concrete imagery--as for instance when it pictures Eve:

    Picking a dish of sweet
    Berries and plums to eat,

or presents her, when the serpent is softly calling her name, as

    Wondering, listening,
    Listening, wondering,
    Eve with a berry
    Half-way to her lips.

Moreover, the poet does not in the least mind winging his fancy in a
homely phrase. He is not afraid of an idiomatic touch, nor of pithy,
vigorous words. His conception is vivid enough to bear rigorous
treatment; and in the same poem, "Eve," the serpent is found plotting
the fall of humanity in these terms:

    Now to get even and
    Humble proud heaven and
    Now was the moment or
    Never at all.

And when his wiles have been successful, Eve's feathered comrades,
Titmouse and Jenny Wren, make an indignant 'clatter':

    How the birds rated him,
    How they all hated him!
    How they all pitied
    Poor motherless Eve!

That is the nearest approach to fantasy which will be found in this
poetry. There is nothing subtle or whimsical here: no half-lights or
neutral tones or hints of meaning. This genius cannot fulfil itself in
an 'airy nothing.' The imaginative power is too firmly controlled by a
sense of fact to admit the bizarre and incredible; yet there can be no
doubt of its creative force when one turns for a moment to either of the
prize poems, and particularly to "The Bull." It would be hard to name a
finer specimen of verse in which imagination, high and sustained, is
seen to be operating through a purely sensuous medium. That is to say,
moving in a region of fact, accurately observing and recording the
phenomena of a real world, there is yet achieved an imaginative creation
of great power--a bit of all-but-perfect art. Quotation will not serve
to illustrate this, since the poem is an organic whole and a principal
element of its perfection is its unity. One could, however, demonstrate
over again from almost any line the poet's instinct for reality: as for
example in the truth, quiet but unflinching, of his presentment of the
cruelty inherent in his theme. The passages are almost too painful taken
out of their context; and there may be some for whom they will rob the
poem of complete beauty. But the same instinct may be observed
visualizing, in strong light and rich colour and incisive movement, the
teeming tropical world in which the old bull stands, sick, unkinged and
left to die.

    Cranes and gaudy parrots go
    Up and down the burning sky;
    Tree-top cats purr drowsily
    In the dim-day green below;
    And troops of monkeys, nutting, some,
    All disputing, go and come;

    .....

    And a dotted serpent curled
    Round and round and round a tree,
    Yellowing its greenery,
    Keeps a watch on all the world,
    All the world and this old bull
    In the forest beautiful.

This poem is indeed very characteristic of its author's method. One
perceives the thought behind (apart, of course, from the mental process
of actual composition); and one realizes the magnitude of it. But again
it is implicit only, and reflection on 'the flesh that dies,' on
greatness fallen and worth contemned, hardly wins a couple of lines of
direct expression.

In "The Song of Honour" it would seem for the moment as if all that were
reversed. This poem is the re-creation of a spiritual experience, a hymn
of adoration. It is entirely subjective in conception, and is strangely
different therefore from the cool objectivity of "The Bull" or "Eve" or
"Time." In them the poet is working so detachedly that there is even
room for the play of gentle humour now and then. He is working with
delight, indeed, and emotion warm enough, but with a joy that is wholly
artistic, caring much more for the thing that he is making than for any
single element of it. But in "The Song of Honour" it is evident that he
cares immensely for his theme; and hence arise an ardour and intensity
which are not present in the other poems. Moreover, the work is the
interpretation of a vision, which would seem to imply a mystical quality
only latent hitherto; and there is a rapture of utterance which is not
found elsewhere.

The apparent contrast has no reality however. It is possible to catch,
though in subtle inflexions it is true, an undertone which runs below
even the simplest and clearest of these lyrics. No doubt it is as quiet,
as subdued, as it well could be--this soft, complex harmony flowing
beneath the ringing measure. But one can distinguish a note here and a
phrase there which point directly to the dominant theme of "The Song of
Honour." There is a hint of it, for example, in "The Mystery," where the
soul is imagined as standing, reverent but without fear, within the
closed circle of the unknown, and joyfully content to accept as the
pledge and symbol of that which it is unable to comprehend, the beauty
of the material world. One may see in that a familiar attitude of the
modern mind; the perception that there _is_ a mystery, which somehow
perpetually eludes the creeds and philosophies, but which seems to be
attaining to gradual revelation and fulfilment in actual existence. A
vision of the unity of that existence was the inspiration of this
greater poem: a realization, momentary but dazzling, of the magnificence
of being: of its joy, of its continuity, of the progression of life
through countless forms of that which we call matter to an ultimate goal
of supreme glory.

I do not say that any thesis, in those or kindred terms, was the origin
of this Song. I feel quite sure that it had no basis so abstract. It was
born in a mood of exaltation, kindled perhaps by such an instant of
flaming super-consciousness as may be observed in the spiritual
experience of other contemporary poets. The moment of its inception is
recorded in the opening of the poem:

    I climbed a hill as light fell short,
    And rooks came home in scramble sort,
    And filled the trees and flapped and fought
    And sang themselves to sleep;

Silence fell upon the landscape as darkness came and the stars shone
out.

    I heard no more of bird or bell,
    The mastiff in a slumber fell,
    I stared into the sky,
    As wondering men have always done
    Since beauty and the stars were one,
    Though none so hard as I.

    It seemed, so still the valleys were,
    As if the whole world knelt at prayer,
    Save me and me alone;

So true is the poet to his impulse towards clarity and the concrete, so
unerringly does he select the strong, familiar word with all its meaning
clear on the face of it, that it is possible to regard the Song simply
as a religious poem--a hymn of adoration to a Supreme Being:

    I heard the universal choir,
    The Sons of Light exalt their Sire
    With universal song,
    Earth's lowliest and loudest notes,
    Her million times ten million throats
    Exalt Him loud and long,

Pure religion the poem is, but its implications are broader than any
creed. And, define it as we may, it remains suggestive of the most vital
current of modern thought. For it takes its stand upon the solid earth,
embraces reality and perceives in the material world itself that which
is urging joyfully toward some manifestation of spiritual splendour.
Thus the poet hears the Song rising from the very stocks and stones:

    The everlasting pipe and flute
    Of wind and sea and bird and brute,
    And lips deaf men imagine mute
    In wood and stone and clay,

The pæan is audible to him, too, from lowly creatures in whom life has
not yet grown conscious, from the tiniest forms of being, from the most
transient of physical phenomena.

    The music of a lion strong
    That shakes a hill a whole night long,
    A hill as loud as he,
    The twitter of a mouse among
    Melodious greenery,
    The ruby's and the rainbow's song,
    The nightingale's--all three,
    The song of life that wells and flows
    From every leopard, lark and rose
    And everything that gleams or goes
    Lack-lustre in the sea.

But it is in humanity that the Song attains its fullest and noblest
harmony. Out of the stuff of actual human life the spiritual essence is
distilled, making the wraiths of a mystical imagination poor and pale by
comparison.

    I heard the hymn of being sound
    From every well of honour found
    In human sense and soul:
    The song of poets when they write
    The testament of Beautysprite
    Upon a flying scroll,
    The song of painters when they take
    A burning brush for Beauty's sake
    And limn her features whole--

    .....

    The song of beggars when they throw
    The crust of pity all men owe
    To hungry sparrows in the snow,
    Old beggars hungry too--
    The song of kings of kingdoms when
    They rise above their fortune men,
    And crown themselves anew,--

_Ford Madox Hueffer_

There is a collected edition of Mr Hueffer's poetry published in that
year of dreadful memory nineteen hundred and fourteen. It is a valuable
possession. Its verse-content may not--of course it cannot--appeal in
the same degree to all lovers of poetry. For reasons that we shall see,
it is more liable than most poetic art to certain objections from those
whose taste is already formed and who therefore, wittingly or
unwittingly, have adopted a pet convention. They may boggle at a word or
a phrase in terminology which is avowedly idiomatic. They may wince
occasionally at a free rhyme or grow a little restive at the
irregularities of a rhyme-scheme, or resent an abrupt change of rhythm
in the middle of a stanza just as they believed they had begun to scan
it correctly. If they are the least bit sentimental (and it is not many
who have cast out, root and branch, the Anglo-Saxon vice) they will be
chilled here and there by an ironic touch, repelled by an apparent
levity, or irritated at the contiguity of subjects and ideas which seem
inept and unrelated. The classicist will grumble that the unities are
broken; the idealist will shudder at a bit of actuality; the formalist
will eye certain new patterns with disfavour; and even the realist,
with so much after his own heart, will be graceless enough to be
impatient at recurrent signs of a romantic temperament.

So, in perhaps a dozen different ways, the literary person of as many
different types may find that he is just hindered from complete
enjoyment of what he nevertheless perceives to be beautiful work. If he
be honest, however, and master of his moods, he will be ready to admit
that it _is_ beautiful, and that none of these objections invalidate the
essential poetry of the book. That has its own winning and haunting
qualities, quite strong enough to justify the claim that the volume is a
valuable possession. That is to say, there is absolute beauty in it,
considered simply as a work of art and judged only from the point of
view of the conventional lover of poetry. There are other values
however, immediate or potential. There is, for example, to the believer
in Mr Hueffer's theory, promise of the power which his method would have
upon all the good, kind, jolly, intelligent, but unliterary people,
could they be induced to read poetry at all. As a mere corollary from
the literary quibbles already named, one would expect such people to
find this volume delightful--an expectation by no means daunted by the
declared fate of earlier productions. One sees that the evident
sincerity of the work, the attitude of that particular individuality to
life, the free hand and the right instinct in the selection of incident,
and the use of language that is homely and picturesque, ought to be
potent attractions to the reader who frequently finds the older poetry
stilted and artificial.

Moreover, so successful has the author's method been in many cases that
even the _littérateur_ must pause and think. He will observe how well
the new artistry suits the new material; he will note the exhilaration
of the final effect; and when, returning to his beloved poets of the
last generation, he finds that some of their virtue seems to have fled
meantime, he will ask himself whether the life of our time may not
_demand_ poetic presentation in some such form as this. Which is to say
that he will probably be a convert to Mr Hueffer's impressionism.

That point is debatable, of course; but what will hardly be questioned,
apart from the joy we frequently experience here in seeing a thing
consummately done, is the importance of this work as an experiment. That
is obviously another kind of value, with a touch of scientific interest
added to the æsthetics. And the importance of the experiment is
enhanced, or at any rate we realize it more fully, from the fact that
the poet has been generous enough to elaborate his theory in a preface.
That is no euphemism, as other prefaces and theories of exasperating
memory might seem to suggest. It is real generosity to give away the
fundamentals of your art, to show as clearly as is done here the
principles upon which you work and the exact means which are taken to
give effect to them. It is courageous too, particularly when confessions
are made which supply a key to personality. For the hostile critic is
thus doubly armed. But the 'gentle reader' is armed too; and Mr Hueffer
would seem to have been wise, even from the point of view of mere
prudence, to take the risk.

The reader of this book then will find the poems doubly interesting in
the light that the preface throws upon them. He may, of course, read and
enjoy them without a single reference to it--that is the measure of
their poetic value. Or, on the other hand, he may read the preface, brim
full of stimulating ideas, without reference to the poetry. But the full
significance of either can only be appreciated when they are taken in
conjunction. For instance, we light upon this phrase indicating the
material of the poet's art: "Modern life, so extraordinary, so hazy; so
tenuous, with still such definite and concrete spots in it." It is a
charming phrase, and from its own suggestiveness gently constrains one
to think. But if we turn at once to the most considerable poem of the
collection, "To All the Dead," we shall see our poet in the very act of
recording the life that he visualizes in this way; and we shall see how
remarkably the texture of the poem fits the description in the passage
just quoted: "life hazy and tenuous, with such definite and concrete
spots."

To tell the truth, haze is the first thing we see when observing the
effect of this poem. It is pervasive too, and for a time nothing more is
visible save two or three islets of concrete experience, projecting
above it and appearing to float about in it, unstable and unrelated.
This first effect is rather like that of a landscape in a light autumn
ground-mist, which floats along the valley-meadows leaving tree-tops and
hillsides clear. Or it is like trying to recollect what happened to you
on a certain memorable day. The mood comes back readily enough, golden
or sombre; but the events which induced it, or held it in check, or gave
it so sudden a reverse only return reluctantly, one by one, and not even
in their proper order; so that we have to puzzle them out and rearrange
and fit them together before the right sequence appears.

Such is the main impression of "To All the Dead." Only the artist has
been at work here selecting his incidents with a keen eye and sensitive
touch, brooding over them with a temperament of complex charm, and for
all their apparent disjunction, relating and unifying them, as in life,
with the subtlest and frailest of links. As a consequence, at a second
glance the haze begins to lift, while at a third the whole landscape is
visible, a prospect very rich and fair despite the ugly spots which the
artist has not deigned to eliminate, and which, as a fact, he has
deliberately retained.

But there is no doubt the first glance is puzzling. If one were not
caught by the interest of those concrete spots it might even be
tiresome, and one would probably not trouble to take the second glance.
But they are so curious in themselves, and so boldly sketched, that we
are arrested; and the next moment the general design emerges. First the
picture of the ancient Chinese queen--a Mongolian Helen--

    With slanting eyes you would say were blind--
    In a dead white face.

