The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century Part 13

Synge wrote few poems, and they came at intervals during a period of sixteen or seventeen years. Objectively, they are unimportant; his contributions to English literature are his dramas and his prose sketches. But as revelations of his personality they have a deep and melancholy interest; and every word of his short Preface, written in December, 1908, a few months before his death, is valuable. He knew he was a dying man, and not only wished to collect these fugitive bits of verse, but wished to leave behind him his theory of poetry. With characteristic bluntness, he says that the poems which follow the Preface were mostly written "before the views just stated, with which they have little to do, had come into my head."

No discussion of modern verse should omit consideration of this remarkable Preface--for while it has had no effect on either Mr. Yeats or Mr. Russell--it has influenced other Irish poets, and many that are not Irish. Indeed much aggressively "modern" work is trying, more or less successfully, to fit this theory. In the advance, Synge was more prophet than poet.

Many of the older poets, such as Villon and Herrick and Burns, used the whole of their personal life as their material, and the verse written in this way was read by strong men, and thieves, and deacons, not by little cliques only.

Then, in the town writing of the eighteenth century, ordinary life was put into verse that was not poetry, and when poetry came back with Coleridge and Sh.e.l.ley, it went into verse that was not always human. [This last clause shows the difference between Synge and his friends, Yeats and Russell.]

In these days poetry is usually a flower of evil or good; but it is the timbre of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timbre that has not strong roots among the clay and worms.

Even if we grant that exalted poetry can be kept successful by itself, the strong things in life are needed in poetry also, to show that what is exalted or tender is not made by feeble blood. It may almost be said that before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.

Like Herrick, he wrote verse about himself, for he knew that much biography and criticism would follow his funeral.

ON AN ANNIVERSARY

_After reading the dates in a book of Lyrics._

With Fifteen-ninety or Sixteen-sixteen We end Cervantes, Marot, Nashe or Green: Then Sixteen-thirteen till two score and nine, Is Crashaw's niche, that honey-lipped divine.

And so when all my little work is done They'll say I came in Eighteen-seventy-one, And died in Dublin.... What year will they write For my poor pa.s.sage to the stall of night?

A QUESTION

I asked if I got sick and died, would you With my black funeral go walking too, If you'd stand close to hear them talk or pray While I'm let down in that steep bank of clay.

And, No, you said, for if you saw a crew Of living idiots pressing round that new Oak coffin--they alive, I dead beneath That board--you'd rave and rend them with your teeth.

The love of brutal strength in Synge's work may have been partly the projection of his sickness, just as the invalid Stevenson delighted in the creation of powerful ruffians; but the brooding on his own death is quite modern, and is, I think, part of the egoism that is so distinguishing a feature in contemporary poetry. So many have abandoned all hope of a life beyond the grave, that they cling to bodily existence with almost gluttonous pa.s.sion, and are filled with self-pity at the thought of their own death and burial. To my mind, there is something unworthy, something childish, in all this. When a child has been rebuked or punished by its father or mother, it plays a trump card--"You'll be sorry when I am dead!" It is better for men and women to attack the daily task with what cheerful energy they can command, and let the interruption of death come when it must. If life is short, it seems unwise to spend so much of our time in rehearsals of a tragedy that can have only one performance.

In the modern Tempest of Ireland, Yeats is Ariel and A. E. is Prospero. He is the Master of the island. As a literary artist, he is not the equal of either of the two men whose work we have considered; but he is by all odds the greatest Personality. He holds over his contemporaries a spiritual sway that many a monarch might envy.

Perhaps the final tribute to him is seen in the fact that even George Moore treats him with respect.

One reason for this predominance is the man's sincerity. All those who know him regard him with reverence; and to us who know him only through his books and his friends, his sincerity is equally clear and compelling. He has done more than any other man to make Dublin a centre of intellectual life. At one time his house was kept open every Sunday evening, and any friend, stranger, or foreigner had the right to walk in without knocking, and take a part in the conversation. A.

E. used to subscribe to every literary journal, no matter how obscure, that was printed in Ireland; every week he would scan the pages, hoping to discover a man of promise. It was in this way he "found"

James Stephens, and not only found him, but founded him. Many a struggling painter or poet has reason to bless the gracious a.s.sistance of George W. Russell.

