The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century Part 4

He found occasion to draw from his cold storage of hate much sooner than he had antic.i.p.ated. Being a convinced anti-imperialist, and having not a spark of antagonism to Germany, the early days of August, 1914, shocked no one in the world more than him. But after the first maze of bewilderment and horror, he drew his pen against the Kaiser in holy wrath. Most of his war poems have been collected in the little volume _The Man Who Saw,_ published in the summer of 1917. He has now at all events one satisfaction, that of being in absolute harmony with the national sentiment. In his Preface, after commenting on the pain he had suffered in times past at finding himself in opposition to the majority of his countrymen, he manfully says, "During the present war, with all its agonies and horrors, he has had at any rate the one private satisfaction of feeling not even the most momentary doubt or misgiving as to the perfect righteousness of his country's cause.

There is nothing on earth of which he is more certain than that this Empire, throughout this supreme ordeal, has shaped her course by the light of purest duty." The volume opens with a fine tribute to Mr.

Lloyd George, "the man who saw," and _The Kaiser's Dirge_ is a savage malediction. The poems in this book--of decidedly unequal merit--have the fire of indignation if not always the flame of inspiration. Taken as a whole, they are more interesting psychologically than as a contribution to English verse. I sympathize with the author's feelings, and admire his sincerity; but his reputation as a poet is not heightened overmuch. Perhaps the best poem in the collection is _The Yellow Pansy_, accompanied with Shakespeare's line, "There's pansies--that's for thoughts."

Winter had swooped, a lean and hungry hawk; It seemed an age since summer was entombed; Yet in our garden, on its frozen stalk, A yellow pansy bloomed.

'Twas Nature saying by trope and metaphor: "Behold, when empire against empire strives, Though all else perish, ground 'neath iron war, The golden thought survives."

Although, with the exception of his marriage and travels in America, Mr. Watson's verse tells us little of the facts of his life, few poets have ever revealed more of the history of their mind. What manner of man he is we know without waiting for the publication of his intimate correspondence. It is fortunate for his temperament that, combined with an almost morbid sensitiveness, he has something of Byron's power of hitting back. His numerous volumes contain many verses scoring off adverse critics, upon whom he exercises a sword of satire not always to be found among a poet's weapons; which exercise seems to give him both relief and delight. Apart from these thrusts edged with personal bitterness, William Watson possesses a rarely used vein of ironical wit that immediately recalls Byron, who might himself have written some of the stanzas in _The Eloping Angels_. Faust requests Mephisto to procure for them both admission into heaven for half-an-hour:

To whom Mephisto: "Ah, you underrate The hazards and the dangers, my good Sir.

Peter is stony as his name; the gate, Excepting to invited guests, won't stir.

'Tis long since he and I were intimate; We differed;--but to bygones why refer?

Still, there are windows; if a peep through these Would serve your turn, we'll start whene'er you please...."

So Faust and his companion entered, by The window, the abodes where seraphs dwell.

"Already morning quickens in the sky, And soon will sound the heavenly matin bell; Our time is short," Mephisto said, "for I Have an appointment about noon in h.e.l.l.

Dear, dear! why, heaven has hardly changed one bit Since the old days before the historic split."

The excellent conventional technique displayed in _The Prince's Quest_ has characterized nearly every page of Mr. Watson's works.

He is not only content to walk in the ways of traditional poesy, he glories in it. He has a contempt for heretics and experimenters, which he has expressed frequently not only in prose, but in verse. It is natural that he should worship Tennyson; natural (and unfortunate for him) that he can see little in Browning. And if he is blind to Browning, what he thinks of contemporary "new" poets may easily be imagined. With or without inspiration, he believes that hard work is necessary, and that good workmanship ought to be rated more highly.

This idea has become an obsession; Mr. Watson writes too much about the sweat of his brow, and vents his spleen on "modern" poets too often. In his latest volume, _Retrogression_, published in 1917, thirty-two of the fifty-two poems are devoted to the defence of standards of poetic art and of purity of speech. They are all interesting and contain some truth; but if the "new" poetry and the "new" criticism are really balderdash, they should not require so much attention from one of the most eminent of contemporary writers. I think Mr. Watson is rather stiff-necked and obstinate, like an honest, hearty country squire, in his st.u.r.dy following of tradition. Smooth technique is a fine thing in art; but I do not care whether a poem is written in conventional metre or in free verse, so long as it is unmistakably poetry. And no garments yet invented or the lack of them can conceal true poetry. Perhaps the Traditionalist might reply that uninspired verse gracefully written is better than uninspired verse abominably written. So it is; but why bother about either? He might once more insist that inspired poetry gracefully written is better than inspired poetry ungracefully written. And I should reply that it depended altogether on the subject. I should not like to see Whitman's _Spirit that formed this Scene_ turned into a Spenserian stanza.

