is a sinuous idiom which allows the freest expression to the foibles and intricacies of characters" (p. 413). Although the forms of Knister's poetry were derived from the Imagists, he also owed a good deal to A.E. Housman and to the English Georgians. Aside from Robinson, "Housman was the poet for whom Knister had the highest praise." The qualities which Knister lauded in the work of the British poet are also central to his own verse. Knister commented upon the characters Housman had chosen. He said that "doubtless for centuries there had subsisted this soul-loving, life-loving, inarticulate but artlessly downright yeoman, the backbone of English armies and, in later stages, for all his rootedness in England, particularly rural England, the basis of such large things as colonization and world exploration," (p. 419). Of course, Knister's characters were also simple farmers, "soil-loving, life-loving, inarticulate." Knister also commented upon Housman's portrayal of a youth's discovery of life's complexities and "of the inevitability of love and death" (p. 421). In his own poetry Knister explored the differences between the world of the child and that of the adult. The moment when the boy crosses from innocence to knowledge is central to a number of his stories as well. Another side of A Shropshire Lad which received his approval was its realism. Knister claimed that it is this realism which accounted for the book's continued popularity. He contrasted Housman's realism with the artificiality of contemporaries: there was the contrast with the reigning artificial Yellow Book school of the nineties, then in the ascendancy with Wilde, Yeats, Symons, Le Gallienne as high- priests ... Housman arrived on this flower plot scene with his lad made of the stuff of eternal human clay, with the high spirits, the wistfulness, the flesh and blood, dreams and passions known to the English scene for centuries and crying out for portrayal ... Here, in fine, was life, and the public which loved poetry was not long in discovering it. (p. 425) Despite these general similarities it is difficult to find specific echoes of Housman in Knister because their styles are so different. One can also trace the effects of the Georgians upon Knister. Like Housman, many of them wrote about the country life and the people who lived close to the land. Once again it is easy to see how Knister shared general characteristics, but difficult to perceive specific