It is a singular thing that the three great men of modern Ireland seem more like disembodied spirits than carnal persons. Synge always seems to those who read his books like some ghost, waking the echoes with ironical laughter; I cannot imagine A. E. putting on coat and trousers; and although I once had the honour--which I gratefully remember--of a long talk with W. B. Yeats, I never felt that I was listening to a man of flesh and blood. It is fitting that these men had their earthly dwelling in a sea-girt isle, where every foot of ground has its own superst.i.tion, and where the constant mists are peopled with unearthly figures.

I do not really know what mysticism is; but I know that Mr. Yeats and Mr. Russell are both mystics and of a quite different stamp. Mr. Yeats is not insincere, but his mysticism is a part of his art rather than a part of his mind. He is artistically, rather than intellectually, sincere. The mysticism of Mr. Russell is fully as intellectual as it is emotional; it is more than his creed; it is his life. His poetry and his prose are not shadowed by his mysticism, they emanate from it.

He does not have to live in another world when he writes verse, and then come back to earth when the dinner or the door bell rings; he lives in the other world all the time. Or rather, the earth and common objects are themselves part of the Universal Spirit, reflecting its constant activities.

DUST

I heard them in their sadness say "The earth rebukes the thought of G.o.d; We are but embers wrapped in clay, A little n.o.bler than the sod."

But I have touched the lips of clay, Mother, thy rudest sod to me Is thrilled with fire of hidden day, And haunted by all mystery.

The above poem, taken from the author's first volume, _Homeward: Songs by the Way_, does not reflect that homesickness of which A.

E. speaks in his Preface. Homesickness is longing, yearning; and there is little of any such quality in the work of A. E. Or, if he is really homesick, he is homesick not like one who has just left home, but more like one who is certain of his speedy return thither. This homesickness has more antic.i.p.ation than regret; it is like healthy hunger when one is a.s.sured of the next meal. For a.s.surance is the prime thing in A. E.'s temperament and in his work; it partly accounts for his strong influence. Many writers today are like sheep having no shepherd; A. E. is a shepherd. To turn from the wailing so characteristic of the poets, to the books of this high-hearted, resolute, candid, cheerful man, is like coming into harbour after a mad voyage. He moves among his contemporaries like a calm, able surgeon in a hospital. I suspect he has been the recipient of many strange confessions. His poetry has healing in its wings.

Has any human voice ever expressed more wisely or more tenderly the reason why Our Lord was a man of sorrows? Why He spake to humanity in the language of pain, rather than in the language of delight? Was it not simply because, in talking to us, He who could speak all languages, used our own, rather than that of His home country?

A LEADER

Though your eyes with tears were blind, Pain upon the path you trod: Well we knew, the hosts behind, Voice and shining of a G.o.d.

For your darkness was our day, Signal fires, your pains untold, Lit us on our wandering way To the mystic heart of gold.

Naught we knew of the high land, Beauty burning in its spheres; Sorrow we could understand And the mystery told in tears.

Something of the secret of his quiet strength is seen in the following two stanzas, which close his poem _Apocalyptic_ (1916):

It shall be better to be bold Than clothed in purple in that hour; The will of steel be more than gold; For only what we are is power.

Who through the starry gate would win Must be like those who walk therein.

You, who have made of earth your star, Cry out, indeed, for hopes made vain: For only those can laugh who are The strong Initiates of Pain, Who know that mighty G.o.d to be Sculptor of immortality.

It is a wonderful thing--a man living in a house in Dublin, living a life of intense, ceaseless, and extraordinarily diversified activity, travelling on life's common way in cheerful G.o.dliness, and shedding abroad to the remotest corners of the earth a masculine serenity of soul.

James Stephens was not widely known until the year 1912, when he published a novel called _The Crock of Gold;_ this excited many readers in Great Britain and in America, an excitement considerably heightened by the appearance of another work of prose fiction, _The Demi-G.o.ds,_ in 1914; and general curiosity about the author became rampant. It was speedily discovered that he was a poet as well as a novelist; that three years before his reputation he had issued a slim book of verse, boldly named _Insurrections,_ the t.i.tle being the boldest thing in it. By 1915 this neglected work had pa.s.sed through four editions, and during the last six years he has presented to an admiring public five more volumes of poems, _The Hill of Vision,_ 1912; _Songs from the Clay,_ 1915; _The Adventures of Seumas Beg,_ 1915; _Green Branches,_ 1916, and _Reincarnations,_ 1918.