I cannot forget that David Mallet tried to smoothen Hamlet's soliloquy by jamming it into the heroic couplet. Mr. Watson thinks that the great John Donne is dead. On the contrary, he is audibly alive; and the only time he really approached dissolution was when Pope "versified" him.

Stephen Phillips, William Watson, Alfred Noyes--each published his first volume of poems at the age of twenty-two, additional evidence of the old truth that poets are born, not made. Alfred Noyes is a Staffordshire man, though his report of the county differs from that of Arnold Bennett as poetry differs from prose. They did not see the same things in Staffordshire, and if they had, they would not have been the same things, anyhow. Mr. Noyes was born on the sixteenth of September, 1880, and made his first departure from the traditions of English poetry in going to Oxford. There he was an excellent ill.u.s.tration of _mens sana in corpore sano_, writing verses and rowing on his college crew. He is married to an American wife, is a professor at Princeton, and understands the spirit of America better than most visitors who write clever books about us. He has the wholesome, modest, cheerful temperament of the American college undergraduate, and the Princeton students are fortunate, not only in hearing his lectures, but in the opportunity of fellowship with such a man.

Mr. Noyes is one of the few poets who can read his own verses effectively, the reason being that his mind is by nature both literary and rhetorical--a rare union. The purely literary temperament is usually marked by a certain shyness which unfits its owner for the public platform. I have heard poets read pa.s.sionate poetry in a m.u.f.fled sing-song, something like a child learning to "recite." The works of Alfred Noyes gain distinctly by his oral interpretation of them.

He is prolific. Although still a young man, he has a long list of books to his credit; and it is rather surprising that in such a profusion of literary experiments, the general level should be so high. He writes blank verse, octosyllabics, terza-rima, sonnets, and is particularly fond of long rolling lines that have in them the music of the sea. His ideas require no enlargement of the orchestra, and he generally avoids by-paths, or unbeaten tracks, content to go l.u.s.tily singing along the highway. Perhaps it shows more courage to compete with standard poets in standard measures, than to elude dangerous comparisons by making or adopting a new fashion. Mr. Noyes openly challenges the masters on their own field and with their own weapons.

Yet he shows nothing of the schoolmasterish contempt for the "new"

poetry so characteristic of Mr. Watson. He actually admires Blake, who was in spirit a twentieth century poet, and he has written a fine poem _On the Death of Francis Thompson_, though he has nothing of Thompson in him except religious faith.

In the time-worn but useful cla.s.sification of versemakers under the labels _Vates_ and _Poeta_, Alfred Noyes belongs clearly to the latter group. He is not without ideas, but he is primarily an artist, a singer. He is one of the most melodious of modern writers, with a witchery in words that at its best is irresistible. He has an extraordinary command of the resources of language and rhythm. Were this all he possessed, he would be nothing but a graceful musician.

But he has the imagination of the inspired poet, giving him creative power to reveal anew the majesty of the untamed sea, and the mystery of the stars. With this clairvoyance--essential in poetry--he has a hearty, charming, incondescending sympathy with "common" people, common flowers, common music. One of his most original and most captivating poems is _The Tramp Transfigured, an Episode in the Life of a Corn-flower Millionaire_. This contains a character worthy of d.i.c.kens, a faery touch of fantasy, a rippling, singing melody, with delightful audacities of rime.

_Tick, tack, tick, tack_, I couldn't wait no longer!

Up I gets and bows polite and pleasant as a toff-- "Arternoon," I says, "I'm glad your boots are going stronger; Only thing I'm dreading is your feet 'ull both come off."

_Tick, tack, tick, tack_, she didn't stop to answer, "Arternoon," she says, and sort o' chokes a little cough, "I must get to Piddinghoe tomorrow if I can, sir!"

"Demme, my good woman! Haw! Don't think I mean to loff,"

Says I, like a toff, "Where d'you mean to sleep tonight? G.o.d made this gra.s.s for go'ff."

His masterpiece, _The Barrel-Organ_, has something of Kipling's rollicking music, with less noise and more refinement. Out of the mechanical grinding of the hand organ, with the accompaniment of city omnibuses, we get the very breath of spring in almost intolerable sweetness. This poem affects the head, the heart, and the feet. I defy any man or woman to read it without surrendering to the magic of the lilacs, the magic of old memories, the magic of the poet. Nor has one ever read this poem without going immediately back to the first line, and reading it all over again, so susceptible are we to the romantic pleasure of melancholy.

