Studies of Contemporary Poets Part 13

And I was alone with Hobson, Two centuries dead.

Hidden by sprawling brambles The Nine Waters were; From a chalky bed they bubbled up, Clean, green, and fair.

And I was alone with Hobson, Whose ghost walks there.

But it seems that the poet is not alone with the pleasant ghost of the old university carrier. There is a third presence near, hidden and silent, but malign; and the stanzas in which this secret presence grows to a realization that is acute and almost terrifying, are remarkably done. They ill.u.s.trate this poet's ability to create illusion out of mere sc.r.a.ps of material, and those of the most commonplace kind; and they rely for their verbal effect upon the homeliest words. Yet the impression of an intangible something that is evil and uncanny is so strong, that when the very real head of the tramp appears the contrast provokes a sudden laugh at its absurdity.

And something yawned, and from the gra.s.s A head upreared; And I was not alone with Hobson, For at me leered A great, gaunt, greasy tramp With a golden beard.

He had a beard like a dandelion, And I had none; He had tea in a beer-bottle, Warm with the sun; He had pie in a paper bag, Not yet begun.

The vigorous handling of that pa.s.sage, and its comical actuality, makes an excellent foil to the subtler method of presenting the two spirits, living and dead. And the poem as a whole may be said to reflect the dual elements which are everywhere present in this work. It is true that in a more characteristic piece the ideal will prevail over the real. And consequently, imagination will there be found to weave finer strands, while thought goes much further afield. Thus, in "Crying for the Moon"

and in "The Thief," one may follow the idea very far; and in both poems we move in the pale light and dim shadow where mystery is evoked at a hint. Never, I think, was there such an eerie dawn as that in "The Thief"; yet never was orchard-joy more keenly realized--

He stood at the world's secret heart In the haze-wrapt mystery; And fat pears, mellow on the lip, He supped like a honey-bee; But the apples he crunched with sharp white teeth Were pungent, like the sea.

Probably it is in work like this, where both blind countries find expression, that Miss Macaulay is most successful. But when she gives imagination licence to wander alone in the ideal region, it occasionally seems to go out of sight and sound of the good earth. That happens in "Completion," a poem which is frankly mystical in theme, symbolism, and terminology. There is not a touch of reality in it; and neither its fine strange music, nor glowing colour, nor certain perfect phrases, nor the language, at once rich and tender and strong, can make it more than the opalescent wraith of a poem. But perhaps that is just what the author intended it to be!

In any case "Completion" does correspond to, and daintily express, the mystical strain which is dominant in this work. It is, however, the extreme example of it. It stands at the opposite pole from "St Mark's Day," and ant.i.thetical to that, it might have been written by a mystic for whom the material world was virtually nothing. Moreover, it might belong to almost any time, or not to time at all; whereas the mysticism of the book as a whole is peculiarly that of its own author and its own day. It is individual--a thing of this poet's personality and no other--in the evidence of a finely sensitive spirit, of a gift of vision abnormally acute, imaginative power that ranges far and free, and a fine capacity for abstract thought. But all these qualities, though pervasive and dominant, are sweetly controlled by a humane temper that has been nurtured on realities.

Hence comes a duality in which it is, perhaps, not too fanciful to see a feature of contemporary thought--intensely interested in the region of ideas, but frankly claiming the material world as the basis and starting-point of all its speculation. One might put it colloquially (though without the implied reproach) as making the best of both worlds: humanity recognizing an honourable kinship with matter, but reaching out continually after the larger existence which it confidently believes to be latent in the physical world itself.

A voice may be raised to protest that that is too vaguely generalized; and if so, the protestant may turn for more precise evidence to such poems as "Trinity Sunday" and "The Devourers." There he will perceive, after a moment's reflection, the store of modern knowledge--of actual data--which has been a.s.similated to the mystical element here. Let him consider, for example, the first two stanzas of "The Devourers," and other similar pa.s.sages:

Cambridge town is a beleaguered city; For south and north, like a sea, There beat on its gates, without haste or pity, The downs and the fen country.

Cambridge towers, so old, so wise, They were builded but yesterday, Watched by sleepy gray secret eyes That smiled as at children's play.

It is clear that the knowledge really has been a.s.similated--it is not a fragmentary or external thing. It is absorbed into the essence of the work and will not be found to mar its poetic values. But by a hint, a word, a turn of expression or a mental gesture, one can see that learning both scientific and humane (a significant union) has gone into the poetic crucible. There are signs which point to a whole system of philosophy: there is an historical sense, imaginatively handling the data of cosmic history; and there are traces which lead down to a basis in geology and anthropology. Yet these elements are, as I said, perfectly fused: it would be difficult to disengage them. And inimical as they may seem to the very nature of mysticism, they are constrained by this poet to contribute to her vision of a world beyond sense.