That, with its quaint strange setting and its suggestion of a guilty
love story, is a thing to linger over for its own sake, apart from its
apparent isolation. Nor do we fully realize till later (although
something subtler than intelligence has already perceived it), that in
this opening passage the theme has been stated, and that the key-note
was struck in the line

    She should have been dead nine thousand year....

But we pass abruptly, in the second movement, to our own time and to the
very heart of our own civilization. We are paying a call on a garrulous
friend in the rue de la Paix. He is an American and therefore a
philosopher; but as he descants on the 'nature of things,' doubtless in
the beautiful English of the gentle American, we let our attention
wander to things that touch us more sharply, to sights and sounds
outside the window, each vividly perceived and clearly picked out, but
all resolving themselves into a symbol, vaguely impressive, of the
complicated whirl of life. And this passage again, with its satiric
flavour and dexterity of execution, we are content to enjoy in its
apparent detachment, until we glimpse the link which unites it to the
larger interest of the whole.

The link with that ancient queen is in a flash of contrast--a couple of
Chinese chiropodists, grinning from their lofty window at a _mannequin_
on the opposite side of the street. And as the theme is developed,
episodes which seem irrelevant at first, are soon found to have their
relation with the thought--of death and tragic passion--on which the
poet is brooding. At a chance word dropped by the American host the
confused and perplexing sights and sounds of the outer world vanish; and
the philosophical lecture, droning hitherto just on the edge of
consciousness, fades even out of hearing--

                                 ... I lost them
    At the word "Sandusky." A landscape crossed them;
    A scene no more nor less than a vision,
    All clear and grey in the rue de la Paix.

He is seven years back in time and many hundreds of miles away, pushing
up a North American river in a screaming, smoky steamer, between high
banks crowned with forests of fir:

    And suddenly we saw a beach--

    A grey old beach and some old grey mounds
    That seemed to silence the steamer's sounds;
    So still and old and grey and ragged.
    For there they lay, the tumuli, barrows,
    The Indian graves....

So, rather obliquely perhaps as to method, but with certainty of effect,
we are prepared for the culmination in the third movement. The poet has
fled from civilization and 'Modern Movements' to the upland heather of a
high old mound above the town of Trêves. And here, on a late autumn
evening, he lingers to think. He remembers that it is the eve of All
Souls' Day; and remembers too that the mound on which he is seated is an
old burying-place of great antiquity. In the cold and dark of his eerie
perch, certain impressions of the last few days return to him, just
those which have been subtly galling a secret wound and impelling him to
flee--the tragedy of the Chinese queen, the vision of the old tumuli at
Sandusky Bay, the unheeded platitudes of his friend--

                                 ... "_From good to good,
    And good to better you say we go._"
    (There's an owl overhead.) "_You say that's so?_"
    My American friend of the rue de la Paix?
    "_Grow better and better from day to day._"
    Well, well I had a friend that's not a friend to-day;
    Well, well, I had a love who's resting in the clay
    Of a suburban cemetery.

One has felt all through that something weird is impending; but I am
sure that no ghost-scene so curiously impressive as that which follows
has ever been written before. It could not have been done, waiting as it
was for the conjuncture of time and temperament and circumstance. But
here it is, a thing essentially of our day; with its ironic mood, its
new lore, its air of detachment, its glint of grim humour now and then,
and its intense passion, both of love and of despair, which the
fugitive show of nonchalance does but serve to accentuate. Passion is
the dominant note as the myriad wraiths of long-dead lovers crowd past
the brooding figure in the darkness.

    And so beside the woodland in the sheen
    And shimmer of the dewlight, crescent moon
    And dew wet leaves I heard the cry "Your lips!
    Your lips! Your lips." It shook me where I sat,
    It shook me like a trembling, fearful reed,
    The call of the dead. A multitudinous
    And shadowy host glimmered and gleamed,
    Face to face, eye to eye, heads thrown back, and lips
    Drinking, drinking from lips, drinking from bosoms
    The coldness of the dew--and all a gleam
    Translucent, moonstruck as of moving glasses,
    Gleams on dead hair, gleams on the white dead shoulders
    Upon the backgrounds of black purple woods....

That poem naturally comes first in a little study, because it is the
most considerable in the collection, and again because it is the most
characteristic. It is very convenient, too, for illustrating those
theories of the preface, as for example, that the business of the poet
is "the right appreciation of such facets of our own day as God will let
us perceive ... the putting of certain realities in certain aspects ...
the juxtaposition of varied and contrasting things ... the genuine love
and the faithful rendering of the received impression." But on æsthetic
grounds one is not so sure of "To All the Dead" for the first place.
Perhaps it tries to include too many facets of life--or death; perhaps
we get a slight impression as regards technique that the poet is
_consciously_ experimenting; and there is a shade of morbidity haunting
it. In many of the shorter pieces there is a nearer approach to
perfection. "The Portrait," for instance, a symbolical picture of life,
has only one flaw; a slight excess of a trick of repetition which is a
weakness of our author. It is mere carping, however, to find fault with
a piece which is so noble in idea and gracious in expression; and it
seems a crime to spoil the lovely thing by mutilating it. But with a
resemblance of theme, the poem is so strongly contrasted in manner with
"To All the Dead" that one cannot resist quoting from it at this point.
The idea, although great, is relatively simple: life, symbolized in the
figure of a woman, seated upon a tomb in a sequestered graveyard. The
mood is one of serene melancholy, not rising to passion or dropping to
satire; and the gentle unity of thought and feeling leaves the mind free
to receive the impression of beauty.

    She sits upon a tombstone in the shade;

    .....

    Being life amid piled up remembrances
    Of the tranquil dead.
                     ... So she sits and waits.
    And she rejoices us who pass her by,
    And she rejoices those who here lie still,
    And she makes glad the little wandering airs,
    And doth make glad the shaken beams of light
    That fall upon her forehead: all the world
    Moves round her, sitting on forgotten tombs
    And lighting in to-morrow.

That was written earlier than "To All the Dead," but, like the two songs
which come immediately after it in this volume, and like the "Suabian
Legend," it is amongst Mr Hueffer's best things. One precious quality is
the temperament which pervades it--and the principal artistic
significance of all this work is to have expressed so strikingly an
exuberant and complex personality. Sensibility rules, perhaps; but
reflective power is visibly present, with a vein of irony running below
it, precipitated out of its own particular share of the bitterness that
nobody escapes. In one aspect after another this individuality is
revealed, and the changing moods are matched by changing forms. It
follows that there are many varied measures here; and most of them have
some new feature. A few are very irregular, and all are, of course,
modelled to suit the author's impressionistic theory. And the fact that
these forms are in the main so well adapted to their themes: that they
are so successful in conveying the desired impression, is as much as to
say that the poet has evolved a technique which perfectly suits his own
genius. It may or it may not carry much further than that; and the
extent to which the new instrument would respond to other hands may be
problematical. One would suppose that some of its qualities at least
would be a permanent gain, particularly the larger range which brings
within its compass so many fresh aspects of life on the one hand and on
the other a richer idiom. But whether or no these are qualities which
will pass into the substance of future poetry, there can be no question
that life seen through this particular temperament is interpreted
vividly by this method.

Thus we have the fulmination of "Süssmund's Address to an Unknown God";
violent, bitter, and unreasoned, the mere rage of weary mind and body
against the goads of modern existence. Thus, in the "Canzone _à la_
Sonata" as in "The Portrait" a single serious thought is rendered in
grave unrhymed stanzas which have all the dignity of blank verse with
something more than its usual vivacity; and thus, too, in "From Inland,"
one of the exquisite pieces of the volume, the whole of a tragedy is
suggested by the rapid sketching of two or three brief scenes. Again the
verse is perfectly fitted to the theme; the sober rhythm matching the
quietness of retrospect; memory tenderly grieving in simple rhymes which
vary their occurrence as emotion rises and falls.

                        "... We two," I said,
    "Have still the best to come." But you
    Bowed down your brooding, silent head,
    Patient and sad and still....

                                 ... Dear!
    What would I give to climb our down,
    Where the wind hisses in each stalk
    And, from the high brown crest to see,
    Beyond the ancient, sea-grey town,
    The sky-line of our foam-flecked sea;
    And, looking out to sea, to hear,
    Ah! Dear, once more your pleasant talk;
    And to go home as twilight falls
    Along the old sea-walls!
    The best to come! The best! The best!
    One says the wildest things at times,
    Merely for comfort. But--_The best!_

Again, in "Grey Matter" and "Thanks Whilst Unharnessing," the colloquial
touch is right and sure. In the latter poem, the almost halting time of
the opening lines clearly suggests the tired horse as he draws to a
standstill in the early darkness of a winter evening: there is a quicker
movement as the robin's note rings out; the farmer's song is broken at
intervals as he moves about the business of unharnessing, and when he
stands at the open stable door, peering through the darkness at the
robin on the thorn, the impression of relief from toil, of gratitude for
home and rest, of simple kindliness and humanity, is complete--

    Small brother, flit in here, since all around
    The frost hath gripped the ground;
    And oh! I would not like to have you die.
    We's help each other,
    Little Brother Beady-eye.

One might continue to cite examples: the rapid unrhymed dialogue of
"Grey Matter," which continues so long as there is a touch of
controversy in the talk of husband and wife, and changes to a lyric
measure as emotion rises; the real childlikeness of the "Children's
Song"; or the mingled pain and sweetness of "To Christina at Nightfall,"
epitomising life in its philosophy and reflecting it in its art. But it
is unnecessary to go further; and this last little poem (I will not do
it violence by extracting any part of it) is perhaps the most complete
vindication of our poet's theories. Never surely were impressions so
vivid conveyed with a touch at once so firm and tender; never were
thought and feeling so intense rendered with such gracious homeliness.

_An Irish Group_

The spirit of poetry is native to Ireland. It awakened there in the
early dawn, and has hardly slumbered in two thousand years. Probably
before the Christian era it had become vocal; and as long as twelve
hundred years ago it had woven for the garment of its thought an
intricate and subtle prosody. You would think it had grown old in so
great a time. You would almost expect to find, in these latter days, a
pale and mournful wraith of poetry in the green isle. You would look for
the symbol of it in the figure of some poor old woman, like the
legendary Kathleen ni Houlihan, who is supposed to incarnate the spirit
of the country. But even while you are looking it will happen with you
as it happened before the eyes of the lad in the play by Mr Yeats. The
bent form will straighten and the old limbs become lithe and free, the
eyes will sparkle and the cheeks flush and the head be proudly lifted.
And when you are asked, "Did you see an old woman?" you will answer with
the boy in the play:

    I did not; but I saw a young girl, and she had the walk of a queen.

So it is with the later poetry of Ireland. One would not guess, in the
more recent lyrics, that these singers are the heirs of a great
antiquity. Their songs are as fresh as a blade of grass: they are as new
as a spring morning, as young and sweet as field flowers in May. They
partake of youth in their essence; and they would seem to proceed from
that strain in the Irish nature which has always adored the young and
beautiful, and which dreamed, many centuries ago, a pagan paradise of
immortal youth which has never lost its glamour:

    Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,
    Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,
    Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.

Doubtless we owe this air of newness largely to the rebirth of
literature in the Isle. When we say that poetry has never slumbered
there, we get as near to the truth as is possible; it seems always to
have been quick, eager and spontaneous, and never to have drowsed or
faded. But there was a black age when it was smitten so hard by external
misfortune that it nearly died. It was early in the nineteenth century
when, as Dr Hyde tells, "The old literary life of Ireland may be said to
come to a close amidst the horrors of famine, fever and emigration." All
that Dr Hyde and Lady Gregory have done to build up the new literary
life of their land cannot be fully realized yet. But out of their
labours has surely sprung the movement which we call the Irish Literary
Renaissance--a movement in which, disregarding cross currents, the
detached observer would include the whole revival, whether popular or
æsthetic. By fostering the Gaelic they have awakened in the people
themselves a sense of the dignity of their own language and literature.
By the translation of saga and romance, the patient gathering of
folk-tale and fairy-lore, the search for and interpretation of old
manuscripts, they have given to native poets a mass of material which is
peculiarly suited to their genius. And since approximately the year 1890
they have seen their reward in the work of a band of brilliant writers.
Romance is reborn in the novel; the poetry of the old saga blooms again
in the lyric; and a healthy new development has given to Ireland what
she never before possessed--a native drama.

Now it is true that the larger figures of the movement have receded a
little; the one in whom the flame of genius burned most fiercely has
passed into silence. And Synge being gone, there is no hand like his,
cunning to modulate upon every string of the harp. There is no voice of
so full a compass, booming out of tragic depths or shrilling satiric
laughter or sweet with heroic romance; breathing essential poetry and
yet rich with the comedy of life. It is a fact to make us grieve the
more for that untimely end, but it is not a cause for despair. For there
are many legatees of the genius of Synge. They are slighter
figures--naturally so, at this stage of their career--but they belong,
as he did, to the new birth of the nation's genius and they draw their
inspiration directly from their own land.

