POEMS OF FRANZ WERFEL

The market for this volume of collected verse will be largely drawn from admirers of Franz Werfel's prose, for his poetry is unknown in this country and this the first English translation, completed shortly before his death. One feels in reading the poems that the thought of death was ever-present, for a majority of the poems are burdened with a sense and thought of death -- the oppressive sense of passing years -- the nostalgic looking backward to youth and childhood. A few are simply lyrics dealing with nature and beauty and God. The German original appears on one page, the English translation on the page opposite.