Chapter VII: Part 7

However, all that is little more than to say--here is a genuine artist working conscientiously in a given medium. It does not go far towards a relative estimate of the work as pure drama. Only a detailed critical analysis could do that adequately; though one may perhaps try to indicate two or three of the prominent features of the plays. Thus in _Joan of Arc_ we meet at once certain qualities which become in the later plays definitely characteristic. There is, for example, a conception of the theme which stresses the element of spiritual conflict, and draws upon it, as well as upon its human values, for dramatic inspiration. That is a primary fact in all this work; and in four of the five plays it is implied in the very name of the protagonist. _Joan_, _Manin_, _Marcus Aurelius_ and _Belisarius_ are synonyms for the purest spirituality of which human nature is capable. They suggest, before a page of this poetry has been turned, that the conflict out of which drama always springs is in this case largely a matter of invisible forces--of principles and ideas. And they point to a type of dramatic art which, trending to fine issues, inevitably deals in quiet effects.

There is, in fact, in the extreme grandeur of these four characters, a possible source of weakness to the plays, as actual drama. There is a danger that Joan may be too good a Christian, Marcus Aurelius too austere a stoic, Manin or Belisarius too absolute an idealist, to put up a strenuous fight against destiny. In the final impression of the plays, indeed, one is aware of a vague touch of regret on that very account; and although that may arise from one's own pugnacity, one suspects the existence of a good many other imperfect humans who will share it; from which it may be inferred that the weakness inherent in the subject has not been entirely overcome. I doubt whether it would be possible to overcome it altogether; and by the same token I salute the power which has evoked profoundly moving and stimulating drama out of themes like these.

Again, in _Joan of Arc_, one may see how the poet uses the human elements of a story to make the stirring scenes through which the spiritual crisis is reached. Thus Joan, in the fundamental struggle of her soul for the soul of France, is brought into external conflict which rounds out the plot with incident. It belongs, of course, to the historical setting of her life, that that conflict is one of actual warfare; but we are bound to admire the art which has placed her as the central figure of those warring factions--the invading English, the army of the Duke of Burgundy, the Church, and Charles the Dauphin. Out of that come the events through which the action proceeds and the incomparable beauty of her character is revealed.

It is the struggle of Joan's enthusiasm with the apathy and indolence of Charles which gives rise to one of the finest scenes in the play. It occurs in Act I, the whole of which is skilfully designed to set the action moving, while indicating so much of the political situation as ought to be known, and the weakness in Charles' character which is the ultimate cause of Joan's downfall. A premonitory note is struck in the opening dialogue. A little story is told by la Tremoille, who is Joan's chief enemy, of how he had just whipped a ragged prophet in the street and caused him to be stoned. It has a double purpose--to introduce Joan, the prophetess of Domrémy, as a subject of conversation; and, by reminding us of her own end, to awaken the sense of tragic irony through which we shall view the subsequent action. The talk turns to Joan, who is awaiting audience; and la Tremoille proposes the trick of the disguise. Charles agrees to it, and goes out to put on the dress of a courtier, while his absence is filled out by a lively dialogue which glances lightly from point to point of court life. When Charles and his train re-enter and Joan is brought in, the scene rises strongly to its climax. Joan recognizes the Dauphin through his disguise and announces her divine mission--

I do declare to you
That I, no other,--neither duke, nor prince,
Nor captain,--no, nor learned gentlemen,
But I alone, a girl of Domrémy,--
Am sent to save you.

By means of a flexible blank-verse, plain diction, and free and nervous phrasing, dialogue runs with an easy vigour. It is fired by strong and quickly changing emotion--the incredulity of Charles, the base hostility of la Tremoille, the indignation of Joan's friends, or the amazement and curiosity of the courtiers. But for the most part it remains strictly dramatic poetry; that is to say, raised by several degrees above the level of prose, yet closely fitted to personality. When, however, Joan begins to tell about her life, her quiet country home, and the divine command which bade her save her country, the note deepens. The verse becomes lyrical, burning with the mystical passion which possesses her--a flame, like the grand simplicity of her own nature, white and intensely clear.

JOAN. Sire, it was in the spring; one afternoon
When I was in a meadow all alone,
Lying among the grasses (over head
The scurrying clouds were like a flock of sheep,
Chased by a sheep-dog); then, all suddenly,
I heard a voice--nay, heard I cannot say,
There _was_ a voice took hold upon my sense,
As if it swallowed up all other sounds
In all the world; the birds, the sheep, the bees,
The sound of children calling far away,
The rustling of the rushes in the stream,
Were only like the cloth, whereon appears
The gold embroidery, the voice of God.

ARCHBISHOP. Did you see aught?

JOAN. Yea, see! Our earthly words
Cannot express divinity, but like
Small vessels over-filled with generous wine,
They leave the surplus wasted. If I say,
I saw, or heard, that seems to leave untouched
The other senses; but indeed, my lords,
All of my body seemed transformed to soul.
So I should say I _saw_ the voice of God,
And _heard_ the light effulgent all around,
Nay, heard, and saw, and felt through all of me
The radiance of the message of the Lord.