Here we touch a constant feature of Irish poetry. Dr. Hyde tells that
from the earliest times the bards were imbued with the spirit of
nationality: that their themes were always of native gods and heroes,
and that they were, in a sense, the guardians of national existence. The
singers of a later day curiously resemble them in this. Sometimes it is
a matter of outward likeness only, the new poets having drawn directly
upon the stories which have been placed in their hands from the old
saga. But much more often it is a rooted affinity--a thing of blood and
nerve and mental fibre. Then, although the gods may bear another name
and the heroes be of a newer breed and the national ideal may be
enlarged, it is still with these things that the poets are preoccupied.

This has become to the scoffer a matter of jest, and to the grumbler a
cause of complaint--that the Irish poet is obsessed by race. They say
that they can guess beforehand what will be the mood, the manner and the
subject of nine Irish poems out of ten. They are very clever people, so
they probably could get somewhere near the mark. And they would
naturally find themselves cramped in these narrow bounds. Religion and
history and national ideals would give them no scope. But when they
maintain that this is a radical defect, I am not at all convinced. I
remember that many of the world's great books proceeded from an intense
national self-consciousness; and I ask myself whether it may not be a
law in the literary evolution of a people, as well as in their political
development, that they proceed by way of a strong, free and proud spirit
of nationality to something wider. The reply may be that that is a
relatively early stage through which, in a normal literary progress,
Ireland should have passed long since. True, but normal growth and
advance have never been possible to her; and recalling the events of her
history, it is something of a marvel that the literary genius should
have survived at all.

In contrast with modern English poetry, impatient as it is to escape
from tradition, these traits which mark a line of descent so clearly are
the more striking. One may even smile a little at them--whimsically, as
we do when we see a youth or a young girl reproducing the very looks and
tones and gestures of an older generation. There is something comical in
the unconscious exactitude of it. But the laugh comes out of the deeper
sources of comedy. There lies below it, subconsciously perhaps, a
profound sense of those things in life which are most precious and most
enduring.

One of the gayer features of this family likeness is the persistence of
a certain kind of satire. We know from Dr Hyde's _Literary History of
Ireland_ that an important function of the ancient bards was to satirize
the rivals and enemies of their chieftain. They had, of course, to sing
his victories, to inspire and encourage his warriors and to weave into
verse the hundreds of romances which had come down to them from times
older still. But their equipment was not complete unless it included a
good stinging power of ridicule; and the _ollamh_, or chief bard, was
commonly required to castigate in this way the king of some other
province who happened to have given offence. But it is not to be
supposed that the rival _ollamh_ would remain silent under the
punishment inflicted on his lord; and one can imagine the battle of wits
which would follow. Or, if we need any assurance as to the caustic power
of the bard, it may be found in one quaint incident. The hero Cuchulain
was ranged against Queen Maeve of Connacht in her famous raid into
Ulster about the year 100 B.C. Maeve was astute as well as warlike, and
when she had failed several times to induce Cuchulain to engage singly
with one of her warriors, she sent to him a threat that her bards "would
criticize, satirize and blemish him so that they would raise three
blisters on his face" ... and Cuchulain instantly consented to her wish.

I cannot guess how many blisters have been raised by Irish satirists
since that date, but I know the art has not died out. There are modern
practitioners of it. Synge made the national susceptibility smart; and
yet his satire, to the mere onlooker, would seem sympathetic enough. So,
too, with Miss Susan Mitchell. She pokes fun at her compatriots with
perfect good humour and we cannot believe that they would be annoyed by
it. But you never can tell. Perhaps the witty philosophy of "The Second
Battle of the Boyne" would not appeal to an Ulster Volunteer; and it is
conceivable that even a Nationalist might resent the sly shaft at the
national pugnacity. The opening stanza tells about an old man, whose
name of portent is Edward Carson MacIntyre. His little grandchild runs
in to him from the field carrying a dark round thing that she has
found, and she trundles it along the floor to the old man's feet.

    Now Edward Carson MacIntyre
      Was old, his eyes were dim,
    But when he heard the crackling sound,
      New life returned to him.
    "Some tax-collector's skull," he swore,
    "We used to crack them by the score."

    "Why did you crack them, grandpapa?"
    Said wee Victoria May;
    "It surely was a wicked thing
    These hapless men to slay."
    "The cause I have forgot," said Mac,
    "All I remember is the crack."

    .....

    "And some men said the Government
    Were very much to blame;
    And I myself," says MacIntyre,
    "Got my own share of fame.
    I don't know why we fought," says he,
    "But 'twas the devil of a spree."

Again it is possible (though hardly probable one would think) that Mr
George Moore does not really enjoy the fun so cleverly poked at him in
the stanzas, "George Moore Comes to Ireland." Safe in our own
detachment, the criticism seems delicious, brightly hitting off the
personality which has grown so familiar in Mr Moore's work, and
especially in "Hail and Farewell": the delightful garrulity, the
disconcerting candour, the intimacy and naïve egoism, and the perfectly
transparent what-a-terror-I-was-in-my-youth air. The speaker in the poem
is, of course, Mr Moore himself; and it will be seen how cunningly the
author has caught his attitude, particularly to the work of Mr W. B.
Yeats--

    I haven't tried potato cake or Irish stew as yet;
    I've lived on eggs and bacon, and striven to forget
    A naughty past of ortolan and frothy omelette.

    .....

    But W. B. was the boy for me--he of the dim, wan clothes;
    And--don't let on I said it--not above a bit of pose;
    And they call his writing literature, as everybody knows.

    If you like a stir, or want a stage, or would admirèd be,
    Prepare with care a naughty past, and then repent like me.
    My past, alas! was blameless, but this the world won't see.

When Miss Mitchell's satire is engaged on personalities in this way, it
has a piquancy which may obscure the subtler flavour of it. But the
truth is that it is often literary in a double sense, both in subject
and in treatment. So we may find a theme of considerable general
interest in the world of literature, treated in the allusive literary
manner which has so much charm for the booklover. And to that is added a
racy and vigorous satirical touch. Thus, for instance, is the question
of Synge's _Playboy_ handled. Ridicule is thrown on the stupid rage with
which it was received, and on the folly which generalized so hotly from
the play to the nation, deducing wild nonsense against a whole people
and its literature because the man who killed his father in the story is
befriended by peasants. Here is a snatch of it:

      I can't love Plato any more
    Because a man called Sophocles,
      Who lived in distant Attica,
    Wrote a great drama _Oedipus_,
      About a Greek who killed his da.
    I know now Plato was a sham,
      And Socrates I brush aside,
    For Phidias I don't care a damn,
      For every Greek's a parricide.

So, too, comes the burlesque touch in the "Ode to the British Empire":

    God of the Irish Protestant,
      Lord of our proud Ascendancy,
    Soon there'll be none of us extant,
      We want a few plain words with thee.
      Thou know'st our hearts are always set
      On what we get, on what we get.

The genial temper of this work pervades even the political pieces. Miss
Mitchell is no respecter of persons or institutions: she finds food for
derision in friend as well as foe. But her laughter is not
bitter--unless, perhaps, a tinge comes in when she touches that old
source of bitterness, the gulf between the Saxon and the Celt--

    We are a pleasant people, the laugh upon our lip
    Gives answer back to your laugh in gay good fellowship;
    We dance unto your piping, we weep when you want tears;
    Wear a clown's dress to please you, and to your friendly jeers
    Turn up a broad fool's face and wave a flag of green--
    But the naked heart of Ireland, who, who has ever seen?

There is, however, a more important strain of heredity in the new Irish
poetry; and it comes directly through the renaissance of which we have
already spoken. There are two lines of development which begin in that
rebirth; but they proceed almost at right angles from each other. One,
the clearer and more direct, is towards work of a specifically literary
order. The other is tending to a simple and direct rendering of life. On
the one hand we find poetry which is romantic in manner and heroic in
theme. This is largely of narrative form, and seems to hold within it
the promise of epic growth. On the other hand, there is a lyric form of
less pretension and wilder grace; music so fresh and apparently artless
as to mock the idea of derivation. Yet it, too, owes its vitality to the
same impulse, and is, perhaps, its healthiest blossoming.

The treasury of Irish romance has been eagerly drawn upon by the
literary poet; and splendid stories they are for his purpose. Every one
by this time knows the incomparable Deirdre legend, in one or other of
the fine versions by Mr Yeats, Mr Trench or Synge. Deirdre, as a heroine
of the ancient world, positively shines beside a Helen or a Cleopatra.
In her is crystallized the Celtic conception of womanhood, with her
free, clean, brave, generous soul; magnificently choosing her true mate
rather than wed the High King Conchubar; and with her lover
magnificently paying the penalty of death.

We have become almost as familiar, too, with the Hosting of Maeve, the
prowess of Cuchulain, and the mythological figures of Dagda and Dana,
who are the Zeus and Hera of early Irish religion. Here is a fragment of
a poem by Mr James Cousins called "The Marriage of Lir and Niav." The
personages of the story belong to very early myth. To find Lir you must
go back past the heroes and the demigods: further still, past the gods
themselves, to their ancestors. For Lir was the father of Mananan the
sea-god; and he was the Lord of the Seven Isles. Niav (or Niamh) is
described as the Aphrodite of Irish myth; which probably accounts for
the symbolism in the passage where Lir first sees her--

    But, as upon the breathless hour of eve,
    The gentle moon, smiling amid the wreck
    And splendid remnant of the flaming feast
    Wherewith Day's lord had sated half the world,
    Sets a cool hand on the tumultuous waves,
    And soothes them into peace, and takes the throne,
    And beams white love that wakens soft desire
    In waiting hearts; so in that throbbing pause
    Came Niav, daughter of the King whose name
    May not be named till First and Last are one.
                               ... And He who stood
    Unseen, apart, marked how about Her form,
    Clothed white as foam, Her sea-green girdle hung
    Like mermaid weed, and how within her wake
    There came the sound and odour of the sea,
    The swift and silent stroke of unseen wings,
    And little happy cries of mating birds;

This poem appeared in one of Mr. Cousins' earlier books, _The Quest_,
published in 1904; and it is interesting to observe in it the little
signs which indicate the nearness of the poet at that time to the source
of his inspiration. The stories from the three great national cycles of
romance had been made accessible in the years just preceding; and the
poetic imagination seems to have been charmed by their quaint manner as
well as stimulated by their vigour. Hence we find in this poem one or
two familiar epic devices which have apparently been adopted as a means
to catch the tone of the old story, and to convey a sense of its
antiquity. There is, for instance, the trick of repetition that we know
so well, a whole phrase recurring, either word for word or varied very
slightly, at certain intervals through the poem. Thus we have the phrase
which appears in the passage quoted above, and which is several times
repeated in other places--

                      --the King whose name
    May not be named till First and Last are one.

Thus, too, we find the frequent use of simile of an involved and
elaborate order. Mr Cousins reveals himself as poet and artist in this
device alone. Imagination and mastery of technique are alike implied in
fancies so beautifully wrought. The opening lines of the passage we have
given supply an example, and another may be taken from "Etain the
Beloved." It is simpler than most, but it illustrates very aptly the
grace of idea and expression which is characteristic of this poet. The
scene is an assembly of the people before King Eochaidh; and the chief
bard is presenting their urgent petition to him--

    He ceased, and all the faces of the crowd
    Shone with the light that kindles when the boon
    Of speech has eased the heart; as when a cloud
    Falls from the labouring shoulder of the moon,
    And all the world stands smiling silver-browed.

In the same poem of Etain we may note the free use of description and
the rich colour and profuse detail which mark romantic work of this
kind. The story of Etain has a mythological association. She was the
beloved wife of Mider, one of the ancient gods; but she seems to have
been driven out of the hierarchy and to have become incarnate in the
form of a young girl of great beauty. King Eochaidh, not knowing of her
divine origin, wooed her and made her queen. But Mider followed her to
earth and won her back from her human lover. There is an exquisite
stanza in which the King sends to seek for his bride, and tells how they
will find her--

    "She shall be found in some most quiet place
    Where Beauty sits all day beside her knee
    And looks with happy envy on her face;
    Where Virtue blushes, her own guilt to see,
    And Grace learns new, sweet meanings from her grace;
    Where all that ever was or will be wise
    Pales at the burning wisdom of her eyes."

News is brought to the King that Etain is found, and he goes to the
remote and lonely place that his messengers have told him of. He comes
upon her unaware--

    There by the sea, Etain his destined bride
    Sat unabashed, unwitting of the sight
    Of him who gazed upon her gleaming side,
    Fair as the snowfall of a single night;
    Her arms like foam upon the flowing tide;
    Her curd-white limbs in all their beauty bare,
    Straight as the rule of Dagda's carpenter.

