SOME 
 
 SOLDIER 
 
 POETS 
 
 By 
 
 T. STURGE 
 
 MOORE 
 

SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 POETRY 
 
 1899. THE VINEDRESSER AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 1901. APHRODITE AGAINST ARTEMIS 
 
 1903. ABSALOM 
 
 1903. DANAE 
 
 1905. THE LITTLE SCHOOL 
 
 1906. POEMS 
 1911. MARIAMNE 
 
 1911. A SICILYAN IDYLL 
 
 1914. THE SEA IS KIND 
 PROSE 
 
 1899. THE CENTAUR AND THE BACCHANT FROM 
 
 THE FRENCH BY MAURICE DE GUERIN 
 
 1900. ALTDORFER 
 
 1904. DURER 
 1906. CORREGGIO 
 
 1910. ART AND LIFE (FLAUBERT AND BLAKE) 
 
 1915. HARK TO THESE THREE 
 
SOME 
 SOLDIER POETS 
 
 BY 
 
 T. STURGE MOORE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE 
 
 1920 
 
printed in great britain bv the kiveksidb press limited 
 ■ • . ■ . '. .'ediupcruh 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION .... 7 
 
 JULIAN GRENFELL . 
 
 
 
 . 13 
 
 RUPERT BROOKE 
 
 
 
 21 
 
 A HALF PLEIADE 
 
 
 
 27 
 
 R. E. \^RNEDE 
 
 
 
 45 
 
 SORLEY . 
 
 
 
 55 
 
 FRANCIS LEDWIDGE . 
 
 
 
 69 
 
 EDWARD THOMAS 
 
 
 
 77 
 
 F. W. HAR\^Y . 
 
 
 
 87 
 
 RICHARD ALDINGTON 
 
 
 
 95 
 
 ALAN SEEGER . 
 
 
 
 107 
 
 THE BEST POETRY . 
 
 
 
 119 
 
 426177 
 
NOTE 
 
 Gratf.i ri, ackno-wlodgnicnt is due to the courtesy with 
 whicli authors or tlicir representatives and their pub- 
 lisliers liave most generously permitted me to quote — 
 Lord Desborougli from JuHan Grenfell's poem ; Mr 
 l^hvard Marsh and Messrs Sidgwiek & Jaekson from 
 Rupert Brooke's poems ; Captains Siegfried Sassoon and 
 Rolicrt Graves, Lieutenants Robert Nichols and Richard 
 Aldington and Mr Laurence Binyon from their own 
 poems ; Bishop Frodsham from those of Lieutenant 
 Harvey, then a prisoner ; Professor W. R. Sorley from 
 Captain Sorley's, Mrs Edward Thomas and Mrs R. E. 
 Vernede from their husbands' poems. Lord Dunsany and 
 Mr Herbert Jenkins from those of Francis Ledwidge, and 
 JMr Charles Louis Seeger and Messrs Constable from Alan 
 Seeger's poems. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 These essays are occasional. They are incomplete and 
 tentative, as must be every reply to a fortuitous demand. 
 I have not chosen my themes by any deep affinity or 
 because I had a native bent for studying them, but 
 because they were thiiist before me and some of my 
 thoughts flocked out to meet each. 
 
 I sketched characters based on analysis of work, not 
 on information about authors, yet have since learned that 
 some of these literarj^ portraits seemed good likenesses 
 to the friends of the man portrayed, and the friends of 
 other poets have desired to see their literary characters 
 sketched by me. 
 
 Young poets are old-fashioned, like Nature herself ; 
 they have usually not yet acquired the professional desire 
 to be in advance of the public. Nothing seems haclcneyed 
 to genius, and youth is perhaps half genius. 
 
 What a work is not is always more obvious than what 
 it is, as critics are never weary of proving. I have tried 
 to build with positive qualities, and to obtain relief by 
 laying on shadows lightly, as the best topographical 
 draughtsmen did their pearly washes of diluted Indian 
 ink. 
 
 What is poetry ? Why are so many young people 
 tempted to try their hands at it ? Wrong answers to 
 these questions are naturally more numerous and fashion- 
 able than right answers. But we can never see poetry in 
 relation to national life until we get hold of right answers. 
 Poetiy is a creation or discovery in the use of words 
 that wakes or strengtl ens emotion in us, thus enlarging 
 consciousness. The poet is not full of emotions and per- 
 ceptions that need expressing, as a vat is full of grapes, 
 though no doubt human nature — complete, ideal — is 
 latent in him. He is, like all young creatures, playful. 
 He plays with language, attracted by its beauties and 
 
 7 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 possibilities, and in doing so he does for himself what 
 afterwards his poems do for us— he awakens or creates 
 emotions in his heart that it knew little or nothing of 
 before, and as he continues he clarifies, strengthens and 
 adds to them. 
 
 The ]\hiso is lifrht -footed, but does not, like Poe, consider 
 a poem more essentially poetical for being short. No, as 
 children continue their Indians and Pirates from day to 
 day and from one hondays to another, she sustains the 
 poet's interest in Aready or Babylon, in murderous king 
 and incestuous queen, for years together, and renews it 
 from age to age ; yet she often welcomes novel themes. 
 She loves to defeat the 'proud limitaiy " theorist who 
 is for a hole-in-the-corner business, with one properly 
 labelled ware of a high quality. One generation having 
 deified classical example, she prompts the next to scoff 
 at " monstrous Milton " ; yet will very likely lead the 
 scoffer's son back to that blind man's feet. In fact, like 
 children, she hates a declared purpose ; for the game is 
 best when the players forget themselves entirely in it, 
 even though it be preaching, for then she loves a sermon. 
 The poet is only a poet when he lays aside the interests 
 j of his life among his neighbours and shares her free 
 absorption over anything or everything. To live poetry / 
 as Rupert Brooke dreamed of doing is impossible, for/ 
 though Life may follow, she can never overtake those 
 immaterial feet. The welfare of one man, of one neigh- 
 bourhood, of one nation or period, is a pettifogging affair 
 when past and future lie open. If the poet treats of his 
 own love he must be careful not clearly to distinguish her 
 from Helen of Troy, or should, at least, give us the illusion 
 that they are equally real to him. That is why failure in 
 love and war is so much more inspiring to the poet than 
 success ; when the real world has rejected a man he feels 
 freer in the Muses' house ; he no longer has any interests 
 that conflict with theirs. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Poetry is more profound and significant than prose, 
 wiser and weightier, at once more primitive and more 
 refined ; for the fashion of this world passes, but the 
 moods of that remain. They build with durable, precious 
 materials which, though invisible, are stronger and 
 tougher than steel, and more difficult than radium to 
 account for. The poet is not the odd sheepish person 
 whom his friends know, but the worthy playmate of 
 Polyhymnia. In fact the wider the difference the freer 
 the poet is from personal taint. Some " nice man " was 
 Shakespeare to his London, but our Shakespeare was and 
 still is more imposing than Lord Verulam, yet never 
 could be met in any street. 
 
 What is poetry ? Why do youths love it ? To read 
 verse and watch young men answers both questions, but 
 who shall sum those answers up in words ? One at present 
 fashionable answer may be worth combating so as to set 
 off the largeness and vigour of that apparent truth which 
 defeats the tongue. Why do young men write verse ? 
 They want to express themselves, their own sense of things. 
 This answer only shows how deeply the fallacjr of impres- 
 sionism has sophisticated modern aesthetic thought. No 
 one escapes. The impressionist looks upon his individual 
 peculiarities as the source of value. He offers to exploit 
 the Peru of his mind for the benefit of the world. He 
 would work it with scientific nicety, or else record the 
 whimseys of feeling, seeing and thinking to which he is 
 subject when most alarmingly unlike other men, and thinks 
 thus to add new facts to our knowledge, enlarge our ex- 
 perience. He does, but Apollo is not interested in his 
 wonders as glimpsed from a garret. ' ' Intolerably severe " 
 he has frowned on these votaries who are content with 
 what they see. He smiles on those who, forgetting them- 
 selves, follow his splendour into the open. Their worship 
 can never enough divest itself, not only of walls and roof, 
 but of coat and shirt, so as to feel his glory with every pore. 
 
 9 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Whereas those others try to frame their sense of him, which 
 is small, those flatter him with a wholc-hcartcd imitation, 
 creating little gardens with stick and ink and paper as 
 he creates the world for joy with light. 
 
 More minds arc ca])ahlc of an interest in persons than 
 in beauty, as the a})[)etitc for gossi}) and scandal shows. 
 The impressionist theory was bound to catch on ; it 
 panders to so common a weakness. " Know thyself ! " 
 " Be true to your own experience." Yes, but not because 
 you are you, or it is yours, but because you are not adequate, 
 it c-iinnul suffice, and to realise these limits till they ache 
 is to extend them, throw them off and enlarge your life. 
 The difference of attitude is enormous, far more real 
 than any that can be drawn between romantic and classical 
 or realist and idealist. The artist never does express 
 himself ; but, in trying to create objects, a bj'^-product of 
 mannerisms and shortcomings piles up like a heap of 
 shavings, and this distinguishes his work from that of 
 other artists. The poet who is keen about a poem and 
 the poet who is anxious about his reputation are two 
 persons, though like light and darkness they may alter- 
 nately occupy the same room ; one casts the other out. 
 The master draws importance from the masterpiece, not 
 this from him : his glory is a reflex light from its worth. 
 
 But do I not in sketching these characters truckle with 
 this vice ? A character is formed by a transparent and 
 elastic envelope of limitations like a soap-bulable ; it is 
 easy to attribute those iridescent hues to that tegument 
 of defect, but they are due to the form which the energy 
 within supports. This escapes ; a slop of soapy water 
 falls ; so when life evades, the body caves in and moulders. 
 The hope which is my excuse is that I have focused atten- 
 tion on no slimy limitations but on the shape bestowed 
 by that expansive energy. 
 
 Life is impersonal except while prisoned in some alien 
 material, to which it gives as perfectly as possible an im- 
 10 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 mortal form. At least it is safest to think of it as im- 
 personal until we can follow it out of one form into another : 
 at present it disappears and reappears, like but not neces- 
 sarily the same. I treat of poets, not of persons. Poetry- 
 is a form of vitality due to the fact that language can be 
 filled with significance in such a way as to catch the light 
 and appear transformed in texture and value. The poet's 
 words are mere words, nevertheless ; we all use and misuse 
 them. His success is limited by their defects, just as it 
 has always been seconded by the energy with which un- 
 countable minds have charged them. So the poem has 
 a distinct character, a distinct life, and a distinct fate, 
 fuller than the poet's in some respects, narrower in others. 
 It too is a bubble into which life passes through the 
 artist as through a pipe often cracked, choked or faulty ; 
 liesides the materials he works with, the soap is not all 
 good, there may be too much or too little water, and at 
 last when the perfect globe sails away nobody happens to 
 be looking. The game is one of many hazards. Theorists 
 insist that only those bubbles that sport a certain blue or 
 green or purple are true art. But no dye, no pigment 
 helps ; and a more generously endowed faculty discovers 
 that a change in the angle of regard can awaken any of the 
 seven hues on all that float the air ; for not subject and 
 sentiment but form and texture import ; emotions and 
 themes are only tabooed by prejudice. The rainbow ad- 
 miration even hovers over the bowl of suds, and any bubble 
 round enough might be induced to travel alone if chivied 
 about with a conviction equal to that of the moment's 
 fashion. Histoiy is draughty, capriciously so, and to- 
 morrow will not correct all the mistakes of to-day. Chance 
 often defeats fine work while it treasures trash. These 
 poets have been chosen at random out of the hundreds 
 that are launched by the Press. I cannot pretend to any 
 assurance that I have chosen the largest or the most 
 prosperous voyagers. Twenty years ago the public gave 
 
 11 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 comparatively little attention to youngsters and their 
 poetry. Perliaps the public attitude has changed more 
 than young men and their work. First the turn of the 
 century made the future seem more interesting because 
 it had got a new name ; lately these l)oys became heroes, 
 defenders, creditors, and people ■were anxious to pay them 
 with sympathy and imderstanding. This more human 
 attitude no doubt exhilarates the poets. Manly youth 
 during these last four years, like a Niagara, has been 
 tlumdering down into an abj^s and the few- bubbles whose 
 beauty floats upward are pathetically disproportionate 
 to its volume and sound. To realise the cost of the forms 
 of social life yet experimented in by man is to turn in 
 horror from the past towards the future. But only by 
 gazing steadily back can we discern what life has produced 
 and therefore may again shape to warrant this outlay. 
 Art and poetry, to such a steady gaze, make up perhaps 
 half of that acceptable excuse for man's existence. Nay, 
 more than half ; for heroism, personal charm, beauty, 
 holiness, wisdom and even knowledge live again reflected 
 and absorbed into works of art, and only so find adequate 
 remembrance. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT 
 
 The war is over, and I add to these studies of Soldier 
 Poets a lecture on The Best Poetry read before the Royal 
 Society of Literature on 27th IMarch 1912, in hopes of 
 balancing and completing their significance. Young 
 poets have frequently produced perfect things, but these 
 have rarely been of any length. Much practice and 
 familiarity with the possibilities of words and thoughts are 
 required in complex creations. In discovering The Best 
 Poetry the qualities of great works must be scanned in 
 due relation to the excellences of lyrics, and thus, perhaps, 
 this examination of work hy necessity immature may be 
 throvTi into perspective and refresh without confusing. 
 
 12 
 
JULIAN GRENFELL 
 
 The war has confounded matter-of-fact calculation and 
 made most people aware of unprized volcanic resources 
 in human nature. However, some men, many young men, 
 have always felt moved, supported or opposed by agencies 
 of which they could give no consistent account to the 
 seasoned worldling. Rhythms and cadences which express 
 or seem to lead on to the expression of life's hidden value 
 take possession of young minds, control and contort their 
 speech into jangling rhyme which, since the war, has ac- 
 quired increasing popularity, till critics remember how 
 during the wars of Napoleon verse sold better than prose, 
 and wonder whether this may not happen again. The 
 customs and cares of civil life dishearten and depress, 
 and a run on poetry would be proof of reawakened sensi- 
 bility. Let us hope that England, where life has seemed 
 both stablest and stalest, is to be refreshed l^y a wave of 
 finer enthusiasm. The young will feel it first, for they 
 are never stale or established. Of all the young men 
 whom England has sent out to fight, he who has produced 
 the best poem seems to have least hesitated, answering 
 the call to fight with ecstatic joy. 
 
 Captain the Hon. JuHan H. F. Grenfell, D.S.O., was 
 bom on 30th March 1888, obtained a commission in the 1st 
 Royal Dragoons in September, 1909, and died of wounds 
 on 26th May 191 5, having written the following poem about 
 a month earlier : — 
 
 INTO BATTLE 
 
 The naked earth is warm with Spring, 
 And with green grass and bursting trees 
 Leans to the sun's gaze glorying. 
 And quivers in the sumiy breeze ; 
 
 13 
 
SOME SOU)IER POETS 
 
 And life is Coloui" and Warmth and Light, 
 And a striving evermore for these ; 
 And he is dead who will not light, 
 And who dies fighting has increase. 
 
 The fighting man shall from the sun 
 Take warmth, and life from glowing earth ; 
 Speed with the light-foot winds to run 
 And with the trees to newer birth ; 
 And find, when fighting shall be done, 
 Great rest, and fulness after dearth. 
 
 All the bright company of Heaven 
 Hold him in their bright comradeship, 
 The Dog star, and the Sisters Seven, 
 Orion's belt and sworded hip : 
 
 The woodland trees that stand together, 
 They stand to him each one a friend ; 
 They gently speak in the windy weather ; 
 They guide to valley and ridges end. 
 
 The kestrel hovering by day. 
 And the little owls that call by night, 
 Bid him be swift and keen as they. 
 As keen of ear, as smf t of sight. 
 
 The blackbird sings to him : " Brother, brother, 
 If this be the last song you shall sing, 
 Sing well, for you may not sing another ; 
 Brother, sing." 
 
 In dreary doubtful waiting hours, 
 Before the brazen frenzy starts, 
 The horses show him nobler powers ; — 
 O patient eyes, courageous hearts ! 
 
 And when the burning moment breaks, 
 And all things else are out of mind. 
 And only joy of battle takes 
 Him by the throat and makes liim blind, 
 
 14 
 
JULIAN GRENFEI.L 
 
 Through joy and blindness he shall know, 
 Not caring much to know, that still 
 Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so 
 That it be not the Destined Will. 
 
 The thundering line of battle stands. 
 And in the air Death moans and sings ; 
 But Day shall clasp him with strong hands, 
 And Night shall fold him in soft wings. 
 
 Many readers are exhilarated by this who cannot be at 
 the pains to ravel out its seciet ; and I propose to help 
 them, that the impression may last longer and satisfy 
 more completely. Young Grenfell exults at fulfilling an 
 inborn promise. At last he feels free to be what instinct 
 and capacitj' make him ; general consent and his own 
 conscience permit him to kill and to die. The ecstasy is 
 like that of married love : a fundamental instmct can be 
 gratified untaxed by inward loss or damage and with the 
 approval of mankind. Harmony between impulse and 
 circiunstance creates this joy ; but not only is it more 
 complex than that of the young male stag who attacks 
 the leader of the herd, there is in it an element of quite a 
 different order, a sense that wrong within can be defeated 
 by braving evil abroad. The strain between worldly 
 custom and that passion for good which begets spiritual 
 insight, finds relief in fighting, looks for peace in death. 
 Only the noblest spirits when young so intolerably feel 
 this strain that they welcome such an end as delicious 
 satisfaction. Acquiescence in evil seems to them too 
 high a price to pay for life. As though it were a devil, they 
 would cast out all complicity with it from themselves as 
 from others. This is the focus of their activity and mitil 
 it is found they have no peace. Shelley is recognised as 
 a type of the young poet, and this eagerness to attack 
 evil in the world and this readiness to die characterise 
 him, though his weapon was the pen and he faced death 
 
 15 
 
SOME SOT.DTKR POETS 
 
 in crazy boats and fever-stricken liovels and not in 
 battle. 
 
 The intimate delicacy and justness of this mai*vellous 
 lyric will ai)pcar more brilliantly yet if we contrast the 
 asj)ects which arouse its eloquence with those more com- 
 monly selected when the tlieme is w^ar. 
 
 Throughout the poem no hint is given of the nature 
 of the enemy ; he does not proclaim, as so many have 
 done, that he fights for right or against tyranny. He 
 does not himself look I'orward to tasting the fruits of 
 victory ; he accepts death as the natural necessary 
 reward of taking up arms. Even in peace he had chosen 
 to serve by being ready to fight. Yet he does not cry up 
 devotion to England. You will say his was obvious. 
 That is just it,true poetry does not say what is unnecessary. 
 
 That a young man of this gentleness should be glad 
 both to kill and be killed shows that the martyr and the 
 soldier are not opposite tj-pes but stand before the deeply 
 moved conscience as equal heroes. Both are finest when 
 each most resembles the other : the martyr, courageous, 
 unflinching, capable of detachment and courtesy to the 
 last : the soldier, conscientious, humane and unaggressive : 
 St Stephen and St George. The quality of emotion in 
 these stanzas will serve as a touchstone to imperialist 
 and pacifist theories. True peace is not signed by govern- 
 ments, but is something never yet achieved on earth. 
 That so-called peace which preceded the war must have 
 created the exultant relief to have done with it w^hich 
 this young man felt. And we know he was right, we 
 know its foul shame, we know how^ unworthy it was of 
 the name we so fondly gave it. Peace indeed ! 
 
 The sanity of a true inspiration is miraculous and avoids 
 errors which we all breathe and utter, and yet does not 
 fall into the opposition of that half illumination which, 
 like a bee on a window-pane, angrily buzzes itself to death 
 because it sees but cannot enter the light. Neither is 
 
 16 
 
JULIAN GRENFELL 
 
 it passive, disclaiming part and parcel in humanity's 
 Lragedy, as though thei'e were any other means of support 
 than man's widespread good will. Men and nations, we 
 all depend for what we are permitted to be on friendliness 
 and co-operation. 
 
 The senses both of mind and body are tender, all callous- 
 ness impairs them. The slaves of machinery, with their 
 real-politik and subsei-viency to fact, are m all countries 
 striving to stifle liberty, poetry, joy. But kindness is 
 stronger than discipline and courtesy more victorious 
 than munitions. 
 
 Since I wrote this a pamphlet has been published with 
 extracts from Julian Grenf ell's letters ; these strengthen 
 and endorse the impression received from his poem. He 
 was a born fighter : there is a wonderful description of a 
 boxing match he had with a champion at Johannesburg, 
 too long to quote here but very worth reading. After he 
 had been knocked down three times he remarks that his 
 " head was clearing." Yet he can also write : 
 
 " I hate material books, centred on whether people are 
 successful. I like books about artists and philosophers 
 and dreamers, anybody who is just a little bit off his dot." 
 
 Success in this present world is a little incompatible 
 with real success ; one is a trifle beside the mark of the 
 other even when they seem to coincide. 
 
 " I longed to be able to say that I liked it, after all that 
 one has heard of being under fire for the first time. But 
 it is beastly. I pretended to myself for a bit that I liked 
 it, but it was no good ; it only made me careless and un- 
 watchful and self-absorbed ; but when one acknowledged 
 to oneself that it was beastly, one became all right again 
 and cool." 
 
 So his head began to clear again just in time. 
 
 ^ Julian Orenfell : A Memoir. By Viola Meynell. Burns &Oate8. Is, 
 B 17 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 " Here Ave arc in the burning centre of it all, and I would 
 not be anywhere else for a million pounds and the Queen 
 of Sheba." 
 
 Consciously or imconsciously he repeats the sentiment 
 that Shakespeare put into the mouth of Henry V. at Agin- 
 court and Sir Henry Newbolt into Nelson's in his Admirals 
 All. That sentiment characterises the bom leader : 
 when facing danger he feels that he is where he can best 
 prove what he is. He felt " utterly ashamed " of himself 
 when he had met a Gei-man officer prisoner with a scowl, 
 the other looked so " proud, so resolute, smart and con- 
 fident in his hour of bitterness." This instant challenge 
 and rebuke of himself was akin to his mastery and initia- 
 tive. He begged to be allowed to go out into " No Man's 
 Land " stalking Germans, and was refused. At last : 
 
 . " They told me to take a section with me, and I said I 
 would rather cut my throat and have done with it. So 
 they let me go alone." 
 
