This from the dustwrapper: "Pilot-officer David Bourne was a fighter pilot who volunteered for the R.A.F. in 1939 and was killed in action in September 1941 at the age of twenty. He left some 140 poems, a selection of which constitutes this volume. For so young a writer he showed unusual variation of both style and form, allied to a keen observation and a deeply reflective mind. ' These poems I think,' Mr. WaIter de la Mare writes, 'show unquestionable and unusual promise. A few of them are " finished," serene, complete: Sonnet, The Reaper, Parting, Doubt, for example. In general there is intense effort, experiment, an over-mastering desire, hardly endurable, to compel words-plain, simple, tender, violent, forced or " horrible" -by their use (or by their misuse) to reveal and communicate a direct and first-hand experience, whether delighted in or abhorred. That which concerns" the wizard of Oz" and " a world of rarefied splendour" has been shared by many others in these last few years -and also to the bitter end; but it can have very seldom been recorded in verse more unflinchingly or more faithfully. What eventually would have come of this promise it is impossible to say; the dream and the nightmare alike are over, and" the treasured task" since this" short life began." But not assuredly, dull acceptance, dry intellectualism, or spiritual stagnancy.' Mr. Richard Church writes: 'This young poet was urged by that vitality which is the sign of a creative temper. His talent for the handling of words was genuine, and it enabled, even at so early a stage, a rare spirit to shine through his work with a challenging force. ' A number of these poems achieved their first publication in anthologies, notably More Poems from the Forces and Air force poetry. The present volume collects the best of Bourne's work, and , had he lived and matured, he might well have found some definte place in the line of English poets of this war-generation."