Passages like that bring home to us the poetical character of this drama. True, they may remind us that in such a form of the art action is likely to lag: that its movement may be impeded, as toward the end of _Joan of Arc_, by long speeches. On the other hand, they emphasize the peculiar virtue of this kind of drama; the twofold nature of its appeal, and the fact that the two elements are often found concentrated at their highest degree in single scenes of great power. With genius of this type (if genius may be classified in types!), when the dramatic imagination is most vividly alight, it will inevitably kindle poetry of the finest kind.

Thus, in the last act of _Marcus Aurelius_, we get the force of the whole drama, and all the incidence of the directly preceding scene moving behind and through the Emperor's speech from which I shall quote. The play has shown the complicity of Faustina in the plot to depose her husband: we know that she is a wanton and a traitress. But Marcus is ignorant of the truth, and generously unsuspecting. After the death of Cassius, the chief conspirator, Marcus orders an officer to bring all the dead man's papers to him. It is necessary to examine them for the names of accomplices. They are brought in while he is chatting with Faustina; and she knows that they contain certain incriminating letters that she had written. Exposure is imminent--disgrace and probable death for her await the opening of the letters. She tries every ruse that a bold and cunning mentality can suggest to prevent her husband from reading them. She seems about to succeed, but her insistence faintly warning Marcus, she fails after all. He takes up the package and goes away to open it quietly in his tent, and Faustina, believing that in a few minutes he will know all her treachery, drinks poison and dies. Unconscious of this catastrophe, the Emperor is sitting alone in his tent, with the package of letters on a table before him.

... Here, beneath my hand,
Are laid the hidden hearts of many men.
What shall I read therein? Ingratitude,
Lies, envy, spite, the barbed and venomous word
Of those that called me Emperor, I called friend;
... Break the seal, and read
Which of our subjects, of our intimates,
Our friends of many years, are netted here.
How thickly fall the shadows in the tent!
Almost I fancied, with my tired eyes,
I saw Faustina there ... Faustina, you!

.....

If I should find
_Her_ name among the friends of Cassius?
Ah no, Faustina, not such perfidy!
The gods must blush at it! Am I grown grey
And learnt no wisdom? Though it should be so--
Though yet it cannot be--what's that to me?
Am _I_ wronged by it? Yet it cannot be,
With that frank brow. I've loved you faithfully;
It could not be so....
... I will not know
More than I must of unprofitable things,
Lest they should, in the garden of my soul,
Nourish rank weeds of hate and bitterness;
I will not hate that which I cannot change.

(_He drops the papers into a tripod._)

Burn! Go into oblivion! The gods
Permit themselves to pity good and bad,
Giving to each the sunshine and sweet rain,
And hiding all things in the mist of years.
May I not do as gods do? Burn away,
Consume all hate and evil into smoke!
I will not know of them; assuredly
For me such ills exist not----

(_The body of Faustina is brought in._)

The same combination of dramatic elements will be found in the crucial scenes of _Manin_ and _Belisarius_. In _Manin_ it is especially notable, because of the curious nature of the crisis. This would seem, on the face of it, almost calculated to inhibit the dramatic impulse: to tend to negative the dynamic properties of character and circumstance. Manin, the defender of Venice, has held his city against the Austrian enemy by sheer force of character. His courage and confidence and determination have heartened the Venetians to continue their resistance; and his statesmanship has been diligent in trying to secure the intervention of France or England, or military aid from Kossuth. But help is refused from every quarter; the garrison is small and weak; the people are starving, and ravaged by disease. Nevertheless, inspired by their leader, they are willing and eager to resist to the end, although they know that this must bring on them the hideous penalties with which the Austrians notoriously punished that kind of patriotism.

The crux of the drama lies in the problem thus presented to Manin. It is essentially a spiritual struggle: between wisdom on the one hand and patriotic ardour on the other; between foresight and courage; between the long, weary, unattractive processes that make for life and the blind impetuosity that makes for death; between, in his personal career, a prospect of humiliation in exile and the glory of a hero's end. Given the character of Manin, victory in the conflict was bound to lie with reason against passion, with sagacity against recklessness; but the victory in this case meant defeat--physical and apparently moral. It would mean to the world, and even to his own people, that, with the surrender of the town, he yielded up the very principles for which he stood. Therein, of course, lies the unusual nature of this crisis. The dramatic instinct has somehow to vitalize a dead weight of failure. To see how that is done--and it _is_ done, finely--one must turn to the scene in Act III, which is the core of the play. There the poet creates an external conflict between Manin and the people which embodies, as it were, the spiritual struggle; and, translating it into action, visibly reveals Manin as a conqueror. Quotations hardly do justice to the poet here, but there are two speeches, one before and one after Manin has won the people to the proposed surrender, which indicate the skill of the art at this point.

The first expresses the agony of failure in Manin's mind, resulting from his decision to yield to the enemy. It is in answer to his faithful friend and secretary, Pezzato, who has been trying to comfort him with a prediction that the freedom of their city and their land is only deferred, that it must ultimately come. Manin replies:

I shall not see it.
I shall be blind beneath my coffin lid
There in a foreign land; I shall not see
The glory and the splendour of St. Mark's
When our Italian flag salutes the sun;
I shall be deaf, and never hear the peal
Of our triumphant bells, and volleying guns;
I shall be dumb, I shall be dumb that day,
And never say "My people, for this hour
I saved you when I sacrificed you most."

