Chapter I: Front Matter

SELECTIONS FROM MODERN POETS

MADE BY J. C. SQUIRE

LONDON: MARTIN SECKER

1921

PREFATORY NOTE

No Poet represented in this book was over fifty when, in 1919, I began to compile it. The eldest of them all was born in 1870.

Many good and some great living poets are therefore missing from its pages. Nothing is here by Mr Hardy or Mr Bridges, by Mr A. E. Housman, Mr Yeats, _Æ,_ Mr Binyon, Mr Hewlett, Mr Herbert Trench, Mr Gosse, Mr Austin Dobson, Mr Doughty, Mr Kipling, Sir Henry Newbolt, Mrs Meynell, Mrs Woods, Mr Wilfrid Blunt, and others whose names must appear in any comprehensive anthology from living poets. The date, 1870, was arbitrarily chosen: so would any other date have been. But some date I had to fix, for my object was to illustrate what many of us think an exceptional recent flowering.

I do not propose to analyse the tendencies, in idea and in method, exhibited in the poems here collected. These things are always better seen at a distance; and anyhow the materials are here for the production of an analysis by the reader himself, if he is eager for one. But I will express one opinion, and call attention to one phenomenon. The opinion is that the majority of the poems in this book have merit and that many more could have been printed without lowering the standard. And the phenomenon is the simultaneous appearance--the result of underlying currents of thought and feeling--of a very large number of poets who write only or mainly in lyrical forms. Several living poets of the highest repute have won their reputation solely on short poems, and there are, and have been, a very large number indeed who have written one or two good poems.

The better production of our generation has been mainly lyrical and it has been widely diffused. Where is the ambitious work on a large scale? Where is the twentieth century poet who is fulfilling the usual functions of the greatest poets: to display human life in all its range and variety, or to exercise a clear and powerful influence on the thought of mankind with regard to the main problems of our existence? These questions are asked; possibly Echo may give its traditional and ironic answer.

There are several observations, however, which should be made. One is that the great doctrinal poets have not always become widely recognised as such in their own prime, their general vogue being posthumous. Another is that we cannot possibly tell what a poet now living and young may or may not do before he dies. But though I have my own views on this subject I do not think that the age, even if admitted to be purely lyrical, stands in need of defence. It is of no use asking a poetical renascence to conform to type, for there isn't any type. There are marked differences in the features of all those English poetical movements which have chiefly contributed to the body of our "immortal" poetry. In the Elizabethan age we had the greatest diversity of production: a multitude of great and small men, with much genius, or but a spark of it blown to life by the favourable wind, produced works in every form and on every scale. The age of Herbert and Vaughan, of Crashaw, Herrick, Marvell, Carew, Suckling, Lovelace, Corbet, Habington, is memorable almost solely for its lyrical work. The era of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats was an age during which a vast amount of great poetry was written by a few great poets; there was very little healthy undergrowth. Should our literary age be remembered by posterity solely as an age during which fifty men had written lyrics of some durability for their truth and beauty, it would not be remembered with contempt. It is in that conviction that I have compiled this anthology.

It is irritating to feel that even within its own limits it does not appear to myself--not to mention others--as good or as nearly representative as it might have been. Permission could not be obtained to print Mr Masefield's _Biography_ and his _August 1914,_ which I personally happen to prefer to any of his shorter works. Since the time in 1919-20 when I was compiling the book two volumes have come out from which I should like to have made large seleetions: Edmund Blunden's _The Waggoner_ and the late Wilfrid Owen's _Poems._ Each of these poets is inadequately represented here; and a few things by others, who do not appear here at all, came to my notice when it was too late to put them in.

I have to thank the living poets from whose works I have drawn for permitting me to use everything I wanted. I am grateful to Mrs Brooke and Rupert Brooke's literary executor, Mr Edward Marsh (whose "Georgian" collections have been a great stimulus and help to me) for permission to use a selection from Brooke; to Mrs J. E. Flecker for poems by her husband; to Lady Desborough for the poems by her son, Julian Grenfell; to Lord Dunsany for the poems by Francis Ledwidge; to Mrs Thomas Macdonagh and Mrs Joseph Plunkett for the poems by their husbands; to Mrs Owen for her son Wilfrid Owen's _Strange Meeting;_ to Professor W. R. Sorley for the poems by his son, Charles Sorley; to Lady Glenconner for those by her son, Edward Wyndham Tennant; to Mrs Edward Thomas for the poems (published too late for him ever to know-how people would admire them) by Edward Thomas.

