The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century Part 11

I imagined measureless time in a day, And starry s.p.a.ce in a wagon-road, And the treasure of all good harvests lay In the single seed that the sower sowed.

My garden-wind had driven and havened again All ships that ever had gone to sea, And I saw the glory of all dead men In the shadow that went by the side of me.

The West of England looms large in contemporary poetry. A. E. Housman, John Masefield, W. W. Gibson, J. E. Flecker have done their best to celebrate its quiet beauty; and some of the finest work of Mr.

Drinkwater is lovingly devoted to these rural scenes. We know how Professor Housman and John Masefield regard Bredon Hill--another tribute to this "calm acclivity, salubrious spot" is paid in Mr.

Drinkwater's cheerful song, _At Grafton_. The spirit of his work in general is the spirit of health--take life as it is, and enjoy it.

It is the open-air verse of broad, windswept English counties. Its surest claim to distinction lies in its excellent, finished--he is a sound craftsman. But he has not yet shown either sufficient originality or sufficient inspiration to rise from the better cla.s.s of minor poets. His verse-drama, _The Storm_, which was produced in Birmingham in 1915, shows strong resemblances to the one-act plays of Mr. Gibson and is not otherwise impressive.

William Henry Davies, the Welsh poet, exhibits in his half-dozen miniature volumes an extraordinary variety of subjects. Everything is grist. He was born of Welsh parentage in Monmouthshire on the twentieth of April, 1870. He became an American tramp, and practised this interesting profession six years; he made eight or nine trips to England on cattle-ships, working his pa.s.sage; he walked about England selling pins and needles. He remarks that "he sometimes varied this life by singing hymns in the street." At the age of thirty-four he became a poet, and he insists--not without reason--that he has been one ever since. Readers may be at times reminded of the manner of John Davidson, but after all, Mr. Davies is as independent in his poetry as he used to be on the road.

Sometimes his verse is ba.n.a.l--as in the advice _To a Working Man_. But oftener his imagination plays on familiar scenes in town and country with a lambent flame, illuminating and glorifying common objects. He has the heart of the child, and tries to see life from a child's clear eyes.

THE TWO FLOCKS

Where are you going to now, white sheep, Walking the green hill-side; To join that whiter flock on top, And share their pride?

Stay where you are, you silly sheep: When you arrive up there, You'll find that whiter flock on top Clouds in the air!

Yet much of his poetry springs from his wide knowledge and experience of life. An original defence of the solitary existence is seen in _Death's Game_, although possibly the grapes are sour.

Death can but play one game with me-- If I do live alone; He cannot strike me a foul blow Through a beloved one.

Today he takes my neighbour's wife, And leaves a little child To lie upon his breast and cry Like the Night-wind, so wild.

And every hour its voice is heard-- Tell me where is she gone!

Death cannot play that game with me-- If I do live alone.

The feather-weight pocket-volumes of verse that this poet puts forth, each containing a crop of tiny poems--have an excellent virtue--they are interesting, good companions for a day in the country. There is always sufficient momentum in page 28 to carry you on to page 29--something that cannot be said of all books.

English literature suffered a loss in the death of Edward Thomas, who was killed in France on the ninth of April, 1917. He was born on the third of March, 1878, and had published a long list of literary critiques, biographies, interpretations of nature, and introspective essays. He took many solitary journeys afoot; his books _The South Country_, _The Heart of England_, and others, show both observation and reflection. Although English by birth and education, he had in his veins Welsh and Spanish blood.

In 1917 a tiny volume of his poems appeared. These are unlike any other verse of the past or present. They cannot be called great poetry, but they are original, imaginative, whimsical, and reveal a rich personality. Indeed we feel in reading these rimes that the author was greater than anything he wrote or could write. The difficulty in articulation comes apparently from a mind so full that it cannot run freely off the end of a pen.

Shyness was undoubtedly characteristic of the man, as it often is of minute observers of nature. I am not at all surprised to learn from one who knew him of his "temperamental melancholy." He was austere and aloof; but exactly the type of mind that would give all he had to those who possessed his confidence. It must have been a privilege to know him intimately. I have said that his poems resemble the work of no other poet; this is true; but there is a certain kinship between him and Robert Frost, indicated not only in the verses, but in the fact that his book is dedicated to the American.