There is, too, in this poetry of Mr Cousins, a very tender feeling for
Nature. Perhaps it does not quite accord with the spirit of the wild
time out of which the stories came; but that opens up a larger question
into which we are not bound to enter. For if we are going to quarrel
with the treatment of epic material in any but the vigorous, 'primitive'
manner, we shall make ourselves the poorer by rejecting much beautiful
poetry. We may even find ourselves robbed of Virgilian sweetness. But
most of us will be wise enough to take good things wherever we find
them; and may, therefore, rejoice in stanzas like these, which describe
the stirring of wild creatures at dawn:

    Somewhere the snipe now taps his tiny drum;
    The moth goes fluttering upward from the heath;
    And where no lightest foot unmarked may come,
    The rabbit, tiptoe, plies his shiny teeth
    On luscious herbage; and with strident hum
    The yellow bees, blustering from flower to flower,
    Scatter from dew-filled cups a sparkling shower.

    The meadowsweet shakes out its feathery mass;
    And rumorous winds, that stir the silent eaves,
    Bearing abroad faint perfumes as they pass,
    Thrill with some wondrous tale the fluttering leaves,
    And whisper secretly along the grass
    Where gossamers, for day's triumphal march,
    Hang out from blade to blade their diamond arch.

There is, however, a very different manner in which these early legends
are being treated by some of the Irish poets. One may call it 'Celtic,'
in the hope of conveying some impression of it in a single word. But if
you would get nearer than that, you may take one or two fragments from
Mr Yeats' _The Celtic Twilight_--such as "the voice of Celtic sadness
and of Celtic longing for infinite things ... the vast and vague
extravagance that lies at the bottom of the Celtic heart." And to
phrases like that, which adumbrate the spirit of the work, you must add
a style which is allusive, mystic, and symbolical: in fact, a mode of
expression rather like Mr Yeats' own early poetry. But the crux of the
matter lies there. For the production of really good work of this kind
demands just the equipment which Mr Yeats happens to possess: the right
temperament and the right degree (a high one) of poetic craftsmanship.
It is a rare combination--unique, of course, in so far as the element
of individuality enters. And attempts which have been made to gain the
same effects with a different natural endowment have failed in
proportion as temperament was unsuited or 'the capacity for taking
pains' was less. Hence 'Celtic' poetry, in the specific sense, has
fallen into some disfavour. Yet when mood and material and craft 'have
met and kissed each other,' it is clear that authentic beauty is
created; and that of a kind which cannot be made in any other way. Thus
we might choose, from the romantic work of Miss Eva Gore Booth, passages
where all the desirable qualities seem to meet. There is, for instance,
the poem which prefaces her _Triumph of Maeve_, from which I take the
last two stanzas. Here is finely caught that unrest of soul which we
have been taught to believe essentially Celtic; though it probably
haunts every imaginative mind, of whatever race.

    There is no rest for the soul that has seen the wild eyes of Maeve;
    No rest for the heart once caught in the net of her yellow hair--
    No quiet for the fallen wind, no peace for the broken wave;
    Rising and falling, falling and rising with soft sounds everywhere,
    There is no rest for the soul that has seen the wild eyes of Maeve.
    I have seen Maeve of the Battles wandering over the hill
    And I know that the deed that is in my heart is her deed;
    And my soul is blown about by the wild winds of her will,
    For always the living must follow whither the dead would lead--
    I have seen Maeve of the Battles wandering over the hill.

From the same romance we may select a speech by Fionavar, Queen Maeve's
beautiful young daughter. The sense of the supernatural enters here, for
the occasion is Samhain, the pagan All Souls' Eve. It is a night when
gods and fairies are abroad, and Fionavar has seen things strange and
awesome:

    As I came down the valley after dark,
    The little golden dagger at my breast
    Flashed into fire lit by a sudden spark;
    I saw the lights flame on the haunted hill,
    My soul was blown about by a strange wind.
    Though the green fir trees rose up stark and still
    Against the sky, yet in my haunted mind
    They bent and swayed before a magic storm:
    A wave of darkness thundered through the sky,
    And drowned the world....

In _Nera's Song_, again, as in the whole romance, we find the element
of dreams which is supposed to be an indubitable sign of the Celtic
temperament. Nera, who is the Queen's bard, has just returned after an
absence of one whole year in the Land of Faëry; and though it is autumn,
his arms are full of primroses, the fairies' magical flower:

    I bring you all my dreams, O golden Maeve,
    There are no dreams in all the world like these
    The dreams of Spring, the golden fronds that wave
    In faery land beneath dark forest-trees,--
              I bring you all my dreams.

    I bring you all my dreams, Fionavar,
    From that dim land where every dream is sweet,
    I have brought you a little shining star,
    I strew my primroses beneath your feet,
              I bring you all my dreams.

There is yet another style in which the heroic tales are occasionally
treated, and it is directly contrasted with either of those which we
have just considered. Examples of it may be found in Miss Alice
Milligan's book of _Hero Lays_, where it will be seen that the poet's
chief concern is with the story itself, rather than with the manner of
telling. In such a piece as "Brian of Banba," for instance, the action
is clear and moves rapidly. There is a sense of morning air and light in
the poem which is very refreshing after the atmosphere of golden
afternoon, or evening twilight, in which we have been wandering. It
comes partly from the blithe swing of the rhythm: partly from the vigour
and clear strength of diction. And a true dramatic sense imparts the
life and movement of quickly changing emotion.

Banba is one of the many beautiful old names for Ireland; and Brian was
perhaps her greatest king. He lived about the time of our English Alfred
and, like him, Brian fought continually against the invading Dane. He,
too, when a young man, lived for a long time the life of an
outlaw--outcast even from his own clan because he would not suffer the
Danish yoke. The poem relates an incident of Brian's appearance at the
palace of his brother, King Mahon, after a long absence. He strides into
the gay assembly alone, his body worn thin by privation and his garments
ragged.

    "Brian, my brother," said the King, in a tone of scornful wonder,
    "Why dost thou come in beggar-guise our palace portals under?
    Where hast thou wandered since yester year, on what venture of love
        hast thou tarried?
    Tell us the count of thy prey of deer, and what cattleherds thou
        hast harried."

    .....

    "I have hunted no deer since yester year, I have harried no
        neighbour's cattle,
    I have wooed no love, I have joined no game, save the kingly game of
        battle;
    The Danes were my prey by night and day, in their forts of hill and
        hollow,
    And I come from the desert-lands alone, since none are alive to
        follow.
    Some were slain on the plundered plain, and some in the midnight
        marching;
    Some were lost in the winter floods, and some by the fever parching;
    Some have perished by wounds of spears, and some by the shafts of
        bowmen;
    And some by hunger and some by thirst, and all are dead; but they
        slaughtered first
            Their tenfold more of their foemen."

The King impulsively offers him gifts for a reward, but Brian declines
them:

    "I want no cattle from out your herds, no share of your shining
        treasure;
    But grant me now"--and he turned to look on the listening warriors'
        faces--
    "A hundred more of the clan Dal Cas, to follow me over plain and
        pass:
    To die, as fitteth the brave Dal Cas, at war with the Outland
        races."

It must not be supposed, however, that these poets are working solely
upon romantic themes, more or less in the epic manner. On the contrary,
direct treatment of the saga is declining, even with the poets who, like
those we have named, were formerly preoccupied with it. Mr Cousins'
volume of 1915 is sharply symptomatic of the change. Subjects of more
social and more immediate interest are engaging attention, and legendary
material is passing into a phase of allusion and symbol. Concurrently,
there is a development of the pure lyric which gives great promise,
being sound and sweet and vigorous. It has all the signs of vitality,
drawing its inspiration directly from life, keeping close to the earth,
as it were, and often dealing with the large and simple things of
existence.

One may not make too precise a claim here for affiliation with the
literary revival; but observing the movement broadly, it would appear
that this is its more popular manifestation, springing out of the
devotion to the old language of the country, its folklore and the life
of its people. That current of the stream would touch actual existence
much more closely than æsthetic or academic study; and while one might
regard Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats as the pioneers of the movement on the
specifically literary side, on the other hand there are Dr Hyde, A. E.,
and others, whose influence must have counted largely in these new
lyrics of life.

There are about half a dozen poets who are making these sweet, fresh
songs. They have not published very much, but that follows from the
nature of the medium in which they are working. Lyrical rapture is
brief, and the form of its expression correspondingly small. Very seldom
can it be sustained so long and so keenly as, for example, in Mr
Stephens' "Prelude and a Song," for the wise poet accepts the natural
limits of inspiration and technique. But this little group does not, of
course, include all the Irish lyrists. The poets whom we may describe as
literary--who have, at any rate, the more obvious connexion with the
revival--have made beautiful lyrics too. But they are sharply contrasted
in subject or style, or both, with those others. Thus we may take a
"Spring Rondel" by Mr Cousins, which is supposed to be sung by a
starling:

    I clink my castanet,
      And beat my little drum;
      For spring at last has come,
    And on my parapet
    Of chestnut, gummy-wet,
      Where bees begin to hum,
    I clink my castanet,
                And beat my little drum.
    "Spring goes," you say, "suns set."
      So be it! Why be glum?
      Enough, the spring has come;
    And without fear or fret
    I clink my castanet,
      And beat my little drum.

The lyrical virtues of that need no emphasis: the quick, true reflection
of a mood: the lightness of touch and grace of expression. It is,
however, mainly by qualities of form that one is delighted here--the
art's the thing. To make a rondel at all seems an achievement; and to
make it so daintily, with playful fancy and feeling caught to the nicest
shade, almost compels wonder. But that is characteristic of the kind of
verse of which I am speaking, another aspect of which may be seen in a
captivating fragment which has been translated by this poet from the
Irish of some period before the tenth century. It is called "The
Student"; and to find the like of it, with its combined love of nature
and of learning, one must seek a certain 'Clerk of Oxenford' and endow
him with the spirit of his own springtime poet--

    High on my hedge of bush and tree
    A blackbird sings his song to me,
    And far above my linèd book
    I hear the voice of wren and rook.
    From the bush-top, in garb of grey,
    The cuckoo calls the hours of day.
    Right well do I--God send me good!--
    Set down my thoughts within the wood.

It is not often that these poets are occupied with "Modern Movements,"
wherein they differ from their English contemporaries. For that reason,
it is the more significant that one public question has moved them
deeply. Thus we find Miss Mitchell writing of womanhood:

    Oh, what to us your little slights and scorns,
    You who dethrone us with a careless breath.
    God made us awful queens of birth and death,
    And set upon our brows His crown of thorns.

And Miss Gore-Booth, thinking of the sheltered ignorance of many women
who oppose the suffrage for their sex, makes a little parable:

    The princess in her world-old tower pined
    A prisoner, brazen-caged, without a gleam
    Of sunlight, or a windowful of wind;
    She lived but in a long lamp-lighted dream.

    They brought her forth at last when she was old;
    The sunlight on her blanchèd hair was shed
    Too late to turn its silver into gold.
    "Ah, shield me from this brazen glare!" she said.

Mr Cousins, too, has several noble sonnets on the theme, from which we
may select part of the one called "To the Suffragettes":

    Who sets her shoulder to the Cross of Christ,
    Lo! she shall wear sharp scorn upon her brow;
    And she whose hand is put to Freedom's plough
    May not with sleek Expediency make tryst:

    .....

    O fateful heralds, charged with Time's decree,
    Whose feet with doom have compassed Error's wall;
    Whose lips have blown the trump of Destiny
    Till ancient thrones are shaking toward their fall;
    Shout! for the Lord hath given to you the free
    New age that comes with great new hope to all.

The main point of contrast, in turning to the more 'popular' lyrics, is
their simplicity. It is a difference of manner as well as of material.
You will not find in this verse either an elaborate metrical form, or
the treatment of questions such as that which we have just noted. Those
things belong to a more complex condition, both of life and of letters,
than that which is reflected here. And if such a contrast always implied
separation in time, we could believe ourselves to be in a different
epoch--a younger and more ingenuous age. But that, of course, by no
means follows. Even if we regard it as figured by a kind of separation
in space, with town and university on the one hand and the broad land
and toiling people on the other, it is still too arbitrary and,
moreover, it is incomplete. No room is found for the wanderers in
neutral territory.

The contrast is rather like that between the newer English poetry and
the old. It is indicative of a current of thought which is running
throughout Europe, and which may be observed in England, stimulating the
more vital work of contemporary poets. That, crudely stated, is a
perception of the value of life--of the whole of life, sense and spirit,
heart and brain and soul. As the poet is seized by it, he is carried
into a larger and more vivid world, one of manifold significance and
beauty which he had never before perceived. He grasps eagerly at _all_
the stuff of existence, persistently seeks his inspiration in life
instead of in literature, and having rejected the artifice of
conventional terminology, begins to create a new kind of poetry.

Now that undercurrent is not visible in a superficial glance at this
poetry. Even native critics seem to have missed it, or tend to refer it
to anything rather than to the whole movement of the national mind
towards reality. But that is not surprising, indeed. For the limpidity
of these lyrics is quite untroubled; they are innocent of ulterior
purpose, and free from the least chill of philosophical questioning into
origins or ends. The impulse out of which they came is instinctive:
their very art, at least in the selection of themes, is spontaneous. An
excellent example is the whole volume by Mr Joseph Campbell called _The
Mountainy Singer_. He has another, _Irishry_, but although that is very
interesting in its studies of Irish life, it is not so good as poetry,
nor is it so apt to our present purpose, because a tinge of
self-consciousness has crept into it. Let us take, however, the piece
which gives its name to the first of these two books:

    I am the mountainy singer--
    The voice of the peasant's dream,
    The cry of the wind on the wooded hill,
    The leap of the fish in the stream.