The second passage burns with the fire of triumph, tragical but prophetic, which has been kindled in Manin by his struggle with the opposing will of the people and his victory over it:

Of this one thing be sure. A little time,
A little hour, in the span of years
That history devours, we submit
To bow before the flail of tyranny;
Ay, it may strike us down, and we may die
With Europe passive round our Calvary;
Yet that for which we stand, for liberty,
For equal justice, and the right of laws
Purely administered, can never die,
Being of the nature of eternity;
Nor all the blood that Austria has shed
Mar the indelibility of truth;
Nor all the graves that Austria has dug
Bury it deep enough; nor all the lies
That coward hearts have bandied to and fro,
And coward hearts received to trick themselves,
Smother the face of it.

There remains to be particularly noted the poet's gift of realizing character. It is seen at its best in _Mary Queen of Scots_, where the unfortunate Queen is very strikingly recreated. Out of the diverse and stormy elements of her nature she is made to live again with a clear unity and completeness which are amazing. That is largely the reason why this play is the most powerful of the five, from the point of view of pure drama. Its theme is unerringly chosen, for drama inheres in Mary's being. The seeds of tragedy lurk in her contrasted weakness and strength, excess and defect, nobility and baseness. And, because she has been so brilliantly studied, this play moves at every step to the majestic truth that character is destiny.

The broad lines of Mary's personality are established in the first act, revealing at once the springs of action. The sensuous basis of her nature, her strong will and quick temper, may be seen to set in motion the forces which will presently overwhelm her. Her widowed state is irksome--therefore she will marry. She hates authority--therefore she will make her own choice in the matter of a husband. And finer threads already begin to complicate the issues. She is really fond of Darnley, the weak youth whom she is determined to marry; but that motive is intricately mixed with the satisfaction of insulting Elizabeth through him; while her ready wit gives a spice to her malice which, in dialogue at least, is very refreshing. When she enters the audience-chamber she calls Darnley to her side and, with a gesture towards the gloomy faces of the disaffected nobles, says in merry mockery:

... look you there
On these good gentlemen, all friends of ours,
The earls of Morton, Ruthven, and Argyll:
For friends they are--upon their countenance
We see it written.

She turns to the English ambassador:

... Here's Sir Nicholas.
What news of our dear cousin? Has she come
At last to give that virgin heart away
Into another's keeping, that brave Archduke,
Who'd bite your hand, they say, as soon as kiss it--
Such manners are in Austria--or Charles,
My dear French brother, who is well enough,
And only fourteen years her junior?
Not yet the happy moment? Patience, then,
Another day you'll have that news for us.

Sir Nicholas states formally Elizabeth's objections to Darnley, who interjects:

By my beard!

MARY. No! No!
Not by your beard, dear Henry, or your oath
Is emptier than a prince's promises--
Some princes we have heard of, we would say,
Though cannot think it truth. Nay, let me hear
What is it that my sister Princess wills
Out of the largeness of her heart for me?

The complexity of Mary's character is well brought out. There is, for instance, the little scene with Mary Beaton at the beginning of Act II. Here the Queen, discovering Darnley's infidelity, passes rapidly through half a dozen moods--from satirical bitterness to a fury of pride, and then to tears in which humiliation, gratitude, and tenderness are mingled. Mary Beaton has just said that the people pity their Queen:

MARY. ... On my life,
I'll not be pitied: pity is a chafe
On open wounds of pride. To pity me
Makes me a beggar--dare you pity me?

BEATON. Sweet lady, I would not, but must perforce!

MARY. Nay, would you have me weep? What thing am I
That three soft words should drive the tear drops forth
Like floods in winter? Nay, nay, good my girl,
This is my body's weakness, not my soul's.

The gentleness of that gives place at the entrance of Darnley to intense scorn, changing to indignation when he compels her to answer him, and to provocative coquetry at his insult to Rizzio. In the second scene of this act a new aspect of her mentality develops. The action here, dramatically splendid in its speed and emotion, grows out of Mary's recklessness, and proceeds directly, through the jealousy of Darnley, to Rizzio's murder and Mary's secret plot to avenge him. It would seem, in the astonishing duplexity of her nature, that there could be nothing more to reveal; yet the profounder forces of it only begin to be operative from this point. Bothwell, as she designs the scheme, is to be merely the tool of her shrewd intelligence. But she is betrayed by the force of her own passion, which transforms Bothwell into the means of her destruction. The finest achievement of this portrayal is that which shows the Queen conscious of her infatuation, and perceiving the tragedy which it is preparing, but incapable of stemming the flood that is carrying her away. Intelligence remains acute: reason holds as clear a light to consequence as ever it did, but both are ineffectual against the storm of instinct. Here is a passage from the end of Act III in which Bothwell after a rebuff has protested his love for the Queen:

MARY. Nay, swear not; nay, I know you what you are--
Hotter than flame in your desires; false--
Falser than water.

BOTHWELL (_embracing her_). Be a salamander,
To live for ever in the midst of fire.

MARY. Oh, Bothwell! Oh, my love! I am bewitched
To love you so. You are a deadly poison
That's crept through all my veins; you are the North,
And I the needle; I must turn to you
From every quarter of the hemispheres.
... I am yours
Utterly, wholly; when I walk abroad,
Jewelled and brocaded, I feel all men's eyes
Can see me naked, and, from head to foot,
Branded in red-hot letters with your name.