 His experiences are as good reading as the fight at 
 Johannesburg, but too long to quote. 
 
 " I got back at a sort of galloping crawl and sent a 
 message to the 10th that the Germans were moving up 
 their way in some numbers. . . . They made quite a 
 ridiculous fuss about me stalking, and getting the message 
 through. ... It was up to someone to do it instead of 
 leaving it all to the Geniians and losing two officers a day 
 through snipers. All our men have started it now. It is 
 a popular amusement." 
 
 But first is first to-day just as when David met Goliath. 
 A piece of bursting shell has deprived us of a great leader, 
 with the characteristics of the fmcst kings of men. And 
 though wealthy enough to travel with dogs and horses 
 wherever he went, he could not bear to think that a friend 
 18 
 
JULIAN GRENFELL 
 
 had deserted the Sociahst cause out of respect for " the 
 loaves and the fishes." This friend writes : 
 
 " I don't suppose many people knew what an ardent 
 love he had for honesty of purpose and intellectual honesty, 
 and what sacrifices he made for them — sacrifices of peace- 
 of-mind abhorrent to most Englishmen . . . caused him- 
 self no end of worry and unhappiness." 
 
 Yes, facing discomfort clears the will, as facing physical 
 danger clears the head, and wrong within can be defeated 
 by braving evil abroad. And now while intellectual 
 honesty is at a premium I will confess that the last two lines 
 of his Into Battle always disappoint me. They ring hollow 
 and empty ; it is as though he had been disturbed and 
 scribbled in haste something that looks like an end but 
 is not, and never given his mind to the poem again. 
 
 The other poems published since are slighter in mood 
 and more boyish in execution. Though they are not bad, 
 they are not good enough to enhance the effect of Into 
 Battle. 
 
 Physically, mentally and morally splendid, he miglit 
 seem to have done little in this world but be and be de- 
 stroyed. Yet to have been, and to be known to have been 
 such as he was, may well in time seem one of the grandest 
 facts of these times. Such admiration as we owe to him 
 is an experience as rare as it is beneficent, and will out- 
 last a vast number of topics and crazes. Two phases of 
 his worth he revealed even to those who never met him : 
 the one in his poem, the other in his letters ; and they 
 tally as the like aspects have rarely tallied in other men. 
 This proves the density of the integrity that was destroyed 
 by a fragment of iron. He lay wounded a few weeks 
 before he ceased to suffer. 
 
 The worst horror of modern war is not the vastness of 
 its destmctions but the number of spirits whom it en- 
 slaves to machmery ; and in this it closely resembles 
 
 19 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 modern peace. The plough lacerates the turf, many lowly 
 and lovely lives are sacrificed that wheat may be sown 
 and a taller, straighter growth raised to sustain a higher 
 pulse of life. But how many of our modem machines 
 create what is useless or harmful, at the expense of the 
 best life both of tliose whose profit is intended and of those 
 whom they exploit ! Is there so much choice between 
 the horrors of war and those of peace when they are truly 
 estimated that the pacifist should prefer them or the 
 imperialist wish to re-establish them ? That men shoidd 
 be forced by the self-seeking of others to linger in want 
 or to die in cruel torture is equally abhorrent. The hope 
 of all generous spirits is to have done by means of the war 
 with the peace that they have known and to usher in a 
 better order. And Grenfell cheers this hope as few can, 
 foreshowing a better proportioned life. The limpidity 
 and strength of his emotion, though it creates beauty and 
 reveals wisdom, was seconded by no matured art ; yet 
 those who have this at command are so liable to fail just 
 where he succeeds, in sureness of aim. 
 
 20 
 
RUPERT BROOKE 
 
 Rupert Brooke was beginning to be kno^\^l both as a 
 poet and for rare personal beauty when his death at the 
 age of twenty-eight, on his way out to the Dardanelles, 
 set him beside Sir Philip Sidney as scholar, soldier, poet 
 and patriot. 
 
 There was a factitious element in this burst of acclama- 
 tion, something we can hope the man himself would have 
 responded less and less to. Though the beauty of his 
 person and the daintiness of his verse and the gentleness 
 of his manners made worldlings eager to spoil him, he was 
 not averse to hard work, and maintained a certain reserve 
 which augured a better future for him than that of a darling 
 of fashion. He and his yovmg Cambridge friends of both 
 sexes seem to have cherished an ideal of free comradeship, 
 and to have realised it in an uncommon degree without 
 paying toll in scandals to the censorious world. In like 
 manner his verse, though playful and ornamental, so toys 
 with philosophical inquiries as to hint at latent resources 
 of graver power. Such problems as whether any com- 
 mimions are possible, whether I can know you or you me, 
 and whether existence is absolutely conditioned by time 
 and space, are whimsically put and illustrated in such 
 instances as a fish, or a single moment of one particular 
 tea in a dining-room. 
 
 " Oh ! never fly conceals a hook, 
 Fish say, in the Eternal Brook, 
 But more than mundane weeds are there. 
 And mud, celestially fair ; 
 Fat caterpillars drift around. 
 And Paradisal grubs are found ; 
 Unfading moths, immortal flies, 
 And the worm that never dies. 
 And in that heaven of all their wish. 
 There shall be no more land, say fish." 
 
 21 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 Only an arch levity saves this from being trite. I should 
 have to quote too much before I could illustrate his amuse- 
 ment Avith the possible delusions of men's thoughts. But 
 occasionally a serious shudder is glim})sed l)ehind the 
 smiling mask. 
 
 " And suddenly there's no meaning in our kiss 
 And your lit upward face grows, where we lie, 
 Lonelier and drcadfuller than sunlight is, 
 And duml) and mad and eyeless like the sky." 
 
 His sovran preoccupation, that which inspired his best 
 poems, was the least suitable for one whom some have 
 imagined cut out for the part of a modern Antinous, to 
 whom the elite of London, both male and female, should 
 corporately play the part of a platonic Hadrian. His 
 thoughts flocked about death. At first he dallies with 
 them. 
 
 " Oh ! Death w-ill find me, long before I tire 
 Of watching you ; and swing me suddenly 
 Into the shade and loneliness and mire 
 Of the last land ! There, w^aiting patiently. 
 One day, I think I'll find a cool wind blowing, 
 See a slow light across the Stygian tide, 
 And hear the dead about me stir, unknowing. 
 And tremble. And I shall know that you have died 
 And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling dream, 
 Pass light as ever, through the lightless host, 
 Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam — 
 Most individual and bewildering ghost !-^- 
 And turn and toss your brown delightful head 
 Amusedly, among the ancient Dead." 
 
 But his contemplation of possible significance in life's 
 end passes gradually into scrcner moods. 
 
 CLOUDS 
 
 Down the blue night the unending columns press 
 In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow. 
 Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow 
 Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness. 
 
 22 
 
RUPERT BROOKE 
 
 Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless, 
 And turn with profound gesture vague and slow, 
 As who would pray good for the world, but know 
 Their benediction empty as they bless. 
 They say that the Dead die not, but remain 
 Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth. 
 I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these, 
 In wise majestic melancholy train. 
 And watch the moon and the still-raging seas, 
 And men, coming and going on the earth." 
 
 At last in his finest poem these reveries rise to an ex- 
 pression worthy of the classics of our language. 
 
 i 
 
 THE DEAD (1914) 
 
 These hearts were woven of human joys and cares, 
 
 Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth, 
 
 The years had given them kindness. Da^\Ti was theirs, 
 
 And sunset and the colours of the earth. 
 
 These had seen movement, and heard music ; known 
 
 Slumber and waking ; loved ; gone proudly friended ; 
 
 Felt the quick stir of wonder ; sat alone ; 
 
 Touched flowers and furs, and cheeks. All this is ended. 
 
 There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter 
 
 And lit by the rich skies all day. And after, 
 
 Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance 
 
 In wandering loveliness. He leaves a white 
 
 Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance, 
 
 A width, a shining peace, under the night. ^ 
 
 The remoteness and impersonality of this sadness, with 
 the wide horizon and imifying candour, compel our deepest 
 welcome. The effort to startle, allure, or amuse has 
 vanished. No doubt the devotion to England, dwelt on 
 in the other sonnets of the 1914 sequence, won more of 
 the praise ; but some who acutely felt his charm were 
 conscious of a falsetto emphasis in those efforts to say the 
 
 ^ Quotations by permission of Brooke's literary representative, 
 E. Marsh, Esq. 
 
 23 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 right thing at the right moment, although his death had 
 doubled their appeal. 
 
 Poems demand to he read aloud by someone who has 
 instinet ive sympathy for the paee, tone and address proper 
 to eaeh. For many the interest nmst at first, and perhaps 
 long, lie in the mental attitude revealed. Nor is this 
 attitude a small or insignificant part of the impression 
 which ought to be made by poetry — the most perfect speech 
 of man, as it has been called — that is, the utterance to 
 which the greatest number of his faculties coml)ined in 
 harmonious balance contribute. The way the speaker 
 has borne himself, and the way he now confronts the world, 
 must influence this hannony profoundly. His words 
 betray his past and present to those whose attention is 
 sufficiently continuous and searching, by indices that lie 
 around and beyond the mere meaning of the sentences 
 used — indices gleaned from their interplay and the degree 
 in which eaeh alters and defines the whole sense, as much 
 as from the melody of the words or the rhythm of their 
 just enunciation. This aroma, which arises from the 
 organism of the meaning, translators can often convey 
 to other nations ; for the beauties of diction and rhytlmi, 
 many among those who speak the same tongue should 
 accept the verdict of trained appreciators. Now melody 
 and rhythm often engross trained apprehension, and the 
 ] less learned may therefore be more ready to note the grave 
 drift of wonder which flows beneath the playful, indulged 
 and indulgent surface of Brooke's art, than were his 
 aesthetic admirers. Those eyes which gaze out from be- 
 hind his poems have been fascinated by the contrast 
 between the momentousness of life to us, and our strangely 
 casual relation to its vast movement, which is not at all 
 suited to nourish our hopes of divining the whole truth. 
 Those eyes seem to dance ; for has not methodic inquiry 
 begun to reconsider what it had denounced as entirely 
 fabulous ? Death's door, which Spencer, Renan and 
 24 
 
RUPERT BROOKE 
 
 Nietzsche regarded as finally closed, is well-nigh ajar once 
 more. Brooke's amused alertness is like that of a child 
 who watches a door emphatically closed upon a cupboard 
 declared to be empty by grown-up assurance ; it creaks, 
 and mysteriously seems to stir ; other little boys and girls, 
 his playmates, pay scant attention to its unaccountable 
 behaviour. He himself thinks he has seen that the cup- 
 board was vacant, and yet, in spite of himself, is fascinated 
 by the possibility of a ghostly opener. Smiling over his 
 own fancies, Brooke seems to have sat half abstracted at 
 a pleasure party till the outbreak of war. He immedi- 
 ately volunteered, though delicate and but recently 
 returned from a voyage across America and through the 
 Pacific Islands in search of health — health which finally 
 failed him before he had struck a blow or fired a shot, 
 though he had been to Antwerp with the naval expedition. 
 To-day he stands with Julian Grenfell, as I see them 
 through their work, in attitudes that suggest statues more 
 worthy of the acropolis of the supreme city than any of 
 those which the public figures of these times have yet 
 assumed. What is done is always faulty, but what is | 
 intended may sometimes be divinely fair ; and early ^ 
 death leaves this untampered with. Finely wrought 
 bronze, these youths and their peers from other lands stand 
 in that lofty garden above the ideal town, listening to 
 their " friends " the trees. At their feet children play on 
 the grass, and young girls crumble bread to lure doves down 
 from the heroic shoulders ; while for the men who glance 
 at them in passing the inspiration of their bearing is all 
 that remains of the Great War. The ardent Grenfell 
 leaps forward ; Brooke with smiling grace escapes from 
 the uncomfortable admiration of a bygone age — both bent 
 on grasping by the hand their new and best friend. Death. 
 
 25 
 
A HALF PLEIADE 
 
 Let St Beiive's avowal justify this title : " All these 
 Academies, between you and me, are pieces of childishness, 
 at any rate the French Academy is. Our least quarter 
 of an hour of solitary reveries or of serious talk, yours and 
 mine, in our youth, was better employed ; but as one 
 gets old one falls back into the power of these nothings ; 
 only it is well to know what nothings they are." So the 
 significance of serious thought and discussion about art 
 is apt to hold an inverse ratio to the number and age of 
 those who think and discuss ; for the future is always in- 
 visible. Robert Nichols, Siegfried Sassoon and Robert 
 Graves, friends by their own avowal, have possibly had 
 this importance in intimate conclave. Who can be sure 
 that they have not deserved my title ? They make no 
 claim to be reformers or a movement, but such announce- 
 ments are perhaps a fashionable foible, a trait which will 
 disparage and date our period a hundred years hence. 
 " The political virus even infected literature ; writers and 
 artists called themselves impressionists, symbolists, futur- 
 ists, imagists and cubists ; they published programmes 
 and manifestoes, the charlatans ! " as some unborn Taine 
 may phrase it. 
 
 Rupert Brooke's verse had a conscious elegance that 
 diverse judges attribute either to his treasuring a meagre 
 vein or to a wary nature's perception that there had only 
 yet been time to polish one of its many facets. In Robert 
 Nichols' work variety and abundance are more evident 
 than artistry and selectness. As if to make up for this he 
 has prefaced his volume ^ with two quotations from An 
 Introduction to the Scientific Study of English Poetry, by 
 Mark Liddell. These passages, though neither new nor 
 perfectly expressed, suggest that Nichols' attention has 
 been absorbed by the rehearsal of passionate experience 
 
 ^ Ardours and Endurances . By Robert Nichols. Chatto & Windus. 
 
 27 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 or its reverberation througli imagined scenes, ratlier tlian 
 by niceties of style or prosody. All that he means by 
 " a rln-thm of ideas " is that the sense of the words should 
 inspire the cadences of their sound ; for, of course, in its 
 major structures as well as in line and stanza, rhj'thm is a 
 sensuous character only applicable to ideas by a metaphor. 
 Poetry is, he thinks, "a marvel of the brain" funda- 
 mentally the same in all men ; the poet only excels by 
 more perfect organs of perception and expression — a con- 
 ception in generous contrast to that of the young man, 
 who is so keen on distinguishing his work as to whittle his 
 gift away in the effort to remove all trace of kinship with 
 other minds. On the other hand, only time will show 
 whether Nichols will say a great deal in a manner not 
 sufficiently distinct to live, or will fulfil the promise every- 
 where apparent in this book. 
 
 " On either hand the slender trees 
 Bow to the caressing breeze. 
 And shake their shocks of silver light 
 Against skies marbled greenish-white. 
 Save where, within a rent of blue. 
 The tilted slip of moon glints through. 
 Glittering upon us as we dance 
 With a soft extravagance 
 Of limbs as blonde as Autumn boughs 
 And gold locks floating from moony brows. 
 While anguished Pan the pipes doth blow 
 Fond and tremulous and low. ..." 
 
 A good omen ! We are reminded of the sweetest music 
 of classical English. It is not easy to imitate ; let those 
 who think it is, echo so fine a strain so freshl}-. . Nothing 
 comes of nothing, but out of imitative admiration grow 
 the grand wings of the Muses. However, this Faun's' 
 Holiday is a rambling, shapeless poem, though it constantly 
 threatens to be better than it anywhere is. With the 
 anxiety of one who expects to sui-pass himself Mr Nichols 
 
 28 
 
A HALF PLEIADE 
 
 appends "Oxford, Early Spring, 1914," to the poem, 
 which is preceded by a note telling us that one part is 
 adapted from a version of 1912 and another only com- 
 posed as late as July, 1914. To set so seriously about 
 helping your biographer is charmingly youthful. Another 
 pre-war poem called The Tower describes Judas leaving 
 the Last Supper : 
 
 "... one arose to depart 
 Having weakness and hate of weakness raging within 
 
 his heart 
 And bowed to the robed assembly whose eyes gleamed 
 
 wet in the light" — 
 
 and at the bottom of the tower found beside the door — 
 
 " Mary of Seven Evils, Mary Magdalen. 
 And he was frighted at her. She sighed : ' I dreamed 
 
 him dead. 
 We sell the body for silver . . .' 
 
 Then Judas cried out and fled." 
 
 Though the texture of the poem has been accepted too 
 easily, these are touches of imaginative power which may 
 lead to greater things. Possibly his best poem is — 
 
 THE RECKONING 
 
 The whole world burns, and with it burns my flesh. 
 
 Arise, thou spirit spent by sterile tears ; 
 
 Thine eyes were ardent once, thy looks were fresh. 
 
 Thy brow shone bright amid thy shining peers. 
 
 Fame calls thee not, thou who hast vainly strayed 
 
 So far from her ; nor Passion, who in the past 
 
 Gave thee her ghost to wed and to be paid ; 
 
 Nor love, Avhose anguish only learned to last. 
 
 Honour it is that calls ; canst thou forget 
 
 Once thou wert strong ? Listen, the solemn call 
 
 Sounds but this once again. Put by regret 
 
 For summons missed, or thou hast missed them all. 
 
 Body is ready. Fortune pleased ; O let 
 
 Not the poor Past cost the proud Future's fall. 
 
 29 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 Witli tliat he turns to enlist. It is a little difficult to 
 guess what " Fortune pleased " may refer to. Possibly 
 that, in sounding him this new, terrible summons. Fortune 
 shows herself pleased to give him a new chance of re- 
 trieving whatever in his life had gone awry. The rest is 
 touching in its sincerity, all the more for its somewhat 
 grandiloquent address. 
 
 Wistful, hesitant, eager, boyish, yet already regretful 
 over things done ill — all the ingenuous flutter of an am- 
 bitious but not yet fully sinewed nature — with what image 
 shall we associate the attitude of Robert Nichols in this 
 book ? Sculpture is too definite. But a fresco in the 
 Prytaneum. Not a large panel nor in a central place. I 
 see a boy battling in a strong wind with a shirt from which 
 he cannot free his wrists. Splash ! splash ! his com- 
 panions plunge into the sea, he totters with impatience, 
 half laughs at his own misfortune, blushes at seeming to 
 lag behind, 3'et thrills at the possibility of retrieving all 
 and being first at the goal. But many of these poems are 
 dreamy ! and was not our lad in a muse when he forgot 
 to unbutton those wrist-bands, before pulling his shirt 
 over his head ? Look, the sky is grey, the water rough, 
 the wind deafening ; only those who swim for honour 
 will not defer the race. 
 
 With Siegfried Sassoon we have " glad confident 
 morning " ; he does easily and well what he desires to do. 
 His rhythms never hark back to Milton's youth as Robert 
 Nichols' did ; they stop short at John INIasefield and 
 Thomas Hardy. The longest poem ^ is a monologue. 
 The speaker, an old huntsman, has become inn-keeper, 
 only to lose his savings instead of increasing them ; he 
 lazily maunders about life and religion, the point being 
 the piquancy of vulgar notions of hell and heaven, when 
 travestied in images drawn from his narrow round of 
 experience with the pack and behind the bar. It might 
 
 ^ The Old Hunttman and Other Poems. Heinemann. 5s. 
 30 
 
A HALF PLEIADE 
 
 be claimed by those anxious to show that this young 
 poet's roots strike deeper than I have suggested that this 
 poem resembles Bro^vning's Caliban on Setebos. The 
 book at first seems merely smart, buoyed on good health 
 and good fortune, " like little wanton boys who swim on 
 bladders." 
 
 STAND TO : GOOD FRIDAY MORNING 
 
 I'd been on duty from two till four. 
 
 I went and stared at the dug-out door. 
 
 Down in the frowst I heard them snore. 
 
 " Stand to ! " Somebody grunted and swore. 
 
 Dawn was misty ; the skies were still ; 
 
 Larks were singing, discordant and shrill ; 
 
 They seemed happy ; but I felt iU. 
 
 Deep in water I splashed my way 
 
 Up the trench to our bogged front line. 
 
 Ram had fallen the whole damned night, 
 
 O Jesus, send me a wound to-day, 
 
 And I'll believe in Your bread and wine, 
 
 And get my bloody old sins washed white. 
 
 Graves' tone is more felicitous in this vein, his cynicism 
 is less consciously aggressive. 
 
 STRONG BEER 
 
 Tell us, now, how and when 
 We may find the bravest men ? . . . 
 Oh, never choose as Gideon chose 
 By the cold well, but rather those 
 Who look on beer when it is brown, 
 Smack their lips and gulp it down. 
 Leave the lads who tamely drink 
 With Gideon by the water brink, 
 But search the benches of the Plough, 
 The Tun, The Sun, The Spotted Cow, 
 For jolly rascals, lads who pray, 
 Pe\^i:er in hand, at close of day, 
 " Teach me to live that I may fear 
 The grave as little as my beer." 
 
 31 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 Nichols is hardly ever so successful as these two pieces 
 are, yet even his war poems (records of casual scenes and 
 moods), which cannot be said to push l)eyond appearances, 
 are warmer and not so arid as Bassoon's, not so trivial as 
 Graves'. 
 
 " ' 'Ello ! wot's up ? ' ' Let's 'ave a look ! ' 
 ' Come on. Ginger, drop that book ! ' 
 ' Wot an 'ell of bloody noise ! ' 
 ' It's the Yorks and Lanes, me boys ! ' 
 
 So we crowd : hear, watch them come . . . 
 
 One man drubbing on a drum, 
 
 A crazy, high mouth-organ blowing. 
 
 Tin cans rattling, cat-calls, crowing . . . 
 
 ' 'Ip 'urrah ! ' ' Give Fritz the chuck.' 
 
 ' Good ol' bloody Yorks ! ' ' (Jood luck ! ' 
 
 ' Cheer ! ' 
 
 I cannot cheer or speak 
 Lest my voice, my heart must break." 
 
 His comrades' intentions are thinner than this, indeed 
 so fully rewarded with a grin that the title "poet" 
 appears misplaced. Slangy cynicism characterises many 
 of Sassoon's poems, but reading on, something deeper is 
 discovered. 
 
