Studies of Contemporary Poets Part 2

Now precisely in that way, though not of course in the same superlative degree, one may see Rupert Brooke standing for the England of his time.

And when this poet died at Lemnos on April 23, 1915, those who knew and loved his work must have felt the tragic fitness of the date with the event. If the G.o.ds of war had decreed his death, they had at least granted that he might pa.s.s on England's day. In him indeed was manifested the poetic spirit of the race, warm with human pa.s.sion and sane with laughter: soaring on wings of fire but nesting always on the good earth. And though one does not claim to find in him the highest point or the extremest advance to which the thought of his day had gone, he stands pre-eminently for that day in the steel-clear light of his gallant spirit.

The t.i.tle of Rupert Brooke's posthumous book--_1914_--signifies that moment of English history which is reflected in his work. He is the symbol of that year in a double sense. He represents the calamitous political event of it in his voluntary service to the State, and the manner of his death. Thus by the accident of circ.u.mstance which made him eminent and vocal, he serves to speak for the silent millions of English men and women who splendidly sprang to duty. But in his poetry there is a closer and deeper relation to that tragic year. Incomplete as it may be: youthful and prankish as some of it is, the thought and manner of the time are imaged there. A certain level of humane culture had been reached, a certain philosophy of life had been evolved, and a definite att.i.tude to reality taken. Lightly but clearly, these things which reflect the colour of our civilization at August 1914 are crystallized in Rupert Brooke's poetry to that date. But at that point the image, like the whole order of which it was the reflection, was shattered by the crash of arms; and the few poems which he wrote subsequently are preoccupied with the spiritual crisis which the war precipitated.

Most of the admirers of this poet have seen only in his last pieces the singular ident.i.ty of his spirit with the spirit of his country. And that is so n.o.ble a concord that it cannot be missed. For when England plunged into the greatest war of history, she flung off in the act several centuries of her age. Priceless things, slowly and patiently acquired, went overboard as mere impedimenta; but in the relapse, the slipping backward to an earlier time and consequent recovery of youth, with its ardour and pa.s.sion, its recklessness and generosity and courage, the optimist saw a reward for all that was lost. So with the poetry of Rupert Brooke. Those few last sonnets, as it were the soul of rejuvenated England, seem to the same hopeful eye a complete compensation, not only for the wasted individual life, but for the beauty and significance of the age for which he stood, now irrevocably lost.

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!

There's none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.

These laid the world away; poured out the red Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene, That men call age; and those who would have been, Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth, Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.

Honour has come back, as a king, to earth, And paid his subjects with a royal wage; And n.o.bleness walks in our ways again; And we have come into our heritage.

Before that renunciation one can only stand with bowed head, realizing perhaps more clearly than the giver did, the splendour of the gift. But he too, this representative of his age, knew the value of the life that he was casting away. It was indeed to him a "red sweet wine," precious for the "work and joy" it promised, and the sacred seed of immortality.

It is this, above all, that his poetry signifies: a rich and exuberant life, keenly conscious of itself, and fully aware of the realities by which it is surrounded. Its nature grows from that--sensuous and _spirituelle_, pa.s.sionate and intellectual, ingenuous and ironic, tragic and gay. Never before--no, not even in Donne, as some one has suggested--was such intensity of feeling coupled with such merciless clarity of sight: mental honesty so absolute, piercing so fierce a flame of ardour.

From the fusion of those two powers comes the distinctive character of this poetry: the peculiar beauty of its gallant spirit. They are constant features of it from first to last, but they are not always perfectly fused nor equally present. In the earlier poems, to find which you must go back to the volume of 1911 and begin at the end of the book, they enter as separate and distinct components. One would expect that, of course, at this stage; and we shall not be surprised, either, if we discover that there is here a shade of excess in both qualities: a touch of self-consciousness and relative crudity. The point of interest is that they are so clearly the princ.i.p.al elements from which the subtle and complex beauty of the later work was evolved. Thus, facing one another on pages 84 and 85, are two apt examples. In "The Call" sheer pa.s.sion is expressed. The poet's great love of life, taking shape for the moment as love of his lady, is here predominant.