BOTHWELL. This is indeed love!

MARY. You may call it so!
It is not that which most men mean by love--
A moment's idle fancy. No, this love
Is like a dragon, laying waste the land
Of all my life; it is a deadly sickness,
Of which we both shall die; it is a sin,
Of which we both are damned, the saints of God
Not finding mercy; there's no pleasure in it,
But dust in the mouth and saltness in the eyes.

One would like to indicate further the truth with which the character is studied through the last two acts, providing the material as it does for scenes of great power and range of effect. Particularly one would wish to convey some idea of the scene of the final tragedy, broadly conceived against a background of the angry Edinburgh populace, and throbbing with the defiance of the Queen. Psychological imagination here is no less than brilliant, and one could cull perhaps half a dozen passages to illustrate it. But a single extract must suffice; and that is chosen for the additional reason that its closing sentences contain the very root of the tragedy. It is from Act IV, and the scene, following upon Mary's marriage to Bothwell, is designed to show her last desperate struggle against him and against herself. Already she is remorseful, disillusioned, and bitter; she knows the marriage to be hateful to her people, and she has found Bothwell cruel and treacherous. Before the nobles, who are assembled to receive them, she taunts Bothwell that he is not royal; flouts him for Arthur Erskine; declares that she will never wear jewels again; and at last provokes from Bothwell angry abuse and threats of violence. The nobles interpose to protect her, and beg her to let them save her from him. It needs but one word of assent to be rid of him for ever. She is almost won; she takes a few steps towards them, and actually gives her hand to one of them. Then she hesitates, turns, and looks at her husband:--

MARY. I am yours, Bothwell.

BOTHWELL. Will you go with me?

MARY. Ay, to the world's end, in my petticoat.

BOTHWELL. Let go her hands, my lord.

MORTON. Ay, let them go,
And let _her_ go, for naught can save her now.
Not ours the fault.

MARY. Not yours, nor his, nor mine.
'Tis not the fault of floods to drown, nor fire
To burn and shrivel--no, nor beasts to bite,
Nor frosts to kill the flowers--not the fault,
Only the property. There's something here
That's stronger than our wishes and our wills.
There is no going back; our course is laid,
And we must keep it, though it lead to death.
Good-bye, my lords. My husband, let us go.

_James Stephens_

One does not put a poet like Mr Stephens into a group--it cannot be done. If you try to do it, weakly yielding a wise instinct to mere intelligence, one of two things will happen. You will return to your careful group the moment after you thought you had made it, to find either that Mr Stephens has vanished or that the others have. Either he has broken away from the ridiculous frail links which bound him, and is already disappearing on the horizon with a gleeful shout, or his unfortunate companions have vanished before so much exuberance.

That is why this poet was not included in the Irish chapter where, if the thing were possible at all, one would have hoped to catch him. There are many fine racial strands out of which you would think a net could be woven. They appear to enmesh an Irishman and an Irish poet. We think we recognize that eye, critical and appreciative, for a woman--or a horse. We believe we know that wit, with a touch of satire and another touch of merry malice. We are surely not mistaken in that adoration of beauty and its converse hatred of ugliness; while we have no doubt whatever about that passion for liberty.

But the true poet will transcend his nation, as he does his manhood, at times of purest inspiration; and Mr Stephens has those happy seasons--happy, surely, for those to whom he sings, though, doubtless, each with its own agony to him. In many of the slighter poems, however, all of them good and most of them quite beautiful, the signs of nationality are obvious. They are comically clear, in fact, proceeding as they do directly from the quick, keen perception of the Comic Spirit itself. Only a blessed simpleton whose name was Patsy, could see the angel who walks along the sky sowing the poppyseed. The word 'Sootherer' sounds like English; and indeed individuals of the species are not unknown in this country. But they, like the word, are native to the land of the born lover. Has anybody heard of a Saxon who could fit names like these to his sweetheart--Little Joy, Sweet Laughter, Shy Little Gay Sprite? or who could woo her with such a ripple of flattery--

... You are more sweetly new
Than a May moon: you are my store,
My secret and my treasure and the pulse
Of my heart's core.

But, on the other hand, no mere English boy could hope to match the glib rage of spite in this disappointed youth--

You'll go--then listen, you are just a pig,
A little wrinkled pig out of a sty;
Your legs are crooked and your nose is big,
You've got no calves, you have a silly eye,
I don't know why I stopped to talk to you,
I hope you'll die.

Again, no Jack Robinson, though the dull smother that he would call his imagination were fired by plentiful beer, could ever have conceived of "What Tomas an Buile Said in a Pub"; or could have accompanied Mac Dhoul on his impish adventure into heaven, to be twitched off God's throne by a hand as large as a sky, and sent spinning through the planets--

Scraping old moons and twisting heels and head
A chuckle in the void....

