Chapter V: Part 5

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 stamp to its art; but, curiously, it is also that which marks its heredity, and defines its place in the succession of English poetry. There is independence here, but not isolation; nor is there violent conflict with an older poetic ideal. On the contrary, a reconciliation has been made; balance has been attained; and revolutionary principles, whether in the region of technique or ideas, have been harnessed and controlled. So that this work, while fairly representing the new poetry, is clearly related in the direct line to the old. A little "Impression," one of a group at the end of the volume called _Before Dawn_, will illustrate this:

She was young and blithe and fair,
Firm of purpose, sweet and strong,
Perfect was her crown of hair,
Perfect most of all her song.

Yesterday beneath an oak,
She was chanting in the wood:
Wandering harmonies awoke;
Sleeping echoes understood.

To-day without a song, without a word,
She seems to drag one piteous fallen wing
Along the ground, and, like a wounded bird,
Move silent, having lost the heart to sing.

She was young and blithe and fair,
Firm of purpose, sweet and strong,
Perfect was her crown of hair,
Perfect most of all her song.

One may cite a piece like that, breaking away, in the third stanza, to a freer and more fitting rhythm, as an example of the normal development of English prosody. And that is, perhaps, the final significance of Mr Monro's work. With less temptation to waywardness than a more exuberant genius, he has achieved a completer harmony. But it was not so easy a task as the quiet manner would cheat one into supposing; and, of course, it has not always been so successfully done. There are many pieces--beautiful nevertheless--where external influences have not been completely subdued. From them one may measure the strength with which contemporary thought claims this poet. For it appears that he, too, cannot be at ease in Zion; that he is troubled and ashamed by reason of a social conscience; that he is haunted by an unappeasable questioning spirit; that he is perpetually seeking after the spiritual element in existence. Indeed, so clear and persistent is this last motive, that if one were aiming epithets it would be possible to fit the word 'religious' to the essential nature of Mr Monro's poetry. Of course, no poet, be he great or small, can be packed into the compass of a single word. His work will mean much more, and sometimes greatly different from that. And the word religious in this connexion is more than usually hazardous, for almost all the connotations are against it. It is true that the common meaning, bandied on the lips of happy irresponsibles, has no application here. On the contrary, it seems sometimes completely reversed; and the good unthinking folk would find themselves nonplussed by such a piece as that called "The Poets are Waiting," in the chapbook which Mr Munro published at the end of 1914. Yet it is of the essence of religion; and it most faithfully presents the spiritual crisis which was precipitated by the Great War for many who had clung to a last vague hope of some intelligent providence--

To what God
Shall we chant
Our songs of Battle?

Hefty barbarians,
Roaring for war,
Are breaking upon us;
Clouds of their cavalry,
Waves of their infantry,
Mountains of guns.
Winged they are coming,
Plated and mailed,
Snorting their jargon.
Oh to whom shall a song of battle be chanted?

Not to our lord of the hosts on his ancient throne,
Drowsing the ages out in Heaven alone.
The celestial choirs are mute, the angels have fled:
Word is gone forth abroad that our lord is dead.

To what God
Shall we chant
Our songs of Battle?

I do not wish, to stress unduly the spiritual element in this work, but it compels attention for two reasons. It is a dominant impulse, supplying themes which occur early and late and often; and the manner of its expression reveals a link with the past generation which is analogous to the technical connexion that we have already noted.