Out of the nothingness of sleep, The slow dreams of Eternity, There was a thunder on the deep: I came, because you called to me.

I broke the Night's primeval bars, I dared the old abysmal curse, And flashed through ranks of frightened stars Suddenly on the universe!

I'll break and forge the stars anew, Shatter the heavens with a song; Immortal in my love for you, Because I love you, very strong.

But on the opposite page, the sonnet called "Dawn" swings to the extremest point from the magniloquence of that. It is realistic in a literal sense: a bit of wilful ugliness. Yet it springs, however distortedly, from the root of mental clarity and courage which was to produce such gracious blossoming thereafter. It is engaged with an exasperated account of a night journey in an Italian train: all the discomfort and weary irritation of it venting itself upon two unfortunate Teutons.

One of them wakes, and spits, and sleeps again.

The darkness shivers. A wan light through the rain Strikes on our faces, drawn and white. Somewhere A new day sprawls; and, inside, the foul air Is chill, and damp, and fouler than before....

Opposite me two Germans sweat and snore.

It is not long, however, before we find that the two elements are beginning to combine; and we soon meet, astonishingly, with the third great quality of the poet's genius. It is strange that imagination always has this power to surprise us. No matter if we have taught ourselves that poetry cannot begin to exist without it: no matter how watchful and alert we think we are, it will spring upon us unaware, taking possession of the mind with amazing exhilaration. That is especially true of the quality as it is found in Rupert Brooke's poetry.

For, however you have schooled yourself, you do not expect imaginative power of the first degree to co-exist with sensuous joy so keen, and so acute an intelligence. Yet in a piece called "In Examination" the miracle is wrought. This, too, is an early poem, which may be the reason why one can disengage the threads so easily; whilst a notable fact is that the delicate fabric of it is woven directly out of a commonplace bit of human experience. The poet is engaged with a scene that is decidedly unpromising for poetical treatment--all the stupidity of examination, with its dull, unhappy, "scribbling fools."

Lo! from quiet skies In through the window my Lord the Sun!

And my eyes Were dazzled and drunk with the misty gold,

And a full tumultuous murmur of wings Grew through the hall; And I knew the white undying Fire, And, through open portals, Gyre on gyre, Archangels and angels, adoring, bowing, And a Face unshaded ...

Till the light faded; And they were but fools again, fools unknowing, Still scribbling, blear-eyed and stolid immortals.

There are at least two poems, "The Fish" and "Dining-Room Tea," in which imaginative power prevails over every other element; and if imagination be the supreme poetic quality, these are Rupert Brooke's finest achievement. They are, indeed, very remarkable and significant examples of modern poetry, both in conception and in treatment. In both pieces the subjects are of an extremely difficult character. One, that of "The Fish," is beyond the range of human experience altogether; and the other is only just within it, and known, one supposes, to comparatively few.

The imaginative flight is therefore bold: it is also lofty, rapid, and well sustained. In "The Fish" we see it creating a new material world, giving substance and credibility to a strange new order of sensation:

In a cool curving world he lies And ripples with dark ecstasies.

The kind luxurious lapse and steal Shapes all his universe to feel And know and be; the clinging stream Closes his memory, glooms his dream, Who lips the roots o' the sh.o.r.e, and glides Superb on unreturning tides.

But there the night is close, and there Darkness is cold and strange and bare; And the secret deeps are whisperless; And rhythm is all deliciousness; And joy is in the throbbing tide, Whose intricate fingers beat and glide In felt bewildering harmonies Of trembling touch; and music is The exquisite knocking of the blood.

s.p.a.ce is no more, under the mud; His bliss is older than the sun.

Silent and straight the waters run.

The lights, the cries, the willows dim, And the dark tide are one with him.

