Last Wylie

ANGELS AND EARTHLY CREATURES-- Elinor Wylie--Knopf ($2.50). According to her publishers, Elinor Wylie arranged for publication this slim volume of tristful poems on the day, last December, before she met her sudden death from a paralytic stroke (TiME, Dec. 24). She had found the title in John Donne: "But, because Angels could not propagate, nor make more Angels, he enlarged his love in making man, that so he might enjoy all natures at once, and have the nature of Angels, and the nature of earthly Creatures, in one Person."

Death, passion and intelligence played prime parts in Elinor Wylie's verse. To "One Person" she dedicated a wreath of 19 love sonnets. The octet to the fifth:

The little beauty that I was allowed--

The lips new-cut and coloured by my sire.

The polished hair, the eyes' perceptive fire--

Has never been enough to make me proud:

For I have moved companioned by a cloud.

And lived indifferent to the blood's desire

Of temporal loveliness in vain attire:

My flesh was but a fresh-embroidered shroud.