From this point of view "Trinity Sunday" is the most important poem in the book. It records an experience which the mystic of another age would have called a revelation, and which he would have apprehended through the medium of religious emotion. But this poet attains to her ultimate vision through the phenomena of the real world, apprehended in terms of the ideal. The warm breath of Spring, rich with scent and sound of the teeming earth, stirs it to awakening. But though she is walking in familiar Cambridge with, characteristically, the scene and time exactly placed: though friendly faces pa.s.s and cordial voices give a greeting, all that suddenly shrivels at the touch of the wild earth spirit. s.p.a.ce and time curl away in fold after fold; and with them pa.s.s successive forms of strange life immensely remote. But even while reality thus terribly unfolds, it is perceived to be the _stuff of the world's live brain_; to have existence only in idea.

And the fens were not. (For fens are dreams Dreamt by a race long dead; And the earth is naught, and the sun but seems: And so those who know have said.)

Thus the facts of science have gone to the making of this poem, as well as the theories of an idealist philosophy. It is through them both that imagination takes the forward leap. But neither the one nor the other can avail to utter the revelation; and even the poet's remarkable gift of expression can only suffice to suggest the awfulness of it.

So veil beyond veil illimitably lifted: And I saw the world's naked face, Before, reeling and baffled and blind, I drifted Back within the bounds of s.p.a.ce.

_John Masefield_

There is one sense at least in which Mr Masefield is the most important figure amongst contemporary poets. For he has won the popular ear, he has cast the poetic spell further than any of his compeers, and it has been given to him to lure the mult.i.tudinous reader of magazines--that wary host which is usually stampeded by the sight of a page of verse.

Now I know that there are cultured persons to whom this fact of uncritical appreciation is an offence, and to them a writer bent upon purely scientific criticism would be compelled to yield certain points.

But they would be mainly on finicking questions, as an occasional lapse from fineness in thought or form, an incidental ba.n.a.lity of word or phrase; or a lack of delicate effects of rhyme and metre. And the whole business would amount in the end to little more than a petulant complaint; an impertinent grumble that Mr Masefield happens to be himself and not, let us say, Mr Robert Bridges; that his individual genius has carved its own channels and that, in effect, the music of the sea or the mountain torrent does not happen to be the same thing as the plash of a fountain in a valley.

But having no quarrel with this offending popularity: rejoicing in it rather, and the new army of poetry-readers which it has created; and believing it to be an authentic sign of the poetic spirit of our day, one is tempted to seek for the cause of it. Luckily, there is a poem called "Biography" which gives a clue and something more. It is a paean of zest for life, of the intense joy in actual living which seems to be the dynamic of Mr Masefield's genius. There is, most conspicuous and significant, delight in beauty; a swift, keen, accurate response of sense to the external world, to sea and sky and hill, to field and flower. But there is fierce delight, too, in toil and danger, in strenuous action, in desperate struggle with wind and wave, in the supreme effort of physical power, in health and strength and skill and freedom and jollity; and above all, first, last and always, in ships.

But there is delight no less in communion with humanity, in comradeship, in happy memories of kindred, in still happier mental kinships and intellectual affinities, in books, in 'glittering moments' of spiritual perception, in the brooding sense of man's long history.

These are the 'golden instants and bright days' which correctly spell his life, as this poet is careful to emphasize; and we perceive that the rapture which they inspire in him, the ardour with which he takes this sea of life, is of the essence of his poetry. It is seen most clearly in the lyrics; and that is natural, since these are amongst his early work, and youth is the heyday of joy. It is found in nearly all of them, of course in varying degree, colouring substance and shaping form, evoking often a strong rhythm like a hearty voice that sings as it goes.

So hey for the road, the west road, by mill and forge and fold, Scent of the fern and song of the lark by brook, and field, and wold;

Or again, in "Tewkesbury Road,"

O, to feel the beat of the rain, and the homely smell of the earth, Is a tune for the blood to jig to, a joy past power of words; And the blessed green comely meadows are all a-ripple with mirth At the noise of the lambs at play and the dear wild cry of the birds.

And it rings in many songs of the sea, telling of its beauty or terror, its magic and mystery and hardship, its stately ships and tough sailor-men and strange harbourages, its breath of romance sharply tingling with reality, its lure from which there is no escape--

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

Under the wistfulness of that throbs the same zest as that which finds expression in "Laugh and be Merry"; but the mood has become more buoyant--

Laugh and be merry, remember, better the world with a song, Better the world with a blow in the teeth of a wrong.

Laugh, for the time is brief, a thread the length of a span.

Laugh and be proud to belong to the old proud pageant of man.

