The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century Part 10

Through the great pinewood I have been An hour before the l.u.s.tre dies, Nor have such forest-colours seen As those that glimmer in your eyes.

Ah, misty woodland, down whose deep And twilight paths I love to stroll To meadows quieter than sleep And pools more secret than the soul!

Could I but steal that awful throne Ablaze with dreams and songs and stars Where sits Night, a man of stone, On the frozen mountain spars I'd cast him down, for he is old, And set my Lady there to rule, Gowned with silver, crowned with gold, And in her eyes the forest pool.

It seems to me improbable that Flecker will be forgotten; he was a real poet. But a remark made of Tennyson is still more applicable to Flecker. "He was an artist before he was a poet." Even as a small boy, he had astonishing facility, but naturally wrote little worth preserval. The _Collected Poems_ show an extraordinary command of his instrument. He had the orthodox virtues of the orthodox poet--rime and rhythm, cunning in words, skill in nature-painting, imagination.

The richness of his colouring and the loveliness of his melodies make his verses a delight to the senses. His mind was plentifully stored with cla.s.sical authors, and he saw nature alive with old G.o.ds and fairies. In one of his most charming poems, _Oak and Olive_, he declares,

When I go down the Gloucester lanes My friends are deaf and blind: Fast as they turn their foolish eyes The Maenads leap behind, And when I hear the fire-winged feet, They only hear the wind.

Have I not chased the fluting Pan, Through Cranham's sober trees?

Have I not sat on Painswick Hill With a nymph upon my knees, And she as rosy as the dawn, And naked as the breeze?

His poetry is composed of sensations rather than thoughts. What it lacks is intellectual content. A richly packed memory is not the same thing as original thinking, even when the memories are glorified by the artist's own imagination. Yet the death of this young man was a cruel loss to English literature, for his mental development would eventually have kept pace with his gift of song. His cheerful Paganism would, I think, have given place to something deeper and more fruitful. Before he went to Constantinople, he had, as it is a fashion for some modern Occidentals to have, a great admiration for Mohammedanism. A friend reports a rather nave remark of his, "this intercourse with Mohammedans had led him to find more good in Christianity than he had previously suspected." I have sometimes wondered whether a prolonged residence among Mohammedans might not temper the enthusiasm of those who so loudly insist on the superiority of that faith to Christianity. Mr. Santayana speaks somewhere of "the unconquerable mind of the East." Well, my guess is that this unconquerable mind will some day be conquered by the Man of Nazareth, just as I think He will eventually--some centuries ahead--conquer even us.

Flecker died so soon after the opening of the Great War that it is vain to surmise what the effect of that struggle would have been upon his soul. That it would have shaken him to the depths--and perhaps given him the spiritual experience necessary for his further advance--seems not improbable. One of his letters on the subject contains the significant remark, "What a race of deep-eyed and thoughtful men we shall have in Europe--now that all those millions have been baptized in fire!"

The last stanza of his poem _A Sacred Dialogue_ reads as follows:

Then the black cannons of the Lord Shall wake crusading ghosts And the Milky Way shall swing like a sword When Jerusalem vomits its horde On the Christmas Day preferred of the Lord, The Christmas Day of the Hosts!

He appended a footnote in December, 1914, when he was dying: "Originally written for Christmas, 1912, and referring to the first Balkan War, this poem contains in the last speech of Christ words that ring like a prophecy of events that may occur very soon." As I am copying his Note, December, 1917, the English army is entering Jerusalem.

Flecker was essentially n.o.ble-minded; and without any trace of conceit, felt the responsibility of his talents. There is not an unworthy page in the _Collected Poems_. In a memorable pa.s.sage, he stated the goal of poetry. "It is not the poet's business to save man's soul, but to make it worth saving."

Walter De La Mare, a close personal friend of Rupert Brooke, came of Huguenot, English and Scotch ancestry, and was born at Charlton, Kent, on the twenty-fifth of April, 1873. He was educated at St. Paul's Cathedral Choir School. Although known today exclusively as a poet, he has written much miscellaneous prose--critical articles for periodicals, short stories, and a few plays. His first poetry-book, _Songs of Childhood_, appeared in 1902; in 1906, _Poems_; in 1910, _The Return_, which won the Edmond de Polignac prize; _The Listeners_, which gave him a wide reputation, appeared in 1912; _Peac.o.c.k Pie_, in 1917, and _Motley and Other Poems_ in 1918. When, in November, 1916, the Howland Memorial Prize at Yale University was formally awarded to the work of Rupert Brooke, it was officially received in New Haven by Walter De La Mare, who came from England for the purpose.

If Flecker's poems were written in a glare of light, Mr. De La Mare's shy Muse seems to live in shadow. It is not at all the shadow of grief, still less of bitterness, but rather the cool, grateful shade of retirement. I can find no words anywhere that so perfectly express to my mind the atmosphere of these poems as the language used by Hawthorne to explain the lack of excitement that readers would be sure to notice in his tales. "They have the pale tint of flowers that blossom in too retired a shade,--the coolness of a meditative habit, which diffuses itself through the feeling and observation of every sketch. Instead of pa.s.sion there is sentiment; and, even in what purport to be pictures of actual life, we have allegory, not always so warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be taken into the reader's mind without a shiver. Whether from lack of power, or an uncontrollable reserve, the author's touches have often an effect of tameness.... The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages."