    Quiet and love I sing--
    The carn on the mountain crest,
    The cailin in her lover's arms,
    The child at its mother's breast.

    .....

    Sorrow and death I sing--
    The canker come on the corn,
    The fisher lost in the mountain loch,
    The cry at the mouth of morn.

    No other life I sing,
    For I am sprung of the stock
    That broke the hilly land for bread,
    And built the nest in the rock!

That comes directly out of life, and the confidence and sincerity of it
are a result. The poet, become aware of the prompting of genius, loyally
follows its leading through the common and familiar things of human
experience. And partly because of his loyalty to himself; partly because
he happens to be in touch with the land--quite literally the oldest and
commonest thing of all, except the sea--there comes into his poetry a
sense of natural dignity and strength. His themes are simple and touched
with universal significance. Thus there is the song of ploughing:

    I will go with my father a-ploughing
    To the green field by the sea,
    And the rooks and the crows and the seagulls
    Will come flocking after me.
    I will sing to the patient horses
    With the lark in the white of the air,
    And my father will sing the plough-song
    That blesses the cleaving share.

One finds, too, a song of reaping, and one of winter, and one of night.

There is a love-song, pretty and tender, and fresh with the suggestion
of breezes and blue skies, which begins like this:

    My little dark love is a wineberry,
    As swarth and as sweet, I hold;
    But as the dew on the wineberry
    Her heart is a-cold.

There is a piece, in _Irishry_, which tells of the wonder of childhood,
and another in the same book which reverently touches the thought of
motherhood and old age:

    As a white candle
    In a holy place,
    So is the beauty
    Of an agèd face.

    As the spent radiance
    Of the winter sun,
    So is a woman
    When her travail done.

    Her brood gone from her,
    And her thoughts as still
    As the waters
    Under a ruined mill.

So we might turn from one to another of these old and ever-new themes:
not alone in this poet's work, but also in that of Mr Padraic Colum,
whom he resembles. We shall notice in their music a characteristic
harmony. It is a blending of three diverse elements: the individual, the
national, and the universal. One would expect a discord sometimes; but
the measure of the success of this verse is that it contrives to be, at
one and the same time, specifically lyrical (and therefore a reflection
of personality), definitely Irish, and completely human. Most of the
poems will illustrate this, but for an obvious example take this one by
Mr Campbell:

    I met a walking-man;
    His head was old and grey.
    I gave him what I had
    To crutch him on his way.
    The man was Mary's Son, I'll swear;
    A glory trembled in his hair!

    And since that blessed day
    I've never known the pinch:
    I plough a broad townland,
    And dig a river-inch;
    And on my hearth the fire is bright
    For all that walk by day or night.

If one found that on a bit of torn paper in the wilds of Africa, one
would know it for unquestionable Irish. There are half a dozen signs,
but the spirit of the last two lines is enough. The element of
personality is there, too; clearly visible in tone and choice of words
to those who know the poet's work a little. But stronger than all is
the human note, with all that it implies of man's need of religion, his
incorrigible habit of making God in his own image, and the half comical,
half pathetic materialism of his faith.

There are, of course, some occasions when the blending is unequal: when
one or other of the three elements, usually that of national feeling,
weighs down the balance. But, on the other hand, there are many pieces
in which it is very intimate and subtle. Then it follows that the poet
is at his best, for he has forgotten the immediacy of self and country
and the world of men and things in the joy of singing. Of such is this
"Cradle Song" by Mr Colum:

    O, men from the fields!
    Come softly within.
    Tread softly, softly,
    O! men coming in.

    Mavourneen is going
    From me and from you,
    To Mary, the Mother,
    Whose mantle is blue!

    From reek of the smoke
    And cold of the floor,
    And the peering of things
    Across the half-door.

    O, men from the fields!
    Soft, softly come thro'.
    Mary puts round him
    Her mantle of blue.

Such also is Mr Colum's "Ballad Maker," from which I quote the first and
last stanzas:

    Once I loved a maiden fair,
      _Over the hills and far away_.
    Lands she had and lovers to spare,
      _Over the hills and far away_.
    And I was stooped and troubled sore,
    And my face was pale, and the coat I wore
    Was thin as my supper the night before.
      _Over the hills and far away_.

    .....

    To-morrow, Mavourneen a sleeveen weds,
      _Over the hills and far away_;
    With corn in haggard and cattle in shed,
      _Over the hills and far away_.
    And I who have lost her--the dear, the rare,
    Well, I got me this ballad to sing at the fair,
    'Twill bring enough money to drown my care,
      _Over the hills and far away_.

It is an arresting fact, however, that the spirit of nationality is
strong in the work of these poets. True, one may distinguish between a
national sense, keen and directly expressed, and the almost
subconscious influence of race. The first is a theme deliberately chosen
by the poet and variously treated by him. It is a conscious and direct
expression--of aspiration or regret. Racial influence is something
deeper and more constant: something, too, which quite confounds the
sceptic on this particular subject. Whether from inheritance or
environment, it has 'bred true' in these poets; and it will be found to
pervade their work like an atmosphere. It belongs inalienably to
themselves: it is of the essence of their genius, and it is revealed
everywhere, in little things as in great, in cadency and idiom as well
as in an attitude to life and a certain range of ideas.

But though we may make the distinction, it will hardly do to disengage
the strands, because they are so closely bound together. We may only
note the predominance of one or the other, with an occasional complete
and perfect combination. Perhaps the work in which they are least
obvious is the slim volume of Miss Ella Young. But, even here, and
choosing two poems where the artistic instinct has completely subdued
its material, we shall find some of the signs that we are looking for;
and not altogether _because_ we are looking for them. Thus a sonnet,
called "The Virgin Mother," suggests its origin in its very title and,
moreover, it is occupied with a thought of death and a sense of
blissful quietude which are familiar in Irish poetry.

    Now Day's worn out, and Dusk has claimed a share
    Of earth and sky and all the things that be,
    I lay my tired head against your knee,
    And feel your fingers smooth my tangled hair.
    I loved you once, when I had heart to dare,
    And sought you over many a land and sea;
    Yet all the while you waited here for me
    In a sweet stillness shut away from care.
    I have no longing now, no dreams of bliss.
    But drowsed in peace through the soft gloom I wait
    Until the stars be kindled by God's breath;
    For then you'll bend above me with the kiss
    Earth's children long for when the hour grows late,
    Mother of Consolation, Sovereign Death.

In the blank-verse piece called "Twilight" it is again the title which
conveys the direct sign of affinity, but it will also be found to lurk
in every line:

    The sky is silver-pale with just one star,
    One lonely wanderer from the shining host
    Of Night's companions. Through the drowsy woods
    The shadows creep and touch with quietness
    The curling fern-heads and the ancient trees.
    The sea is all a-glimmer with faint lights
    That change and move as if the unseen prow
    Of Niamh's galley cleft its waveless floor,
    And Niamh stood there with the magic token,
    The apple-branch with silver singing leaves.
    The wind has stolen away as though it feared
    To stir the fringes of her faery mantle
    Dream-woven in the Land of Heart's Desire,
    And all the world is hushed as though she called
    Ossian again, and no one answered her.

Now that, in inspiration and imagery, is very clearly derived from
native legendary sources. But no one would expect to find in such work a
direct expression of national feeling. The backward-looking poet, the
one who is drawn instinctively to old themes and times, has not usually
the temper for politics, even on the higher plane. Or if he have, he
will make a rigid separation in style and treatment between his poetry
in the two kinds. Thus Miss Milligan sharply differentiates her lays on
heroic subjects from her lyrics. The lays try to catch the spirit of the
age out of which the stories came. The lyrics, as lyrics should, reflect
no other spirit than the poet's own. The lays are somewhat strict in
form: they are in a brisk narrative style, with a swinging rhythm and
plenty of vigour. The songs, depending on varying sense impressions and
fluctuating emotion, are more irregular as to form and, at the same
time, stronger in their appeal to human sympathy. It is in them that
the poet is able to express the passionate love of country which,
superimposed on a deep sense of Ireland's melancholy history and an
intense longing for freedom, is the birthright of so many Irish poets.
One would like to quote entire the lovely "Song of Freedom," in which
the poet hears in wind and wave and brook a joyous prophecy. But here is
the last stanza:

    To Ara of Connacht's isles,
    As I went sailing o'er the sea,
    The wind's word, the brook's word,
    The wave's word, was plain to me----
    "_As we are, though she is not
    As we are, shall Banba be----
    There is no King can rule the wind
    There is no fetter for the sea._"

More beautiful and significant, perhaps, is a fragment from "There Were
Trees in Tir-Conal":

    Fallen in Erin are all those leafy forests;
    The oaks lie buried under bogland mould;
    Only in legends dim are they remembered,
    Only in ancient books their fame is told.
    But seers, who dream of times to come, have promised
    Forests shall rise again where perished these;
    And of this desolate land it shall be spoken,
    "In Tir-Conal of the territories there are trees."

The prophetic figure there, of course, is symbolical; but thinking of
the basis it has in fact--of the schemes which are afoot in the Isle
for afforestation--one cannot help wondering whether it was consciously
suggested by them. Not that there need be the slightest relation, of
course. The poetical soul will often take a leap in the dark and reach a
shining summit long before the careful people who travel by daylight
along beaten tracks are half way up the hill. Still, there is proof that
this group of writers is keenly interested in the question of the land
and the organized effort to reclaim it. It is the more practical form of
their patriotism, and the sign by which one knows it for something more
than a sentiment. It is a deeply rooted and reasoned sense that the
well-being of a nation, and therefore its strength and greatness, come
ultimately from the soil and depend upon the close and faithful relation
of the people to it. That surely is the conviction which underlies the
work of a poet like Mr Padraic Colum, and particularly such a piece as
his "Plougher":

    Sunset and silence! A man: around him earth savage, earth broken;
    Beside him two horses--a plough!

    Earth savage, earth broken, the brutes, the dawn-man there in the
        sunset,
    And the Plough that is twin to the Sword, that is founder of cities!

    .....

    Slowly the darkness falls, the broken lands blend with the savage;
    The brute-tamer stands by the brutes, a head's breadth only above
        them.
    A head's breadth? Ay, but therein is hell's depth, and the height up
        to heaven,
    And the thrones of the gods and their halls, their chariots, purples
        and splendours.

In closing this study we must take a glance at two recent volumes, one
containing the poetry of Mr Seumas O'Sullivan and the other Mr Cousins'
latest work. Mr O'Sullivan's book is curiously interesting, inasmuch as
it unites certain contrasted qualities which are found separately in the
other poets we have been considering. Thus, this poet is 'literary' in
the sense of knowing and loving good books, in his familiarity with the
old literature of his country, and in the fact that those things have
had a palpable influence upon him. Temperamentally he is an artist, with
the artistic instinct to subordinate everything to the beauty of his
work. But he is also like the more 'popular' poets in his lyrical gift
and in the range and depth of his sympathies; so that his collected
poems of 1912 may be regarded in some degree as an epitome of modern
Irish poetry. There you will find work which indicates that its author
might have lived very happily in a visionary world of æsthetic delight.
He might have chosen always to sing about gods and heroes and fair
ladies with "white hands, foam-frail." But, just as clearly, you will
see that he has been aroused from dreams. Vanishing remnants of them are
perceptible in such a piece as "The Twilight People"; and when they are
gone, in that serene moment before complete awakening, when the light is
growing and the birds call and a fresh air blows, you get a piece like
"Praise":

    Dear, they are praising your beauty,
    The grass and the sky:
    The sky in a silence of wonder,
    The grass in a sigh.

    I too would sing for your praising,
    Dearest, had I
    Speech as the whispering grass,
    Or the silent sky.

    These have an art for the praising
    Beauty so high.
    Sweet, you are praised in a silence,
    Sung in a sigh.

Then comes the awakening, sudden and sharp, with an impulse to spring
out and away from those old dreams of myth and romance:

    Bundle the gods away:
    Richer than Danaan gold,
    The whisper of leaves in the rain,
    The secrets the wet hills hold.

A spiritual adventure seems to be implied in the poem from which this
fragment is taken, similar to that which Mr Cousins has recorded in
"Straight and Crooked." It is the call of reality: the impulse which is
drawing the poetic spirit closer and closer to life, and bidding it seek
inspiration in common human experience. Thus when we find Mr O'Sullivan
invoking the vision of earth we soon discover that 'earth' means
something more to him than 'countryside'--the beauty of Nature and of
pastoral existence. It comprises also towns and crowded streets and busy
people; and it seems to mean ultimately any aspect of human existence
which has the power to induce poetic ecstasy. An infinitely wider range
is thus open to the poet, and though this little volume does not pretend
to cover any large part of it, there are pieces which suggest its almost
boundless possibility. Let us put two of them together. The first, "A
Piper," describes a little street scene:

    A Piper in the streets to-day
    Set up, and tuned, and started to play,
    And away, away, away on the tide
    Of his music we started; on every side
    Doors and windows were opened wide,
    And men left down their work and came,
    And women with petticoats coloured like flame
    And little bare feet that were blue with cold,
    Went dancing back to the age of gold,
    And all the world went gay, went gay,
    For half an hour in the street to-day.