 " When I ni among a blaze of lights, 
 W^ith tawdry music and cigars 
 And women dawdling through delights. 
 And officers at cocktail bars, . . . 
 Sometimes I think of garden nights 
 And elm trees nodding at the stars. 
 
 I dream of a small fire-lit room 
 
 With yellow candles burning straight, 
 
 And glowing pictures in the gloom, 
 
 And kindly books that hold me late. 
 
 Of things like these I love to think 
 
 When I can never be alone : 
 
 Then someone says : ' Another drink ? ' . . . 
 
 And turns my living heart to stone." 
 
 32 
 
A HALF PLEIADE 
 
 Nothing could be better than that "When I can never 
 be alone." It is as apt as it is simple, worthy of any- 
 master. 
 
 So he yearns from the crowd, the mud, the din at the 
 Front ; and when he gets home on leave he walks up 
 round the house where his friend used to live, and through 
 the wood they often paced together, seeking for com- 
 munion with him, though he is dead. 
 
 " Ah, but there was no need to call his name. 
 He was beside me now, as swift as light. 
 I knew him crushed to earth in scentless flowers, 
 And lifted in the rapture of dark pines. 
 ' For now,' he said, ' my spirit has more eyes 
 Than heaven has stars ; and they are lit by love. 
 My body is the magic of the world. 
 And dawn and sunset flame with my spilt blood. 
 My breath is the great wind and I am filled 
 With molten power and surge of the bright waves 
 That chant my doom along the ocean's edge. . . .' " 
 
 •Thus sorrow opens the flood-gates of his eloquence. 
 Yet though it less suggests abundance. Graves' simpler, 
 briefer Not Dead is perhaps more effective. 
 
 " Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain 
 I know that David's with me here again. 
 All that is simple, happy, strong he is. 
 Caressingly I stroke 
 Rough bark of the friendly oak. 
 A brook goes babbling by : the voice is his. 
 Turf burns with pleasant smoke ; 
 I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses ; 
 All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. 
 Over the whole wood in a little while 
 Breaks his slow smile." 
 
 Here both young scoffers are in earnest. And though 
 Graves succeeds best, one doubts whether he will task 
 himself enough for greater things, whereas throughout 
 Sassoon's book, with its glib impressionism playing with 
 
 c 33 
 
somp: soi.dikr poets 
 
 worn themes in order to make something out of the wrong 
 side of them, there is a toueh of strength, a gift for suc- 
 ceeding to-day whicli will help liim when he turns his mind 
 to its true work. But on this theme also Nichols, in spite 
 of his less steady hand, can match them both, perhaps 
 surpass either. 
 
 OUR DEAD 
 
 They have gone from us. O no ! they are 
 
 The inmost essence of each thing that is 
 
 Perfect for us ; they flame in every star ; 
 
 The trees are emerald with their presences. 
 
 They arc not gone from us ; they do not roam 
 
 The How and turmoil of the lower deep, 
 
 But have now made the whole wide world their home, 
 
 And in its loveliness themselves they steep. 
 
 They fail not ever ; theirs is the diurn 
 
 Splendour of sunny hill and forest grave ; 
 
 In every rainbow's glittering drop they burn ; 
 
 They dazzle in the massed clouds' architrave ; 
 
 They chant on every wind, and they return 
 
 In the long roll of any deep blue wave. 
 
 The grief is that a voice like our own, a mind which had 
 communed with ours, has been replaced by a world-wide 
 absence : travel where we will, the well-known hail can 
 never suiprise us again. An end has been reached. 
 Rupert Brooke's sonnet gives splendid expression to the 
 strange awe of this silent, empty prospect. Yet all three 
 of these younger poets, in a strain of slightly affected 
 pantheism, console themselves that what they have lost 
 is added to what remains — invisibly present in it ; and 
 you are set pondering whether inspiration leavened the 
 literary convention, derived from Shelley's Adonais, 
 sufficiently to give their having done this, force as a hint 
 of some deep human trait. What place do we really 
 think " our dead " should take in our lives ? The poet 
 who would convince us of the truth would need to be not 
 
 84 
 
A HALF PLEIADE 
 
 only daring and honest as these boys, but wise and 
 profoundly gentle. 
 
 A shirt was clinging to Nichols' image, but Sassoon 
 appears in full uniform, equal to every claim made by a 
 day of action. Or is his smartness rather intellectual 
 than practical ? Derision hardly consists with might 
 and main. Scorn abstracts itself and stands aside. The 
 dapper mind is exasperated by fatigue and danger, and 
 ever tries to reserve for self-realisation a few crumbs of 
 time and energy. Shall we not picture this satirist better 
 huddling under a greatcoat in some chilly dug-out? 
 Refusing to drop asleep, he muses of his room in college, 
 or holds a book he is too tired to read for a few seconds 
 near his candle-end before putting it out. Preoccupied 
 with to-day, he is of the best that it recognises in itself. 
 
 But no ! How easy it is to be unjust ! Another little 
 book ^ arrives, clearer-voiced ; in it the self-conscious grin 
 opens to a bitter laugh, while on its later pages the soul 
 rebels, repents and aspires, with grace and power. 
 
 BANISHMENT 
 
 I AM banished from the patient men who fight. 
 They smote my heart to pity, built my pride. 
 Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side. 
 They trudged away from life's broad wealds of light. 
 Their wrongs were mine ; and ever in my sight 
 They went arrayed in honour. But they died, — 
 Not one by one : and mutinous I cried 
 To those who sent them out into the night. 
 
 The darkness tells how vainly I have stri-^en 
 
 To free them from the pit where they must dwell 
 
 In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven 
 
 By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel. 
 
 Love drives me back to grope with them through hell ; 
 
 And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven. 
 
 1 Counter- Attack and Other Poems. Siegfried Sassoon. Heinemann. 
 2s. 6d. 
 
 35 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 For a young officer to refuse to lead more men to death 
 may give proof of truer courage than to continue to do it 
 ^vitllout conviction. Such insubordination is abundantly 
 excused both l)y tlic facts that prompted it and by the 
 action that retrieved it. 
 
 Were all men capable of such mutinies war would cease. 
 "War is forced on many whose souls rebel against it by 
 many who seek profit in it, whether for themselves, their 
 caste or their nation. But these were surely more numerous 
 and more dominant among our enemies than on our side : 
 yet even Prussians are men. How many of us repel the 
 offer of an unfair advantage ? how many pounce on it ? 
 This solidarity of the average man with them gives war- 
 lords their power, which must be broken symbolically in 
 fact before the human spirit will discipline its appetite 
 for exploiting weaker men. Grenfells are needed to 
 subjugate this dragon ; but they will recognise brother 
 spirits among the conscientious objectors, who brave not 
 only the enemy but the whole world. Just as Sassoon's 
 scorn for many common attitudes towards the war is too 
 intellectual to inspire his best poetry, so censors of all 
 mankind discover a theoretical nudity. Our dependence 
 on our neighbours, even when we are forced to despise 
 their judgment, is more certain than our own wisdom can 
 be. Peace with its commerce was blighted vrith. a like 
 shame, waste and ruthlessness, yet who dissociated himself 
 thus completely from its prosperity ? Then to refuse to 
 soil the hands when millions must be stained will appear 
 ungenerous, unless the danger run in keeping them so 
 daintily clean exceed the common danger ; and even then 
 the grace of a divine humility maj^ not be superfluous. 
 History has proved, however, that the Prince of Peace 
 necessarily appears hostile to the average man until he 
 rises from death, no longer to reason about property and 
 liberty in the world but to appeal for service and integrity 
 In the heart. 
 36 
 
A HALF PI.EIADE 
 
 Timon of Athens is frequently enacted in small on the 
 nursery boards, often with a sixth act, an act as touching 
 and more heroic than the prodigal son's last, when the 
 scorned scorner returns to his world. In the splendour 
 of early manhood such a repentant Timon is a rarer and 
 grander figure — stooping his proud, honest head because 
 though men are servile and treacherous, he who is neither 
 is yet their brother in so many other ways that when 
 Athens is besieged he claims to share their agony as a 
 privilege. Such is the figure gazing on which my admiring 
 eyes are misted, after reading this sonnet Banishment. 
 
 Less passion, and an easier commerce with actuality 
 would seem to characterise the poetry of Captain Robert 
 Graves. His is a taking smile. 
 
 " The child alone a poet is : 
 Spring and Fairyland are his. 
 Truth and Reason show but dim, 
 And all's poetry with him. 
 Rhyme and music flow in plenty 
 For the lad of one and twenty, 
 But Spring for him is no more now 
 Than daisies to a munching cow ; 
 Just a cheery pleasant season, 
 Daisy buds to Uve at ease on. 
 He's forgotten how he smiled 
 And shrieked at snowdrops when a child." 
 
 As reason wakes, lads find themselves asked to accept 
 not only the dumbfounding universe but monstrous social ! 
 and political accumulations ; and, for the most part, 
 religious ideals tangled with fabulous legend. For all j 
 this there is no simple and clear defence ; even genius is 1 
 at a loss to create so much as an appearance of straight- 
 forwardness or to deduce a practical course which you can 
 pretend is, or has been, followed. This world's sublimest 
 tact is the inept stare that refuses to see difficulties. 
 Youngsters laugh, however seriously minded, for laughter 
 
 37 
 
 V 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 is their one escape from the awe-inspiring immensity of 
 tlic imposition. The more eompreliensive the mind tlie 
 more kinds of rehef it seeks in laughter. The young man 
 who guys love, art, science, justice and the Bible is usually 
 he who is most naturally gifted for pursuing ideals of 
 affection, beauty, truth, righteousness and revercnce. 
 The middle-aged forget what they laughed at in youth : 
 for my own part I cannot recall that there was any limit 
 either of decency or reverence; Rabelais had not gone 
 too far. Aristoplianes proves that Athenian taste forbade 
 no jest. And while the laugh rings in his ear no young 
 fellow of parts is inclined to deny it a universal privilege. 
 I have even seen one joke about toothache while writhing 
 with it. AVe first discover subjects that are no laughing 
 matter under the lash of predicted consequences, as we 
 accept servitude to social and political ends ; then we 
 begin in revenge to outlaw indecency and irreverence. 
 The young and gifted are right, sesthetic training and in- 
 tellectual power must achieve an Attic freedom. We need 
 not wonder then to find a young captain-poet writing in a 
 jocular vein about his own wounds and death, and every 
 subject that touches him with at all similar force. The 
 quality of his laughter is all that concerns us ; and this, 
 let me hasten to assure the long faces, is irreverent rather 
 than indecent, fantastic rather than boisterous. Now 
 faces are long because they have not laughed enough, not 
 because they have been wise. 
 
 The aesthetic expression of a comic sense is perhaps the 
 most difficult problem taste has to face. The success of 
 a jest, as Shakespeare said, " lies in the ear." Men become 
 less ticklish and laugh less as life proceeds. A child so 
 enjoys laughing it hardly needs a jest to set it off, and 
 right on up to extreme old age no tears are more grateful 
 than those squeezed out when both aching sides have to be 
 held. But this physical enjoyment bribes the taste to be 
 indulgent ; that we have laughed rebukes all censure of a 
 
 38 
 
A HALF PLEIADE 
 
 jest, just as not to have laughed puts our judgment out of 
 court. But taste, Hke the soldier, must face all odds and 
 strive to remain honest and delicate, in spite of the 
 natural man. 
 
 Captain Robert Graves' humour attains a kind and 
 degree of success similar to that of Robert Nichols' effort 
 after beauty — glimpses and promises of felicity but not 
 much more ; and he also finds a rival in Siegfried Sassoon, 
 who sounds a like note of fantastic levity in his Noah and 
 Policeman. This third star in the tiny constellation has 
 on the whole the most definite character, a ray whose 
 specti-um is more nearly unique. JMany of his poems deal 
 with the childhood he has so recently quit, in its home 
 rather than its school side ; he seems to remain constantly 
 aware of his knickerbocker self and of the family he made 
 one of. Nonsense and laughter are still the happy relief 
 from a probably more mature daily habit, which his rank 
 might seem to infer — relief even after the most terrible 
 experiences of trench life. 
 
 Through long nursery nights he stood 
 
 By my bed unwearying, 
 
 Loomed gigantic, formless, queer. 
 
 Purring in my haunted ear 
 
 That same hideous nightmare thing, 
 
 Talking as he lapped my blood, 
 
 In a voice cruel and flat. 
 
 Saying for ever : ' Cat ! . . . Cat ! . . . Cat ! . . .' 
 
 Morphia-drowsed, again I lay 
 
 In a crater by High Wood : 
 
 He was there with straddling legs. 
 
 Staring eyes as big as eggs, 
 
 Purring as he lapped my blood. 
 
 His black bulk darkening the day — 
 
 With a voice cruel and flat, 
 
 ' Cat ! ... Cat ! ... Cat ! ' he said. ' Cat ! . . . Cat ! . . .' 
 
 39 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 ESCAPE 
 
 "August G, 1916. Officer previously reported died of wounds, 
 now reported wounded : — Graves, Captain R., Royal Welsh Fusiliers." 
 
 But I xca.f dead, an hour or more. 
 
 I woke when I'd already passed the door 
 
 That Cerberus guards, and half-way do\Mi the road 
 
 To Lethe, as an old Greek signpost showed . . . 
 
 Dear Lady Proserpme . . . 
 
 Cleared my poor buzzing head and sent me baek . . . 
 
 Breathless, with leaping heart along the track. 
 
 After me roared and clattered angry hosts 
 
 Of demons, heroes, and policemen-ghosts . . . 
 
 There's still some morphia that I bought on leave. 
 
 Then swiftly Cerberus' wide mouth I cram 
 
 With army biscuit smeared with ration jam ; . . . 
 
 A crash ; the beast blocks up the corridor 
 
 With monstrous hairy carcase, red and dun — 
 
 Too late ! for I've sped through. 
 
 O Life ! O sun ! 
 
 Tliis vivid resilience occurs not only after the most 
 cruel physical agony, but during the long wearing-down of 
 winter in the trenches — as difficult to bear as protracted 
 toothache. 
 
 TO ROBERT NICHOLS 
 
 From Frise on the Somme in February, 1917, in answer to a letter 
 saying : " I am just finishing my Faun's Holiday. I wish you were 
 here to feed him with cherries." 
 
 Here by a snow-bound river 
 In scrapen holes we shiver, 
 And like old bitterns we 
 Boom to you plaintively : 
 Robert, how can I rhyme 
 Verses for your desire — 
 Sleek fauns and cherry-time, 
 Vague music and green trees, 
 Hot sun and gentle breeze, 
 
 40 
 
A HALF PLEIADE 
 
 England in June attire 
 And life born young again 
 For your gay goatish brute . . . 
 Lips dark with juicy stain, 
 Ears hung with bobbing fruit ? 
 Why should I keep him time ? 
 Why in this cold and rime, 
 Where even to dream is pain ? 
 No, Robert, there's no reason; 
 Cherries are out of season. 
 Ice grips at branch and root. 
 And singing birds are mute. 
 
 His range is from Strong Beer to Christ, but is rather of 
 theme than of mood, another hint of a more set character. 
 Here is some half-mystical nonsense on the temptation 
 in the wilderness : 
 
 " He held communion 
 With the she-pelican 
 Of lonely piety. 
 Basilisk, cockatrice. 
 Flocked to his homilies, 
 With mail of dread device, . . . 
 With eager dragon eyes ; 
 And ever with him went . . . 
 Comrade, with ragged coat, 
 Gaunt ribs — poor innocent — . . . 
 The guileless old scapegoat ; 
 For forty nights and days 
 Followed in Jesus' ways. 
 Sure guard behind Him kept. 
 Tears like a lover wept." 
 
 He confesses that even at trys tings with a lady a third 
 is always present, 
 
 THE SPOIL-SPORT 
 
 My familiar ghost again 
 Comes to see what he can see. 
 Critic, son of Conscious Brain, 
 Spying on our privacy. 
 
 41 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 The passages already quoted prove that, as a poet, he 
 is disinclined to think effort worth while, and easily 
 consents to imperfections characteristic of that phase of 
 skill which distinguishes play from a profession. Colin 
 Clout is more gentlemanly than Paradise Lost, even though 
 it be less worthy of man. 
 
 ' ' Wiiat could be dafter 
 Than John Skelton's laughter ? 
 What sound more tenderly 
 Than his pretty poetry ? 
 So where to rank old Skelton ? 
 He was no monstrous Milton 
 Nor wrote no Paradise Lost, 
 So wondered at by most, 
 Praised so disdainfully, 
 C omposed so painfully. 
 He struck what ]\Iilton missed, 
 Milling an English grist 
 With homely turn and twist. 
 He was English through and through, 
 Not Greek, nor French, nor Jew, 
 Though well their tongues he knew. ..." 
 
 Yet, as good old Skelton pled : 
 " For though my rhime be ragged, 
 Tattered and jagged, 
 Rudely rain-beaten. 
 Rusty and moth-eaten. 
 If ye take well therewith, 
 It hath in it some pith." 
 
 A just claim ; besides there is something ideal about 
 absence of strain ; greatness has in Milton undoubtedly 
 taken itself a shade too seriously. Howev^er, in the end 
 one perhaps likes our humorist best when he is gravest. 
 
 1915 
 
 I've watched the Season passing slow, so slow. 
 In fields between La Bassee and Bethune ; 
 Primroses and the first warm day of Spring, 
 Red poppy floods of June, 
 
 42 
 
A HALF PLEIADE 
 
 August, and yellowing Autumn, so 
 
 To Winter nights knee-deep in mud or snow. 
 
 And you've been everything. 
 
 Dear, you've been everything that I most lack 
 
 In these soul-deadening trenches — pictures, books. 
 
 Music, the quiet of an English wood. 
 
 Beautiful comrade-looks. 
 
 The narrow, bouldered mountain- track. 
 
 The broad, full-bosomed ocean, green and black, 
 
 And Peace, and all that's good. 
 
 Yes, he is the man who does not forget, whom to-day 
 does not absorb ; he remains conscious of a crowd of younger 
 selves, and of those distant places which have coloured his 
 thought. At the front the absent are " everything," 
 and after death " evei-ything " becomes the lost friend. 
 A complex and delicately poised nature, but perhaps 
 lacking the passion and impetus that can shape large and 
 difficult themes. Watts might have painted a young man 
 leading a child through Gehenna and preventing its terror 
 by keeping it laughing, but such allegories are not neces- 
 sary or obvious enough for successful plastic treatment 
 even by a great painter. Christophe's statue, Le Masque, 
 is better conceived ; a smiling artificial visage still fronts 
 the world from which the real agonised head has fallen 
 back. From one view — 
 
 " vois ce souris fin et voluptueux 
 Oti la fatuite promene son extase " ; 
 
 while from the other — 
 
 " voici, crispee atrocement 
 La veritable tete, et la sincere face 
 Renversee a I'abri de la face qui ment," 
 
 as Baudelaire describes the well-known masterpiece in the 
 Jardin des Tuileries. Only I think to substitute a man 
 for the woman would heighten the effect, and for this the 
 
 43 
 
SOME SOT.DTER POETS 
 
 imagination can relieve our young captain of his accoutre- 
 ments and exeliange liis gas mask Tor one wliieli lauglis. 
 Yes, nimble youth plays M'ith Hl'e and death, and intcr- 
 clianges agony with ecstasy, even as laughter sheds tears 
 for very pleasiH'e. 
 
 Those who shall gaze back a century hence may discern 
 rather in Nichols than in Sassoon or Graves the poet's 
 mind that is independent of time and approaciies all 
 human circumstance with the kinsman's joy or pain. It 
 will depend on what they are yet to write, which of these 
 three those distant readers are best able to strip and set 
 free in the Palaestra of immortal youth with Grenfell and 
 Brooke — companions meet for those who read with Plato 
 or those who, a-horseback, passed Pheidias on the road, 
 and who, also, most of them, matured and became differ- 
 ent when Death had picked his favourites out. 
 
 4,4, 
 
R E. VERNfeDE 
 
 Self-praise is no recommendation, neither is a pro- 
 fession of patriotism ; besides, the Germans have raised 
 such a pother over theirs that silence would seem enjoined 
 on all self-respecting men, for fear of even distantly re- 
 sembling those blatant deluded souls. " The last resource 
 of a scoundrel," Doctor Johnson called these professions 
 of devotion to one's country ; and Gilbert laughed them 
 down with his — 
 
 " In spite of all temptations 
 To belong to other nations. ..." 
 
 We are what we are in this respect, neither by choice 
 nor yet by merit, but by necessity. Most of us could not 
 betray our country even if we were born treacherous, the 
 situation would be too strong for us ; and it is only some 
 unusual situation which can make praise for patriotic 
 action due to a good man, or turn a weak man into a 
 traitor. No doubt we were all pro- German to the extent 
 of our failings ; for nothing cumbers or hinders a country 
 more than the shortcomings common to the majority of 
 its people. Yet how easily intelligent men are lured 
 away to indulge in this odious rhetoric ! How sane the 
 common soldier is in this ; " Blighty "Ms his name for 
 the mother isle. No name could be more exactly de- 
 served ; for a country is always, by collective action, 
 blighting the best hopes and virtues of its sons ; and yet 
 they feel for it the affection expressed in a pet name as for 
 some impossibe old landlady who has contributed to all 
 the happiness they have known. 
 
 ^"Blighty" is derived from the Arabic and hence Urdu {camp 
 language) of the Mogul soldiery, Vilayat meaning a country, which has 
 come in India to designate England or Europe, and the adjective 
 Vilayati, English. But the British soldier in adopting the word for 
 home or England accepted also^half humorously the sense associated 
 with it3 deformed pronunciation. 
 
 45 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 R. E. Vern^de was a peace lover quite unfamiliar with 
 weapons, over forty and married, yet he enlisted in 1914. 
 He was a man of remarkable intellectual and moral 
 delicacy, and yet his muse retm'ns to this theme of 
 patriotism, as a moth haunts a candle. He had deserved 
 esteem for several works in prose, and his friends made 
 sure that in time a more general and generous acknow- 
 ledgment would accrue to him. He was of French 
 descent, and these poems ^ show a fine sense for literary 
 craftsmanship. The war made a poet of him, for the 
 verses written prior to it are comparatively unambitious. 
 Perhaps the lyrical impulse aroused was younger than 
 the rest of his mind, or was it some French traditional 
 reliance on trumpet-calls that set him toot-tooting ? 
 