Finally, almost every publisher in the kingdom has assisted the book with permission to reprint copyright poems. The full list of publishers and works is as follows: Messrs Bell (Edward L. Davison, _Poems_); Blackwell (E. Wyndham Tennant, _Worple Flit_); Burns' Oates and Washbourne (G. K. Chesterton, _Poems_); Cambridge University Press (C. H. Sorley, _Marlborough and other Poems_); Chatto and Windus (Robert Nichols, _Ardours and Endurances, Aurelia,_ Wilfred Owen, _Poems_); Collins (F. Brett Young, _Poems_); Constable (Gordon Bottomley, _Annual of New Poetry,_ 1917, W. de la Mare, _Collected Poems_); Dent (G. K. Chesterton, _The Wild Knight_); Duckworth (H. Belloc, _Poems,_ D. H. Lawrence, _Love Poems,_ Sturge Moore, _Collected Poems_); Fifield (W. H. Davies, _Collected Poems_); Heffer (A. Y. Campbell, _Poems_); Heinemann (Robert Graves, _Fairies and Fusiliers,_ John Masefield, _Lollingdon Downs,_ Siegfried Sassoon, _The Old Huntsman, Counter-Attack, War Poems_); Herbert Jenkins (Francis Ledwidge, _Poems_); Lane (Lascelles Abercrombie, _Emblems of Love_); Macmillan (Ralph Hodgson, _Poems,_ James Stephens, _Songs from the Clay_); Elkin Mathews (Gordon Bottomley, _Chambers of Imagery,_ James Joyce, _Chamber Music,_ Sturge Moore, _The Vinedresser_); Maunsel and Roberts (Padraic Colum, _Poems,_ Seumas O'Sullivan, _The Twilight People,_ Joseph Plunkett, _Poems_); Methuen (G. K. Chesterton, _The Ballad of the White Horse,_ W. H. Davies, _The Bird of Paradise,_ I. A. Williams, _Poems_); Palmer (Francis Burrows, _The Green Knight_); Poetry Bookshop (Frances Cornford, _Poems,_ Harold Monro, _Children of Love, Strange Meetings_); Seeker (Martin Armstrong, _The Buzzards,_ Maurice Baring, _Poems_ 1914-1919, J. E. Flecker, _Collected Poems,_ Robert Graves, _Country Sentiment,_ Edward Shanks, _The Queen of China_); Selwyn and Blount (Robin Flower, _Hymensea,_ John Freeman, _Poems New and Old,_ Edward Thomas, _Collected Poems_); Sidgwick & Jackson (Edmund Blunden, _The Waggoner,_ Rupert Brooke, _Collected Poems,_ John Drinkwater, _Olton Pools,_ R. C. K. Ensor, _Odes,_ Ivor Gurney, _Severn and Somme,_ R. Macaulay, _The Two Blind Countries,_ W. J. Turner, _The Hunter, The Dark Fire_); Talbot Press and Fisher Unwin (T. Macdonagh, _Poems_).

J. C. SQUIRE.

LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE

MARRIAGE SONG

Come up, dear chosen morning, come,
Blessing the air with light,
And bid the sky repent of being dark:
Let all the spaces round the world be white,
And give the earth her green again.
Into new hours of beautiful delight,
Out of the shadow where she has lain,
Bring the earth awake for glee,
Shining with dews as fresh and clear
As my beloved's voice upon the air.
For now, O morning chosen of all days, on thee
A wondrous duty lies:
There was an evening that did loveliness foretell;
Thence upon thee, O chosen morn, it fell
To fashion into perfect destiny
The radiant prophecy.
For in an evening of young moon, that went
Filling the moist air with a rosy fire,
I and my beloved knew our love;
And knew that thou, O morning, wouldst arise
To give us knowledge of achieved desire.
For, standing stricken with astonishment,
Half terrified in the delight,
Even as the moon did into clear air move
And made a golden light,
Lo there, croucht up against it, a dark hill,
A monstrous back of earth, a spine
Of hunchèd rock, furred with great growth of pine,
Lay like a beast, snout in its paws, asleep;
Yet in its sleeping seemed it miserable,
As though strong fear must always keep
Hold of its heart, and drive its blood in dream.
Yea, for to our new love, did it not seem,
That dark and quiet length of hill,
The sleeping grief of the world?--Out of it we
Had like imaginations stept to be
Beauty and golden wonder; and for the lovely fear
Of coming perfect joy, had changed
The terror that dreamt there I
And now the golden moon had turned
To shining white, white as our souls that burned
With vision of our prophecy assured:
Suddenly white was the moon; but she
At once did on a woven modesty
Of cloud, and soon went in obscured:
And we were dark, and vanisht that strange hill.
But yet it was not long before
There opened in the sky a narrow door,
Made with pearl lintel and pearl sill;
And the earth's night seem'd pressing there,--
All as a beggar on some festival would peer,--
To gaze into a room of light beyond,
The hidden silver splendour of the moon.
Yea, and we also, we
Long gazed wistfully
Towards thee, O morning, come at last,
And towards the light that thou wilt pour upon us soon!