That expresses the rapture which is evoked directly by the touch of the
actual. The next piece, a fragment from "A Madonna," is equally
characteristic; but its inspiration came through another art, a picture
by Beatrice Elvery:

    Draw nigh, O foolish worshippers who mock
    With pious woe of sainted imagery
    The kingly-human presence of your God.
    Draw near, and with new reverence gaze on her.
    See you, these hands have toiled, these feet have trod
    In all a woman's business; bend the knee.
    For this of very certainty is she
    Ordained of heavenly hierarchies to rock
    The cradle of the infant carpenter.

Under the diverse sources from which such poems immediately spring,
there flows the current which is fertilizing, in greater or less degree,
all modern poetry. It has been running strongly in England for some
years, but hitherto the Irish poet has hardly seemed conscious of it,
though it was visibly moving him. Its presence has been mainly felt in
the silence of Mr Yeats, whose lovely romanticism fell dumb at its
touch. But, significantly, the latest poetic utterance of Ireland is a
cry of complete realization. It has remained for Mr Cousins, more
sensitive and complex than his compatriots, to hear the call of his age
more consciously than they; and it is left to him, in grace and courage,
to declare it:

    ... From a sleep I emerge. I am clothed again with this woven
        vesture of laws;
    But I am not, and never again shall be the man that I was.
    At the zenith of life I am born again, I begin.
    Know ye, I am awake, outside and within.
    I have heard, I have seen, I have known; I feel the bite of this
        shackle of place and name,
    And nothing can be the same.

    .....

    I have sent three shouts of freedom along the wind.
    I have struck one hand of kinship in the hands of Gods, and one in
        the hands of women and men.
    I am awake. I shall never sleep again.

_Rose Macaulay_

There is one small volume of poems by Miss Macaulay, called _The Two
Blind Countries_. It is curiously interesting, since it may be regarded
as the testament of mysticism for the year of its appearance, nineteen
hundred and fourteen. That is, indeed, the most important fact about it;
though no one need begin to fear that he is to be fobbed off with
inferior poetry on that account. For the truth is that the artistic
value of this work is almost, if not quite, equal to the exceptional
power of abstraction that it evinces. Poetry has really been achieved
here, extremely individual in manner and in matter, and of a high order
of beauty.

One is compelled, however, though one may a little regret the
compulsion, to start from the fact of the poet's mystical tendency. Not
that she would mind, presumably; the title of her book is an avowal,
clear enough at a second glance, of its point of view. But the reader
has an instinct, in which the mere interpreter but follows him, to
accept a poem first as art rather than thought; and if he examine it at
all, to begin with what may be called its concrete beauty. I will not
say that the order is reversed in the case of Miss Macaulay's poetry,
since that would be to accuse her of an artistic crime of which she is
emphatically not guilty. But it is significant that the greater number
of pieces in this book impress the mind with the idea they convey,
simultaneously with the sounds in which it is expressed. And as the idea
is generally adventurous, and sometimes fantastic, it is that which
arrests the reader and on which he lingers, at any rate long enough to
discover its originality.

But though the mystical element of the work is suggested in its very
title, one discovers almost as early that it is mysticism of a new kind.
It belongs inalienably to this poet and is unmistakably of this age. The
world of matter, this jolly place of light and air and colour and human
faces, is vividly apprehended; but it is seen by the poet to be ringed
round by another realm which, though unsubstantial, is no less real.
Indeed, so strong is her consciousness of that other realm, and its
presence so insistently felt, that sometimes she is not sure to which of
the two she really belongs. In the first poem of the book, using the
fictive 'he' as its subject, she indicates her attitude to that region
beyond sense. In the physical world, this 'blind land' of 'shadows and
droll shapes,' the soul is an alien wanderer. Constantly it hears a
'clamorous whisper' from the other side of the door of sense, coming
from the

           ... muffled speech
    Of a world of folk.

But no cry can reach those others: no clear sight can be had of them,
and no intelligible word of theirs can come back.

    Only through a crack in the door's blind face
      He would reach a thieving hand,
    To draw some clue to his own strange place
          From the other land.

    But his closed hand came back emptily,
      As a dream drops from him who wakes;
    And naught might he know but how a muffled sea
          In whispers breaks.

    .....

    On either side of a gray barrier
      The two blind countries lie;
    But he knew not which held him prisoner,
          Nor yet know I.

This poem may be said to state the theme of the whole book. It would
appear, however, that in the difficult feat of giving form to thought so
intangible, the poet has attained here a detachment which is almost
cold. But it would be unfair to judge her manner of expression from one
poem; and it happens that there is another piece, built upon a similar
theme, which is much more characteristic. It is called "Foregrounds,"
and here again the two countries are conceived as bordering upon each
other, inter-penetrating, but sharply contrasted as night from day. The
contrast favours a more vivid setting, and the subjective treatment,
admitting deeper emotion, infuses a warmth that "The Alien" lacked.
Moreover, the psychic region is here called simply the _dream-country_;
and, presented in the delicate suggestion of a moonlit night, it hints
only at the lure of the mystery, and nothing of its terror. Throughout
the poem, too, runs exuberant joy in common earthly things, in the
beauty of nature and in human feeling; and this is followed, in the
closing lines of each stanza, by an afterthought and a touch of
melancholy: reflection coming, in the most natural way, close upon the
heels of emotion. Thus the first lines revel in the glory of spring; and
then, almost audibly, the tone drops to the lower level of one who
perceives that glory as the veil of something beyond it.

    The pleasant ditch is a milky way,
      So alight with stars it is,
    And over it breaks, like pale sea-spray,
    The laughing cataract of the may
      In luminous harmonies.
        (Cloak with a flower-wrought veil
    The face of the dream-country.
        The fields of the moon are kind, are pale,
        And quiet is she.)

Thus, too, in the third stanza, the recurrent idea of an alien spirit is
caught into imagery which glows with light and colour: imagery so simple
and sensuous as almost to mock abstraction and quite to disguise it; but
bearing at its heart the essence of a philosophy. Again the soul is
imagined as standing at the barrier of the two countries, when reality
has melted to an apparition and the sense of that other realm has grown
acute. Bereft of the comfortable earth, but powerless still to enter the
dream-country: standing lonely and fearful at the cold verge of the
mystic region, the spirit will seek to draw about it the garment of
appearance:

    I will weave, of the clear clean shapes of things,
      A curtain to shelter me;
    I will paint it with kingcups and sunrisings,
    And glints of blue for the swallow's wings,
      And green for the apple-tree.
        (Oh, a whisper has pierced the veil
        Out of the dream-country,
    As a wind moans in the straining sail
        Of a ship lost at sea.)

In reading this poem, and in others too, one is struck by the hold
which the real world has upon our poet. It is a surprising fact in one
of so speculative a turn, and is the clearest sign by which we recognize
her work as of our time and no other. Her thought may be projected very
far, but her feet are generally upon solid ground. Perhaps I ought
rather to say that they are always there; for it is more than probable
that bed-rock may exist in two or three poems where I have been unable
to get down to it. It is in any case safe to say that a sense of
reality--shown in human sympathy and tenderness for lowly creatures, in
love of nature and perception of beauty, in truth to fact, in a touch of
shrewd insight and a sense of humour bred of the habit of detachment--is
very strong. I do not suggest that these qualities are everywhere
apparent. By their nature they are such as could not often enter into
the framework of poems so subtly wrought. But they are woven into the
texture of the poet's mentality, and have even directed its method. So
that, remote as may be the idea upon which she is working, it is
generally brought within the range of sight; and, intangible though it
may seem, it is given definite and charming shape. And if there were not
one obvious proof of this steady anchorage, we might have happy
assurance of it in the clarity and precision of her thought. But
fortunately there _is_ obvious proof. There is, for instance, this
delicious passage in the poem from which I have just quoted, surely
proving a kinship with our own 'blind country' as close as with that
other and something dearer:

    The jolly donkeys that love me well
      Nuzzle with thistly lips;
    The harebell is song made visible,
    The dandelion's lamp a miracle,
      When the day's lamp dips and dips.

There are, too, a sonnet called "Cards" and the very beautiful longer
poem, "Summons," in which the glow of human love makes of the
supernatural a mere shadow. In "Cards" the scene is a 'dim
lily-illumined garden,' and four people are playing there by candle
light. But out of the darkness which rings the circle of flickering
light sinister things creep, menacing the frail life of one of the
players.

    But, like swords clashing, my love on their hate
    Struck sharp, and drove, and pushed.... Grimly round you
    Fought we that fight, they pressing passionate
    Into the lit circle which called and drew
    Shadows and moths of night.... I held the gate.
    You said, "Our game," more truly than you knew.

Again we perceive this sense of reality in the humour of a poem like
"St Mark's Day" or "Three." It is a quality hearty and cheery in the way
of one who knows all the facts, but has reckoned with them and can
afford to laugh. It has a depth of tone unexpected in an artist whose
natural impulse seems to be towards delicate line and neutral tint; and
there is a tang of salt in it which one suspects of having been added of
intent--as a quite superfluous preservative against sentimentality. "St
Mark's Day" is very illuminating in this respect, and in the bracing
sanity under which mere superstition wilts. The village girl, teased by
neighbours into believing that her spectre was seen the night before and
that therefore she must die within the year, is a genuine bit of rustic
humanity. No portrait of her is given; but in two or three strong
touches she stands before us, plump, rosy and rather stupid; hale enough
to live her fourscore years, but sobbing in foolish fright as her sturdy
arms peg the wet linen upon the line.

    I laughed at her over the sticky larch fence,
      And said, "Who's down-hearted, Dolly?"

    And Dolly sobbed at me, "They saw you, too!"
      (And so the liars said they had,
    Though I've not wasted paper nor rhymes telling you),
      And, "Well," said I, "_I'm_ not sad."
    "But since you and me must die within the year,
      What if we went together
    To make cowslip balls in the fields, and hear
      The blackbirds whistling to the weather?"

    So in the water-fields till blue mists rose
      We loitered, Dolly and I,
    And pulled wet kingcups where the cold brook goes,
      And when we've done living, we'll die.

The realism of that goes deeper than its technique, and is a notable
weapon in the hands of such an idealist. But in "Three," another
humorous poem, something even more surprising has been accomplished. "St
Mark's Day" is a bit of pure comedy, and might have been written by a
poet for whom _one_ 'blind country' was the beginning and end of all
experience. That is to say, it is interesting as proof of a healthy
grasp on the real world; but the distinctive feature of this poetry
hardly appears in it. Abstraction is absent, inevitably, of course; and
with it that ideal realm which largely preoccupies the poet's thought.
But in "Three," with reality no less strong, with art matching it in
bold and vigorous strokes, and touches here and there positively comic;
with the scene laid out-of-doors in a sunny noonday of August, there is
achieved an almost startling sense of the supernatural. More than that,
it is the supernatural under two different aspects, or on two separate
planes (whichever may be the correct way to state that sort of thing):
the consciousness of a ghostly presence, in the accepted sense of the
spirit of one dead; and that obscure but disturbing awareness of a
hidden life close at hand which most people have experienced at some
time or other. But while the poet has sketched these two of her "Three"
with an equally light hand, smiling amusedly, as it were, at her own
fantasy, she has differentiated them quite clearly. For the true ghost,
conjured out of the stuff of memory, association and the influence of
locality, is a creature of pure imagination. He is not so much described
as suggested, and only dimly felt. There is a stanza devoted to the
Cambridge landscape in the hot noon, and then--

    In the long grass and tall nettles
      I lay abed,
    With hawthorn and bryony
      Tangled o'erhead.
    And I was alone with Hobson,
      Two centuries dead.

    Hidden by sprawling brambles
      The Nine Waters were;
    From a chalky bed they bubbled up,
      Clean, green, and fair.
    And I was alone with Hobson,
      Whose ghost walks there.

But it seems that the poet is not alone with the pleasant ghost of the
old university carrier. There is a third presence near, hidden and
silent, but malign; and the stanzas in which this secret presence grows
to a realization that is acute and almost terrifying, are remarkably
done. They illustrate this poet's ability to create illusion out of mere
scraps of material, and those of the most commonplace kind; and they
rely for their verbal effect upon the homeliest words. Yet the
impression of an intangible something that is evil and uncanny is so
strong, that when the very real head of the tramp appears the contrast
provokes a sudden laugh at its absurdity.

    And something yawned, and from the grass
      A head upreared;
    And I was not alone with Hobson,
      For at me leered
    A great, gaunt, greasy tramp
      With a golden beard.

    He had a beard like a dandelion,
      And I had none;
    He had tea in a beer-bottle,
      Warm with the sun;
    He had pie in a paper bag,
      Not yet begun.