 " Oh War-lord of the Western Huns — that Army of Sir 
 
 John's 
 Your legions know it, do they not ? They drove it back 
 
 from Mons — 
 'Twas small enough . . . too small perhaps . . . the 
 
 British line is thin . . . 
 It won't seem quite so little when it's marching through 
 
 Berlin." 
 
 Surely Vernede cannot have voiced this boast for his 
 own satisfaction. Do we listen to one for whom " any- 
 thing pretentious and pompous was a target " when we 
 read — 
 
 " The sea is God's — and England, 
 England shall keep it free " ? 
 
 Surely such things arc intended to reach duller ears 
 than his own. Imagine this ardent dreamer, suddenly 
 surrounded with " Tommies," gaining rapid ascendancy 
 over them by his moral elevation, but at the same time 
 
 ^ War Poems and Other Verses. By R. E. Veniede. Heiiiemanu. 
 33. Gd. Quotations by permission of Mrs C. H. Vernede. 
 
 46 
 
R. E. VERNEDE 
 
 aching to express their inarticulate enthusiasms for them. 
 An excellent motive, but the Muses have decreed that 
 words and images must fascinate us before we can enthral 
 others with them. We are told that " he insists on 
 keeping sharp the blade of indignation " ; but the 
 Germans did that for us far better. Indignation has a 
 grand force, but one which must owe nothing to self- 
 culture ; to nurse it is to corrupt it — is indeed one of the 
 knavish tricks of Prussian policy. 
 
 I cannot help feeling that the Kaiser has done for the 
 word " God " very much what " liber alles " has done for 
 professions of patriotism. Yet Vernede raps it out with 
 all the assurance of a bishop. To-day it either means too 
 much or too little for frequent use, save when addressing 
 those who, like children, belong to an earlier world. The 
 idea of Providence has become too simple, too many 
 relations are implied to be so grouped, just as the idea of 
 England has become too complex for Britannia's outfit. 
 The country that triumphed over Napoleon was worse than 
 an enemy to masses of her people under Castlereagh, and 
 this and other contradictions subsist, though they are not 
 quite so glaring. 
 
 Vernede had been used to complain playfully that life 
 was humdrum — that is, he was one of those many gifted 
 men of whom England, to her shame, made no good use, 
 damping their energies with the huge sponge of her 
 lethargic materialism. His old schoolfellow, Mr G. K. 
 Chesterton, has told us : "No man could look more lazy 
 and no man was more active. He would move as swiftly 
 as a leopard from something like sleep to something too 
 unexpected to be called gymnastics. It was so that he 
 passed from the English country life he loved so much, 
 with its gardening and dreaming, to an ambush and a 
 German gun." 
 
 He published two or three not quite successful novels, 
 visited India and Canada, and wrote pleasantly of what 
 
 47 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 he had seen. He played tennis, gardened and occasionally 
 walked many miles very fast. But none of these things 
 could al)sorb him. He was grateful for them, but not 
 content with them. In thanking your country for such a 
 life, a slight extravagance of compliment is gracious, but 
 he would probably never have used it if she had not 
 suddenly accepted from him the total dedication of 
 himself ; he would have felt restrained by the fact that 
 though she kept him and his peers in clover, she was 
 keeping far greater numbers in want. 
 
 A PETITION 
 
 All that a man might ask thou has given me, England , 
 Birth-right and happy childhood's long heartsease, 
 
 And love whose range is deep beyond all sounding, 
 And wider than all seas. 
 
 A heart to front the world and find God in it, 
 Eyes blind enow, but not too blind to see 
 
 The lovely things behind the dross and darkness, 
 And lovelier things to be. 
 
 And friends whose loyalty time nor death shall weaken, 
 And quenchless hope and laughter's golden store ; 
 
 All that a man might ask thou has given me, England, 
 Yet grant thou one thing more : 
 
 That now when envious foes would spoil thy splendour, 
 
 Unversed in arms, a dreamer such as I 
 May in thy ranks be deemed not all unworthy, 
 
 England, for thee to die. 
 
 This chance to use himself thoroughly and to adventure 
 greatly filled him with enthusiasm and hope. Emotion 
 is simple-minded, and for a moment his world seemed all 
 of one piece ; as broad meadows may be run together by 
 
 48 
 
R. E. VERNEDE 
 
 a flood, everything was merged in a shining mirror of the 
 uphfted sky. Still it is reassuring to notice by the dates 
 of his poems that his landmarks were reappearing and 
 that Germany and England are no longer just black 
 and white. By December, 1916, he strikes truer, less 
 complacent notes : 
 
 "We have failed — we have been more weak than these 
 betrayers — 
 In strength or in faith we have failed ; our pride was vain. 
 How can we rest who have not slain the slayers ? 
 
 What peace for us, who have seen Thy children slain ? 
 
 Hark, the roar grows . . . the thunders reawaken — 
 We ask one thing, Lord, only one thing now : 
 
 Hearts high as theirs, who went to death unshaken, 
 Courage like theirs to make and keep their vow. 
 
 To stay not till these hosts whom mercies harden, 
 Who know no glory save of sword and fire. 
 
 Find in our fire the splendour of Thy pardon. 
 Meet from our steel the mercy they desire. . . . 
 
 Then to our children there shall be no handing 
 Of fates so vain — of passions so abhorr'd . . . 
 
 But Peace . . . the Peace which passeth understand- 
 ing .. . 
 Not in our time . . . but in their time, O Lord." 
 
 And later still we have : 
 
 A LISTENING POST 
 
 The sun's a red ball in the oak 
 
 And all the grass is grey with dew. 
 Awhile ago a blackbird spoke — 
 
 He didn't know the world's askew. 
 
 D 49 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 And yonder rifleman and I 
 
 Wait licrc behind the misty trees, 
 
 To shoot the first man that goes by, 
 Our rifles ready on our knees. 
 
 IIoAV could he know that if we fail 
 The world may lie in ehains for years 
 
 And England be a bygone Tale 
 
 And right be wrong, and laughter tears ? 
 
 Strange that this bird sits there and sings 
 While we must only sit and plan — 
 
 Who are so mueh the higher things — 
 The murder of our fellow-man. . . . 
 
 But maybe God will cause to be — 
 
 Who brought forth sweetness from the strong — 
 Out of our discords harmony 
 
 Sweeter than that bird's song. 
 
 Though the rousing of Vernede's lyrical impulse was 
 at first coincident with loss of discrimination, and might 
 be condemned as an attempt to shout with the crowd, 
 I find its excuse, if not its justification, in that ardent 
 sympathy that at first wraps the confused soul in cloud, 
 but will, like a late September morning b}^ 10 a.m., grow 
 glorious as a summer day. Readers only feel the insult 
 of not being treated as an author's equals, in proportion 
 as they are his peers. Now Vernede's peers can look 
 after themselves, but the men he looked after in that hell 
 at the front needed him, and needed such as he was, more 
 than any other kind of ofiicer. He was not artist enough 
 to reconcile both these claims, but he chose the most 
 important. All that he says of his friend we can safely 
 transfer to himself ; the testimony of his brother officers 
 is our warrant. 
 
 50 
 
R. E. VERNEDE 
 
 To F. G. S. 
 
 (" Seriously wounded ") 
 
 Peaks that you dreamed of, hills your heart has climbed 
 on, 
 
 Never your feet shall climb, your eyes shall see ; 
 All your life long you must tread lowly places. 
 
 Limping for England ; well — so let it be. 
 
 We know your heart's too high for any grudging. 
 
 More than she asked, you gladly gave to her : 
 What tho' its streets you'll tramp instead of snow-fields, 
 
 You'll be the cheeriest, as you always were. 
 
 Yes, and you'll shoulder all our packs — we know you — 
 And none will guess you're wearied night or day — 
 
 Yes, you'll lift lots of lame dogs over fences. 
 Who might have lifted you, for that's your way. 
 
 All your life long — no matter — so you've chosen. 
 
 Pity you ? Never — that were waste indeed — 
 Who up hills higher than the Alps you loved so 
 
 All your life long will point the way and lead. 
 
 Such men are mature in a sense that most of us are not. 
 The joy of recognising their characters, the joy felt in 
 these verses, is in quality like that we might receive from 
 a fine picture in which a strong man and a number of lads 
 were shown hauling a boat up the beach — ^their muscular 
 developments contrasted, their attitudes rhythmically 
 applied to a common task. So, like a charm, the pre- 
 sense of these grown-up souls organises and increases our 
 strength. Even Vernede's tiTimpet-calls give me glimpses 
 of a man whole-heartedly playing with children in time he 
 was free to give to some congenial hobby. What though 
 his boyishness be a little out of fashion as compared with 
 theirs ! He succeeds and keeps them even-tempered, 
 
 51 
 
SOME SOT.DTER POETS 
 
 brave and loyal. Several ol" these poems witness that 
 he saw his " Tommies " as they were. What if the battle 
 songs he wrote arc not siieh as can ever quite win their 
 favour, and can hardly better content a more refined 
 public ? since for those, as for these, his life and death 
 were his best poem. He had been ready to appreciate 
 all his men's virtues and to make even all their de- 
 ficiencies. Tliey were his inspiration and he was theirs. 
 This give and take between the leader and the led is more 
 trustworthy than the rigidity of discipline, replacing it by 
 life — a wonder of creation comparable to a master work in 
 art. Augmented living ought perhaps alwa\s to precede 
 a literary production which should be the spirit's paean for 
 victory — for wider and more delicate lelations achieved — 
 though at times it has been the bitter sons of the van- 
 quishcd, declaring that his loss is greater and other than 
 the victor's gain. That grander pulse was throbbing 
 through Vernede's veins, as his more frequent bursts of 
 song and ever truer note testify ; the poet liberated in 
 him was rehearsing the adequate lay which we shall never 
 hear — and indeed the enemy did not gain by his death 
 anything commensurate with what we have lost, even 
 though such losses should kindle us more finely than that 
 masterpiece unheard, unsung and for ever overdue could 
 have done ! In two stanzas to his wife which now 
 dedicate the book, Vernede himself underlines the differ- 
 ence between promises and deeds, between words and the 
 seal of death : 
 
 " What shall I bring to you. wife of mine, 
 
 When I come back from the war ? 
 A ribbon your dear brown hair to twine ? 
 
 A shawl from a Berlin store ? 
 Say, shall I choose you some Prussian hack 
 
 When the Uhlans we o'erwhclm ? 
 Shall I bring you a Potsdam goblet back 
 
 And the crest from a prince's helm ? 
 
 52 
 
R. E. VERNEDE 
 
 Little you'd care what I laid at your feet, 
 
 Ribbon or crest or shawl — 
 What if I bring you nothing, sweet, 
 
 Nor maybe come home at all ? 
 Ah, but you'll know, Brave Heart, you'll know 
 
 Two things I'll have kept to send : 
 Mine honour for which you bade me go 
 
 And my love — my love to the end." 
 
 53 
 
SORLEY 
 
 When we first admire a person after death we are apt to 
 feel a kind of joy that he is now unalterable, not to be 
 pottered over or finicked with or painted out for some 
 supposed improvement. In spite of reason we cannot 
 really regret Keats' maturity, much less his old age. As 
 we have been prevented by the centuries from sitting on 
 the jury which banished Pheidias, we dote on his maimed 
 and footless Theseus, and doubt whether the marble has 
 not been improved by rough-handed Time ; while we 
 neglect or patronise the young sculptor in whom a like 
 creative force struggles against the odds, with our long- 
 established apathy. Only if we have followed its growth 
 with all our hopes, a life seems broken through, snapped 
 off and its promise wasted by early death. Then we 
 wonder whether it is civilisation or barbarism that defends 
 itself at such a cost. And the failure to preserve at least 
 those who were creatively gifted from exposure, seems 
 proof that our foresight was at fault, or our scale of values 
 inadequate.! Sorley, the youngest, and it may be the 
 most hope-inspiring of our poet soldiers, has set me 
 musing thus. He is so fine, Death seems to have saved 
 him from misshaping Life. 
 
 His language is poor and thin, but it moves powerfully, 
 and constantly suggests organic forms. This is most 
 unlooked for in a tyro. Sensuous images are extra- 
 ordinarily persisted in, and as strangely few. Rain, wind, 
 running, one particular spot on the downs where four grass 
 tracks separate east, v/est, south and north, from a tall, 
 weathered sign-post, and the " red-capped town " of 
 Marlborough, where he was at school — these images 
 return and return, ever freshly applied ; but there is no 
 
 ^ Marlborough and Other Verses, etc. C. H. Sorley. Cambridge 
 University Press. Quotations by permission of Professor W. R. 
 Sorley. 
 
 55 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 hint of tlio noitrhboiirinnr Savernake forest, it liad too 
 much the eliaraeter of liostiUty to free movement. This 
 young mind runs tirelessly, with ever revived pleasure, 
 through an open wet bleak grey land, as once the boy 
 clad only in jersey and shorts raced over the dim do\vns 
 cloaked in rain. 
 
 THE SONG OF THE UNGIRT RUNNERS 
 
 Wk swing ungirded hips, 
 And lightened arc our eyes, 
 The rain is on our lips, 
 We do not run for prize, 
 We know not whom we trust 
 Nor whitherward we fare, 
 But we run because we must 
 Through the great wide air. 
 
 Tlie waters of the seas 
 Are troubled as by storm. 
 The tempest strips the trees 
 And does not leave them warm. 
 Does the tearing tempest pause ? 
 Do the tree -tops ask it why ? 
 So we run without a cause 
 'Neath the big bare sky. 
 
 The rain is on our lips, 
 We do not run for prize. 
 But the storm the water whips 
 And the wave howls to the skies. 
 The winds arise and strike it 
 And scatter it like sand. 
 And we run because we like it 
 Through the broad bright land. 
 
 The felicity here is of the rarest and finest kind, and 
 shapes the main form and rhjdhm ; their inevitability 
 sweeps us away and convinces, in spite of no matter what 
 predisposition to stickle over details. 
 
 56 
 
SORLEY 
 
 The downs have another hold on this poet ; not only- 
 are they good to course at a long swinging run, they have 
 preserved huge stones, earthworks and chiselled flints 
 that tell of prehistoric lives. 
 
 STONES 
 
 This field is almost white with stones 
 That cumber all its tliirsty crust. 
 And underneath, I know, are bones 
 And all around is death and dust. 
 
 O, in these bleached and buried bones 
 Was neither love nor faith nor thought. 
 
 But like the wind in this bleak place 
 Bitter and bleak and sharp they grew. 
 And bitterly they ran their race, 
 A brutal bad unkindly crew : 
 
 Souls like the dry earth, hearts like stone. 
 Brains like the barren bramble-tree. 
 Stern, sterile, senseless, mute, unknown — 
 But bold, O, bolder far than we ! 
 
 Against this wet, bleak, strenuous background of his 
 predilection the young man's thought is astonishingly 
 keen, fresh and mature. 
 
 " I," he says in the title poem, Marlborough, 
 
 " Have had my moments there, when I have been 
 Unwittingly aware of something more. 
 Some beautiful aspect, that I had, seen 
 With mute unspeculative eyes before ; 
 
 Have had my times, when, though the earth did wear 
 Her self- same trees and grasses, I could see 
 The revelation that is always there. 
 But somehow is not always clear to me." 
 
 Here he introduces as an image " Jacob's return from 
 exile," and ends it : 
 
 57 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 "For God had wrestled with him, and was gone. 
 He looked around, and only Ciod remained. 
 The dawn, the desert, he and God were one. 
 — And Esau came to meet him travel- stained. 
 
 So, there, when sunset made the downs look new 
 And earth gave up her eolours to the sky, 
 And far away the little eity grew 
 Half into sight, new-visioned was my eye. 
 
 I, who have lived, and trod her lovely earth, 
 Raced with her winds and listened to her birds, 
 Have cared but little for their worldly worth 
 Nor sought to put my passion into words. 
 
 But now it's different ; and I have no rest 
 Because my hand must search, dissect and spell 
 The beauty that is better not expressed. 
 The thing that all can feel, but none can tell." 
 
 Words halt behind thought and feeling. After vision 
 and inspiration have been aroused by experience, even 
 the best poetiy may seem lame. But Sorley was con- 
 scious of another reason why " Beauty is better not 
 expressed." He knew that it would not be welcomed. 
 He had reached that stage when the soul reacts against 
 parents, masters and the world that has fostered it. He 
 was a rebel, an unusually clear-eyed and affectionate 
 rebel, who did not only feel that things were wrong, but 
 could point them out with un unerring finger. 
 
 " O come and see, it's such a sight. 
 So many boys all doing right : 
 To see them underneath the yoke, 
 Blindfolded by the elder folk. 
 Move at a most impressive rate 
 Along the way that is called straight. 
 O, it is comforting to know 
 They're in the way they ought to go. 
 
 58 
 
SORLEY 
 
 But don't you think it's far more gay 
 To see them slowly leave the way 
 And limp and lose themselves and fall ? 
 O, that's the nicest thing of all. 
 I love to see this sight, for then 
 I know they are becoming men, 
 And they are tiring of the shrine 
 Where things are really not divine. 
 
 I do not know if it seems brave 
 
 The youthful spirit to enslave, 
 
 And hedge about lest it should grow. 
 
 I don't know if it's better so 
 
 In the long end. I only know 
 
 That when I have a son of mine, 
 
 He shan't be made to droop and pine, 
 
 Bound down and forced by rule and rod 
 
 To serve a God who is no God. 
 
 But I'll put custom on the shelf 
 
 And make him find his God himself. 
 
 Perhaps he'll find Him in a tree 
 
 Some hollow trunk, where you can see. 
 
 Perhaps the daisies in the sod 
 
 Will open out and show him God. 
 
 Or will he meet him in the roar 
 
 Of breakers as they beat the shore ? 
 
 Or in the spiky stars that shine ? 
 
 Or in the rain (where I found mine) ? 
 
 Or in the city's giant moan ? 
 
 — A God who will be all his own, 
 
 To whom he can address a prayer 
 
 And love him for he is so fair. 
 
 And see with eyes that are not dim 
 
 And build a temple m.eet for him." 
 
 Yes, the actual world is more hospitable and more 
 inspiring than the scenery, the panorama that English 
 conventions paint and hang round the young, in part to 
 help and prepare them, but in part also to delude them 
 and disguise our own fears and failures. Truth provides 
 a roomier house than the average Englishman has hired 
 
 59 
 
SO:\[E SOLDIER rOETS 
 
 for his bojrs. Yet Sorley knew and felt that he had been 
 iinusiially hicky in this respect. After leaving school he 
 went to Germany for some months, and loved the life he 
 saw in Mecklcnberg Schwerin. lie was reading the 
 Odyssey, no longer one hundred lines at a time, but for his 
 own pleasure, in long draughts, and was struck by the 
 resemblance of the life he found about him, in that foreign 
 place, to that he was reading about. He saw many 
 things in Germany that were wrong, but it seemed to him 
 that, as a nation, they had something to live for, while the 
 English had sti*uek him as lacking an adequate goal for 
 effort. War was declared and he had to hurry across 
 the frontier. In Cologne station he notes the various 
 attitudes of the nationalities : Americans in a bustle for 
 themselves ; Germans in a bustle too, but for the Father- 
 land ; " dark uprooted Italians peering from a squeaking 
 truck — like Cassandra from the backmost car looking 
 steadily down on Agamemnon." He was gazetted 2nd 
 Lieutenant before August was out, and by December he 
 writes : 
 
 LOST 
 
 Across my past imaginings 
 
 Has dropped a blindness silent and slow. 
 
 My eye is bent on other things 
 
 Than those it once did see and know. 
 
 I may not think on those dear lands 
 (O far away and long ago !) 
 Where the old battered signpost stands 
 And silently the four roads go 
 
 East, west, south and north, 
 And the cold winter winds do blow. 
 And what the evening will bring forth 
 Is not for me nor you to know. 
 
 60 
 
SORLEY 
 
 Yet outwardly he was not at all " lost " in camp life, 
 but held his own, was popular and successful, and did not 
 know what ill health was. Promoted to a lieutenancy in 
 November, 1914, he crossed to France in the following 
 May, and was gazetted Captain in August, 1915, being 
 killed near Hulloch on October the 13th that same year. 
 
 Once he wrote home wondering what kind of life he 
 would take up after the war : 
 
 " Sorley is Gaelic for Wanderer. I have had a con- 
 ventional education ; Oxford would have corked it. But 
 this (the war) has freed the spirit, glory be ! " 
 
 Many, many must have felt freed from the tyranny of 
 England by the mere fact of fighting for her against the 
 tyranny of Germany. The tyranny of peace in half-baked 
 countries like those we know, though less apparent than 
 the tyranny of war, was perhaps more deadly to spiritual 
 freedom ; no Government yet established has deserved im- 
 munity from attack either from without or from within ; 
 that their constitutions should change smoothly and, if it 
 may be, swiftly is the one possible hope for them all. 
 
 Much later Sorley writes : 
 
 " I am now beginning to think that free-thinkers should 
 give their minds into subjection ; for we, who have given 
 our actions and volitions into subjection, gain such 
 marvellous rest thereby. Only of course it is the sub- 
 jecting of their powers of will and deed to a wrong master, 
 on the part of a great nation, that has led Europe into 
 war. Perhaps afterwards I and my likes will again 
 become indiscriminate rebels. For the present, we find 
 high relief in making ourselves soldiers." 
 
 No subjection can be wholesome and no master right 
 for long. We must be freed in order to subject ourselves 
 to better rules. No adequate rule has yet been conceived, 
 even by the finest conscience. From prison to prison, or 
 rather from enlargement to enlargement, men must 
 advance or stagnate and die. 
 
 61 
 
SOISIE SOT.DTER POETS 
 
 There was no black and white brutally juxtaposed in 
 his vision of the European War ; he was sliockcd to find 
 so many, like Vernede, imbued with this ehildishly simple 
 sense of utter contrast between the Allies and the Germans, 
 and he seeks refuge with one correspondent, to whom he 
 can safely put in a plea for a more rational view of the 
 enemy. 
 