Sometimes a minor key is struck, as in "Prayer;" but even here the joy is present, revealing itself in sharp regret for the beloved things of earth. It manifests itself in many ways, subtler or more obvious; but mainly I think in a questing, venturous spirit which must always be daring and seeking something beyond. Whether in the material world or the spiritual, it is always the same--whether it be sea-longing, or hunger for the City of G.o.d, or a vague faring to an unknown bourne, or the eternal quest for beauty. The poem called "The Seekers" is beautifully apt in this regard. Simply, clearly, directly, it expresses the alpha and omega of this genius: the zest which is its driving force and the aspiration, the tireless and ceaseless pursuit of an ideal, which is its objective.

Not for us are content, and quiet, and peace of mind, For we go seeking a city that we shall never find.

There is no solace on earth for us--for such as we-- Who search for a hidden city that we shall never see.

There is the spirit of adventure, the eternal allure of romance, as old and as potent as poetry itself. And surely nothing is more engaging, nothing quicker and stronger and more universal in its appeal, than zest for life finding expression in this way. In these early lyrics its spontaneous and simple utterance is very winning; but in the later narrative poems it is none the less present because, having grown a little older, it is a little more complex and not so obvious in its manifestation. Under these longer poems too runs the stream of joy, somewhat quieter now, perhaps, subdued by contemplation, brought to the test of actuality, shaping a different form through the conflict of human will, but still deep and strong, and, as in the earlier work, expressing its ultimate meaning through the spirit of high adventure.

Thus "The Widow in the Bye Street," which was the first written of these four narrative poems, is the adventure of motherhood. "Oh!" will protest some member of the dainty legion which lives in terror of appearances, "it is a story of l.u.s.t and murder!" But no; fundamentally, triumphantly, it is a tale of mother-love, venturing all for the child. Only superficially is it a tragedy of ungoverned desire and rage, made out of the incidence of character which we call destiny. The mother's spirit prevails over all that, and remains unconquerable. In "Daffodil Fields"

there is the adventure of romantic pa.s.sion. The "Everlasting Mercy," so obviously as hardly to need the comment, is the high adventure of the soul; and "Dauber," less clearly perhaps, though quite as certainly, is that too. But while in the first of these two poems the spirit's spark is struck into 'absolute human clay,' in "Dauber" it is burning already in the brain of an artist. Saul Kane, when his soul comes to birth at the touch of religion, puts off b.e.s.t.i.a.lity and rises to a joyful perception of the meaning of life. The Dauber, with that precious knowledge already shining within him, but twinned with another, the supreme and immortal glory of art, with his last breath cries holy defiance to the elements that s.n.a.t.c.h his life--_It will go on_.

But there is another reason for the popularity of this poet's work; and it also is deducible from the poem called "Biography." I mean the complete and robust humanity which is evinced there. One sees, of course, that this has a close relation with the zest that we have already noted; that it is indeed the root of that fine flower. But the balance of this personality--with power of action and of thought about equally poised, with the mystic and the humanitarian meeting half-way, with the ideal and the real twining and intertwining constantly, with sensuous and spiritual perception almost matched--determines the quality by which Mr Masefield's poems make so wide and direct an appeal. If reflectiveness were predominant, if the subjective element outran the keen dramatic sense, if the ideal were capable of easy victory over the material (it does conquer, but of that later), this would be poetry of a very different type. Whether it would be of a finer type it is idle to speculate, the point for the moment being that it would not command so large an audience. By just so far as specialization operated, the range would be made narrower.

It is this sense of humanity which wins; not only explicit, as, for example, in the deliberate choice of subject avowed once for all in the early poem called "Consecration"--

The men of the tattered battalion which fights till it dies, Dazed with the dust of the battle, the din and the cries,

The sailor, the stoker of steamers, the man with the clout, The chantyman bent at the halliards putting a tune to the shout,

Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold-- Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tales be told.

There the poet is responding consciously to the time-spirit: the awakening social sense which, moving pitifully amongst bitter and ugly experience, was to evoke the outer realism of his art. That, of course, being pa.s.sionately sincere, is a powerful influence. But stronger still is the unconscious force of personality, this completeness of nature which in "Biography" is seen as a rare union of powers that are nevertheless the common heritage of humanity; and which is implicit everywhere in his work, imbuing it with the compelling attraction of large human sympathy.

Out of this arise the curiously contrasted elements of Mr Masefield's poetry. For, as in life itself, and particularly in life that is full and sound, there is here a perpetual conflict between opposing forces.

It is, perhaps, the most prominent characteristic of this work. It pervades it throughout, belongs to its very essence and has moulded its form. It is, of course, most readily apparent in the poet's art. Here the battling forces of his genius, transferred to the creatures whom he has created, have made these narrative poems largely dramatic in form.

Here, too, we come upon a clash of realism with romance and idyllic sweetness. That bald external realism has found much disfavour with those who do not or will not see its relation to the underlying reality.