A. E. believed in him from the start; and it was owing to the influence of A. E. that _Insurrections_ took the form of a book, gratefully dedicated to its own begetter. Both patron and protege must have been surprised by its lack of impact, and still more surprised by the immense success of _The Crock of Gold._ The poems are mainly realistic, pictures of slimy city streets with slimy creatures crawling on the pavements. It is an interesting fact that they appeared the same year of Synge's _Poems_ with Synge's famous Preface counselling brutality, counselling anything to bring poetry away from the iridescent dreams of W. B. Yeats down to the stark realities of life and nature. They bear testimony to the catholic breadth of A. E.'s sympathetic appreciation, for they are as different as may be imagined from the spirit of mysticism. It must also be confessed that their absolute merit as poetry is not particularly remarkable; all the more credit to the discernment of A. E., who described behind them an original and powerful personality.

The influence of Synge is strong in the second book of verses, called _The Hill of Vision_, particularly noticeable in such a poem as _The Brute_. Curiously enough, _Songs from the Clay_ is more exalted in tone than _The Hill of Vision_. The air is clearer and purer. But the author of _The Crock of Gold_ and _The Demi-G.o.ds_ appears again in _The Adventures of Seumas Beg_. In these charming poems we have that triple combination of realism, humour, and fantasy that gave so original a flavour to the novels.

They make a valuable addition to child-poetry; for men, women, angels, fairies, G.o.d and the Devil are treated with easy familiarity, in practical, definite, conversational language. These are the best fruits of his imagination in rime.

THE DEVIL'S BAG

I saw the Devil walking down the lane Behind our house.--There was a heavy bag Strapped tightly on his shoulders, and the rain Sizzled when it hit him. He picked a rag Up from the ground and put it in his sack, And grinned and rubbed his hands. There was a thing Moving inside the bag upon his back-- It must have been a soul! I saw it fling And twist about inside, and not a hole Or cranny for escape. Oh, it was sad.

I cried, and shouted out, "_Let out that soul!_"

But he turned round, and, sure, his face went mad, And twisted up and down, and he said "_h.e.l.l!_"

And ran away.... Oh, mammy! I'm not well.

In 1916 Mr. Stephens published a threnody, _Green Branches_, which ill.u.s.trates still another side of his literary powers. There is organ-like music in these n.o.ble lines. The sting of bitterness is drawn from death, and sorrow changes into a solemn rapture.

In commenting on Synge's poem, _The Curse_, I spoke of the delight the Irish have in hyperbolic curses; an excellent ill.u.s.tration of this may be found in Mr. Stephens' latest volume, _Reincarnations_. There is no doubt that the poet as well as his imaginary imprecator found real pleasure in the production of the following e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns:

RIGHTEOUS ANGER

The lanky hank of a she in the inn over there Nearly killed me for asking the loan of a gla.s.s of beer; May the devil grip the whey-faced s.l.u.t by the hair, And beat bad manners out of her skin for a year.

That parboiled imp, with the hardest jaw you will see On virtue's path, and a voice that would rasp the dead, Came roaring and raging the minute she looked at me, And threw me out of the house on the back of my head!

If I asked her master he'd give me a cask a day; But she, with the beer at hand, not a gill would arrange!

May she marry a ghost and bear him a kitten, and may The High King of Glory permit her to get the mange.

Padraic Colum has followed the suggestion of Synge, and made deep excavations for the foundations of his poetry. It grows up out of the soil like a hardy plant; and while it cannot be called major work, it has a wholesome, healthy earthiness. It is realistic in a different way from the town eclogues of James Stephens; it is not merely in the country, it is agricultural. His most important book is _Wild Earth_, published in Dublin in 1901, republished with additions in New York in 1916. The smell of the earth is pungent in such poems as _The Plougher_ and _The Drover_; while his masterpiece, _An Old Woman of the Roads_, voices the primeval and universal longing for the safe shelter of a home. I wonder what those who believe in the abolition of private property are going to do with this natural, human pa.s.sion? Private property is not the result of an artificial social code--it is the result of an instinct. The first three stanzas of this poem indicate its quality, expressing the all but inexpressible love of women for each stick of furniture and every household article.

O, to have a little house!

To own the hearth and stool and all!