These outward marks are unmistakable; and so, too, are certain qualities in the essence and texture of the work. His lyric moods may be as tender and fanciful, though always more spontaneous, than those of Mr Yeats. And one may find the arrowy truth, the rich earthiness and the profound sense of tragedy of a Synge. But the filmy threads which seem to stretch between Mr Stephens and his compatriots have no strength to bind him. They are, indeed, only visible when he is ranging at some altitude that is lower than his highest reach. When he soars to the zenith, as in "The Lonely God" and "A Prelude and a Song," their tenuity snaps. He has gone beyond what is merely national and simply human; and has become just a Voice for the Spirit of Poetry.

Nevertheless the affinities of this poet with what is best in modern Irish literature would make a fascinating study. Foremost, of course, there is imagination. You will find in him the true Hibernian blend of grotesquerie and grandeur, pure fantasy and shining vision. But each of these things is here raised to a power which makes it notable in itself, while all of them may sometimes be found in astonishing combination in a single poem. In the book called _Insurrections_, which is dated 1909, and appears to represent Mr Stephens' earliest efforts in verse, there is the piece which I have already named, "What Tomas an Buile Said in a Pub." Already we may see this complex quality at work. Tomas is protesting that he saw God; and that God was angry with the world.

His beard swung on a wind far out of sight
Behind the world's curve, and there was light
Most fearful from His forehead ...

.....

He lifted up His hand--
I say He heaved a dreadful hand
Over the spinning Earth, then I said "Stay,
You must not strike it, God; I'm in the way;
And I will never move from where I stand."
He said "Dear child, I feared that you were dead,"
And stayed His hand.

You will see--a significant fact--that there is no nonsense about a dream or a transcendent waking apparition. In the opening lines Tomas says, with anxious emphasis, that he saw the 'Almighty Man'--and that is symbolical. It has its relation to the mellow tenderness with which the poem closes; but apart from that it is a sign of the way in which the creative energy always works in this poetry. It seizes upon concrete stuff; and that is fused, hammered and moulded into shapes so sharp and clear that we feel we could actually touch them as they spring up in our mental vision. This is not peculiar to Mr Stephens, of course. It would seem to be common to every poet--though to be sure they are not many--in whom sheer imagination, the first and last poetic gift, is preeminent. Mr Stephens has many other qualities, which give his work depth, variety and significance; but fine as they are, they take a secondary place beside this ardent, plastic power.

We quickly see, even in the early poem from which I have quoted, the mixed elements of this gift. Now the grotesquerie which seems to lie in the fact that Tomas tells about the majesty and familiar kindliness of God 'in a pub,' may be apparent only. It probably arises from one's own sophistication and painful respectability. We have lost the simplicity which would make it possible to talk about such a subject at all; and as for doing it in a pub...!

Yet there is something truly grotesque in this work. That is to say, there is a juxtaposition of ideas so violently contrasted that they would provoke instant mirth if it were not for the grave intensity of vision. Sometimes, indeed, they are frankly absurd. We are meant to laugh at them, as we do at Mac Dhoul, squirming with merriment on God's throne with the angels frozen in astonishment round him. But generally these extraordinary images are presented seriously, and often they are winged straight from the heart of the poet's philosophy. Then, the driving power of emotion and a passion of sincerity carry us safely over what seems to be their amazing irreverence. There is, for instance, in the piece called "The Fulness of Time," a complete philosophic conception of good and evil, boldly caught into sacred symbolism. The poet tells here how he found Satan, old and haggard, sitting on a rusty throne in a distant star. All his work was done; and God came to call him to Paradise.

Gabriel without a frown,
Uriel without a spear,
Raphael came singing down
Welcoming their ancient peer,
And they seated him beside
One who had been crucified.

It is not irreverence, of course, but the audacity of poetic innocence. Only an imagination pure of convention and ceremonial would dare so greatly. And the remarkable thing is that this naîveté is intimately blended with a grandeur which sometimes rises to the sublime. The noblest and most complete expression of that is in "The Lonely God." That is probably the reason why this poem is the finest thing that Mr Stephens has done--that, and the magnitude of its central idea. There is, indeed, the closest relation here between the thought and the imagery in which it is made visible. But, keeping our curious, impertinent gaze fixed for the moment on the changing form of the imaginative essence of the work, let us take first the opening lines of the poem:

So Eden was deserted, and at eve
Into the quiet place God came to grieve.
His face was sad, His hands hung slackly down
Along his robe ...
... All the birds had gone
Out to the world, and singing was not one
To cheer the lonely God out of His grief--

There follow several stanzas of exquisite reverie as the majestic figure paces sadly in Adam's silent garden and pauses before the little hut

Chaste and remote, so tiny and so shy,
So new withal, so lost to any eye,
So pac't of memories all innocent....

Then, reminiscent of the dear friendliness of those banished human souls, desolation comes upon the solitary Being. He remembers that he is eternal and ringed round with Infinity. He sends thought flying back through endless centuries, but cannot find the beginning of Time. He ranges North and South, but cannot find the bounds of Space. He is most utterly alone--save for his silly singing angels--in the monotonous glory of his heaven.

... Many days I sped
Hard to the west, a thousand years I fled
Eastwards in fury, but I could not find
The fringes of the Infinite....
--till at last
Dizzied with distance, thrilling to a pain
Unnameable, I turned to Heaven again.
And there My angels were prepared to fling
The cloudy incense, there prepared to sing
My praise and glory--O, in fury I
Then roared them senseless, then threw down the sky
And stamped upon it, buffeted a star
With My great fist, and flung the sun afar:
Shouted My anger till the mighty sound
Rung to the width, frighting the furthest bound
And scope of hearing: tumult vaster still,
Thronging the echo, dinned my ears, until
I fled in silence, seeking out a place
To hide Me from the very thought of Space.