Hawthorne is naturally not popular today with readers whose sole acquaintance with the art of the short story is gleaned from magazines that adorn the stalls at railway-stations; and to those whose taste in poetry begins and ends with melodrama, who prefer the hoa.r.s.e cry of animal pa.s.sion to the still, sad music of humanity, it would not be advisable to recommend a poem like _The Listeners_, where the people are ghosts and the sounds only echoes. Yet there are times when it would seem that every one must weary of strident voices, of persons shouting to attract attention, of poets who capitalize both their moral and literary vices, of hawking advertisers of the latest verse-novelties; then a poem like _The Listeners_ reminds us of Lindsay's bird, whose simple melody is not defeated by the blatant horns.

Decidedly a poet must have both courage and faith to hold himself so steadily aloof from the compet.i.tion of the market-place; to work with such easy cheerfulness in his quiet corner; to remain so manifestly unaffected by the swift currents of contemporary verse. For fifteen years he has gone on producing his own favourite kind of poetry, dealing with children, with flowers, with autumn and winter, with ghosts of memory, with figures in literature, and has finally obtained a respectable audience without once raising his voice. He has written surprisingly little love poetry; the notes of pa.s.sion, as we are accustomed to hear them, seldom sound from his lute; nor do we hear the agonizing cries of doubt, remorse, or despair. There is nothing turbulent and nothing truculent; he has made no contribution to the literature of revolt. Yet many of his poems make an irresistible appeal to our more reflective moods; and once or twice, his fancy, always winsome and wistful, rises to a height of pure imagination, as in _The Listeners_--which I find myself returning to muse over again and again.

His studies of humanity--both from observation and from books--are descriptive rather than dramatic. I do not know a contemporary poet whose published works contain so few quotation marks. The dramatic monologue, which Emerson back in the 'forties prophesied would be the highest cla.s.s of poetry in the immediate future (which prophecy was fulfilled), does not interest Mr. De La Mare; maybe he feels that it has been done so well that he prefers to let it alone. His remarkable thirteen poems dealing with Shakespearean characters--where he attempts with considerable success to pluck out the heart of the mystery--are all descriptive. Perhaps the most original and beautiful of these is

MERCUTIO

Along an avenue of almond-trees Came three girls chattering of their sweethearts three.

And lo! Mercutio, with Byronic ease, Out of his philosophic eye cast all A mere flow'r'd twig of thought, whereat ...

Three hearts fell still as when an air dies out And Venus falters lonely o'er the sea.

But when within the further mist of bloom His step and form were hid, the smooth child Ann Said, "La, and what eyes he had!" and Lucy said, "How sad a gentleman!" and Katharine, "I wonder, now, what mischief he was at."

And these three also April hid away, Leaving the spring faint with Mercutio.

There are immense tracts of Shakespeare which Walter De La Mare never could even have remotely imitated; but I know of no poet today who could approach the wonderful Queen Mab speech more successfully than he.

The same method of interpretative description that he employs in dealing with Shakespearean characters he uses repeatedly in making portraits from life. One of the most vivid and delightful of these is

OLD SUSAN

When Susan's work was done she'd sit, With one fat guttering candle lit, And window opened wide to win The sweet night air to enter in; There, with a thumb to keep her place She'd read, with stern and wrinkled face, Her mild eyes gliding very slow Across the letters to and fro, While wagged the guttering candle flame In the wind that through the window came.

And sometimes in the silence she Would mumble a sentence audibly, Or shake her head as if to say, "You silly souls, to act this way!"

And never a sound from night I'd hear, Unless some far-off c.o.c.k crowed clear; Or her old shuffling thumb should turn Another page; and rapt and stern, Through her great gla.s.ses bent on me She'd glance into reality; And shake her round old silvery head, With--"You!--I thought you was in bed!"-- Only to tilt her book again, And rooted in Romance remain.

I am afraid that Rupert Brooke could not have written a poem like _Old Susan_; he would have made her ridiculous and contemptible; he would have accentuated physical defects so that she would have been a repugnant, even an offensive, figure. But Mr. De La Mare has the power--possessed in the supreme degree by J. M. Barrie--of taking just such a person as Old Susan, living in a world of romance, and making us smile with no trace of contempt and with no descent to pity. One who can do this loves his fellow-men.

Poems like _Old Susan_ prepare us for one of the most happy exhibitions of Mr. De La Mare's talent--his verses written for and about children. Every household ought to have that delightful quarto, delightfully and abundantly ill.u.s.trated, called _Peac.o.c.k Pie: A Book of Rhymes. With Ill.u.s.trations by W. Heath Robinson_. There is a picture for each poem, and the combination demands and will obtain an unconditional surrender.

