from the merit of those that are included. A number of the best of the old ballads are given, which greatly adds to the value of the volume. The book sells in New Zealand at twelve shillings and sixpence. At double the price it would still be cheap.

Railway Workshops Bands.
Members of the combined bands of the Lower Hutt Workshops and the Maintenance Shops at Kaiwarra, at the recent railway picnic at Maidstone Park, Wellington.

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“Hear ye not the hum
Of mighty workings?”—Keats.
(Government Publicity Photo.)
State Hydro-electric Scheme. The picturesque setting of the dam at Mangahao, Wellington Province, New Zealand.

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“And it's oh! for the rush of the shining track,
And the whirl of the leaping wheel.…”—C. Quentin Pope.
(Photo. W. W. Stewart)
A typical Suburban Train on the New Zealand Railways.