 "So it seems to me that Germany's only fault— is a 
 lack of real insight and sympathy with those who differ 
 from her. We are not fighting a bully, but a bigot. They 
 are a young nation, and don't see that what they consider 
 is being done for the good of the world may be really 
 being done for self-gratification — like X, who, under 
 pretence of informing the form, dropped into the habit 
 of parading his own knowledge. X incidentally did the 
 form a service by creating great amusement for it ; and 
 so is Germany incidentally doing the world a service 
 (though not in the way it meant) by giving them some- 
 thing to live and die for, which no country but Germany 
 had before. If the bigot conquers, he will learn in time 
 his mistaken methods (for it is only of the methods and 
 not of the goal of Germany that one can disapprove) — 
 just as the early Christian bigots conquered by bigotry 
 and grew larger in sympathy and tolerance, after conquest 
 I regard the war as one between sisters, between Martha 
 and Mary, the efficient and intolerant against the casual 
 and sympathetic. Each side has a virtue for which it 
 is fighting, and each that virtue's supplementary vice. 
 I hope that whatever the material result of the conflict, 
 it will purge these two virtues of their vices, and efficiency 
 and tolerance will no longer be incompatible. But I 
 think that tolerance is the larger virtue of the two, and 
 efficiency must be her servant. So I am quite glad to 
 fight against this rebellious servant. In fact I look at 
 it this way. Suppose my platoon were the world. Then 
 my platoon sergeant would represent efficiency and I 
 
 62 
 
SORLEY 
 
 would represent tolerance. . And I always take the 
 sternest measures to keep my platoon sergeant in check ! 
 I fully appreciate the ■s\asdom of the War Office when they 
 put inefficient officers to rule sergeants. . . . But I've 
 seen the Fatherland (I like to call it the Fatherland, for 
 in many families papa represents efficiency and mama 
 tolerance — but don't think I'm W.S.P.U.) so horribly 
 misrepresented that I've been burning to put in my case 
 for them to a sympathetic ear." 
 
 And he strikes the same note, in some ways more 
 profoundly, in verse : 
 
 TO GERMANY 
 
 You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed, 
 
 And no man claimed the conquest of your land. 
 
 But gropers both, through fields of thought confined, 
 
 We stumble and we do not understand. 
 
 You only saw your future bigly planned, 
 
 And we the tapering paths of our own mind. 
 
 And in each other's dearest ways we stand, 
 
 And hiss and hate. And the blmd fight the blind. 
 
 When it is peace, then we may view again 
 
 With new-won eyes each other's truer form 
 
 And wonder. Grown more loving- kind and warm 
 
 We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain, 
 
 When it is peace. But until peace, the storm 
 
 The darkness and the thunder and the rain. 
 
 This, like the other poems I have quoted, has a fine 
 movement ; and though at the outset the phrasing is not 
 felicitous, it improves till it becomes worthj' of the mean- 
 ing in the last three lines. Then, too, what wise, kindly 
 eyes this young fellow sees with ; how many of us can be 
 put to shame by such a gentle sanity ! His discoveries 
 about his ovn\ countrvanen are no less persuasively 
 illuminating. 
 
 " One has fairly good chances of observing the life of 
 
 63 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 the barrack-room, and what a contrast to the life of a 
 house in a public school ! The system is roughly the 
 same ; the house-master or platoon commander entrusts 
 the discipline of his charge to prefects or corporals, as the 
 case may })e. They never open their mouths in the 
 barrack-room without the introduction of the unprintable 
 swear-words and epithets ; they have absolutely no 
 ' morality ' (in the narrower, generally accepted sense) ; 
 yet the Public School boy should live among them to learn 
 a little Christianity ; for they are so extraordinarily nice 
 to one another. They live in and for the present : we in 
 and for the future. So they are cheerful and charitable 
 always : and we often niggardly and unkind and spiteful. 
 In the gymnasium at Marlborough, how the few clumsy 
 specimens are ragged and despised and jeered at by the 
 rest of the squad ; in the gymnasium here you should 
 hear the sounding cheer given to a man who has tried for 
 eight weeks to make a long jump of eight feet, and at last, 
 by the advice and assistance of others, has succeeded. 
 They seem instinctively to regard a man singly, at his own 
 rate, by his o^mi standards and possibilities, not in com- 
 parison with themselves or others ; that is why they are 
 so far ahead of us in their treatment and sizing up of 
 others." 
 
 Because they need servants, and because fine houses 
 and rapid locomotion imply labour, the well-to-do tend to 
 regard other kinds of people as existing for their con- 
 venience. In this notion they resemble the enemy, who 
 thought other nations were there that Germany might be 
 " uber alles." 
 
 Sorley was very sensitive to the falseness and unfairness 
 of this seductive outlook, and perceived how detrimental 
 it is to the finer powers of those who indulge in it. He 
 felt that even poets were too content to think of others 
 as mere readers and admirers, and addresses to them a 
 protest on behalf of less articulate souls : 
 
 64 
 
SORLEY 
 
 TO POETS 
 
 We are the homeless, even as you, 
 
 Who hope and never can begin. 
 
 Our hearts are wounded through and through 
 
 Like yours, but our hearts bleed within. 
 
 We too make music, but our tones 
 
 'Scape not the barrier of our bones. 
 
 We have no comeliness like you. 
 We toil, unlovely, and we spin, 
 We start, return : we wind, undo : 
 We hope, we err, we strive, we sin. 
 We love : your love's not greater, but 
 The lips of our love's might stay shut. 
 We have the evil spirits too 
 That shake our soul with battle-din. 
 But we have an eviller spirit than you, 
 We have a dumb spirit within : 
 The exceeding bitter agony 
 But not the exceeding bitter cry. 
 
 Here are shapeliness and vigour once more and, though 
 finish and colour are to seek, there is still a marked im- 
 provement as the end comes in view. 
 
 Like other soldier poets, Sorley is anxious to think well 
 of Death, whom he addresses : 
 
 I. 
 
 Saints have adored the lofty soul of you. 
 Poets have whitened at your high renown. 
 We stand among the many millions who 
 Do hourly wait to pass your pathway down. 
 You, so familiar, once were strange : we tried 
 To live as of your presence unaware. 
 But now in every road, on every side, 
 We see your straight and steadfast signpost here. 
 I think it like that signpost in my land. 
 Hoary and tall, which pointed me to go 
 
 E 65 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 Upward, into the Hills, on the right hand, 
 
 Where the mists swim and the winds shriek and blow, 
 
 A homeless land and I'riendless. but a land 
 
 I did not know and that I wished to know. 
 
 II. 
 
 Such, sueh is Death : no triumph : no defeat : 
 Only an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean, 
 A merciful putting aw'ay of what has been. 
 
 And this we know : Death is not Life effete. 
 
 Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen 
 
 So marvellous things know well the end not yet. 
 
 Victor and vanquished are a-onc in death : 
 
 Coward and brave : friend, foe. Ghosts do not say 
 
 " Come, what was vour record when vou drew vour 
 
 breath?" 
 But a big blot has hid each yesterday 
 So poor, so manifestly incomplete. 
 And your bright Promise withered long and sped, 
 Is touched, stirs, rises, opens and grows sweet 
 And blossoms and is you, when you are dead. 
 
 These sonnets cannot compare for beauty and adequacy 
 with Brooke's best, but the thought in them is perhaps 
 even less expected, if not so certainly true. For us at 
 least his promise is Sorley, now that he is dead. Death 
 tempts us, nay forces us to overrate his actual production, 
 and Reason in vain points out that the strait limits of his 
 sensuous joys in image and language suggest that his 
 poetical vein might have soon run dry. Yet not before 
 he had enriched us, like another Matthew^ Arnold, with 
 some equivalent for Empedocles, Sohrab and Ruslum 
 and The Scholar Gipsy, we retort. The power which 
 shapes a masteipiece includes that which matures the man 
 of the world, and that which renders the critic accom- 
 plished. Youth binds these and the other tacts and 
 aptitudes in a solid faggot, but after a time there is 
 
 66 
 
SORLEY 
 
 possibly more gain than loss, should life cut the cord and 
 use the sticks singly. Then, perhaps, engrossed by 
 political reform, the poet's soul may be felt as an agent 
 and no longer by its cohesion provoke the echo, beauty 
 from stony world. Death has settled that, and for many 
 minds, when Wordsworth's hare is watched, racing on the 
 moors while that mist raised by her feet from the wet turf 
 iTjns with her, a boy will soon appear accompanied with a 
 sweeping veil of rain coursing the same uplands. And 
 when the elder poet has listened to the old leech-gatherer 
 standing in the pool, he will turn to welcome wisdom from 
 young rain-brightened lips as Sorley draws to a halt at 
 his side, to wonder over prehistoric men or speak gener- 
 ously of those of to-day and to morrow. His is but a 
 continuation of Wordsworth's theme ; for as the dignity 
 of individuals depends on their resolute independence, so 
 that dignity alone rendei-s a social amalgam feasible. A 
 nation is not fused by these sacrificing and exploiting 
 those, but by all devoting and employing themselves, 
 and no man has a chance of doing this till he is a free 
 agent. Nations, too, can only build a civilised world by 
 respecting each other's independence, and the do^^iifall 
 of Germany shows how little efficiency can atone for 
 the wish to domineer. Efficiency is fine, but kindness is 
 beautiful, and beauty is as strong as light, far stronger 
 than any palpable thing ; and in the long run it will 
 prove to be the only rightful ruler. All other principles 
 need to resort to force, but for beauty vision will win 
 allegiance, so soon as the smoke of strife and commerce is 
 out of men's eyes. 
 
 67 
 
FRANCIS LEDWIDGE 
 
 Francis Ledwidge/ as a poet, is the complement of 
 Sorley ; each brings us what the other lacks. Ledwidge 
 has no constructive power, and the impetus of his 
 cadences rarely carries him satisfactorily through even a 
 short poem, whereas Sorley's rode on unchecked by weak 
 lines and poor phrasing. Our new poet's language is, on 
 the other hand, often over-poetical, and his images some- 
 times fantastically dazzling — an excess of the quality 
 which critics perceive most easily and Avelcome most 
 widely ! And a vivid coloured flash on its surface is an 
 important element in great verse. Lord Dunsany, who 
 introduces Ledwidge to the public, tells us that he was 
 born a peasant in Meath and tried once to assist a Dublin 
 grocer. But cities cannot cage these wild souls, home 
 memories inveigle, the country lures, 
 
 " And wondrous impudently sweet, 
 Half of him passion, half conceit. 
 The blackbird calls adown the street 
 Like the piper of Hamelin." 
 
 And the lad of sixteen who had written this " walked 
 home one night a distance of thirty miles." 
 
 Since the war he had become a coi"poral in the regiment 
 in which Lord Dunsany was a captain, and had travelled 
 to Greece and Eg}^pt. This preface likens him to John 
 Clare, our English pauper poet, of one hundred years ago, 
 whose life among a nation of shopkeepers is the saddest 
 idyll ; and even to-day I fancy that Ledwidge might 
 have been congratulated on his birth the other side of St 
 George's Channel, among people more patient with and 
 more appreciative of poets. John Clare's poems were a 
 
 ^ Songs of the Fields. By Francis Ledwidge. Herbert Jenkins. 
 1915. Songs of Peace. By Francis Ledwidge. Herbert Jenkins. 
 1017. Quotations by permission of Herbert Jenkins, Esq., and Lord 
 Dunsany. 
 
 69 
 
SOME SOT.DIER POKTS 
 
 series of delights over detail, grouped more or less as in 
 nature l)y loeality and season, yet rareh', if ever, shaped 
 into a poetic whole. Ledwidge's verse stores details too, 
 but they are less varied and less realistic, though Ixtter 
 transnuited by his moods, for he is moved even more by 
 the image that caps the perception than by the thing 
 perceived. As a poet, at least, he too lived in a dream 
 not yet articulated by reason and purjjose. And one is 
 tempted, though one lias no right, to suppose that his life 
 also may have had something of the ineffectual simplicity 
 of John Clare's. His rhymes are related to those of ]Mr 
 Yeats and the minor Irish poets of to-day, as Clare's were 
 to Keats', Wordsworth's and Cowper's, and I think this 
 is all that can be really meant when he has been praised 
 for style. Irish work may often seem to have more style 
 than English, even when it is far weaker in the funda- 
 mental qualities of great literature. Dominant moods 
 give it a singleness and independence of outlook which 
 condones the absence of complexity in emotion and of 
 balance in intellectual grasp. 
 
 THE SISTER 
 
 I SAW the little quiet town, 
 And the whitewashed gables on the hill. 
 And laughing children coming down 
 The lane way to the mill. 
 
 Wind-blushes up their faces glowed, 
 And they were happy as could be. 
 The wobbling water never flowed 
 So merry and so free. 
 
 One little maid withdrew aside 
 To pick a pebble from the sands. 
 Her golden hair was long and wide, 
 And there were dimples on her hands. 
 
 70 
 
FRANCIS LEDWIDGE 
 
 And when I saw her large blue eyes, 
 What was the pain that went through me ? 
 Why did I think on Southern skies 
 And ships upon the sea ? 
 
 I think this is as near as Ledwidge ever comes to 
 organic perfection, though two freaks of phrasing fleck its 
 very real beauty and success. 
 
 " And Gwydion said to Math, when it was Spring : 
 ' Come now and let us make a wife for Llew. ' 
 And so they broke broad boughs yet moist with dew 
 And in a shadow made a perfect ring : 
 They took the violet and the meadow-sweet 
 To form her pretty face, and for her feet 
 They built a mound of daisies on a wing. 
 And for her voice they made a linnet sing 
 In the wide poppy blowing for her mouth. 
 And over all they chanted twenty hours. 
 And Llew came singing from the azure south 
 And bore away his wife of birds and flowers." 
 
 If the success of this is smoother, there is to my mind a 
 suspicion of the happy moment of a professor of poetry in 
 its well-worn theme and the refurbished stock images of 
 the Celtic Muse. The Death of Aillil, the most successful 
 of his attempts at narrative, fails for me in the same way. 
 Songs of the Fields, his first volume, rewards the reader far 
 better than Songs of Peace, in good part written since the 
 war began. Yet his soldiering in Greece gives us this : 
 
 THE HOME-COMING OF THE SHEEP 
 
 The sheep are coming home in Greece, 
 Hark the bells on every hill ! 
 Flock by flock, and fleece by fleece. 
 Wandering wide a little piece 
 Thro' the evening red and still, 
 Stopping where the pathways cease. 
 Cropping with a hurried will. 
 
 71 
 
SOME SOT.DTER POETS 
 
 Tliro' tlic cotton Irishes low 
 ]\Iorrv l>oys with sliouklcrcd crooks 
 Close them in a single row, 
 Shout among thcni as they go 
 With one bell-ring o'er the brooks. 
 Such delight you never know 
 Reading it from gilded books. . . . 
 
 The fourth line is quite as inadequate as some of Sorley's 
 most careless, but the poem is exquisite ; only in the book 
 the picture and mood are weakened by an additional 
 stanza. 
 
 His movements are more sustainedly happy in less 
 original work, which is an indication that he had it in him 
 to suipass what now remains his best. 
 
 " I often look when the moon is low 
 Thro' that other window on the wall. 
 At a land all beautiful under snow. 
 Blotted with shadows that come and go 
 When the winds rise up and fall. 
 And the form of a beautiful maid 
 In the white silence stands 
 And beckons me with her hands. . . ." 
 
 The trouble produced by a soldier's life in such a mind 
 accounts for the comparative poverty of the second book, 
 rather than any failure of impulse or resource. Neither 
 book is so much a collection of poems as a store-house of 
 lines, phrases and images, with here a cadence caught and 
 lost, there a striking thought — choice things, but rarely 
 mounted to advantage, rather, to use his own words, like 
 
 " . . . an apron full of jewels 
 The dewy cobweb swings." 
 
 Here are others : and you might have as many again, 
 were there space to quote them : 
 
 " The large moon rose up queenly as a flower 
 Charmed by some Indian pipes." 
 
 72 
 
FRANCIS LEDWTDGE 
 
 " And all we learn but shows we know the less." 
 
 " When the wind passing took your scattered hair 
 And flung it like a brown shower in my face." 
 
 " Within the oak a throb of pigeon wings." 
 
 " And the blue 
 Of hiding violets, watching for your face, 
 Listen for you in every dusky place." 
 
 " The moon had won 
 Her way above the woods, with her small star 
 Behind her like the cuckoo's little mother. ..." 
 
 " Tlie bees are holding levees in the flowers." 
 
 " Day hangs its light between two dusks, my heart, 
 Always beyond the dark there is the blue. 
 Some time we'll leave the dark, myself and you, 
 And revel in the light for evermore. 
 
 But in the dark your beauty shall be strong. 
 
 Pigeons are home. Day droops — the fields are cold. 
 Now a slow wind comes labouring up the sky 
 With a small cloud long steeped in sunset gold, 
 Like Jason with the precious fleece anigh 
 The harbour of lolcos. Day's bright eye 
 Is filmed with the tAvilight, and the rill 
 Shines like a scimitar upon the liill." 
 
 These things are strimg together with little apparent 
 connection except the rhymes, each poem's structure 
 being the pattern that these make. However, you could 
 glean felicities in such quantities from no other of these 
 Soldier Poets, not even from Brooke ; and note that this I 
 underlines Brooke's superiority ; his reflective and 
 organic power makes more of fewer treasures. The best 
 
 73 
 
so:me soldier poets 
 
 effect of rcndint;- T>((lwid<rc' is tlmt wliicli lie (leseril>es in a 
 poem (Icdieatcd to INI. McCi. (" Who came one day when 
 we were all gloomy and cheered us with sad music "). 
 
 " Old memories knocking at each heart 
 Troubled us with the world's great lie : 
 You sat a little way apart 
 And made a fiddle cry. 
 
 And rivers full of little lights 
 
 Came down the fields of waving green : 
 
 Our immemorial delights 
 
 Stole in on us unseen." 
 
 The delight with which a cliild first perceives Ijeauty, 
 though it be forgotten, must never be barred and shuttered 
 from return into the mind by coarsening habit or hum- 
 bling care. If this happens, the enchantment of poetrj- 
 is powerless. And as Antaeus' strength was increased 
 whenever his feet touched the earth, aesthetic power 
 revives when these primordial joys return into the lofty 
 buildings of a master mind ; and should these smiling 
 visitors desert it finally, however noble the building, its 
 charm grows cold ; so important is this love of particular 
 things and particular aspect of things to the mind. This 
 tenderness over detail means more to poetry and painting 
 than the theorist easily allows. Though perceived as a 
 flash on the surface, this is a pulse of health that, having 
 made youth perfect, can recreate maturity and old age. 
 Everj'thing that exists is holy, or at least demonic, when 
 seen as a new and solitary portent ; thus it appears first 
 to the child, and must reappear to inspire the artist. 
 
 In these small books, those whom the w^ar has hurried 
 too much and too long, and those whom it has deafened 
 and sickened with evil sounds and evil sights, may find a 
 well of refreshment suitable to a convalescent mood that 
 has not the energy to appreciate more elegant, noble or 
 74 
 
FRANCIS LEDWIDGE 
 
 massive creations. Had he lived Ledwidge might very 
 well have shown more constnictive power than I seem to 
 allow. He was still quite young when he was killed in 
 Flanders ; and those finer things that his genius would 
 have created when it was fully organised were lost 
 for ever. The choice and subtle images which cro^^^l his 
 perceptions so frequently are in themselves structures, 
 just as the cells of the body are living organisms. As we 
 have seen, Sorley stands quite alone in power to shape an 
 inevitable whole at so early an age. The vision that rises 
 for me as I read these Songs of the Fields is more like John 
 Clare than it would be were my mind more capable of 
 detecting the intimate difference of tissue in the liveliest 
 productions of the two men. Still, though in him it were 
 but a phase to outgrow, this temperament embodies 
 before my eyes, as an inveterate way of life in which most 
 poets have some share. Though the body it informs grow 
 old, this does not age : young-eyed, it has wandered 
 every land where an oral literature was cherished, a wel- 
 come figure with the pathetic refinement of one who has 
 mused much and yet lives destitute of creature comforts. 
 His clothes have been new in regions far apart, though 
 wear and weather have made them merely his, well-nigh 
 obliterating fashions and colour. Watch, he stops on 
 the hill road before a little fomitain's trough which some 
 herd-boy has banked round with turfs and stones, that a 
 few sheep or a cow may drink the better ! He discerns in 
 it more success than his own activity has compassed — an 
 image of hopes he once owTied. He kneels and, gazing 
 into the limpid basin, sees not, like Narcissus, his o^vn 
 features, but most dear memories, moonrises and sunsets, 
 wind-bent boughs, the calls of many birds, nodding 
 flowers, children running, laughing and kissing — he sees 
 and hears as he first saw and heard. From many poems 
 the delight of other men's visions changes and inter- 
 changes with these until he clears a mist from liis eyes, for 
 
 75 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 always iK'foro long ho expects "a fnvc \\\\] of smiles," a 
 young woman's, always the same, though now the eyes 
 are blue, now grey, now brown, though the hair curls or is 
 smooth, though name after name seems to fit it, though 
 blue jewels made from feathers crown it or coral from 
 the sea, helmeted now in fur and now in mail, or white- 
 capped like " a fairy hooded in one bell of the valley-lilv," 
 or, uncovered, with tresses that play with the wind. The 
 eyes are always innocent, always welcoming, but so vari- 
 ous that, despite a constant homeliness, it is a goddess's 
 face — her laugh is heard wherever this or that in the 
 world has pleased eye or ear of this wanderer, whose heart 
 has remained young and fresh as that of a boy. And he, 
 he forgets his life, forgets the stones and glinting mica silt 
 that floor that limpid trough, forgets the grass of Par- 
 nassus that he has set floating on it, and is where she is, 
 while contentment fills him and that lonely place. 
 
 76 
 
EDWARD THOMAS 
 
 Edward Thomas had wandered over literature and 
 England, and shaped a mind that, at first opinionated, 
 had saddened and mellowed. In the end he became a 
 poet and a soldier almost at the same time, and now is 
 dead. His success in prose had always been middling, 
 breeding further discontent ; do his poems ^ greatly 
 succeed ? Every time I read them I like them better. 
 Loh, his longest effort, was the first I saw ; it was 
 perfectly dissociated from him by the assumed name of 
 " Eastaway " and appeared to me full of promise though 
 unwieldy ; but in this collected volume his quality does 
 not strike me as like a young man's, but wily, artful and 
 aware of many traps. 
 