If the poetry of James Flecker and Walter De La Mare live after them, it will not be because of sensational qualities, in matter or in manner. Fancy is bred either in the heart or in the head--and the best poetry should touch either one or the other or both. Mr. De La Mare owes his present eminence simply to merit--his endeavour has been to write just as well as he possibly could. His limit has been downward, not upward. He may occasionally strike over the heads of his audience, for his aim is never low.

The poetry of D. H. Lawrence (born 1885) erupts from the terrible twenties. In spite of his school experience, he has never sent his mind to school; he hates discipline. He has an undeniable literary gift, which has met--as it ought to--with glad recognition. He has strength, he has fervour, he has pa.s.sion. But while his strength is sometimes the happy and graceful play of rippling muscles, it is often contortion. If Mr. De La Mare may seem too delicate, too restrained, Mr. Lawrence cares comparatively little for delicacy; and the word restraint is not in his bright lexicon. In other words, he is aggressively "modern." He is one of the most skilful manipulators of free verse--he can drive four horses abreast, and somehow or other reach the goal.

He sees his own turbulent heart reflected stormily in every natural spectacle. He observes flowers in an anti-Wordsworthian way. He mentions with appreciation roses, lilies, snapdragons, but to him they are all pa.s.sion-flowers. And yet--if he only knew it--his finest work is in a subdued mood. He is a master of colouring--and I like his quieter work as a painter better than his feverish, hectic cries of desire. Despite his dialect poems, he is more successful at description than at drama. I imagine Miss Harriet Monroe may think so too; it seems to me she has done well in selecting his verses, to give three out of the five from his colour-pieces, of which perhaps the best is

SERVICE OF ALL THE DEAD

Between the avenue of cypresses, All in their scarlet capes and surplices Of linen, go the chaunting choristers, The priests in gold and black, the villagers.

And all along the path to the cemetery The round dark heads of men crowd silently; And black-scarfed faces of women-folk wistfully Watch at the banner of death, and the mystery.

And at the foot of a grave a father stands With sunken head and forgotten, folded hands; And at the foot of a grave a mother kneels With pale shut face, nor neither hears nor feels.

The coming of the chaunting choristers Between the avenue of cypresses, The silence of the many villagers, The candle-flames beside the surplices.

(Remember the English p.r.o.nunciation of "cemetery" is not the common American one.) He is surely better as a looker-on at life than when he tries to present the surging pa.s.sions of an actor-in-chief. Then his art is full of sound and fury, and instead of being thrilled, we are, as Stevenson said of Whitman's poorer poems, somewhat indecorously amused. All poets, I suppose, are thrilled by their own work; they read it to themselves with shudders of rapture; but it is only when this _frisson_ is felt by others than blood-relatives that they may feel some reasonable a.s.surance of success. The London _Times_ quite properly refuses to surrender to lines like these:

And if I never see her again?

I think, if they told me so, I could convulse the heavens with my horror.

I think I could alter the frame of things in my agony.

I think I could break the System with my heart.

I think, in my convulsion, the skies would break.

He should change his gear from high to low; he will never climb Parna.s.sus on this speed, not even with his m.u.f.fler so manifestly open.

The _Times_ also quotes without appreciation from the same volume the following pa.s.sage, where the woman, looking back, stirs a biblical reminiscence.

I have seen it, felt it in my mouth, my throat, my chest, my belly, Burning of powerful salt, burning, eating through my defenceless nakedness, I have been thrust into white sharp crystals, Writhing, twisting, superpenetrated, Ah, Lot's wife, Lot's wife!

The pillar of salt, the whirling, horrible column of salt, like a waterspout That has enveloped me!

Most readers may not need a whole pillar, but they will surely take the above professions _c.u.m grano salis_. It is all in King Cambyses' vein; and I would that we had Pistol to deliver it. I cite it here, not for the graceless task of showing Mr. Lawrence at his worst, but because such stuff symptomatic of many of the very "new"

poets, who wander, as Turgenev expressed it, "aimless but declamatory, over the face of our long-suffering mother earth."

John Drinkwater, born on the first of June, 1882, has had varied experiences both in business and in literature, and is at present connected with the management of the Birmingham Repertory theatre.

Actively engaged in commercial life, he has found time to publish a number of volumes of poems, plays in verse, critical works in prose, and a long string of magazine articles. He has wisely collected in one volume--though I regret the omission of _Malvern Lyrics_--the best of his poems that had previously appeared in four separate works, containing the cream of his production from 1908 to 1914. His preface to this little book, published in 1917, is excellent in its manly modesty. "Apart from the Cromwell poem itself, the present selection contains all that I am anxious to preserve from those volumes, and there is nothing before 1908 which I should wish to be reprinted now or at any time." One of the earlier books had been dedicated to John Masefield, to whom in the present preface the author pays an affectionate compliment--"John Masefield, who has given a poet's praise to work that I hope he likes half as well as I like his."

The first poem, _Symbols_, prepares the reader for what is to follow, though it is somewhat lacking in the technique that is characteristic of most of Mr. Drinkwater's verse.

I saw history in a poet's song, In a river-reach and a gallows-hill, In a bridal bed, and a secret wrong, In a crown of thorns: in a daffodil.