There was once a reviewer who compared the genius of this poet to that of Homer and Æschylus. Now comparisons like that are apt to tease the mind of the discriminating, to whom there instantly appear all the gulfs of difference. But, indeed, this poet does share in some measure, with Æschylus and our own Milton and the unknown author of the Book of Job, a sublimity of vision. His conceptions have a grandeur of simplicity; and he makes us realize immensities--Eternity and Space and Force--by images which are almost primitive. Like those other poets too, whose philosophical conceptions were as different from his as their ages are remote, he also has made God in the image of man. But the comparison does not touch what we may call the human side of this newer genius; and it only serves to throw into bolder relief its perception of life's comedy, its waywardness, and its mischievous humour. This aspect, strongly contrasted as it is with the poet's imaginative power, is at least equally interesting. It is apparent, in the earlier work, in the realism of such pieces as "The Dancer" or "The Street." There is a touch of harshness in these poems which would amount to crudity if their realism were an outward thing only. But it is not a mere trick of style: it proceeds from indignation, from an outraged æsthetic sense, and from a mental courage which attains its height, rash but splendid, in "Optimist"--

Let ye be still, ye tortured ones, nor strive
Where striving's futile. Ye can ne'er attain
To lay your burdens down.

This poet is not a realist at all, of course--far from it. But he loves life and earth and homely words, he is very candid and revealing, and he has a sense of real values. His humanity, too, is deep and strong, and often supplies his verse with the material of actual existence, totally lacking factitious glamour. Thus we have "To the Four Courts, Please," in which the first stanza describes the deplorable state of an ancient cab-horse and his driver. Then--

God help the horse and the driver too,
And the people and beasts who have never a friend,
For the driver easily might have been you,
And the horse be me by a different end.

This humane temper is the more remarkable from being braced by a shrewd faculty of insight. There is no sentimentality in it; and that the poet has no illusions about human frailty may be seen in such a poem as "Said The Old-Old Man." It is ballasted with humour, too; and has a charming whimsicality. Hence the lightness of touch in "Windy Corner"--

O, I can tell and I can know
What the wind rehearses:
"A poet loved a lady so,
Loved her well, and let her go
While he wrote his verses."

.....

That's the tale the winds relate
Soon as night is shady.
If it's true, I'll simply state
A poet is a fool to rate
His art above his lady.

Returning, however, to the larger implications of this poetry, one may find a passion for liberty in it, and a courageous faith in the future of the race. Here we have, in fact, a pure idealist, one of the invincible few who have brought their ideals into touch with reality. One does not suspect it at first--or at least we do not see how far it goes--largely for the reason that it is so deeply grounded. The poet's hold on life, on the actual, on the very data of experience, is unyielding: his perception of truth is keen and his intellectual honesty complete. And then the way in which his imagination moulds things in the round, as it were, leaves no room to guess that there is a limitless something behind or within. True, we have felt all along what we can only call the spiritual touch in this poetry. It is always there, lighter or more commanding, and sometimes it will come home very sweetly in a comic piece, as for instance when "The Merry Policeman," appointed guardian of the Tree, calls reassuringly to the scared thief:

... "Be at rest,
The best to him who wants the best."

We have observed, too, a faculty of seeing the spirit of things--a habit of looking right through facts to something beyond them. But still we did not quite understand what these signs meant; and if we tried to account for them in any way, we probably offered ourselves the all-too-easy explanation that this was the playful, fanciful, Celtic way of looking at the world. Well, so it may be; but that charming manner is, in all gravity, just the outward sign of an inward grace. And if anyone should doubt that it points in this case to a clear idealism, he may be invited to consider this little poem which prefaces the poet's second volume, called "The Hill of Vision":

Everything that I can spy
Through the circle of my eye,
Everything that I can see
Has been woven out of me;
I have sown the stars, and threw
Clouds of morning and of eve
Up into the vacant blue;
Everything that I perceive,
Sun and sea and mountain high,
All are moulded by my eye:
Closing it, what shall I find?
--Darkness, and a little wind.

Now it must not be inferred that Mr Stephens is an austere person who propounds ideals to himself as themes for his poetry. We should detect his secret much more readily if he did--and it may be that we should not like him quite so well. Hardly ever do you catch him, as it were, saying to his Muse: "Come, let us make a song about liberty, or the future." The very process of his thought, as well as the order of his verse, seems often to be by way of an object to an idea. He takes some bit of the actual world--a bird, a tree, or a human creature; and tuning his instrument to that, he is presently off and away into the blue.

Once, however, he did sing directly on this subject of liberty, and about the external, physical side of it. It was, of course, in that early book; and there may also be found two studies of the idea of liberty in its more abstract nature. They both treat of the woman giving up her life into the hands of the man whom she marries. And in both there is brought out with ringing clarity the inalienable freedom of the human soul. Thus "The Red-haired Man's Wife," musing upon the inexplicable changes that marriage has wrought for her--on her dependence, and on the apparent loss of her very identity, wins through to the light--

I am separate still,
I am I and not you:
And my mind and my will,
As in secret they grew,
Still are secret, unreached and untouched and not subject to you.

