Books: The Muse

COLLECTED POEMS OF ROBERT FROST— Holt ($5), Blue Ribbon*($1.69).

COLLECTED POEMS—Robert Graves—Random House ($2.50).

From Homer on, hardly a serious poet has been without a guardian conscience which he called his Muse. To the Greek poets, the Muses were goddesses who led a life apart from the bullheaded and goatish gods but were, like them, bland absentees. After paganism, when Christianity started trying to hatch out a more personal and better world, the Muse turned from goddess to angel—like Dante's Beatrice, who spoke to him from heaven. But with the Renaissance, poets found their angels...