[In the following review, Untermeyer assesses Abercrombie's verse drama Deborah as one of the finest examples in its genre of its day.]

Just as the critics have proved, to their own satisfaction, that the classics are dead, that restraint and nobility of thought have perished beneath the blows of a savage and incoherent realism, that a sonorous blank-verse drama cannot be written to-day except possibly in slang, Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie is discovered—and smash go all their solemn predictions and glum assurances. Not that Mr. Abercrombie is any less “modern” than his contemporaries—he is often more brutal than Masefield, more direct and incisive than the Abbey Theatre dramatist—he has, in short, all the qualities that make him a product of his times. But there is one thing that distinguishes him from the rest—he is not alone a more intense person, but a far greater writer. This does not mean that his poetry is “literary” or that it will appeal only to the honest seekers after truth who form societies for the discussion of “The Message of So-and-So.” Mr. Abercrombie's work is as unliterary, in the special sense, as Synge's; and it carries no more message than Life does. Take up, for example, Emblems of Love, his previous volume, and one finds a blank verse which, for color and richness, compares favorably with the best. It is full of a fine carelessness, a rich unconcern, that gives force and a fiery dignity to his utterance. Here are a few lines from “Vashti”:

Given thy flesh, the meaning of thy shape!
What beauty is there, but thou makest it?
How is earth good to look on, woods and fields,
The season's garden, and the courageous hills—
All this green raft of earth moored in the seas?
The manner of the sun to ride the air;
The stars God has imaged for the night?
Where do these get their beauty from—all these?
They do but glaze a lantern lit for man
And woman's beauty is the flame therein.

This is by no means an exceptional passage—Mr. Abercrombie's work is not a loose quilt of rambling pattern with occasional “purple patches”—and it is this very free and even language that makes it difficult to quote. It is almost impossible to take an illustrative passage out of his dramatic interlude, The Sale of St. Thomas, or a couplet from the brief but exquisite Mary and the Bramble. Here, as in his earliest volume, Interludes and Poems, one feels an attitude none the less reverential because it is not narrowly religious. Mr. Abercrombie treats his religion symbolically; he has taken Christian legend and retold it eloquently—and always in the most telling and artistic way—as myth. And it is as myths, in the highest sense, that the artist must use them. For the supreme quality of the world's great legends is that they are weak and contradictory when taken literally; thrilling and convincing, profoundly religious and profoundly true, when taken mythologically and symbolically.

In Deborah, his latest volume, the symbolism is more apparent and more human. In fact, it is so apparent that the casual reader, concerned with the purely narrative content, is apt to miss it altogether. The scene is laid in a fishing and pilot village on a great estuary; the background is gray water and gray sky. With the exception of a dozen words spoken by a visiting doctor, all the conversation is given to half a dozen uneducated and uncultured men and women. And yet, or rather because of this, how rich the language is!

It was Mr. Synge who said:

In the modern literature of towns, richness is found only in sonnets, or prose poems, or in one or two elaborate books that are far away from the profound and common interests of life. … In a good play every speech should be as fully flavored as a nut or apple, and such speeches cannot be written by any one who works among people who have shut their lips on poetry.

Mr. Abercrombie's fisher-folk and Mr. Synge's peasants, though they are as unlike as wine and fire, have this in common—their speech is full of a wild and vigorous poetry. In the matter of atmosphere and coloring Deborah puts one in mind of Synge, particularly in his “Riders to the Sea.” But in the latter the sea was the tragic and invisible actor; in Deborah it is love that is the fierce and fatal protagonist. Love, in the dual rôle of sweetheart and mother, enters the gray world of these folk and sets it blazing with passionate joy and passionate hatred. And it is love that burns out and leaves them in a blackness greater than ever. Mr. Abercrombie has never written anything more tense and terrible than the third act of this play. At its very opening one is shaken and held by such lines as:

The wind comes out of the open marsh a spirit
Raving to find naught, all those empty miles,
To throw itself against, and feeling only
Its own rage in the air. But when it lights
Upon these walls, then there's glee in the wind,
And a din aloft like devils blowing trumpets;
And then 'twill fall to hissing 'round the eaves
And fumbling at the thatch for a way in;
While seemingly, for a blood-beat or two,
Half of the gale crouches a short way off;
And then a hundred beasts of wind leap howling,
And pounce upon the roof with worrying paws,
And roar to feel the walls not shaken down.

To miss reading Deborah is to miss the most spontaneous and intense tragedy of our days. And to miss Lascelles Abercrombie is to miss one who reflects much of the spirit of the age.