His death accentuates the range of the dragnet of war. This intellectual, quiet, introspective, slightly ironical temperament would seem almost ideally unfitted for the trenches. Yet, although no soldier by instinct, and having a family dependent upon his writings for support, he gave himself freely to the Great Cause. He never speaks in his verses of his own sacrifice, and indeed says little about the war; but the first poem in the volume expresses the universal call.

Rise up, rise up, And, as the trumpet blowing Chases the dreams of men, As the dawn glowing The stars that left unlit The land and water, Rise up and scatter The dew that covers The print of last night's lovers-- Scatter it, scatter it!

While you are listening To the clear horn, Forget, men, everything On this earth newborn, Except that it is lovelier Than any mysteries.

Open your eyes to the air That has washed the eyes of the stars Through all the dewy night: Up with the light, To the old wars; Arise, arise!

In reading Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, Alan Seeger, we recognize how much greater were the things they sacrificed than the creature comforts ordinarily emphasized in the departure from home to the trenches; these men gave up their imagination.

A thoroughly representative poem by Edward Thomas is _c.o.c.k-Crow_; beauty of conception mingled with the inevitable touch of homeliness at the end.

Out of the wood of thoughts that grows by night To be cut down by the sharp axe of light,-- Out of the night, two c.o.c.ks together crow, Cleaving the darkness with a silver blow: And bright before my eyes twin trumpeters stand, Heralds of splendour, one at either hand, Each facing each as in a coat of arms; The milkers lace their boots up at the farms.

This is his favourite combination, seen on every page of his work,--fancy and fact.

Another poet in khaki who writes powerful and original verse is Robert Nichols (born 1893), an Oxford man who has already produced two volumes--_Invocation_, and, in 1918, _Ardours and Endurances_. Accompanying the second is a portrait made in 1915, exhibiting the face of a dreamy-looking boy. No one who reads the pages of this book can doubt the author's gift. In his trench-poetry he somehow manages to combine the realism of Barbusse with an almost holy touch of imagination; and some of the most beautiful pieces are manly laments for friends killed in battle. He was himself severely wounded. His poems of strenuous action are mostly too long to quote; occasionally he writes in a more quiet mood of contemplation.

THE FULL HEART

Alone on the sh.o.r.e in the pause of the nighttime I stand and I hear the long wind blow light; I view the constellations quietly, quietly burning; I hear the wave fall in the hush of the night.

Long after I am dead, ended this bitter journey, Many another whose heart holds no light Shall your solemn sweetness hush, awe, and comfort, O my companions, Wind, Waters, Stars, and Night.

Other Oxford poets from the front are Siegfried Sa.s.soon, Robert Graves and Willoughby Weaving, whose two volumes _The Star Fields_ and _The Bubble_ are as original in their way as the work of Mr.

Nichols, though inferior in beauty of expression. Mr. Weaving was invalided home in 1915, and his first book has an introduction by Robert Bridges. In _The Bubble_ (1917) there are many poems so deeply meditative that their full force does not reach one until after repeated readings. He has also a particular talent for the last line.

TO ----

(Winter 1916)

Thou lover of fire, how cold is it in the grave?

Would I could bring thee fuel and light thee a fire as of old!

Alas! how I think of thee there, shivering out in the cold, Till my own bright fire lacketh the heat which it gave!

Oh, would I could see thee again, as in days gone by, Sitting hands over the fire, or poking it to a bright blaze And clearing the cloggy ash from the bars in thy careful ways!

Oh, art thou the more cold or here by the fire am I?

B. H. Blackwell, the Oxford publisher, seems to have made a good many "finds"; besides producing some of the work of Mr. Nichols and Mr.

Weaving--both poets now have American publishers as well--the four volumes _Oxford Verse_, running from 1910 to 1917, contain many excellent things. And in addition to these, there are original adventures in the art of poetry, sometimes merely bizarre, but interesting as experiments, exhibited in the two volumes _Wheels 1916_, and _Wheels 1917_, and also in the books called _Initiates: a Series of Poetry by Proved Hands_.