II

O soul who still art strange to sense,
Who often against beauty wouldst complain,
Doubting between joy and pain
If like the startling touch of something keen
Against thee, it hath been
To follow from an upland height
The swift sun hunting rain
Across the April meadows of a plain,
Until the fields would flash into the air
Their joyous green, like emeralds alight
Or when in the blue of night's mid-noon
The burning naked moon
Draws to a brink of cloudy weather near,
A breadth of snow, firm and soft as a wing,
Stretcht out over a wind that gently goes,--
Through the white sleep of snowy cloud there grows
An azure-border'd shining ring,
The gleaming dream of the approaching joy of her;--
What now wilt thou do, Soul? What now,
If with such things as these troubled thou wert?
How wilt thou now endure, or how
Not now be strangely hurt?--When
utter beauty must come closer to thee
Than even anger or fear could be;
When thou, like metal in a kiln, must lie
Seized by beauty's mightily able flame;
Enjoyed by beauty as by the ruthless glee
Of an unescapable power;
Obeying beauty as air obeys a cry;
Yea, one thing made of beauty and thee,
As steel and a white heat are made the same!
--Ah, but I know how this infirmity
Will fail and be not, no, not memory,
When I begin the marvellous hour.
This only is my heart's strain'd eagerness,
Long waiting for its bliss.--
But from those other fears, from those
That keep to Love so close,
From fears that are the shadow of delight,
Hide me, O joys; make them unknown to-night!

III

Thou bright God that in dream earnest to me last night,
Thou with the flesh made of a golden light,
Knew I not thee, thee and thy heart,
Knew I not well, God, who thou wert?
Yea, and my soul divinely understood
The light that was beneath thee a ground,
The golden light that cover'd thee round,
Turning my sleep to a fiery morn,
Was as a heavenly oath there sworn
Promising me an immortal good:
Well I knew thee, God of Marriages, thee and thy flame!
Ah, but wherefore beside thee came
That fearful sight of another mood?
Why in thy light, to thy hand chained,
Towards me its bondage terribly strained,
Why came with thee that dreadful hound,
The wild hound Fear, black, ravenous, and gaunt?
Why him with thee should thy dear light surround?
Why broughtest thou that beast to haunt
The blissful footsteps of my golden dream?--
All shadowy black the body dread,
All frenzied fire the head,--
The hunger of its mouth a hollow crimson flame,
The hatred in its eyes a blaze
Fierce and green, stabbing the ruddy glaze,
And sharp white jetting fire the teeth snarl'd at me,
And white the dribbling rage of froth,--
A throat that gaped to bay and paws working violently,
Yet soundless all as a winging moth;
Tugging towards me, famishing for my heart;--
Even while thou, O golden god, wert still
Looking the beautiful kindness of thy will
Into my soul, even then must I be,
With thy bright promise looking at me,
Then bitterly of that hound afraid?--
Darkness, I know, attendeth bright,
And light comes not but shadow comes:
And heart must know, if it know thy light,
Thy wild hound Fear, the shadow of love's delight.
Yea, is it thus? Are we so made
Of death and darkness, that even thou,
O golden God of the joys of love,
Thy mind to us canst only prove,
The glorious devices of thy mind,
By so revealing how thy journeying here
Through this mortality, doth closely bind
Thy brightness to the shadow of dreadful Fear?--
Ah no, it shall not be! Thy joyous light
Shall hide me from the hunger of fear to-night.

IV

For wonderfully to live I now begin.
So that the darkness which accompanies
Our being here, is fasten'd up within
The power of light that holdeth me;
And from these shining chains, to see
My joy with bold misliking eyes,
The shrouded figure will not dare arise.
For henceforth, from to-night,
I am wholly gone into the bright
Safety of the beauty of love:
Not only all my waking vigours plied
Under the searching glory of love,
But knowing myself with love all satisfied
Even when my life is hidden in sleep;
As high clouds, to themselves that keep
The moon's white company, are all possest
Silverly with the presence of their guest;
Or as a darken'd room
That hath within it roses, whence the air
And quietness are taken everywhere
Deliciously by sweet perfume.