Thus, too, "The Rebel" finds an answer to an importunate lover--

You sob you love me--What,
Must I desert my soul
Because you wish to kiss my lips,

.....

I must be I, not you,
That says the thing in brief.
I grew to this without your aid,
Can face the future unafraid,
Nor pine away with grief
Because I'm lonely....

It is, however, in "A Prelude and a Song" that this ardour of freedom finds purest expression. Not that the poem was designed to that end. I believe that it was made for nothing on this earth but the sheer joy of singing. How can one describe this poem? It is the lyrical soul of poetry; it is the heart of poetic rapture; it is the musical spirit of the wind and of birds' cries; it is a passion of movement, swaying to the dancing grace of leaves and flowers and grass, to the majesty of sailing clouds; it is the sweet, shrill, palpitating ecstasy of the lark, singing up and up until he is out of sight, sustaining his song at the very door of heaven, and singing into sight again, to drop suddenly down to the green earth, exhausted.--And I have not yet begun to say what the poem really is: I have a doubt whether prose is equal to a definition. In some degree at any rate it is a pæan of freedom: delighted liberty lives in it. But we cannot apply our little distinctions here, saying that it is this or that or the other kind of freedom which is extolled; because we are now in a region where thought and feeling are one; in a golden age where good and evil are lost in innocency; in a blessed state where body and soul have forgotten their old feud in glad reunion.

One hesitates to quote from the poem. It is long, and as the title implies, it is in two movements. But though every stanza has a lightsome grace which makes it lovely in itself--though the whole chain, if broken up, would yield as many gems as there are stanzas, irregular in size and shape indeed, but each shining and complete--the great beauty of the poem is its beauty as a whole. It would seem a reproach to imperil that. Yet there is a culminating passage of extreme significance to which we must come directly for the crowning word of the poet's philosophy. From that we may take a fragment now, if only to observe the reach of its imagination and to win some sense which the poem conveys of limitless spiritual range.

Reach up my wings!
Now broaden into space and carry me
Beyond where any lark that sings
Can get:
Into the utmost sharp tenuity,
The breathing-point, the start, the scarcely-stirred
High slenderness where never any bird
Has winged to yet!
The moon peace and the star peace and the peace
Of chilly sunlight: to the void of space,
The emptiness, the giant curve, the great
Wide-stretching arms wherein the gods embrace
And stars are born and suns....

There follows hard upon that what is in effect a confession of faith. It is not explicitly so, of course. Subjective this poet may be--is it not a virtue in the lyricist?--but he does not confide his religion to us in so many words. He has an artistic conscience. But the avowal, though it is by way of allegory and grows up out of the imagery of the poem as naturally as a blossom from its stem, is clear enough. And is supported elsewhere, implicitly, or by a mental attitude, or outlined now and then in figurative brilliance. There can be no reason to doubt its strength and its sincerity--and there is every reason to rejoice in it--for it reveals Mr Stephens as a poet of the future.

One pauses there, realizing that the term may mean very much--or nothing at all. It may even suggest a certain technical vogue which, however admirable in the theory of its originators, apparently is not yet justified in the creation of manifest beauty. Our poet has no association with that, of course, except in that he shares the general impulse of the poetic spirit of his generation. That is, quite clearly, to escape from the tyranny of the past in thought and word and metrical form; and therein he is at one with most of the poets in this book. We may grant that it is an important exception: that the movement which is indicated here may be the sober British version of its more daring Italian counterpart. Yet there remains still a difference wide enough and deep enough to disclaim any technical relationship.

The root of the matter lies there, however. In Mr Stephens what we may call the poetic instinct of the age works not merely to escape from the past, but to advance into the future--and it has become a conscious, reasoned hope in human destiny. It does not with him so much influence the form of the work as it directs the spirit of it. And that spirit is an absolute and impassioned belief in the future of mankind. Therein he stands contrasted with many of the younger English poets, and with his own compatriots. With many of his compeers the escape has been into their own time, and the noblest thing evolved from that is a grave and tender social conscience. Some, of course, have not escaped at all, and have no wish to do so. Their work has its own soft evening loveliness. But whilst Mr Yeats lives delicately in a romantic past, whilst poor Synge lived tragically in a sardonic present, this poet stands on his hill of vision and cries to the world the good tidings of a promised land. Here it is, from the closing passage of "A Prelude and a Song":

There the flower springs,
Therein does grow
The bud of hope, the miracle to come
For whose dear advent we are striving dumb
And joyless: Garden of Delight
That God has sowed!
In thee the flower of flowers,
The apple of our tree,
The banner of our towers,
The recompense for every misery,
The angel-man, the purity, the light
Whom we are working to has his abode;
Until our back and forth, our life and death
And life again, our going and return
Prepare the way: until our latest breath,
Deep-drawn and agonized, for him shall burn
A path: for him prepare
Laughter and love and singing everywhere;
A morning and a sunrise and a day!