The vigorous handling of that passage, and its comical actuality, makes
an excellent foil to the subtler method of presenting the two spirits,
living and dead. And the poem as a whole may be said to reflect the dual
elements which are everywhere present in this work. It is true that in a
more characteristic piece the ideal will prevail over the real. And
consequently, imagination will there be found to weave finer strands,
while thought goes much further afield. Thus, in "Crying for the Moon"
and in "The Thief," one may follow the idea very far; and in both poems
we move in the pale light and dim shadow where mystery is evoked at a
hint. Never, I think, was there such an eerie dawn as that in "The
Thief"; yet never was orchard-joy more keenly realized--

    He stood at the world's secret heart
      In the haze-wrapt mystery;
    And fat pears, mellow on the lip,
      He supped like a honey-bee;
    But the apples he crunched with sharp white teeth
      Were pungent, like the sea.

Probably it is in work like this, where both blind countries find
expression, that Miss Macaulay is most successful. But when she gives
imagination licence to wander alone in the ideal region, it occasionally
seems to go out of sight and sound of the good earth. That happens in
"Completion," a poem which is frankly mystical in theme, symbolism, and
terminology. There is not a touch of reality in it; and neither its fine
strange music, nor glowing colour, nor certain perfect phrases, nor the
language, at once rich and tender and strong, can make it more than the
opalescent wraith of a poem. But perhaps that is just what the author
intended it to be!

In any case "Completion" does correspond to, and daintily express, the
mystical strain which is dominant in this work. It is, however, the
extreme example of it. It stands at the opposite pole from "St Mark's
Day," and antithetical to that, it might have been written by a mystic
for whom the material world was virtually nothing. Moreover, it might
belong to almost any time, or not to time at all; whereas the mysticism
of the book as a whole is peculiarly that of its own author and its own
day. It is individual--a thing of this poet's personality and no
other--in the evidence of a finely sensitive spirit, of a gift of vision
abnormally acute, imaginative power that ranges far and free, and a fine
capacity for abstract thought. But all these qualities, though pervasive
and dominant, are sweetly controlled by a humane temper that has been
nurtured on realities.

Hence comes a duality in which it is, perhaps, not too fanciful to see
a feature of contemporary thought--intensely interested in the region of
ideas, but frankly claiming the material world as the basis and
starting-point of all its speculation. One might put it colloquially
(though without the implied reproach) as making the best of both worlds:
humanity recognizing an honourable kinship with matter, but reaching out
continually after the larger existence which it confidently believes to
be latent in the physical world itself.

A voice may be raised to protest that that is too vaguely generalized;
and if so, the protestant may turn for more precise evidence to such
poems as "Trinity Sunday" and "The Devourers." There he will perceive,
after a moment's reflection, the store of modern knowledge--of actual
data--which has been assimilated to the mystical element here. Let him
consider, for example, the first two stanzas of "The Devourers," and
other similar passages:

    Cambridge town is a beleaguered city;
      For south and north, like a sea,
    There beat on its gates, without haste or pity,
      The downs and the fen country.

    Cambridge towers, so old, so wise,
      They were builded but yesterday,
    Watched by sleepy gray secret eyes
      That smiled as at children's play.

It is clear that the knowledge really has been assimilated--it is not a
fragmentary or external thing. It is absorbed into the essence of the
work and will not be found to mar its poetic values. But by a hint, a
word, a turn of expression or a mental gesture, one can see that
learning both scientific and humane (a significant union) has gone into
the poetic crucible. There are signs which point to a whole system of
philosophy: there is an historical sense, imaginatively handling the
data of cosmic history; and there are traces which lead down to a basis
in geology and anthropology. Yet these elements are, as I said,
perfectly fused: it would be difficult to disengage them. And inimical
as they may seem to the very nature of mysticism, they are constrained
by this poet to contribute to her vision of a world beyond sense.

From this point of view "Trinity Sunday" is the most important poem in
the book. It records an experience which the mystic of another age would
have called a revelation, and which he would have apprehended through
the medium of religious emotion. But this poet attains to her ultimate
vision through the phenomena of the real world, apprehended in terms of
the ideal. The warm breath of Spring, rich with scent and sound of the
teeming earth, stirs it to awakening. But though she is walking in
familiar Cambridge with, characteristically, the scene and time exactly
placed: though friendly faces pass and cordial voices give a greeting,
all that suddenly shrivels at the touch of the wild earth spirit. Space
and time curl away in fold after fold; and with them pass successive
forms of strange life immensely remote. But even while reality thus
terribly unfolds, it is perceived to be the _stuff of the world's live
brain_; to have existence only in idea.

    And the fens were not. (For fens are dreams
      Dreamt by a race long dead;
    And the earth is naught, and the sun but seems:
      And so those who know have said.)

Thus the facts of science have gone to the making of this poem, as well
as the theories of an idealist philosophy. It is through them both that
imagination takes the forward leap. But neither the one nor the other
can avail to utter the revelation; and even the poet's remarkable gift
of expression can only suffice to suggest the awfulness of it.

    So veil beyond veil illimitably lifted:
      And I saw the world's naked face,
    Before, reeling and baffled and blind, I drifted
      Back within the bounds of space.

_John Masefield_

There is one sense at least in which Mr Masefield is the most important
figure amongst contemporary poets. For he has won the popular ear, he
has cast the poetic spell further than any of his compeers, and it has
been given to him to lure the multitudinous reader of magazines--that
wary host which is usually stampeded by the sight of a page of verse.

Now I know that there are cultured persons to whom this fact of
uncritical appreciation is an offence, and to them a writer bent upon
purely scientific criticism would be compelled to yield certain points.
But they would be mainly on finicking questions, as an occasional lapse
from fineness in thought or form, an incidental banality of word or
phrase; or a lack of delicate effects of rhyme and metre. And the whole
business would amount in the end to little more than a petulant
complaint; an impertinent grumble that Mr Masefield happens to be
himself and not, let us say, Mr Robert Bridges; that his individual
genius has carved its own channels and that, in effect, the music of the
sea or the mountain torrent does not happen to be the same thing as the
plash of a fountain in a valley.

But having no quarrel with this offending popularity: rejoicing in it
rather, and the new army of poetry-readers which it has created; and
believing it to be an authentic sign of the poetic spirit of our day,
one is tempted to seek for the cause of it. Luckily, there is a poem
called "Biography" which gives a clue and something more. It is a pæan
of zest for life, of the intense joy in actual living which seems to be
the dynamic of Mr Masefield's genius. There is, most conspicuous and
significant, delight in beauty; a swift, keen, accurate response of
sense to the external world, to sea and sky and hill, to field and
flower. But there is fierce delight, too, in toil and danger, in
strenuous action, in desperate struggle with wind and wave, in the
supreme effort of physical power, in health and strength and skill and
freedom and jollity; and above all, first, last and always, in ships.
But there is delight no less in communion with humanity, in comradeship,
in happy memories of kindred, in still happier mental kinships and
intellectual affinities, in books, in 'glittering moments' of spiritual
perception, in the brooding sense of man's long history.

These are the 'golden instants and bright days' which correctly spell
his life, as this poet is careful to emphasize; and we perceive that the
rapture which they inspire in him, the ardour with which he takes this
sea of life, is of the essence of his poetry. It is seen most clearly
in the lyrics; and that is natural, since these are amongst his early
work, and youth is the heyday of joy. It is found in nearly all of them,
of course in varying degree, colouring substance and shaping form,
evoking often a strong rhythm like a hearty voice that sings as it goes.

    So hey for the road, the west road, by mill and forge and fold,
    Scent of the fern and song of the lark by brook, and field, and
        wold;

Or again, in "Tewkesbury Road,"

    O, to feel the beat of the rain, and the homely smell of the earth,
    Is a tune for the blood to jig to, a joy past power of words;
    And the blessed green comely meadows are all a-ripple with mirth
    At the noise of the lambs at play and the dear wild cry of the
        birds.

And it rings in many songs of the sea, telling of its beauty or terror,
its magic and mystery and hardship, its stately ships and tough
sailor-men and strange harbourages, its breath of romance sharply
tingling with reality, its lure from which there is no escape--

    I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
    Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
    And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
    And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

Under the wistfulness of that throbs the same zest as that which finds
expression in "Laugh and be Merry"; but the mood has become more
buoyant--

    Laugh and be merry, remember, better the world with a song,
    Better the world with a blow in the teeth of a wrong.
    Laugh, for the time is brief, a thread the length of a span.
    Laugh and be proud to belong to the old proud pageant of man.

Sometimes a minor key is struck, as in "Prayer;" but even here the joy
is present, revealing itself in sharp regret for the beloved things of
earth. It manifests itself in many ways, subtler or more obvious; but
mainly I think in a questing, venturous spirit which must always be
daring and seeking something beyond. Whether in the material world or
the spiritual, it is always the same--whether it be sea-longing, or
hunger for the City of God, or a vague faring to an unknown bourne, or
the eternal quest for beauty. The poem called "The Seekers" is
beautifully apt in this regard. Simply, clearly, directly, it expresses
the alpha and omega of this genius: the zest which is its driving force
and the aspiration, the tireless and ceaseless pursuit of an ideal,
which is its objective.

    Not for us are content, and quiet, and peace of mind,
    For we go seeking a city that we shall never find.

    There is no solace on earth for us--for such as we--
    Who search for a hidden city that we shall never see.

There is the spirit of adventure, the eternal allure of romance, as old
and as potent as poetry itself. And surely nothing is more engaging,
nothing quicker and stronger and more universal in its appeal, than zest
for life finding expression in this way. In these early lyrics its
spontaneous and simple utterance is very winning; but in the later
narrative poems it is none the less present because, having grown a
little older, it is a little more complex and not so obvious in its
manifestation. Under these longer poems too runs the stream of joy,
somewhat quieter now, perhaps, subdued by contemplation, brought to the
test of actuality, shaping a different form through the conflict of
human will, but still deep and strong, and, as in the earlier work,
expressing its ultimate meaning through the spirit of high adventure.

Thus "The Widow in the Bye Street," which was the first written of these
four narrative poems, is the adventure of motherhood. "Oh!" will protest
some member of the dainty legion which lives in terror of appearances,
"it is a story of lust and murder!" But no; fundamentally, triumphantly,
it is a tale of mother-love, venturing all for the child. Only
superficially is it a tragedy of ungoverned desire and rage, made out of
the incidence of character which we call destiny. The mother's spirit
prevails over all that, and remains unconquerable. In "Daffodil Fields"
there is the adventure of romantic passion. The "Everlasting Mercy," so
obviously as hardly to need the comment, is the high adventure of the
soul; and "Dauber," less clearly perhaps, though quite as certainly, is
that too. But while in the first of these two poems the spirit's spark
is struck into 'absolute human clay,' in "Dauber" it is burning already
in the brain of an artist. Saul Kane, when his soul comes to birth at
the touch of religion, puts off bestiality and rises to a joyful
perception of the meaning of life. The Dauber, with that precious
knowledge already shining within him, but twinned with another, the
supreme and immortal glory of art, with his last breath cries holy
defiance to the elements that snatch his life--_It will go on_.

But there is another reason for the popularity of this poet's work; and
it also is deducible from the poem called "Biography." I mean the
complete and robust humanity which is evinced there. One sees, of
course, that this has a close relation with the zest that we have
already noted; that it is indeed the root of that fine flower. But the
balance of this personality--with power of action and of thought about
equally poised, with the mystic and the humanitarian meeting half-way,
with the ideal and the real twining and intertwining constantly, with
sensuous and spiritual perception almost matched--determines the quality
by which Mr Masefield's poems make so wide and direct an appeal. If
reflectiveness were predominant, if the subjective element outran the
keen dramatic sense, if the ideal were capable of easy victory over the
material (it does conquer, but of that later), this would be poetry of a
very different type. Whether it would be of a finer type it is idle to
speculate, the point for the moment being that it would not command so
large an audience. By just so far as specialization operated, the range
would be made narrower.

It is this sense of humanity which wins; not only explicit, as, for
example, in the deliberate choice of subject avowed once for all in the
early poem called "Consecration"--

    The men of the tattered battalion which fights till it dies,
    Dazed with the dust of the battle, the din and the cries,

    .....

    The sailor, the stoker of steamers, the man with the clout,
    The chantyman bent at the halliards putting a tune to the shout,

    .....

    Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold--
    Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tales be told.

There the poet is responding consciously to the time-spirit: the
awakening social sense which, moving pitifully amongst bitter and ugly
experience, was to evoke the outer realism of his art. That, of course,
being passionately sincere, is a powerful influence. But stronger still
is the unconscious force of personality, this completeness of nature
which in "Biography" is seen as a rare union of powers that are
nevertheless the common heritage of humanity; and which is implicit
everywhere in his work, imbuing it with the compelling attraction of
large human sympathy.

Out of this arise the curiously contrasted elements of Mr Masefield's
poetry. For, as in life itself, and particularly in life that is full
and sound, there is here a perpetual conflict between opposing forces.
It is, perhaps, the most prominent characteristic of this work. It
pervades it throughout, belongs to its very essence and has moulded its
form. It is, of course, most readily apparent in the poet's art. Here
the battling forces of his genius, transferred to the creatures whom he
has created, have made these narrative poems largely dramatic in form.
Here, too, we come upon a clash of realism with romance and idyllic
sweetness. That bald external realism has found much disfavour with
those who do not or will not see its relation to the underlying reality.
And one observes that the critic who professes most to dislike it
hastens to quote the gaudiest example, practically ignoring the many
serene and gracious passages.