 " Rise up, rise up, 
 And, as the triunpet blowing 
 Chases the dreams of men. 
 As the dawn glowing 
 The stars that left unlit 
 The land and water, 
 Rise up and scatter 
 The dew that covers 
 The print of last night's lovers — 
 Scatter it, scatter it ! 
 
 While you are listening 
 
 To the clear horn, 
 
 Forget, men, everything 
 
 On this earth newborn. 
 
 Except that it is lovelier 
 
 Than any mysteries. 
 
 Open your eyes to the air 
 
 That has washed the eyes of the stars 
 
 Thi'ough all the dewy night : 
 
 Up with the hght. 
 
 To the old wars ; 
 
 Arise, arise ! " 
 
 1 Poems by Edward Thomas. Selwyn & Blount. 3s. 6d. Quota- 
 tions by permission of Mrs Edward Thomas. 
 
 77 
 
SOMK SOLDIER POETS 
 
 Tlu)up[li the inipulso to write tliat was strong, it has 
 constantly obeyed the bridle of keen literary taste, its 
 grace is not like that of wild life, but like that of horse- 
 manship, and will ])e the more admired the more fidly the 
 difliculties overcome arc appreciated. In some of these 
 poems novelty is sought as though felicity were despaired 
 of, yet a few are really ha})py. Keats believed that 
 felicities should so chime in with the human soul as to 
 seem known before, even though a prenatal existence 
 had to be supposed to justify that impression. Novelties 
 in poetry fail if merely new. Mr Yeats has of late years 
 set the fashion of skating across ever thinner ice until it 
 seems almost miraculous that verse is not prose. You 
 watch the skater as the surface warps under his swift 
 passage, and expect that in another minute he will be in 
 it, floundering like any Walt Whitman, but this does not 
 happen. Rhyme is not discarded, but strained ; rhj'thms 
 are not free, but licentious. Thomas shows this tendency 
 in ways of his own, neither very determined nor very 
 risky, yet sometimes annoying. These sleights of his 
 are intended, like those of others, deftly to dazzle the 
 most sophisticated judges, and in so far betray a greater 
 preoccupation with manner than with matter — a fault of 
 proportion. The creative mind considers the manner 
 solely as the servant of the import and justness of its 
 theme. Thomas knew life after a fashion that was not 
 the fashion he had intended to discover it in. The 
 passionate young man liaAvks for experience with his 
 fancy, but the quarry brought to his feet is not always 
 that at which he let his falcon fly. 
 
 " 'He has robbed two clubs. The judge at Salisbury 
 Can't give him more than he undoubtedly 
 Deserves. The scomidrel ! Look at his photograph ! 
 A lady-killer ! Hanging's too good by half 
 For such as he.' So said the stranger, one 
 With crimes yet undiscovered or undone, 
 
 78 
 
EDWARD THOIMAS 
 
 But at the inn the Gipsy dame began : 
 
 ' Now he was what I call a gentleman. 
 
 He went along with Carrie, and when she 
 
 Had a baby he paid up so readily 
 
 His half-a-crown. Just like him. A crown'd have been 
 
 More like him. For I never knew him mean. 
 
 Oh ! but he was such a nice gentleman. Oh ! 
 
 Last time we met he said if me and Joe 
 
 Was anywhere near we must be sure to call. 
 
 He put his arms around our Amos all 
 
 As if he were his own son. I pray God 
 
 Save him from justice ! Nicer man never trod.' " 
 
 This is the spirit of Borrow rather than that of 
 Wordsworth. Yet I divine a hankering for spiritual 
 intensity akin to that of the more central master. 
 These poems drift across a profound hunger for ideal 
 human relations ; like those floating gardens of Kashmir, 
 they traverse an inconmiunicable want, as one of them 
 says — 
 
 " content and discontent 
 As larks and swallows are perhaps with wings " 
 
 — an acceptance of the encountered actuality far less 
 cavalier than that of the Tinman's antagonist. Though 
 Thomas had waved a flag like those who throw their 
 energies into a movement, the comrades tramping by his 
 side and following were heard like echoes making his 
 foot's thud sound all the more lonely. That heraldic 
 picture of Simple Life Returning blazoned on the banner 
 seemed no truer to his vision than those unsubstantial 
 reverberations multiplying the plod-plod of his two feet ; 
 till he felt most solitary when agreement with him was 
 most general. To adore remote places with quaint names 
 became a fashion, but he retreated from prose to poetry 
 in shy alarm. 
 
 The country and simple lives have their beauty, but 
 
 79 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 what is more obvious, they are pieturcsque, inventoried 
 stage properties of well-AV(^rn appeal. This pieturesque- 
 ness deludes men after they have despaired of more ideal 
 beauties, sueh as can only he recognised in particular 
 cases by very rare souls. For Wordswortli, country folk 
 were the matrix out of which an ideal life might yet be 
 moulded ; his dearest thoughts and passionate aspirations 
 rejoiced or suffered on their account. Deep country 
 ancientness and Celtic magic had raised Thomas' en- 
 thusiasm, but his mind did not unite with what it admired, 
 and gradually felt undeceived, and this disillusionment 
 was closer to reality than his infatuation had been. At a 
 cross-roads he says : 
 
 " I read the sign. Which way shall I go ? 
 A voice says : ' You would not have doubted so 
 At twenty.' Another voice gentle with scorn 
 Says : ' At twenty you wished you had never been born.' " 
 
 Though doubtless minor disappointments intensified 
 the feeling, in a general sense one would imagine that his 
 birth vexed him because it had not befallen in a pastoral 
 age, in Arcady, in Ireland when Cuchulain was about or in 
 the Middle Ages when the oldest of existing bams was 
 building. This soul, we say as we read, must have chafed 
 against modern circimistance. Union with nature, be- 
 tween man and the most essential conditions of his life, 
 such as that supposed to have been achieved in far-off 
 times and places, has a true ideal value ; it does corre- 
 spond to a profound and rational aspiration. Honour 
 then to its at times quaint and perverse expression ! But 
 observant eyes see more than they look for. And Thomas, 
 who took pains to visit and know the most untouched 
 parts of England and Wales, and who drank to the dregs 
 the considerable literature which can feed such curiosity, 
 though he still loved nature, was undeceived about man 
 
 80 
 
EDWARD THOMAS 
 
 and, as a corollary, about himself. It dawned upon him 
 that man's need is nobler impulses rather than choicer 
 circumstances, that the soul seeks a mood and should not 
 be put off with hopes and desires, for we can onh^ possess 
 that which we can truly appreciate. 
 
 " When we two walked in Lent 
 We imagined that happiness 
 Was something different 
 And this was something less. 
 
 But happy were we to hide 
 Our happiness, not as they were 
 Who acted in their pride 
 Juno and Jupiter : 
 
 For the Gods in their jealousy 
 Murdered that wife and man, 
 And we that were wqse live free 
 To recall our happiness then." 
 
 Thus many men and women look back at a full- 
 illusioned youth with something of envy, and yet with a 
 sense of freedom at the thought that those headstrong 
 young people are really dead, which allows them to smile 
 with the world, not in scorn of it, to be tender and kind 
 instead of passionate and self-absorbed. Freedom from 
 that fervid seriousness permits humorous playfulness, 
 permits a vital possession of our own scorned past, and has 
 gentle acceptance for the stream of shortcoming which is 
 daily life. 
 
 " If every hour 
 Like this one passing that I have spent among 
 The wiser others when I have forgot 
 To wonder whether I was free or not, 
 Were piled before me, and not lost behind, 
 And I could take and carry them away 
 I should be rich ; or if I had the power 
 To wipe out every one and not again 
 Regret, I should be rich to be so poor 
 And yet I still am half in love with pain. ..." 
 
 F 81 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 Wliat a contrast to Wordswortli, who always looked 
 back to his youth as freshly arrived from heaven, and 
 wished to bind maturity and age to it by conscious piety. 
 He liad been born free ; Thomas achieved freedom at the 
 cost of disillusionment ; yet it was part of his latter-day 
 riches that he had been so deceived long ago. Better so, 
 than to have been without fire, than to have been dull, 
 toi"])id and mean. Yes, yes ; but not better than to have 
 been a creative artist, thrilling and anguishing about work 
 that was more important than the workman. But with 
 freedom came the inspired moods at last, and prose gave 
 way to poetry. This wanderer's vision had much in 
 common wnth Ledwidge's vivid aptness of particular 
 images and Clare's limpid sight. 
 
 "While the sweet last-left damsons from the bough 
 With spangles of the morning's storm drop down 
 Because the starling shakes it." 
 
 " The swift with wings and tail as sharp and narrow 
 As if the bow had flown off with the arrow." 
 
 " Like the touch of rain she was 
 On a man's flesh and hair and eyes." 
 
 " November's earth is dirty ... 
 And the prettiest things on the ground are the paths 
 With morning and evening hobnails dinted, 
 With foot ancl wing-tip overprinted 
 Or separately charactered 
 Of little beast and little bird." 
 
 Such things must always make a poet supremely happy 
 at whatever stage of life they may be written. And 
 where there is simple joy, playfulness and tenderness will 
 find room. 
 82 
 
EDWARD THOMAS 
 
 " If I should ever by chance grow rich 
 I'll buy Codham, Cockridden and Childerditch, 
 Roses, Pyrgo and Lapwater, 
 And let them all to my elder daughter. 
 The rent I shall ask of her will be only 
 Each year's first violets, white and lonely, 
 The first primroses and orchises — 
 She must find them before I do, that is. 
 But if she finds a blossom on furze 
 Without rent they shall for ever be hers, 
 Codham, Cockridden and Childerditch, 
 Roses, Pyrgo and Lapwater — 
 I shall give them all to my elder daughter." 
 
 And to his wife — 
 
 " And you, Helen, what should I give you ? 
 So many things I would give you 
 Had I an infinite great store 
 Offered me and I stood before 
 To choose. I would give you youth, 
 All kinds of loveliness and truth, 
 A clear eye as good as mine. 
 Lands, waters, flowers, wine. 
 As many children as your heart 
 Might wish for, a far better art 
 Than mine can be, all you have lost 
 Upon the travelling waters tossed. 
 Or given to me. If I could choose 
 Freely in that great treasm'e-house 
 Anything from any shelf, 
 I would give you back yourself. 
 And power to discriminate 
 What you want and want it not too late, 
 Many fair days free from care 
 And heart to enjoy both foul and fair, 
 And myself, too, if I could find 
 Where it lay hidden and it proved kind." 
 
 The Muse rarely lays her hand for the first time on a 
 man in his late thirties, and when this happens we ought 
 not to be surprised if he proves himself a considerable 
 
 83 
 
SOIME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 poet with complex and subtle moods. Thomas in this 
 thin volume ranges from mere impressionism to creation 
 as exquisite as this : 
 
 " The clouds that are so light, 
 Beautiful, s^vift and bright. 
 Cast shadows on field and park 
 Of the earth that is so dark. 
 
 And even so now, light one ! 
 Beautiful, swift and bright one ! 
 You let fall on a heart that was dark, 
 Unillumined, a deeper mark. 
 
 But clouds would have, without earth 
 To shadow, far less w^orth : 
 Away from your shadow^ on me 
 Your beauty less would be, 
 
 And if it still be treasured 
 An age hence, it shall be measured 
 By this small dark spot 
 Without which it were not." 
 
 A really finished and lovely poem, which will improve 
 with long pondering and often repeating. This man had 
 fought for his own freedom and won against considerable 
 odds before he went out to fight for ours. Through his 
 art, as under limpid water, one sees the opinionated savage 
 youngster whom he first was, lying drowned, exclusive in 
 his love of Celtic magic and deep-country ancientness, 
 despising many fine things because he associated them 
 with towns and globe-trotters ; but the real man's soul 
 with its depth and stillness has charmed all that turbu- 
 lence, so that it now lies like a picture of itself under 
 glass. Not born free, but self -freed like a plant that hfts 
 a stone, or a sapling that splits a rock before it can show 
 the world its proper l^cauty, and, for us discovered, like 
 that hooded wayfarer at the supper-table only recognised 
 
 84. 
 
EDWARD THOMAS 
 
 after he has vanished, as better than our kindest thoughts 
 had dared suppose. Our house was not well ordered, he 
 should not have had to write hastily for his own and his 
 children's bread, we have lost the chance of using him to 
 the best advantage ; yet he leaves us more than we 
 deserved, something that will be treasured by posterity 
 for ever. As his body fell, its cloak melted off the soul 
 and we caught a glimpse which confounded our poor 
 recollections of the man, and words of his still tolling 
 round our ears make us aware that for him this dark 
 casualty had a different meaning. 
 
 " Here love ends. 
 Despair, ambition ends, 
 All pleasure and all trouble, 
 Although most sweet or bitter, 
 Here ends in sleep that is sweeter 
 Than tasks most noble. 
 
 There is not any book 
 
 Or face of dearest look 
 
 That I would not turn from now 
 
 To go into the unknown 
 
 I must enter and leave alone 
 
 I know not how. 
 
 The tall forest towers ; 
 Its cloudy foliage lowers 
 Ahead, shelf above shelf ; 
 Its silence I hear and obey 
 That I may lose my way 
 And mvself." 
 
 85 
 
F. W. HARVEY 
 
 " Flower-like and shy 
 You stand, sweet mortal, at the river's brim : 
 With what unconscious grace 
 Your hmbs to some strange law surrendering 
 Which lifts you clear of our humanity ! 
 
 Now would I sacrifice 
 
 Your breathing, warmth, and all the strange romance 
 
 Of living to a moment ! Ere you break 
 
 The greater thing than you, I would my eyes 
 
 Were basilisk to turn you to a stone. 
 
 So should you be the world's inheritance. 
 
 And souls of unborn men should draw their breath 
 
 From mortal you, immortalised in Death." ^ 
 
 Human beauty, that "greater thing than you," 
 haunts mankind. Its complex attraction maddens not 
 only saints and artists but every honest heart. To arrest 
 it, to keep it steadily in view is our greatest need, yet like 
 the wind it is here and is gone. Having moved men like 
 a hurricane to prove by devastation that their race or 
 their religion is its chosen vehicle, it will be content to 
 fondle a child with caressing indulgence, turning her self- 
 will "to favour and to prettiness." Generations have 
 sought to mew it in a sentence, to immortalise it as the 
 memory of a man or the record of a god's visit. Some 
 have claimed that only perfect form could express it, 
 while others find eloquent a " visage more marred than 
 that of any man," capable of suffering a greater persecu- 
 tion than any other creature. The notion that this 
 revelation may wholly possess one of ourselves, one who 
 may stand emptied of it like a vacant house an hour 
 hence, is old and beautiful. Yes, one lovely moment of a 
 
 1 " Gloucestershire Friends. By Lieutenant F. W. Harvey. Sidgwick 
 & Jackson Ltd. 2s. 6d. Quotations by permission of Mrs Harvey 
 and of Bishop Frodsham. 
 
 87 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 single life may have uttered what millions of completed 
 lives have stammered over unintelligibly ; this thought 
 begets that agony of fondness that would entrust the 
 brief ])erfection of yoiuig persons to stone or metal rather 
 than leave it to fading flesh. Elroy Flecker, a young 
 poet recently dead, rivals the beautiful lines quoted 
 above with a similar invention : 
 
 " Had I the power 
 To Midas given of old 
 To touch a flower 
 And leave its petals gold, 
 I then might touch thy face, 
 Delightful boy, 
 And leave a metal grace 
 A graven joy. 
 
 Thus would I slay — 
 Ah, desperate device ! 
 The vital day 
 
 That trembles in thine eyes, 
 And let the red lips close 
 Which sang so well 
 And drive awav the rose 
 To leave a shell." 
 
 This vivid estimation of human beauty is proof of a 
 deep well of poetic power. 
 
 " Star of my soul, thou gazest 
 Upon the starry skies ; 
 I envy Heaven, that watches 
 Thy face with countless eyes." ^ 
 
 So Plato sang, and still, in spite of astronomy ; the 
 worth of this soul-thrilled comeliness can counterbalance 
 the magnitude of stellar regions and remove all terror 
 from the unclouded night. So great a power has human 
 beauty when we are alone with ourselves ; and yet few 
 
 * Translated by Kenneth Freeman : Schools of Hellas. 
 
 38 
 
F. W. HARVEY 
 
 ideas have had less weight in councils of war and 
 parliaments of peace. Commerce has been permitted 
 to oppress and ambition to outrage it to any extent. 
 
 But let us return to the poem I first cited. Lieutenant 
 Harvey, who won the D.C.M. as lance-corporal, was 
 allowed by the German authorities to send it and a little 
 volume of others home from the prison camp at Giitersloh. 
 Many judges would not admit that his poem is a rival 
 to Flecker's, and the last couplet does weaken its effect ; 
 but then Flecker weakened his by two stanzas which I 
 have not quoted. Lt. Harvey's volume gives proof of 
 a varied and powerful soul ; but it peeps at us from a 
 prison of trivial amusement, banal tricks and rhjines, 
 things that Flecker was all his short poet-life at conscious 
 war with, staving them further and further back from his 
 small garden of verse ; whereas Harvey hardly seems 
 conscious that they confine and baffle the wings of his 
 Pegasus. The gleams of pure poetiy that flash past the 
 bars of his everyday mentality are not alone passages of 
 felicity, but there are also fine inevitable poem-shapes, 
 marred in execution — not so much, as in Sorley's case, 
 from lack of time to finish ; no, rather as though a 
 strange, insensitive, surface-personality intervened and 
 " gambolled from the matter " in repeating what had 
 been conceived. When I first read his volume I said, 
 " No, I cannot write about this man," and laid it aside for 
 weeks ; then I happened to open it at the lines I have 
 quoted and immediately began to search for other signs 
 of power in the mass of smart or pretty trifles, and I 
 found a few. He addresses a fallen comrade — 
 
 " Swift-footed, fleeter yet 
 Of heart. Swift to forget 
 
 The petty spite that life or men could show you : 
 Your last long race is won, 
 But beyond the sound of gun 
 You laugh and help men onward — if I know you." 
 
 89 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 But wc wonder wliether he had himself Iieard the rhythm 
 of the Hrst tliree hues when we next read — 
 
 " O still you laugh and walk 
 And sing and I'rankly talk." 
 
 A doubt arises even over the second three lines — the 
 fatal influenee of a trick of facile rhyming seems already 
 to tame in them the soaring stroke — but with this last 
 couplet we are waddling on ground. 
 
 " What is it the breeze says 
 In London streets to-day 
 Unto the troubled trees 
 Whose shadoAvs strew the way. 
 Whose leaves are all a-flutter ? 
 
 ' You are wild ! ' the rascal cries. 
 The green tree beats its wings 
 And fills the air with sighs. 
 ' Wild ! wild ! ' the rascal sings. 
 But your feet are in the gutter ! 
 
 Men pass beneath the trees 
 Walking the pavement grey, 
 They hear the whisperings tease 
 And at the word he utters 
 Their hearts are green and gay. 
 
 Then like the gay, green trees, 
 They beat proud wings to fly, 
 But like the fluttering trees, 
 Their footprints mark the gutters 
 Until the beggars die." 
 
 This poem has great beauty of structure ; it follows an 
 inevitable course from outstart to the happy last line. 
 Yet the first line for the sake of a pat rhyme is contorted 
 and rendered ambiguous to the ear and really runs — 
 
 " What is it says the breeze " — 
 90 
 
F. W. HARVF.Y 
 
 which seems to demand punctuation thus — 
 
 " ' What is it ? ' says the breeze "— 
 
 whereas the sense is as I have amended it. Besides this, 
 the two latter stanzas distinctly fall off in aptness of 
 phrase as compared with the first two. 
 
 The poems entitled Recognition and The Little Road 
 and the first of the two Ballades are also not only truly 
 inspired and well designed, but spoilt in similar ways. 
 His interests and sentiments have perhaps a wider range 
 than with most of these poets, and are almost all com- 
 mendable and endearing, only it is expression makes 
 the poet, and here the general effect is easy-going and 
 commonplace. No doubt the facility with which he is 
 amused by the first-coming features of his ova\ work and 
 of the world is a sign of youth, and makes his width of 
 range the more promising. It is rare indeed to find in 
 work, the general allure of which is so casual, lines so just, 
 direct and impassioned as were the first five I quoted 
 from him, moving with their own movement, uncontrolled 
 by the conventional notions of form which are habitual 
 with their author ; and they certainly should set expect- 
 ancy on tiptoe for what he will produce during the next 
 few years. Every honest heart is at moments maddened 
 by a glimpse of beauty in behaviour or in persons : then 
 their thought suddenly darts upward as though a robin 
 were possessed by the soul of a lark. Was this such a 
 moment, or are the other poems the tawdry swaddling 
 of a still unconscious master ? Ability there is plenty of ; 
 his mundane effectiveness may reach the level of Kipling's. 
 
 " In general, if you want a man to do a dangerous job : — 
 Say, swim the Channel, climb St Paul's, or break into and rob 
 The Bank of England, why, you find his wages must be 
 
 higher 
 Than if you merely wanted him to light the kitchen fire. 
 But in the British Army it's just the other way. 
 And the maximum of danger means the minimum of pay." 
 
 91 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 Perhaps in the future all journalists may be trained to 
 this degree of ciuining, and then, perhaps before the end 
 of time, they may sicken even the average man with 
 smartness in verse. 
 
 Strangest of all, this lover of beauty and this captive 
 of momentary effect have been once at least fused con- 
 sciously and inextricably in a single poem, a successful 
 poem. 
 
 THE BUGLER 
 
 God dreamed a man ; 
 Then, having firmly shut 
 Life like a precious metal in his fist 
 Withdrew, His labour done. Thus did begin 
 Our various divinity and sin. 
 For some to ploughshares did the metal twist. 
 And others^ — dreaming empires — straightway cut 
 Crowns for their aching foreheads. Others beat 
 Long nails and heavy hammers for the feet 
 Of their forgotten Lord. (Who dares to boast 
 That he is guiltless ?) Otliers coined it : most 
 Did with it — simply nothing. (Here again 
 Who cries his innocence ?) Yet doth remain 
 Metal unmarred, to each man more or less, 
 Whereof to fashion perfect loveliness. 
 