_Margaret L. Woods_

About one half of the poetry in Mrs Woods' collected edition is dramatic in character. There are two plays in regular form, tragedies both. One, _Wild Justice,_ is in six scenes which carry the action rapidly forward almost without a break. The other, called _The Princess of Hanover_, is in three acts, which move with a wider sweep through the rise, culmination, and crisis of a tragic story. These two dramas, which are powerfully imagined and skilfully wrought, are placed in a separate section at the end of the book--quite the best wine thus being left to finish the feast.

Fine as they are, however, the plays do not completely represent the poet's dramatic gift. And when we note the comic elements of two or three pieces which are tucked away in the middle of the volume, we may admit a hope that Mrs Wood may be impelled on some fair day to attempt regular comedy. There is, for instance, the fun of the delightful medley called "Marlborough Fair." Here are broad humour and vigorous, hearty life which smells of the soil; little studies of country-folk, incomplete but vivid; scraps of racy dialogue, and the prattle of a child, all interwoven with the grotesquer fancies of a fertile imagination, endowing even the beasts and inanimate objects of the show with consciousness and speech. Hints there are in plenty (though to be sure they are in some cases no more than hints) that the poet's dramatic sense would handle the common stuff of life as surely and as freely as it deals with tragedy. In this particular poem, of course, the touches are of the nature of low comedy; the awkward sweethearting of a pair of rustic lovers; the showman, alternating between bluster and enticement; the rough banter of a group of farm lads about the cokernut-shy, and the matron who presides there--

Swarthy and handsome and broad of face
'Twixt the banded brown of her glossy hair.
In her ears are shining silver rings,
Her head and massive throat are bare,
She needs good length in her apron strings
And has a jolly voice and loud
To cry her wares and draw the crowd.

--Fine Coker-nuts! My lads, we're giving
Clean away! Who wants to win 'em?
Fresh Coker-nuts! The milk's yet in 'em.
Come boys! Only a penny a shot,
Three nuts if you hit and the fun if not.

The effects are broad and strong, the tone cheery. But in another piece where the dramatic element enters, "The May Morning and the Old Man," the note is deeper. There is, indeed, in the talk of the two old men on the downland road, a much graver tone of the Comic Spirit. One of them has come slowly up the hill and greets another who is working in a field by the roadside with a question. He wants to know how far it is to Chillingbourne; he is going back to his old home there and must reach it before nightfall.

FIRST OLD MAN. It bean't for j'y I taäk the roäd.
But, Mester, I be getten awld.
Do seem as though in all the e'th
There bean't no plaäce,
No room on e'th for awld volk.

SECOND OLD MAN. The e'th do lie
Yonder, so wide as Heaven a'most,
And God as made un
Made room, I warr'nt, for all Christian souls.

It is, however, through the medium of tragedy that the genius of Mrs Woods has found most powerful expression. Not her charming lyrics, not even the contemplative beauty of her elegiac poems, can stand beside the creative energy of the two plays to which we must come directly. But the best of the lyrics are notable, nevertheless; and two or three have already passed into the common store of great English poetry. Of such is the splendid hymn, "To the Forgotten Dead," with its exulting pride of race chastened by the thought of death.

To the forgotten dead,
Come, let us drink in silence ere we part.
To every fervent yet resolved heart
That brought its tameless passion and its tears,
Renunciation and laborious years,
To lay the deep foundations of our race,
To rear its mighty ramparts overhead
And light its pinnacles with golden grace.
To the unhonoured dead.

To the forgotten dead,
Whose dauntless hands were stretched to grasp the rein
Of Fate and hurl into the void again
Her thunder-hoofed horses, rushing blind
Earthward along the courses of the wind.
Among the stars along the wind in vain
Their souls were scattered and their blood was shed,
And nothing, nothing of them doth remain.
To the thrice-perished dead.

It will be seen that the lyric gift of the poet moves at the prompting of an imaginative passion. It is nearly always so in this poetry. Very seldom does the impulse appear to come from intimate personal emotion or individual experience; and the volume may therefore help to refute the dogma that the poetry of a woman is bound to be subjective, from the laws of her own nature. Occasionally, of course, a direct cry will seem to make itself heard--the most reticent human creature will pay so much toll to its humanity. And it is true that in such a spontaneous utterance the voice will be distinctively feminine--life as the woman knows it will find its interpreter. Thus we see austerity breaking down in the poem "On the Death of an Infant," mournfully sweet with a mother's sorrow. Hence, too, in "Under the Lamp" comes the loathing for "the vile hidden commerce of the city"; and equally there comes a touch of that feminine bias (yielding in these late days perhaps to fuller knowledge and consequent sympathy) which inclines to regard the evil from the point of view of the degradation of the man rather than that of the hideous wrong to the woman. Or again, there is "The Changeling," perhaps the tenderest of the few poems which may perhaps, in some sense, be called subjective. Through the thin veil of allegory one catches a glimpse of the enduring mystery of maternal love. The mother is brooding over the change in her child: she has not been watchful enough, she thinks; and while she was unheeding, some evil thing had entered into her baby and driven out the fair soul with which he began.

Perhaps he called me and I was dumb.
Unconcerned I sat and heard
Little things,
Ivy tendrils, a bird's wings,
A frightened bird--
Or faint hands at the window-pane?
And now he will never come again,
The little soul. He is quite lost.