But, putting aside the prejudice which has been fostered by a
conventional poetic language, this realistic method does seem to
conflict with certain other characteristics of the work--with the
essential romance of the spirit of adventure, for instance. There does
at first glance appear to be a disturbing lack of unity between that
ardent, wistful and elusive spirit, and the grim actuality here, of
incident and diction; or, on the other hand, between the raw material of
this verse and its elaborate metrical form, or its frequent passages of
rare and delicate beauty. But is it more than an appearance? I think
not. I believe that the incongruity exists only in a canon of poetical
taste which is false to the extent that it is based too narrowly. That
canon has appropriated romance to a certain order of themes and, almost
as exclusively, to a certain manner of expression. Most of our
contemporary poets have cheerfully repudiated the convention so far as
it governed language; building up, each for himself, a fresh, rich,
expressive idiom in which the magic of romance is often vividly
recreated. Some of them, and Mr Masefield pre-eminently, have gone
further. They have perceived the potential romance of all life, and have
broken down the old limit which prescribed to the poet only graceful
figures and pseudo-heroic themes. They have set themselves to express
the wonder and mystery, the ecstasy and exaltation which inhere, however
obscurely, in the lowliest human existence.

Thus we have Saul Kane, the village wastrel of "The Everlasting Mercy,"
glimpsing his heritage, for a moment, in a lucid interval of a drunken
orgy. Suddenly, for a marvellous instant, he is made aware of beauty,
smitten into consciousness of himself and a fugitive apprehension of
reality.

    I opened window wide and leaned
    Out of that pigstye of the fiend
    And felt a cool wind go like grace
    About the sleeping market-place.
    The clock struck three, and sweetly, slowly,
    The bells chimed Holy, Holy, Holy;

    .....

    And summat made me think of things.
    How long those ticking clocks had gone
    From church and chapel, on and on,
    Ticking the time out, ticking slow
    To men and girls who'd come and go,

    .....

    And how a change had come. And then
    I thought, "You tick to different men."
    What with the fight and what with drinking
    And being awake alone there thinking,
    My mind began to carp and tetter,
    "If this life's all, the beasts are better."

The elements of that passage, and cumulatively to its end, are genuinely
romantic: the heightened mood, the night setting of darkness and
solemnity, the wondering and regretful gaze into the past, and the sense
of eternal mystery. So, too, though from a very different aspect, is the
amazing power of the mad scene in this poem. The fierce zest of it
courses along a flaming pathway and is as exhilarating in its speed and
vigour as any romantic masterpiece in the older manner. It is difficult
to quote, in justice to the author, from so closely woven a texture; but
there is a short passage which illustrates over again the physical
development that we have already noted balancing mental and spiritual
qualities in this genius. It is the exultation of Kane in his
swiftness, as he rages through the streets with a crowd toiling after
him.

    The men who don't know to the root
    The joy of being swift of foot,
    Have never known divine and fresh
    The glory of the gift of flesh,
    Nor felt the feet exult, nor gone
    Along a dim road, on and on,
    Knowing again the bursting glows,
    The mating hare in April knows,
    Who tingles to the pads with mirth
    At being the swiftest thing on earth.
    O, if you want to know delight,
    Run naked in an autumn night,
    And laugh, as I laughed then....

The sensuous ecstasy of that is as strongly contrasted with the
pensiveness of the previous scene at the window as it is with the gentle
rhapsody which follows the drunkard's conversion. Of that rhapsody what
can one say? It is a piece about which words seem inadequate, or totally
futile. Perhaps one comment may be made, however. Reading it for the
twentieth time, and marvelling once more at the religious emotion which,
in its naïve sweetness and intensity is so strange an apparition in our
day, my mind flew, with a sudden sense of enlightenment, back to
Chaucer. At first, reflection made the transition seem abrupt to
absurdity; but the connexion had no doubt been helped subconsciously by
the apt fragment from Lydgate on the fly-leaf of this poem. Thence it
was but a step to the large humanity, the sympathy and tolerance and
generosity, the wide understanding bred of practical knowledge of men
and affairs, of the father of poets. An actual likeness gleamed which
was at the same time piquant and satisfying. For, first, it stimulated
curiosity regarding the use by this poet of the Chaucerian rhyme-royal
in three of these long poems. That evinces a leaning on traditional form
rather curious in so independent an artist. And then it teased the mind
with suggestions that led out of range--about mental affinities, and the
different manifestations of the same type of genius, born into ages so
far apart.

It is not, of course, a question of exact or direct comparison between,
let us say, the _Canterbury Tales_ and these narrative poems of the
twentieth century. It is rather a matter of the spirit of the whole
work, of the personality and its reaction to life, which satisfy one
individual at least of a resemblance. Of course it is not easily
susceptible of proof; but there are passages from the two poets which in
thought, feeling, and even manner of expression, will almost form a
parallel. Consider this stanza from a minor poem of Chaucer, a prayer
to the Virgin in the quaint form of an "A. B. C."

    Xristus, thy sone, that in this world alighte,
    Up-on the cros to suffre his passioun,
    And eek, that Longius his herte pighte,
    And made his herte blood to renne adoun;
    And al was this for my salvacioun;
    And I to him am fals and eek unkinde,
    And yit he wol not my dampnacioun--
    This thanke I you, socour of al mankinde.

The childlike faith of that, the quiet rapture of adoration, the abandon
and simple confidence, are curiously matched by the following passage
from "The Everlasting Mercy." Saul Kane has found his soul in the
mystical rebirth of Christianity, and dawn coming across the fields
lightens all his world with new significance.

    O Christ who holds the open gate,
    O Christ who drives the furrow straight,
    O Christ, the plough, O Christ, the laughter
    Of holy white birds flying after,
    Lo, all my heart's field red and torn,
    And Thou wilt bring the young green corn,
    The young green corn divinely springing,
    The young green corn for ever singing;
    And when the field is fresh and fair
    Thy blessèd feet shall glitter there.
    And we will walk the weeded field,
    And tell the golden harvest's yield,
    The corn that makes the holy bread
    By which the soul of man is fed,
    The holy bread, the food unpriced,
    Thy everlasting mercy, Christ.

So one might go on to contrast the several characteristics of this
poetry, and to trace them back to the combination of qualities in the
author's genius. This elemental religious emotion, dramatically fitted
as it is to the character, could only have found such expression by a
mind which deeply felt the primary human need of religion, and which was
relatively untroubled by abstract philosophy. But set over against that
is the almost pagan joy in the senses, the vigour and love of action
which make so strong a physical basis to this work; whilst, on the other
hand, there stands the astonishing contrast between the lyrical
intensity of the idyllic passages of these poems; and the dramatic power
(at once identified with humanity and detached from it) which has
created characters of ardent vitality.

There is, of course, a corresponding technical contrast; but the fact
that it does 'correspond' is an answer to the critics who object to the
violence of certain scenes or to a literal rendering here and there of
thought or word. Granted that this poet is not much concerned to polish
or refine his verse, it remains true that the same sense of fitness
which closes three of these tragedies in exquisite serenity, governs
elsewhere an occasional crudity of expression or a touch of banality. It
is largely--though not always--a question of dramatic truth. The medium
is related to the material of this poetry and ruled by its moods. Hence
its realism is not an external or arbitrary thing. It is something more
than a trick of style or the adoption of a literary mode, being indeed a
living form evolved by the reality which the poet has designed to
express.

The root of the matter lies in a stanza of "Dauber." The young
artist-seaman, who is the protagonist here, has for long been patiently
toiling at his art at the prompting of instinct--the æsthetic impulse to
capture and make permanent the beauty of the material world. But the
pressure of reality upon him, the unimaginable hardships of a sailor's
existence, have threatened to crush his spirit. A crisis of physical
fear and depression has supervened; terror of the storms that the ship
must soon encounter, of the frightful peril of his work aloft, and of
the brutality of his shipmates, has shaken him to the soul. For a
moment, even his art is obscured, shrouded and almost lost in the whirl
of these overmastering realities. But when it emerges from the chaos it
brings revelation to the painter of its own inviolable relation with
those same realities.

                           ... a thought occurred
    Within the painter's brain like a bright bird:

    That this, and so much like it, of man's toil,
    Compassed by naked manhood in strange places,
    Was all heroic, but outside the coil
    Within which modern art gleams or grimaces;
    That if he drew that line of sailors' faces
    Sweating the sail, their passionate play and change,
    It would be new, and wonderful, and strange.

    That that was what his work meant; it would be
    A training in new vision....

One might almost accept that as Mr Masefield's own confession of
artistic faith; it only needs the substitution of the word 'poet' for
the word 'painter' in the second line. But it is not quite complete as
it stands; and an important article of it will be discovered by reading
this poem through and noting the triumph of the ideal over the real,
which is the essential meaning of the work. It is not the most obvious
interpretation, perhaps. The idealist broken by the elements, wasted and
thrown aside, is hardly a victorious figure on the face of things. But,
in spite of that, the poem is a song of victory--of spirit over matter,
of the ideal over reality, of art over life.

The fact is all the more remarkable when we turn for a moment to note
the poet's grip on facts. We have just seen that profound sense of
reality lying at the base of his technical realism; and it has been won,
through a comprehensive experience, by virtue of the balance of his
equipment. There is no bias here, of mind or spirit, which would have
changed the clear humanity of the poet into the philosopher or the
mystic. The naïveté and simple concrete imagery in the expression of
religious feeling are far removed from mysticism. And, on the other
hand, one cannot conceive of Mr Masefield formally ranged with the
abstractions of either the materialist or the idealist school. Yet it is
true that "Dauber" raises the practical issue between the two; and
because the poet has realized life profoundly and dares to tell the
truth about it, the triumph of the ideal is the more complete. He shows
his hero scourged by the elements until all sense is lost but that of
physical torture--

                                         ... below
    He caught one giddy glimpsing of the deck
    Filled with white water, as though heaped with snow.
                                 ... all was an icy blast.

    Roaring from nether hell and filled with ice,
    Roaring and crashing on the jerking stage,
    An utter bridle given to utter vice,
    Limitless power mad with endless rage
    Withering the soul;

With greater daring still we are shown the spirit itself, cowering in
temporary defeat before material force--

    "This is the end," he muttered, "come at last!
    I've got to go aloft, facing this cold.
    I can't. I can't. I'll never keep my hold.
                       ... I'm a failure. All
    My life has been a failure. They were right.

    .....

    I'll never paint. Best let it end to-night.
    I'll slip over the side. I've tried and failed."

And then, finally, the poet does not shrink from the last and grimmest
reality. He seems to say--Let material force do its utmost against this
man. Admit the most dreadful possibility; shatter the life, with its
fine promise, its aspiration and toil and precious perception of beauty,
and fling it to the elements which claim it. Nevertheless the spirit
will conquer, as it has won in the long fight hitherto and will continue
to win. When the Dauber had been goaded almost beyond endurance by the
cruelty of his shipmates, and when their taunts had availed at last to
conjure in him a sickening doubt of his vocation, the poet represents
him as turning instinctively to his easel, and healed in a moment of all
the abasement and derision--

    He dipped his brush and tried to fix a line,
    And then came peace, and gentle beauty came,
    Turning his spirit's water into wine,
    Lightening his darkness with a touch of flame:

So, too, when the horror of the storm and the immense danger of his work
aloft had shaken his manhood for a moment: when he saw his life as one
'long defeat of doing nothing well' and death seemed an easy escape from
it, a rallying cry from the spirit sent him to face his duty:

    And then he bit his lips, clenching his mind,
    And staggered out to muster, beating back
    The coward frozen self of him that whined.

And in the last extremity, when he lay upon the deck broken by his fall
and rapidly slipping back into the eternal silence, the ideal gleamed
before him still. _It will go on!_ he cried; and the four small words,
considered in their setting, with the weight of the story behind them,
have deep significance. For they bring a challenge to reality from a
poet who has very clearly apprehended it; and in their triumphant
idealism they put the corner-stone upon his philosophy and his art.

_Harold Monro_

The poetry of Mr Monro--that which counts most, the later work--is of so
fine a texture and so subtle a perfume that its charm may elude the
average reader. It is, moreover, very individual in its form; and the
unusual element in it, which is yet not sufficiently bizarre to snatch
attention, may tend to repel even the poetry lover. That person, as we
know, still prefers to take his poetry in the traditional manner; and
hence the audience for work like this, delicately sensitive and quietly
thoughtful, is likely to be small. It will be fully appreciative,
however, gladly exchanging stormy raptures for a serene and satisfying
beauty; and it will be of a temper which will delight to trace in this
work, subdued almost to a murmur, the same influences which are urging
some of his contemporaries to louder, more emphatic, and more copious
expression.

A particular interest of this poetry is precisely the way in which those
influences have been subdued. It is that which gives the individual