Chapter II: Introduction

WITH as much grace as if a monoplanist should attempt to write a preface to a book on flying for an albatross, so may a writer of mere prose attempt to pen an introduction to a book of poetry.

The bird and man both use the air, but with a difference. So do the poet and the man of prose use pen and ink.

Familiarity with tools, used in two branches of one art (or trade), is apt to prove a snare.

Music and poetry, the most ethereal of the arts upon the face of them, are in a way more mathematical than prose, for both have formulæ. Hence, their appeal goes quicker to men’s minds, and oversteps countries and languages to some degree, and makes it difficult to write about them. Of late, young poets, those who have bulked the largest in the public eye, those that the world has hailed as modern, have often been obscure. What is modernity? To be modern is to touch the senses of the age you write for. To me, a fool who owns a motor-car is just as great a fool as was a fool of the stone age.

The only true modernity is talent, and Lucian of Samosata was as modern to the full as Guy de Maupassant. The poet for whose verses I am writing this my introduction, preface, foreword, call it what you will, is one of those whose meaning he who runs may read.

Does she do well in making herself clear? I think so, for though there are those who prefer a mist of words, holding apparently that poetry should be written in Chinook, or Malagasy, this opinion must of necessity be of the nature of what Ben Jonson called a “humour.”

Few men to-day read Eupheus and fewer Gongora. Yet in their time their concepts were considered to be fine flowers of poetry. Those who wrote so that all men could understand, as Sapho, Campion, Jorge Maurique, Petrarca, Villon, and their fellow-singers in the celestial spheres where poets sing, crowned with the bays of the approval of countless generations, all wrote clearly. Their verses all were clear as is the water running over chalk in a south country trout-stream, such as the Itchin or the Test.

I take two specimens of Miss Radclyffe-Hall’s poetry to illustrate what I have said. She writes of a blind ploughman, whose prayer is to his friend to set him in the sun.

“Turn my face towards the East
And praise be to God.”

One sees him sitting, wrinkled and bent, and ploughworn in the sun, and thanking God according to his faith, for light interior, for that interior vision which all the mystics claim.

“God who made His sun to shine
On both you and me,
God who took away my eyes,
That my _soul_ might see.”

This shows the poet in an unusual light, for most poets write on far different subjects; but here is one which is eternal, and has been eternal since the time of Œdipus.

Again in the verses, “Thoughts at Ajaccio,” she shows a love of the earth and of its fulness, a feeling which has been the birthright of all English writers of good verse from the remotest times.

“Fill me with scent of upturned ground,
Soft perfume from thy bosom drawn.”

This is the feeling that has inspired so many poets, and shows the writer not striving to be modern or filled with strange conceits; but with a love and trust of the brown earth, from which all poets take their birth, and into which they all return.

R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM.

RUSTIC COURTING

I

WALKING OUT

UPON a Sunday afternoon,
When no one else was by,
The little girl from Hanley way,
She came and walked with I.

We climbed nigh to the Beacon top,
And never word spoke we,
But oh! we heard the thrushes sing
Within the cherry tree.

The cherry tree was all a-bloom,
And Malvern lay below,
And far away the Severn wound—
’Twas like a silver bow.

She took my arm, I took her hand,
And never word we said,
But oh! I knew her eyes were brown,
Her lips were sweet and red.

And when I brought her home again,
The stars were up above,
And ’twas the nightingale that swelled
His little throat with love!

II

THE SHADOW OF RAGGEDSTONE

O RAGGEDSTONE, you darksome hill,
Your shadow fell for sure
Upon my own dear love and I,
Across the purple moor.

For we were such a happy pair,
The day we climbed your crest;
And now my love she lays her head
Upon another’s breast.

She sits beside another man,
And walks abroad with he,
And never sheds a single tear,
Or thinks a thought o’ me!

My mind it seems a-fire like,
My heart’s as cold as lead,
My prayers they dry upon my lips
And somehow won’t get said.

I wish that I could lay me down,
Upon the dreary plain
That stretches out to Raggedstone,*
And never rise again!

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* A legend is attached to Raggedstone Hill in Worcestershire. The Hill was cursed by a Benedictine Monk. From time to time a great shadow rises up from it, spreading across the surrounding country. Woe betide those on whom the shadow falls, as it brings with it terrible misfortune! Many of the people living near Raggedstone still firmly believe in this legend.

III

THE LONG GREEN LANES OF ENGLAND

OH! the long green lanes of England! They be very far away, And it’s there that I’d be walking, ’Mid the hawthorn and the may.

Where the trees are all in blossom, And the mating birds they sing Fit to bust their little bodies, Out of joy because it’s Spring.

I’d be courting of my true love, She’d be in her Sunday best, With my arm around her shoulder And her head upon my breast.

For the new land it’s a fine land, Where a man can get a start; But there’s that about the old land That will grip his very heart:

For he’ll mind him o’ the cowslips, Coming up all fresh and new In the fields of early mornings, Where the grass is white with dew.

Oh! it’s money, money, money, “Go and try to earn a bit;” And “America’s the country For the lad as doesn’t quit.”

Seems that folks go mad on money, Well, I’ll have enough some day, But the long green lanes of England They be Oh! so far away!

IV

THE HILLS

WHEN I the hills of Malvern see, There comes a sadness over me.

The reason why, I cannot tell, Perhaps I love those hills too well.

But this I know, when I behold Their springtime green, and autumn gold,

And see that year by year they bear Such witness that God’s earth is fair,

I’m happy for their beauty’s sake, And yet my heart begins to ache.

V

EASTNOR CHURCHYARD