Mon coeur est un luth suspendu: Sitot qu'on le touche, il resonne.

Alfred Noyes understands the heart of the child; as is proved by his _Flower of Old j.a.pan_, and _Forest of Wild Thyme_, a kind of singing Alice-in-Wonderland. These are the veritable stuff of dreams--wholly apart from the law of causation--one vision fading into another. It is our fault, and not that of the poet, that Mr. Noyes had to explain them: "It is no new wisdom to regard these things through the eyes of little children; and I know--however insignificant they may be to others--these two tales contain as deep and true things as I, personally, have the power to express. I hope, therefore, that I may be pardoned, in these hurried days, for pointing out that the two poems are not to be taken merely as fairy-tales, but as an attempt to follow the careless and happy feet of children back into the kingdom of those dreams which, as we said above, are the sole reality worth living and dying for; those beautiful dreams, or those fantastic jests--if any care to call them so--for which mankind has endured so many triumphant martyrdoms that even amidst the rush and roar of modern materialism they cannot be quite forgotten." Mr. William J.

Locke says he would rather give up clean linen and tobacco than give up his dreams.

Nearly all English poetry smells of the sea; the waves rule Britannia.

Alfred Noyes loves the ocean, and loves the old sea-dogs of Devonshire. He is not a literary poet, like William Watson, and has seldom given indication of possessing the insight or the interpretative power of his contemporary in dealing with pure literature. He has the blessed gift of admiration, and his poems on Swinburne, Meredith, and other masters show a high reverence; but they are without subtlety, and lack the discriminating phrase. He is, however, deeply read in Elizabethan verse and prose, as his _Tales of the Mermaid Tavern_, one of his longest, most painstaking, and least successful works, proves; and of all the Elizabethan men of action, Drake is his hero. The English lovers of the sea, and the German lovers of efficiency, have both done honour to Drake. I remember years ago, being in the town of Offenburg in Germany, and seeing at a distance a colossal statue, feeling some surprise when I discovered that the monument was erected to Sir Francis Drake, "in recognition of his having introduced the potato into Europe." Here was where eulogy became almost too specific, and I felt that their Drake was not my Drake.

Mr. Noyes called _Drake_, published in 1908, an English Epic. It is not really an epic--it is a historical romance in verse, as _Aurora Leigh_ is a novel. It is interesting from beginning to end, more interesting as narrative than as poetry. It is big rather than great, rhetorical rather than literary, declamatory rather than pa.s.sionate. And while many descriptive pa.s.sages are fine, the pictures of the terrible storm near Cape Horn are surely less vivid than those in _Dauber_. Had Mr. Noyes written _Drake_ without the songs, and written nothing else, I should not feel certain that he was a poet; I should regard him as an extremely fluent versifier, with remarkable skill in telling a rattling good story. But the _Songs_, especially the one beginning, "Now the purple night is past," could have been written only by a poet. In _Forty Singing Seamen_ there is displayed an imagination quite superior to anything in _Drake_; and I would not trade _The Admiral's Ghost_ for the whole "epic."

As a specific ill.u.s.tration of his lyrical power, the following poem may be cited.

THE MAY-TREE

The May-tree on the hill Stands in the night So fragrant and so still, So dusky white.

That, stealing from the wood, In that sweet air, You'd think Diana stood Before you there.

If it be so, her bloom Trembles with bliss.

She waits across the gloom Her shepherd's kiss.

Touch her. A bird will start From those pure snows,-- The dark and fluttering heart Endymion knows.

Alfred Noyes is "among the English poets." His position is secure. But because he has never identified himself with the "new" poetry--either in choice of material or in free verse and polyphonic prose--it would he a mistake to suppose that he is afraid to make metrical experiments. The fact of the matter is, that after he had mastered the technique of conventional rime and rhythm, as shown in many of his lyrical pieces, he began playing new tunes on the old instrument. In _The Tramp Transfigured_, to which I find myself always returning in a consideration of his work, because it displays some of the highest qualities of pure poetry, there are new metrical effects. The same is true of the Prelude to the _Forest of Wild Thyme_, and of _The Burial of a Queen_; there are new metres used in _Rank and File_ and in _Mount Ida_. The poem _Astrid_, included in the volume _The Lord of Misrule_ (1915), is an experiment in _initial_ rhymes. Try reading it aloud.

White-armed Astrid,--ah, but she was beautiful!-- Nightly wandered weeping thro' the ferns in the moon, Slowly, weaving her strange garland in the forest, Crowned with white violets, Gowned in green.

Holy was that glen where she glided, Making her wild garland as Merlin had bidden her, Breaking off the milk-white horns of the honeysuckle, Sweetly dripped the new upon her small white Feet.