 For me, I do but bear within my hand 
 
 (For sake of Him our Lord, now long forsaken) 
 
 A simple bugle such as may awaken 
 
 With one high morning note a drowsing man : 
 
 That wheresoe'er within my motherland 
 
 The sound may come, 'twill echo far and wide 
 
 Like pipes of battle calling up a clan. 
 
 Trumpeting men through beauty to God's side. 
 
 Second thoughts are best, and this seems made entirely 
 of first thoughts ; images, attitude, ever}i;hing ; and yet it 
 is inevitably shaped to a whole that is itself throughout. 
 The mad passion for beauty can do so much even with 
 92 
 
F. W. HARVEY 
 
 cheap and hackneyed material. In the uncouth, though 
 famihar, garb of crazy conmion-sense this young soldier 
 stands among the crowd and blows his bugle, half con- 
 scious of the drab disguise, half hoping it will fall and he 
 find himself naked as Achilles ; and why should he not 
 open his eyes and " behold the mountain full of horses and 
 chariots of fire " ? 
 
 d3 
 
RICHARD ALDINGTON 
 
 As the year nineteen hundred approached and was passed 
 young men said : " We are the new century. How shall 
 we differ from the old ? " And elder folk said : " Of course 
 the new century must be different ; let us try and welcome 
 it." Young poets, who wish to prove that they are a new 
 sort, embrace theories and think that these lend them 
 importance ; obviously they have not produced enough 
 work to claim the authority of masters, so they must 
 needs borrow if they wish to impose. Unfortunately, 
 theory descrbies art but cannot create. No work succeeds 
 because it conforms to rules ; bad and good works alike 
 exemplify the practice of all schools. 
 
 The " Imagists " are one small twig of a branch of the 
 new tree made by forking movements. They plead that 
 they are not rebels, and point out how, at least in English, 
 verse free from rhyme and conventional rhythms has 
 always existed ; besides, they admire, nay worship, the 
 past. None the less they publish a manifesto, and prove 
 their doctrine to be impressionistic. 
 
 " The ' exact ' word does not mean the word which 
 exactly describes the object in itself, it means the ' exact ' 
 word which brings the effect of that object before the 
 reader as it presented itself to the poet's mind at the time 
 of writing the poem." ^ 
 
 The value of a poem cannot consist in informing us 
 how a poet felt at a given moment ; it may tell us this, but 
 its value will lie in the quality of his feeling and the 
 felicity with which it takes shape. This form is a growth 
 like other organisms. If, as it grows, the poet says, 
 " But I did not feel like this or think of that when the 
 impulse started me off ; I am adulterating my inspiration 
 with afterthoughts," he checks and thwarts this growth, 
 
 ^ Some Imagist Poets. Constable & Co. 1915. Quotations by per- 
 mission of Lieutenant Richard Aldington. 
 
 95 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 and turns liis work into a scientific document about liow 
 he once felt, wliicli possibly has very little interest for 
 science. 
 
 The effect of this mistake is clearly seen in the triviality 
 and poverty of many Imagist poems. But Nature takes 
 no notice of creeds and sects and nicknames, and has 
 given Richard Aldington such love of beauty as amounts 
 almost to passion, and to H. D., his wife and compeer, 
 such passion as must create beauty, despite no matter 
 what crippling theory. There is, of course, no such thing 
 as legitimate or illegitimate among aesthetic means and 
 forms. Success in fulfilling its oami nature is the sole 
 criterion by which a poem should be judged. This happy 
 couple are scholars as well as poets, and have contributed 
 excellent work to The Poets' Translation Series. 
 
 A lover of beauty is hurt every day in London, where 
 ruthless commercialism has produced a hell almost as 
 dreadful as that created by ruthless militarism in 
 Flanders. Such a man feels and resents a nameless 
 hostility, yet he may deem it a kind of desertion to take 
 refuge in dreams of old Italy and ancient Greece. He 
 wishes to be lojal to his own day even if it can only be by 
 enlarging on his sufferings. 
 
 WHITECHAPEL ^ 
 
 Noise ! 
 
 Iron hoofs, iron wheels, iron din 
 
 Of drays and trams and feet passmg ; 
 
 Iron 
 
 Beaten to a vast mad cacophony. 
 
 In vain the slu'ill, far cry 
 Of swallows sweeping by : 
 In vain the silence and green 
 Of meadows Apriline ; 
 In vain the clear white rain — 
 
 ^Images. Richard Aldington. The Poetry Bookshop. 
 90 
 
RICHARD ALDINGTON 
 
 Soot ; mud ; 
 
 A nation maddened with labour ; 
 
 Interminable collision of energies — 
 
 Iron beating upon iron, 
 
 Smoke whirling upwards, 
 
 Speechless, impotent. 
 
 In vain the shrill, far cry 
 Of kittiwakes that fly 
 Where the sea waves leap green. 
 The meadows Apriline — 
 
 Noise, iron, smoke ; 
 Iron, Iron, Iron. 
 
 To my ear and understanding this is improved by the 
 omission of lines 1, 11, 16, 21 and 22. Accumulations 
 of nouns and adjectives are characteristic of imagists, 
 inelegancies of syntax give much of their work the air of a 
 translation, as though the difficulty of following a foreign 
 idiom had overstrained the resources of the writer. 
 
 PEOPLE 
 
 Why should you try to crush me ? 
 Am I so Christ-like ? 
 
 You beat against me 
 
 Immense waves, filthy with refuse. 
 
 I am the last upright of a smashed breakwater, 
 
 But you shall not crush me 
 
 Though you bury me in foaming slime 
 
 And hiss your hatred about me. 
 
 You break over me, cover me ; 
 
 I shudder at the contact ; 
 
 Yet I pierce through you 
 
 And stand up, torn, dripping, shaken, 
 
 But whole and fierce. 
 
 G 97 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 This is far better, but a true poet is rarely at his best in 
 the expression of personal antagonism. Admiration and 
 delight create beauty. 
 
 "Like a gondola of green scented fruits 
 Drifting along the dark canals at Venice, 
 You, O exquisite one. 
 Have entered my desolate city. 
 
 The blue smoke leaps 
 Like swirling clouds of birds vanishing. 
 So my love leaps forth towards you, 
 Vanishes and is renewed. 
 
 The flower which the wind has shaken 
 Is soon filled again with rain. 
 So does my heart fill slow^ly wdth tears 
 Until you return." 
 
 Sensitive to beauty, yet a trifle over-ingenious ; let us 
 sample him in a more objective mood. 
 
 THE FAUN SEES SNOW FOR THE FIRST TIME 
 
 Zeus, 
 
 Brazen- thunder-hurler. 
 
 Cloud- whirler, son-of-Kronos, 
 
 Send vengeance on these Oreads 
 
 Who strew 
 
 White frozen flecks of mist and cloud 
 
 Over the brown trees and the tufted gi-ass 
 
 Of the meadows, where the stream 
 
 Runs black through shining banks 
 
 Of bluish white. 
 
 Zeus, 
 
 Are the halls of heaven broken up 
 That you flake down upon me 
 Feather-strips of marble ? 
 
 98 
 
RICHARD ALDINGTON 
 
 Dis and Styx ! 
 
 When I stamp my hoof 
 
 The frozen- cloud- specks jam into the cleft 
 
 So that I reel upon two slippery points . . . 
 
 Fool, to stand here cursing 
 When I might be running ! 
 
 I find this almost convincing, more so than Ledwidge's 
 Wife of Llezv ; yet it too savours of pedantry when 
 compared with Sorley's Runners. 
 
 AT NIGHTS 
 
 At nights I sit here, 
 
 Shading my eyes, shutting them if you glance up. 
 
 Pretending to doze, 
 
 And watching you. 
 
 Thinking. 
 
 I think of when I first saw the beauty of things — 
 
 God knows I was poor enough and sad enough 
 
 And humiliated enough — - 
 
 But not all the slights and the poorness and the worry 
 
 Could hide away the green of the poplar leaves, 
 
 The ripple and light of the little stream, 
 
 The pattern of the ducks' feathers, 
 
 The dawns I saw in the winter 
 
 When I went shooting, 
 
 The summer walks and the winter walks. 
 
 The hot days with the cows coming down to the water, 
 
 The flowers, 
 
 Buttercups and meadow-sweet and hog's parsley, 
 
 And the larks singing in the morning, and the thrushes 
 
 Trilling at dusk when I went out into the fields 
 
 Muttering poetry. 
 
 I looked at the world as God did 
 
 When first He made it. 
 
 I saw that it was good. 
 
 And now at nights, 
 
 Now that everything has gone right somehow. 
 
 And I have friends and books 
 
 And no more bitterness, 
 
 99 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 I sit here, shading my eyes, 
 Fct'ping at you, watching you. 
 Thinking. 
 
 Good ! He is truly himself, Ijut tlic mood has hardly 
 momentum enougli to create perfect form. But when at 
 last we get passion we get song. 
 
 AFTER TWO YEARS 
 
 She is all so slight 
 And tender and white 
 As a May morning. 
 She walks without hood 
 At dusk. It is good 
 To hear her sing. 
 
 It is God's will 
 That I shall love her still 
 As He loves Mary. 
 And night and day 
 I will go forth to pray 
 That she love me. 
 
 There is a third stanza, but it rather detracts from 
 these two, which are perfect in and by themselves. 
 
 Since I wrote the above Richard Aldington has aug- 
 mented his gift to the world by two tiny volumes.^ 
 Reverie and The Love Poems of Myrrhine and Konallis. 
 This last adds a new facet to his talent, for it covers the 
 same ground as Les Amours de Bilitis, by Pierre Louis, 
 compared to which these paragraphs seem shrunk, faint 
 and uninspired. Uncnglish pedantries such as " goldcn- 
 hyacinth-curled hair " or " golden-wrought knees " or 
 " vine-leaf -cai'ved armlet " affect us like the despair of 
 a translator after scratching his head for a long time. 
 " Gold-fiowered-crowned drink " indeed ! A rhetorical 
 
 ^ Privately issued by Charles C. Bubb at his Private Press, Cleveland. 
 1917. 
 
 100 
 
RICHARD ALDINGTON 
 
 use of such adjectives as white, swift, silver, golden, also 
 detracts from that physical precision which is the glory 
 of English. Yet the choice perfume of these poems 
 haunts the mind. Christian civilisation has in nothing so 
 failed to uphold its Founder's criterions as in censorious- 
 ness. Moral disparagement of one sort or another 
 permeates it. " Judge not that ye be not judged " looms 
 from far in the dim and impracticable. Young men are, 
 however, often open-minded and gentle towards sexual 
 licentiousness ; it comes easily to them. Allowing for 
 this, I still think that these spare paragraphs, which so 
 poorly represent strophes, are redolent with that temper 
 which not only refrains from censure, but does not judge, 
 though in his case armed with what is called " the best 
 right to. " These outworn forms of pagan life are regarded 
 simply and graciously, if a trifle fondly. So to cherish 
 distant things is rare ; and their faded colours revive 
 under its kindness, as the dust-scored effacement of some 
 broken shell of a freshly excavated vase might be vivified 
 by a passing shower. 
 
 H. D. takes us into another world, the tragic world of 
 those who strive with the Sphinx. Is what we see con- 
 trolled from the outside, or does the cosmos live ? Are we 
 ourselves shaped by inspiration or by the pressure of 
 conditions ? And if there are two forces, which will be 
 master in the long run ? Passionate minds grapple with 
 this problem ; their doubts, their faiths, their despairs 
 are the result. Goethe's Prometheus is the first modern 
 poem that shakes us with these emotions, and declares 
 unending war on all external tyrants, however strong. 
 His maturity could not finish what he had written ; the 
 crisis was past, less tragic questions engrossed his 
 attention ; but I venture to think that H. D.'s 
 Pygmalion touches as great moments as did his 
 insuppressibly creative Titan whose defiance cries out 
 to Zeus : 
 
 101 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 " Here sit I, and fashion men 
 
 After mine ()\vn image, 
 Of like tem])cr with me, 
 To suffer and weep. 
 To enjoy and rejoiee 
 And lieed thee as little 
 As I." 
 
 I.eopardi and Arnold have sinee prodneed great poems 
 in this key : the doomed fragility of the lovely broom 
 bush on the slopes of Vesuvius is an apt and moving image 
 for the despair inspired l)y the stupendous inequality 
 between what is exquisite within and brutal without ; 
 and in Arnold's Empedocles the despair of the man who 
 has neglected life for thought is strangely capped by 
 youth's serene joy in the harmonious world which it 
 inherits. But H. D.'s sculptor, whose statues come to 
 life, not, as in the old story, to content as a mistress or 
 comfort as a wife, but silently to leave him in disdain, or 
 as though they were of too different a nature to commune 
 with him, discovers new abysses of tragic emotion for the 
 indomitable creator's loneliness, ignorance and relative 
 insignificance. 
 
 The poem is too long and ill put together to quote as a 
 whole. Too many images are used : that of fire, that of 
 heat, and that of light, no doubt of intense distinctness 
 to the writer, collide together and confuse the reader, who 
 has not shared the long meditations which preceded the 
 pangs and joys of creation. Fortunately by simple 
 omission a satisfying simplicity can be obtained. 
 
 PYGMALION 
 
 I MADE god upon god 
 
 Step from the cold rock, 
 
 I made the gods less than men. 
 
 For I was a man and they my work. 
 
 102 
 
RICHARD ALDINGTON 
 
 And now what is it that has come to pass ? 
 
 " Each of the gods, perfect 
 Cries out from a perfect throat : 
 You are useless ; 
 No marble can bind me 
 No stone suggest. 
 They have melted into the light 
 And I am desolate. 
 They have melted 
 Each from his plinth, 
 Each one departs. 
 
 They have gone : 
 
 What agony can express my grief ? 
 
 Each from his marble base 
 
 Has stepped into the light 
 
 And my work is for naught." 
 
 And after this, though before the passage occurs in 
 the poem, the bereaved sculptor enters on an agony of 
 interpretation. 
 
 " Which am I 
 The stone or the power 
 Which lifts the rock from the earth ? " 
 
 Or again — 
 
 " Which is the god. 
 Which the stone 
 The god takes for his use ? " 
 
 The question debated would seem to be whether he was 
 the power which created those gods or whether he himself 
 had been made by the power which took them away. Is 
 he himself the god ? "or is this arrogance ? " or are they, 
 his handiwork, the power that shapes him unperceived? 
 But although most of it is pregnant with splendid sug- 
 gestions, I can make neither head nor tail of it as it stands. 
 Now what I have quoted is grander poetrj^ than anything 
 
 103 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 I have read, cither in French or in Enghsh, produced by 
 tlic so-called re1)cl poets. TJiis cry over the soul's effort 
 that is lost in the ^vorld is grander tlian anything I have 
 quoted from these Soldier Poets. Have we not seen 
 man's wonderful creations go out from tlie workshop 
 and join themselves to tlie hostile gods, the inclement 
 conditions of his life. How many creeds, how many 
 social orders that seemed stable and trustworthy have 
 melted into air ! or, like soiled and rusting weapons, 
 gangrened wounds dealt those they were fashioned to 
 defend ! Vast wealth, created at immense cost in toil, 
 in shame, in wrong and in suffering, is even now being 
 used to damage and destroy men on a huger scale than 
 earthquakes achieve. This image goes deeper than the 
 forlorn agony of the artist ; it is a universal tragedy 
 that what we make makes us and then breaks us like 
 a hostile power ; and can we know that we are shaped by 
 divinity, when it is the outside pressure that hews roughly 
 and desecrates our hopes ? Passion and power are 
 present in others of H. D.'s poems, but nowhere else so 
 successfully. 
 
 Like Orestes and Electra, this young poet and poetess 
 stand hand in hand, and a sculptor might well drav/ a 
 splendid inspiration from their intrepidity ; but perhaps 
 painting could better express how they face the colossal 
 wickedness of the modern world and its tragedy, as the 
 children of Agamemnon faced the cumulative murderous 
 treacheries of " Pelops' line." Young, severe, and de- 
 termined to live and die in defence of that ideal beauty 
 that for us as for them is called Greece, let us picture 
 them under the dark pall of the war, but behind them a 
 glimpse of those blue seas and temple-cro^Mied cliffs. Or 
 shall he show her his hands as in a little prose poem 
 written from the trenches ? 
 
 " I am grieved for our hands, our hands that have 
 caressed roses and women's flesh, old lovely books and 
 104 
 
RICHARD ALDINGTON 
 
 marbles of Carrara. I am grieved for our hands that 
 were so reverent in beauty's service, so glad of beauty's 
 tresses, hair and silken robe and gentle fingers, so glad 
 of beauty of bronze and wood and stone and rustling 
 parchment. So glad, so reverent, so white. . . . 
 
 " I am grieved for our hands. ..." 
 
 She holds the torch near to look and its light floods 
 her face, while he smiles, for she reveals her own un- 
 conscious beauty in the act of pitying his hands, blunted, 
 stiffened and begrimed by his foul task. 
 
 105 
 
ALAN SEEGER 
 
 Love, arms and song, and a noble frankness that asserts, 
 " My kingdom is of this world," characterise America's 
 leading soldier poet, who fell in action on 4th July 1916. | 
 
 Alan Seeger was born in New York in 1888, of old New 
 England parentage. For ten years Staten Island, in the 
 mouth of the harbour, was his home. Later the family 
 settled at Mexico City, in the tropics, but 7400 feet above 
 the sea. He entered Harvard in 1906 and came to Paris 
 in 1912, and, when the war broke out, was among the 
 first half-hundred of his countrymen to enlist in the 
 Foreign Legion of France, and soon writes from the Front : 
 
 " I have always thirsted for this kind of thing, to be 
 present where the pulsations are liveliest. Every minute 
 here is worth weeks of ordinary experience. . . . This will 
 spoil one for any other kind of life. . . . Death is nothing 
 terrible after all. It may mean something even more 
 wonderful than life. It cannot possibly mean anything 
 worse to a good soldier. . . . Success in life means doing 
 that thing than which nothing else conceivable seems 
 more noble or satisfying or remunerative, and this enviable 
 state I can truly say I enjoy, for had I the choice, I would 
 be nowhere else in the world than where I am." ^ 
 
 From him as from Grenfell this sentiment comes in- 
 evitably ; and he was no soldier by profession, but, in so 
 far as he had chosen any, a poet. At first sight they seem 
 twin natures in ardour, in frankness, in courage, in de- 
 votion ; only gradually can the spirit become reconciled 
 to admitting an immense difference. 
 
 The temptation is to apply here the common English 
 prejudice as to where the American fails. But this would 
 be uncritical, for exceptional natures least conform to 
 
 1 Poems by-Alan Seeger. Introduction by W. Archer. Constable & 
 Co. Quotations by permission of C. L. Seeger, Esq., and Messrs 
 Constable. 
 
 107 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 national foi])lcs. Seeger contrasts with Grcnfell as Byron 
 witli Shelley rather than as Yankee with Britisher. Only 
 by erushing the grapes of his thought against a fine palate 
 shall we be able to distinguish their flavour from very 
 highly prized fruit. After a few pages his clarity, like 
 that of Swinburne, confuses the reader, for if his virtue 
 is not to hesitate, his fault is to let the thread sag in the 
 hurry and volume of eloquence ; and this great fluency 
 and facility accompany a lack of delicate choicefulness. 
 In vain you search for such precision in joy as inspired 
 Ledwidge's happiest images, or for details that amount to 
 revelations as did Thomas's best. All kinds of beauty 
 are welcomed, but too indiscriminately. " You will say 
 they are Persian attire ; but let them be changed," is the 
 instinctive comment of many resolute minds on encounter- 
 ing to-day that flaunting habit which ranges women and 
 wine in a single category'. Rakish nakedness offends 
 their studied composure, and others may be sui-prised to 
 find neither fatigue, hopelessness nor cynicism in the 
 voice that proclaims : 
 
 " And m old times I should have prayed to her 
 Whose haunt the groves of windy Cyprus were. 
 To prosper me and crown with good success 
 My will to make of you the rose-twined bowl 
 From whose inebriating brim my soul 
 Shall drink its last of earthly happiness." 
 
 This is from one of a series of sonnets written during 
 leave from the Front. Another with the same object 
 pursues : 
 
 " Enchanting girl, my faith is not a thing 
 By futile prayers and vapid psalm-singing 
 To vent in crowded nave and public pew. 
 My creed is simple : that the world is fair. 
 And beauty the best thing to worship there, 
 And I confess it by adoring you." 
 
 108 
 
ALAN SEEGER 
 
 And this world is defied as gallantly as the other : 
 
 " Let not propriety nor prejudice 
 Nor the precepts of jealous age deny 
 What Sense so incontestably affirms ; 
 Cling to the blessed moment and drink deep 
 Of the sweet cup it tends, as there alone 
 Were that which makes life worth the pain to live." 
 
 Nay, not even death, and what dreams may follow, can 
 give him pause : 
 
 " Exiled afar from youth and happy love, 
 If Death should ravish my fond spirit hence 
 I have no doubt but, like a homing dove. 
 It would return to its dear residence, 
 And through a thousand stars find out the road 
 Back into earthly flesh that was its loved abode." 
 
 Neither heaven nor the possibilities of time and space 
 can offer anything better, a return to known delights is all 
 that can be desired. The old have not infrequently gazed 
 back with something of this feeling, and the illusions of 
 perspective may excuse them ; but that a young man 
 should be so certain that he has seen the bottom of the 
 cup of happiness, and that it could never be refilled with 
 rarer liquors, suggests a near-sighted imagination. So 
 masterful a conviction that no finer means than those 
 you were born with could achieve more exquisite ends 
 sets the mind pondering ; and a plausible philosophy 
 might maintain that youth's vivid apprehension of the 
 M^orth of actual objects, persons and events was the 
 source of all significance, the criterion by which every- 
 thing else is really judged. Wordsworth could almost 
 have subscribed to this belief ; he expressed a very 
 similar intuition though with a less truculent directness. 
 In fact I think this comparison brings home to us a failure 
 in the mood of Alan Seeger's ecstasy. We have all met 
 these gifted young men who seem to tread above the 
 
 109 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 heads of the crowd ; perhaps most of us can recall some- 
 thing of how it ft-els inside them. The most coy have 
 known the itch to swagger, the most staid have longed to 
 shout from the house-top, and modesty itself has desired 
 to stand forth naked and unashamed ; so that a deep 
 and widespread welcome greets these manifestations even 
 among those who dare not avow their approval and 
 whose lives would contradict them if they did. Words- 
 worth himself confessed that he had not written love 
 poems because if he had done so they would have been 
 too warm for publication. 
 