CHAPTER VI

THE IRISH POETS

Irish poetry a part of English Literature--common-sense the basis of romanticism--misapprehension of the poetic temperament--William Butler Yeats--his education--his devotion to art--his theories--his love poetry--resemblance to Maeterlinck--the lyrical element paramount--the psaltery--pure rather than applied poetry--John M. Synge--his mentality--his versatility--a terrible personality--his capacity for hatred--his subjectivity--his interesting Preface--brooding on death--A. E.--The Master of the island--his sincerity and influence--disembodied spirits--his mysticism--homesickness--true optimism--James Stephens--poet and novelist--realism and fantasy--Padraic Colum--Francis Ledwidge--Susan Mitch.e.l.l--Thomas MacDonagh--Joseph Campbell--Seumas O'Sullivan--Herbert Trench--Maurice Francis Egan--Norreys Jephson O'Conor--F. Carlin--The advance in Ireland.

In what I have to say of the work of the Irish poets, I am thinking of it solely as a part of English literature. I have in mind no political bias whatever, though I confess I have small admiration for extremists. During the last forty years Irishmen have written mainly in the English language, which a.s.sures to what is good in their compositions an influence bounded only by the dimensions of the earth.

Great creative writers are such an immense and continuous blessing to the world that the locality of their birth pales in comparison with the glory of it, a glory in which we all profit. We need original writers in America; but I had rather have a star of the first magnitude appear in London than a star of lesser power appear in Los Angeles. Every one who writes good English contributes something to English literature and is a benefactor to English-speaking people. An Irish or American literary aspirant will be rated not according to his local flavour or fervour, but according to his ability to write the English language. The language belongs to Ireland and to America as much as it belongs to England; excellence in its command is the only test by which Irish, American, Canadian, South African, Hawaiian and Australian poets and novelists will be judged. The more difficult the test, the stronger the appeal to national pride.

In a recent work, called _The Celtic Dawn_, I found this pa.s.sage: "The thesis of their contention is that modern English, the English of contemporary literature, is essentially an impoverished language incapable of directly expressing thought." I am greatly unimpressed by such a statement. The chief reason why there is really a Celtic Dawn, or a Celtic Renaissance, is because Irishmen like Synge, Yeats, Russell and others have succeeded in writing English so well that they have attracted the attention of the world.

Ireland has never contributed to English literature a poet of the first cla.s.s. By a poet of the first cla.s.s I mean one of the same grade with the leading half-dozen British poets of the nineteenth century.

This dearth of great Irish poets is the more noticeable when we think of Ireland's contributions to English prose and to English drama.

Possibly, if one had prophecy rather than history to settle the question, one might predict that Irishmen would naturally write more and better poetry than Englishmen; for the common supposition is that the poetic temperament is romantic, sentimental, volatile, reckless.

If this were true, then the lovable, careless, impulsive Irish would completely outcla.s.s in original poetry the sensible, steady-headed, cautious Englishman. What are the facts about the so-called poetic temperament?

Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Gray, Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, were in character, disposition, and temperament precisely the opposite of what is superficially supposed to be "poetic." Some of them were deeply erudite; all of them were deeply thoughtful. They were clear-headed, sensible men--in fact, common sense was the basis of their mental life. And no one can read the letters of Byron without seeing how well supplied he was with the shrewd common sense of the Englishman. He was more selfish than any one of the men enumerated above--but he was no fool. There is nothing inconsistent in his being at once the greatest romantic poet and the greatest satirist of his age. His masterpiece, _Don Juan_, is the expression of a nature at the farthest possible remove from sentimentality. And the author of _Faust_ was remarkable among all the children of men for his poise, balance, calm--in other words, for common sense.

It is by no accident that the British--whom foreigners delight to call stodgy and slow-witted,--have produced more high-cla.s.s poetry than any other nation in the history of the world. English literature is instinctively romantic, as French literature is instinctively cla.s.sic.

The glory of French literature is prose; the glory of English literature is poetry.