The English national poetry of Mr. Noyes worthily expresses the spirit of the British people, and indeed of the Anglo-Saxon race. We are no lovers of war; military ambition or the glory of conquest is not sufficient motive to call either Great Britain or America to arms; but if the gun-drunken Germans really believed that the English and Americans would not fight to save the world from an unspeakable despotism, they made the mistake of their lives. There must be a Cause, there must be an Idea, to draw out the full fighting strength of the Anglo-Saxons. Alfred Noyes made a correct diagnosis and a correct prophecy in 1911, when he published _The Sword of England_.

She sheds no blood to that vain G.o.d of strife Whom tyrants call "renown"; She knows that only they who reverence life Can n.o.bly lay it down;

And these will ride from child and home and love, Through death and h.e.l.l that day; But O, her faith, her flag, must burn above, Her soul must lead the way!

I think none the worse of the mental force exhibited in the poetry of Alfred Noyes because he is an optimist. It is a common error to suppose that cheerfulness is a sign of a superficial mind, and melancholy the mark of deep thinking. Pessimism in itself is no proof of intellectual greatness. Every honest man must report the world as he sees it, both in its external manifestations and in the equally salient fact of human emotion. Mr. Noyes has always loved life, and rejoiced in it; he loves the beauty of the world and believes that history proves progress. In an unashamed testimony to the happiness of living he is simply telling truths of his own experience. Happiness is not necessarily thoughtlessness; many men and women have gone through pessimism and come out on serener heights.

Alfred Noyes proves, as Browning proved, that it is possible to be an inspired poet and in every other respect to remain normal. He is healthy-minded, without a trace of affectation or decadence. He follows the Tennysonian tradition in seeing that "Beauty, Good, and Knowledge are three sisters." He is religious. A clear-headed, pure-hearted Englishman is Alfred Noyes.

Although _A Shropshire Lad_ was published in 1896, there is nothing of the nineteenth century in it except the date, and nothing Victorian except the allusions to the Queen. A double puzzle confronts the reader: how could a University Professor of Latin write this kind of poetry, and how, after having published it, could he refrain from writing more? Since the date of its appearance, he has published an edition of _Manilius_, Book I, followed nine years later by Book II; also an edition of _Juvenal_, and many papers representing the result of original research. Possibly

Chill Pedantry repressed his n.o.ble rage, And froze the genial current of his soul.

Alfred Edward Housman was born on the twenty-sixth of March, 1859, was graduated from Oxford, was Professor of Latin at University College, London, from 1892 to 1911, and since then has been Professor of Latin at Cambridge. Few poets have made a deeper impression on the literature of the time than he; and the sixty-three short lyrics in one small volume form a slender wedge for so powerful an impact. This poetry, except in finished workmanship, follows no English tradition; it is as unorthodox as Samuel Butler; it is thoroughly "modern" in tone, in temper, and in emphasis. Although entirely original, it reminds one in many ways of the verse of Thomas Hardy. It has his paganism, his pessimism, his human sympathy, his austere pride in the tragedy of frustration, his curt refusal to pipe a merry tune, to make one of a holiday crowd.

Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill, And while the sun and moon endure Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure, I'd face it as a wise man would, And train for ill and not for good.

'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale Is not so brisk a brew as ale: Out of a stem that scored the hand I wrung it in a weary land.

But take it: if the smack is sour, The better for the embittered hour; It should do good to heart and head When your soul is in my soul's stead; And I will friend you, if I may, In the dark and cloudy day.

Those lines might have been written by Thomas Hardy. They express not merely his view of life, but his faith in the healing power of the bitter herb of pessimism. But we should remember that _A Shropshire Lad_ was published before the first volume of Mr. Hardy's verse appeared, and that the lyrical element displayed is natural rather than acquired.

Though at the time of its publication the author was thirty-six years old, many of the poems must have been written in the twenties. The style is mature, but the constant dwelling on death and the grave is a mark of youth. Young poets love to write about death, because its contrast to their present condition forms a romantic tragedy, sharply dramatic and yet instinctively felt to be remote. Tennyson's first volume is full of the details of dissolution, the falling jaw, the eye-b.a.l.l.s fixing, the sharp-headed worm. Aged poets do not usually write in this manner, because death seems more realistic than romantic. It is a fact rather than an idea. When a young poet is obsessed with the idea of death, it is a sign, not of morbidity, but of normality.

The originality in this book consists not in the contrast between love and the grave, but in the acute self-consciousness of youth, in the pagan determination to enjoy nature without waiting till life's summer is past.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide.