Publisher's blurbs are full of fantastic, highfalutin' fanfare, but rarely have phrases such as ""strikingly original"", ""freshness of imagery"", ""masterly control"", ""depth of....emotion"", ""clarity of...insight"", etc., been used to endorse a product totally lacking in them. True, Mr. Burnshaw's second collection of verse has a lot of modern thematic-talk about passion, prayer, psychological prisons, myths, metaphysics and nature- but that's it, it's all talk. There are six or seven lithe, sometimes lofty lyrics (e.g., the title poem and St. Petersburg); the rest are meditative meanderings suggesting much reading in the Europeans George, Spire, Valery, luard. Mr. Burnshaw as translator, critic and anthologist is a ""name""; as a poet he has neither tough-fibred technique nor a telling tone; that most important thing, the individual voice, is almost always absent. Runs the opening section epitaph: "" All thought is clay, and withered song"". Appended is a goodly portion of an earlier volume; oddly enough it has more immediacy than the current one.