We see, all through this poem (and the more convincingly as the whole of it is studied) the "fundamental brain-stuff": the patient constructive force of intellect keeping pace with fancy every step of the way. So, too, with "Dining-Room Tea." Imagination here is busy with an idea that is wild, elusive, intangible: on the bare edge, in fact, of sanity and consciousness. It is that momentary revelation, which comes once in a lifetime perhaps, of the reality within appearance. It comes suddenly, unheralded and unaccountable: it is gone again with the swiftness and terror of a lightning-flash. But in the fraction of a second that it endures, aeons seem to pa.s.s and things unutterable to be revealed. Only a poet of undoubted genius could re-create such a moment, for on any lower plane either imagination would flag or intellect would be baffled, with results merely chaotic. And only to one whose quick and warm humanity held life's common things so dear could the vision shine out of such a homely scene. But therein Rupert Brooke shows so clearly as the poet of his day: that through the familiar joys of comradeship and laughter: through the simple concrete things of a material world--the "pouring tea and cup and cloth," Reality gleams eternal.

When you were there, and you, and you, Happiness crowned the night; I too, Laughing and looking, one of all, I watched the quivering lamplight fall

Flung all the dancing moments by With jest and glitter....

Till suddenly, and otherwhence, I looked upon your innocence.

For lifted clear and still and strange From the dark woven flow of change Under a vast and starless sky I saw the immortal moment lie.

One instant I, an instant, knew As G.o.d knows all. And it and you I, above Time, oh, blind! could see In witless immortality.

But the precise characteristic of this poetry is not one or other of these individual gifts. It is an intimate and subtle blending of them all, shot through and through with a gallant spirit which resolutely and gaily faces truth. From this brave and clear mentality comes a sense of fact which finds its artistic response in realism. Sometimes it will be found operating externally, on technique; but more often, with truer art, it will wed truth of idea and form, in grace as well as candour.

From its detachment and quick perception of incongruity comes a rare humour which can laugh, thoughtfully or derisively, even at itself. It will stand aside, watching its own exuberance with an ironic smile, as in "The One Before the Last." It will turn a penetrating glance on pa.s.sion till the gaudy thing wilts and dies. It will pause at the height of life's keenest rapture to call to death an undaunted greeting:

Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill, Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely gra.s.s.

You said, "Through glory and ecstasy we pa.s.s; Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still, When we are old, are old...." "And when we die All's over that is ours; and life burns on Through other lovers, other lips," said I, --"Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!"

"We are Earth's best, that learnt her lesson here.

Life is our cry. We have kept the faith!" we said; "We shall go down with unreluctant tread Rose-crowned into the darkness!" ... Proud we were, And laughed, that had such brave true things to say.

--And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.

Perception so keen and fearless, piercing readily through the half-truths of life and art, has its own temptation to mere cleverness.

Thence come the conceits of the sonnet called "He Wonders Whether to Praise or Blame Her," a bit of the deftest juggling with ideas and words. Thence, too, the allegorical brilliance of the "Funeral of Youth"; and the merry mockery of the piece called "Heaven." This is an excellent example of the poet's wit, as distinct from his richer, more pervasive, humour. It is very finely pointed and closely aimed in its satire of the Victorian religious att.i.tude. And if we put aside an austerity which sees a shade of ungraciousness in it, we shall find it a richly entertaining bit of philosophy:

Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond; But is there anything Beyond?

This life cannot be All, they swear, For how unpleasant, if it were!

One may not doubt that, somehow, Good Shall come of Water and of Mud; And, sure, the reverent eye must see A Purpose in Liquidity.

We darkly know, by Faith we cry, The future is not Wholly Dry.

Mud unto Mud!--Death eddies near-- Not here the appointed End, not here!

But somewhere, beyond s.p.a.ce and Time, Is wetter water, slimier slime!

And in that Heaven of all their wish, There shall be no more land, say fish.

But, on the whole, one loves this work best when its genius is not shorn by the sterile spirit of derision. Its charm is greatest when the creative energy of it is outpoured through what is called personality.

Never was a poet more lavish in the giving of himself, yielding up a rich and complex individuality with engaging candour. And poems will be found in which all its qualities are blended in a soft and intricate harmony. Pa.s.sion is subdued to tenderness: imagination stoops to fantasy: thought, in so far as it is not content merely to shape the form of the work, is bent upon ideas that are wistful, or sad or ironic.

Humour, standing aloof and quietly chuckling, will play mischievous pranks with people and things. A satirical imp will dart into a line and out again before you realize that he is there; and all the time a clear-eyed, observing spirit will be watching and taking note with careful accuracy.