 "All true speech and large avowal 
 Which the jealous soul concedes, 
 All man's heart that brooks bestowal. 
 All frank faith which passion breeds." 
 
 are of the very essence of poetry, and will be cherished 
 by every loyal nature. Propriety is forbidden to intervene 
 when soul communes with soul, her sphere is downstairs 
 in the world of half relations and approximate intercourse. 
 But in proportion as you claim to go naked, you must 
 keep near to the heart of things, and make the very truth 
 your inseparable companion. Anything off-hand, smy- 
 thing insensitive or not quite alive offends these com- 
 municants, like the touch of a coi-pse. Humbleness like 
 that of a child is born from this intensity. Any thought 
 of the myriad eyes that overpeer a stage should be im- 
 possible ; the world is forgotten when the spirit dances 
 naked in the light to which joy entrusts it — tender joy for 
 whom the damage of the pale green, ruby-eyed, lace-winged 
 fly is a calamity to avert with tears and supplications. 
 "Everything that lives is holy." If Seeger lives in his 
 poetry, everything else passes like a ghost, like a reference 
 only : his one imperious desire is to cast a personal spell 
 upon us all. Will not something unmistakably itself 
 arrest tliis fervid eloquence that deals in clouds and stars 
 110 
 
ALAN SEEGER 
 
 and all the commonplaces of poetry with such profusion ! 
 Were but the young women addressed, ever qualified by 
 an adjective proper to some one girl ! No, Alan Seeger 
 is alone felt, with this delightful freshness, a presence, 
 an inspiration ! 
 
 " Sidney, in whom the hey-day of romance 
 Came to its precious and most perfect flower. 
 Whether you turneyed with victorious lance 
 Or brought sweet roundelays to Stella's bower, 
 I give myself some credit for the way 
 I have kept clean of what enslaves and lowers, 
 Shmmed the ideals of our present day 
 And studied those that were esteemed in yours — 
 For, turning from the mob that buys Success 
 By sacrificing all Life's better part, 
 Down the free roads of human happiness 
 I frolicked, poor of purse but light of heart, 
 And lived in strict devotion all along 
 To my three idols — Love and Arms and Song." 
 
 " I could accuse myself of such things that it were 
 better my mother had not borne me. . . . We are arrant 
 knaves all " — in speaking thus was Hamlet so certainly 
 mad as this sonnet implies ? The worry and stress that 
 " honesty of puipose and intellectual honesty " cost 
 Grenfell are remembered with regret. 
 
 "I camiot rest 
 While aught of beauty in any path untrod 
 Swells into bloom and spreads sweet charms abroad 
 Un worshipped of my love. I cannot see 
 In Life's profusion and passionate brevity 
 How hearts enamoured of life can strain too much 
 Li one long tension to hear, to see, to touch." 
 
 He is too eager, too arrogant, to await the visit of those 
 wonders which steal unsought into consciousness. A 
 " wise passiveness " was no mood of his. His ambition 
 emulates Byron's, who hated to think himself a mere poet 
 
 111 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 and itched for acted glory : thus Seeger, gazing beyond 
 the war's end, cries : 
 
 " And the great cities of the world shall yet 
 Be golden frames for me in which to set 
 New masterpieces of more rare romance." 
 
 He fears no repetition of that defeat which yet en- 
 chanted the world with its misanthropy and cynicism, 
 but strains after a vision fellow to that followed by the 
 pilgrim lord from Harrow to Missolonghi. If in spite of 
 failure this temperament achieved so much, what might 
 it not succeed in ? So active, so independent, so daring 
 a nature has as many opportunities of acquiring wisdom 
 as it has of refusing to bow its head under ruin. Though 
 a soul consciously poses while loving, though when heroic 
 it must be setting an example to half the world, this 
 effrontery, largely inexperience, may betoken the verj^ 
 vigour that can grapple with the monster fact on the 
 soul's behalf. Already he can philosophise his pre- 
 occupation with sexual passion. 
 
 " Oh Love whereof my boyhood was the dream 
 My youth the beautiful novitiate. 
 Life was so slight a thing and thou so great. 
 How could I make thee less than all supreme ! 
 In thy sweet transports not alone I thought 
 Mingled the twain that panted breast to breast, 
 The sun and stars throbbed with them ; they were caught 
 Into the pulse of Nature. . . . 
 
 Doubt not that of a perfect sacrifice 
 
 That soul partakes whose inspiration fills 
 
 The spring-time and the depth of summer skies 
 
 The rainbow and the clouds behind the lulls, 
 
 That excellence in earth and air and sea 
 
 That makes things as they are the real divinity."' 
 
 Yes, his brain keeps pace with his eloquence ; but his 
 soul ? Hasty and cnide and licensed to scorn the 
 
 112 
 
ALAN SEEGER 
 
 maimed and mauled by youth's ignorance of irreparable 
 damage, he does not hesitate, on returning to the trenches, 
 to offer his gallant comrades these ungenerous lines which 
 were possibly not really aimed at the invalids he had met 
 at Biarritz, but at those whom he could never forget, his 
 equals in youth and strength, who then still lingered in 
 the States. 
 
 "Apart sweet women (for whom heaven be blessed). 
 Comrades, you cannot think how thin and blue 
 Look the left-overs of mankind that rest, 
 Now that the cream has been skimmed off in you. 
 . . . we turn disdainful backs 
 On that poor world we scorn, yet die to shield, — 
 That world of cowards, hypocrites and fools." 
 
 He has given himself for the freedom of all future souls, 
 what right have we to question whether he gave his own 
 conscience due reverence ? Could we have divined King 
 Lear from reading Venus and Adonis ? That ready 
 aptness of phrase which in my citations has delighted the 
 reader is constantly achieved in his later poems, if only 
 by four or six lines at a time. And though the inspired 
 peaks rise tier behind tier above this plateau, you find 
 few flowers more brilliant without climbing higher. Yet 
 that failure in delicate choicefulness insistently prophesies 
 woe, and was not so striking in Swinburne or more so in 
 Byron at his years. The Deserted Garden, his longest 
 poem, yielded as abundant opportunities as Venus and 
 Adonis could, but no line like 
 
 " A lily prisoned in a gale of snow " 
 
 takes the advantage. In spite of formlessness, how 
 delightful the Keats of Endyniion would have made this 
 old Mexican garden, where the young Seeger dreams the 
 meetings of bygone lovers. He, however, only maintains 
 his obvious efficiency, and we are never " surprised with 
 joy " : in the end we are only surprised that he can keep 
 H 113 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 it up, as we often have been when Swinburne was not 
 first rate. Did the magnoha bud of this large soul lodge 
 a canker ? Yet, though we can only surmise what his 
 full-blown splendour might have been, he was ever so 
 slightly opening ; his latest sonnets are not only the most 
 manifold, but deeper and almost fragrant. 
 
 " Seeing you have not come with me, nor spent 
 This day's suggestive beauty as we ought, 
 I have gone forth alone and been content 
 To make you mistress only of my thought." 
 
 " I am the field of undulating grass 
 And you the gentle perfume of the Spring, 
 And all my lyric being, when you pass, 
 Is bowed and filled with sudden murmuring." 
 
 " For I have ever gone untied and free, 
 The stars and my high thoughts for company ; 
 Wet with the salt spray and the mountain showers, 
 I have had the sense of space and amplitude, 
 And love in many places, silver- shoed, 
 Has come and scattered all my path with flowers." 
 
 Four lines from two sonnets, six from a third, and you 
 build up a new one richer and stronger than any of the 
 three. For all these flashes are like the flap of a flame in 
 a swirl of smoke ; some pleasure in his own attitude, some 
 self-assertion causes the momentary brilliance among the 
 ever-flowing grey ghosts of scheduled ornament which 
 make the bulk of a rhetorical style. But he has gentle, 
 more promising moods. 
 
 " There have been times when I could storm and plead, 
 
 But you shall never hear me supplicate. 
 
 These long months that have magnified my need 
 
 Have made my asking less importunate ; 
 
 For now small favours seem to me so great 
 
 That not the courteous lovers of old time 
 
 Were more content to rule themselves and wait, 
 
 Easing desire with discourse and sweet rhyme." 
 Ill 
 
ALAN SEEGER 
 
 He even stands staring at the different tempers created 
 in him by self-seeking and self-devotion. 
 
 *' Oh love of woman, you are known to be 
 A passion sent to plague the hearts of men ; 
 For every one you bring felicity 
 Bringing rebuffs and wretchedness to ten. 
 I have been oft where human life sold cheap 
 And seen men's brains spilled out about their ears 
 And yet that never cost me any sleep ; 
 I lived untroubled and I shed no tears. 
 Fools prate how war is an atrocious thing ; 
 I always knew that nothing it implied 
 Equalled the agony and suffering 
 Of him who loves and loves unsatisfied. 
 War is a refuge to a heart like this ; 
 Love only tells it what true torture is." 
 
 Playing his part with the best at the Front, he was by 
 no means merely acting a Message to America in order to 
 bring her into line. He really loved France and under- 
 stood something of what she stands for in civilisation. 
 He is compact with generosity which is none the less real 
 for being self-appreciated. 
 
 " O friends, in your fortunate present ease 
 (Yet faced by the self- same facts as these), 
 If you would see how a race can soar 
 That has no love, but no fear of war. 
 How each can turn from his private role 
 That all may act as a perfect whole, 
 How men can live up to the place they claim, 
 And a nation jealous of its good name. 
 Be true to its proud inheritance. 
 Oh, look over here and learn from France ! " 
 
 And he too seeks to think well of Death, and, having 
 most fancied himself as a lover, thinks himself ' ' half in 
 love with " glorious Death. 
 
 115 
 
SOMK SOLDIKR POETS 
 
 " I know not il" in risking my best days 
 I sliall leave utterly behind nic here 
 This dream that lightened me tiu-ough lonesome ways 
 And that no disappointment made less dear ; 
 Sometimes I think that, where the hill-tops rear 
 Tiieir white entrenehments back of tangled wire, 
 liehind the mist Death only can make clear. 
 There, like Bnmhilde ringed with flaming fire, 
 Lies what shall ease my heart's immense desire : 
 There, where beyond the horror and the pain 
 Only the brave shall pass, only the strong attain." 
 
 But from a greater depth comes the simple fatalism 
 which informs his finest sayings about life and love. 
 
 MAKTOOB 
 
 A SHELL surprised our post one day 
 And killed a comrade at my side ; 
 My heart was sick to sec the way 
 He suffered as he died. 
 
 I dug about the place he fell. 
 And found, no bigger than my thumb, 
 A fragment of the splintered shell 
 In warm aluminum. 
 
 I melted it and made a mould 
 
 And poured it in the opening 
 
 And worked it. when the cast was cold, 
 
 Into a shapely ring. 
 
 And when my ring was smooth and bright, 
 Holding it on a rounded stick, 
 For seal, I bade a Turco write 
 Maktoob in Arabic. 
 
 Maktoob ! " 'Tis written ! " So they think, 
 These children of the desert, who 
 From its immense expanses drink 
 Some of its grandeur too. 
 
 IIG 
 
ALAN SEEGER 
 
 And after some less convincing circumstance of entrj^ to 
 a Valhalla he ends by telling how these graven characters 
 calm him. 
 
 " When not to hear some try to talk. 
 And some to clean their guns and sing. 
 And some dig deeper in the chalk ^ — 
 I look upon my ring : 
 
 Aid nerves relax that were most tense, 
 And Death comes whistling down unheard, 
 As I consider all the sense 
 Held in that mystic word. 
 
 And it brings, quieting like balm 
 My heart whose flutterings have ceased, 
 The resignation and the calm 
 And wisdom of the East." 
 
 Ample quotation seemed needed to illumine this 
 soldier's fine attitude. His style takes no end of room ; 
 more time was demanded than love and arms could spare 
 for it to grow as rare as it was large. Still, granted a 
 more prolonged lease of pleasure-hunting, we might have 
 had to deplore luxuriance tangled to perversity, no longer 
 merely grown too fast for strength. To what extent war 
 was a tonic to his extravagance remains uncertain, even 
 after repeated readings of his later poems. Every young 
 man has perforce many possible careers — unwritten books 
 whose titles and contents we may dream of, though hands 
 will never part their leaves, nor eyes peruse. Still there 
 is some faint compensation for this in esteeming them at 
 their highest possible value, though it but increase our 
 sense of loss ; for worth conceived is prophetic of that 
 yet to be revealed by the ever-teeming future. 
 
 Look at him crowning himself, prematurely, as Shake- 
 speare's hero prince did, yet, like him, conscious of 
 deserving the " rigol " by innate capacity and determina- 
 
 117 
 
SOME SOULIER POETS 
 
 tion. Both hands raise the empty hoop, then pause, for 
 through it stars watch him, brilliant and remote. In 
 black bronze he stands for ever returning their gaze — no 
 work of Phidias, rather by some Scopas or Praxiteles, 
 whose more indulgent rin-thm induces a musical ripple 
 throughout the war-hardened muscles of his twenty-eight 
 years. 
 
 118 
 
THE BEST POETHY 
 
 I SHALL attempt to show you why the best poetry 
 usually passes unobserved, and how you may train 
 yourselves to recognise it. 
 
 Matthew Arnold, our greatest literary critic in the last 
 century, thought that if we were to draw full benefit from 
 poetry " we must accustom ourselves to a high standard 
 and to a strict judgment," and thus learn to recognise 
 "the best in poetry." 
 
 No easy task, you think. 
 
 Yet the means whereby it may be accomplished are 
 simple. 
 
 First : A habit of making the mind up as to which 
 poem among those we read satisfies us best ; not to rest 
 there, nor until we know whether the whole poem causes 
 our admiration or whether parts of it are only accepted 
 as introduction or sequel to this or that passage ; till, if 
 possible, we discriminate the most perfect line, phrase or 
 rhythm. 
 
 Secondly : A determination to become intimate only 
 with verse that stands the test of our most active moods, 
 instead of letting the luckless day, with its relaxed temper, 
 console itself with something that we have perceived to 
 be second-rate. For in proportion as we are loyal to our 
 taste, it will become more difficult to please until at last a 
 really sound judgment is acquired. 
 
 Perhaps you will think I speak too confidently, and 
 that good taste in poetry is not within the reach of every 
 honest endeavour. 
 
 For a while please imagine that you may be mistaken, 
 and admit that the method of developing taste is possibly 
 both simple and native to mankind. 
 
 Difficulty really arises through the mind's preoccupa- 
 tions, which prevent a sufficiency of consideration being 
 applied to aesthetic experience. So manifold and strong 
 
 119 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 arc tlicsc distractions that perhaps not more than half-a- 
 dozen men in a generation continue to form their taste 
 through many years together. 
 
 The probabiHty of this Avill appear if we roughly sketch 
 the accidents which deter us from persevering, even 
 though we leave out of sight all those wJiich deprive taste 
 of opportunity, and indicate merely such as induce bad 
 habits of mind. 
 
 l\Iany readers, supposing them to have set out un- 
 prejudiced, may soon be committed to praise or blame, 
 and then prove reluctant to revise and reject those so 
 confident judgments. This unwillingness to renounce 
 infallibility already seduces their minds to continue a 
 higher strain of praise or a more rigorous blame than 
 now appears due ; and such disloyalty spreading will 
 even blight the roots of admiration. 
 
 More modest souls are, on the contrar\% all ears for 
 others' opinions ; yet the verj'' openness of their minds 
 may let in such a crowd of contradictor^' voices that in 
 the din and confusion their o\m poor reason, unable to 
 hold its own, by degrees acquiesces in silence. 
 
 Some, again, read verse so quickly or in such quantities 
 that energy fails them for searching, sifting and listening 
 to their genuine impressions with ardom* and thorough- 
 ness : while others will desist from effort through mere 
 indolence, and so making fewer and fewer discoveries of 
 excellence, will gradually take less interest in poetry% till 
 they no longer find it worth while to read any. 
 
 Then there are those who conclude that great poets 
 produce nothing but great poetr\% and dro\\Ti their taste 
 in forced admiration for a sea of failure, since success 
 crowns the efforts of poetical geniuses far less frequently 
 than those of skilled artisans. 
 
 Taste, in minds more orderly than appreciative, is 
 often suffocated by scholarship. Knowledge concerning 
 man, period or text absorbs them, till beauty, whose 
 
 120 
 
THE BEST POETRY 
 
 supposed presence was their pretext for study, is habitu- 
 ally overlooked by their familiarity. 
 
 Again, ardent partisans will find the poetry whose 
 beauty most delights them tainted with convictions to 
 which they are opposed— heterodox religious dogmas, or 
 ultra Tory or ultra Radical theories with which they have 
 no patience : or it may even happen that some true poet 
 shocks their respectability with what they can honestly 
 call gross immorality. 
 
 In all these ways, and many more, men habitually 
 stunt and adulterate their taste instead of allowing it to 
 refresh, refine and reform their minds, even when they 
 have started unprejudiced, and alert for discovery. 
 
 Now a still greater mass of individuals are biassed 
 against poetry from the start. Its mere unfamiliarity 
 appals them. Like old-fashioned servants, they keep 
 their lives consistently downstairs in regard to it. 
 Whether vice or virtue, it is not for the likes of 
 them. 
 
 Their bolder brothers are ashamed to associate so 
 fantastic a mode of speech with business-like cogitations. 
 Rhyme is all very well in a music hall song ; but what an 
 inconceivable nuisance to a man who wishes to be undis- 
 tracted ! And even when not so alienated by ignorance, 
 or the inhuman circumstances of their lives, they may 
 alone be impressionable through some enthusiasm, and 
 thus become exclusive readers of imperialistic or socialistic 
 verse because they are aglow with sympathy for the 
 poet's ideas, and remain immovable by similar or superior 
 beauties not so associated. 
 
 In this way many folk enjoy hymns to whom all other 
 poetry is distasteful, or are ravished by limericks who 
 could not be tempted to open a Golden Treasury. 
 
 Again the kindling eloquence of some critic, the voice 
 and manner of some reader, cause their taste to be passion- 
 ately espoused : when the same ardent hero-worship 
 
 121 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 Avhicli transplants it may prove tlic enemy of its furtlicr 
 gro^^•th. For disciplcsliip will often take a perverse pride 
 in refusing to admire and love, except where it has the 
 warrant of its master's actual example. 
 
 All these are kinds of initial bigotries which may easily 
 be so ingrained in a person of fourteen that hardly any 
 upheaval can be conceived which should lay bare the 
 foimdations of their humanity to this most congenial of 
 influences, the power of the best poetry. 
 
 A third class are those who are meanly corrupt ; en- 
 dowed with a little taste, they have employed it on 
 personal or social ends, instead of desiring to be employed 
 by it in the discovery of excellence. They have sought 
 sentimental consolations or a pick-me-up for enthusiasm, 
 and used and abused this nectar as others use and abuse 
 alcohol. 
 
 Or by its means they have tried to shine in society, to 
 pass for cultured people cheaply. Or they have learned 
 to understand and theorise about it in order to teach in a 
 school or give an extension lecture ; or, through the weak- 
 ness of all their other tastes, have drifted into literary 
 criticism or a professorship at a university by way of 
 excusing their existence. 
 
 In all these w^ays taste may be harnessed to a market 
 cart, and trot backwards and forwards on the highway, 
 respected among other respectable trades, but stunted, 
 cowed and gelded. 
 
 Now, suppose that all these dangers have been avoided 
 — and there are few walks of life not notably infested by 
 one or another of them — right across the road of progress 
 in good taste there then lies waiting a more terrible ogre, 
 w'ho enslaves great geniuses and starves minds potentially 
 as rich as the Indies. He is that species of vanity which 
 admires what is impertinent or accidental because it is a 
 man's own. All satisfaction with mere cleverness, mere 
 daintiness, mere subtlety, oddity, bravado, bluffness, etc., 
 
 122 
 
THE BEST POETRY 
 
 with which fine designs have been teased or disfigured is 
 wound of his dealing. No Hterature has he scarred more 
 deeply than our English. Shakespeare himself could not 
 defend the grandest poems ever conceived against his 
 barbarity. 
 
 " ' Be true to your taste,' this mocking giant cries, 
 ' your own taste, not any one else's. Be not overborne by 
 tradition or corrupted by fashion. Dare on your own 
 account and let the ideal take care of itself. What ! 
 Correct nature, correct yourself ! Amazing nonsense ! 
 You are what you are ; Nature is what it is. That is all 
 we want to know ; all we can admire." 
 
 Deluded by this advocate of a specious loyalty to taste, 
 men tie themselves to first thoughts and raw emotions as 
 though these were more essentially their own than thoughts 
 cleared and polished by reflection, or emotion chastened 
 by considerate expression. They will relinquish study in 
 dread of tainting their originality, checking their verve, or 
 confusing their impressions. " I want to put down just 
 what I think, what I feel, nothing more, nothing less," 
 they plead. Alas ! had you taken up with that theory in 
 infancy you would be a baby still. 
 
 A thriving taste is like a seedling, intensely itself, but 
 determined to be a tree. Its possessor must be loyal to 
 the laws of its growth and provide it with food, light, air. 
 It does not desire instant petrifaction to preserve it from 
 change and inconsistency, but is eager to embrace and 
 attack the unknown in order to obtain new impressions, to 
 arrange and recompose with its own. And as a creator 
 who owns such a taste is constantly recasting, reconsider- 
 ing and correcting his work, and eschews both haste and 
 lethargy, so an appreciator, whose taste lives, strives after 
 larger comprehension by watching those whom he sur- 
 mises may possibly possess such ; and by sifting and 
 
 123 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 scarcliinpf liis present judgments he will be constantly re- 
 construeting hierarchies of merit, giving marks, 100 for 
 Shakespeare's best sonnet, a duck's cgfr for his worst. 
 
 jNIr Lascelles Abercrombic lately published The Sale of 
 St Thomas, a fine poem. He must take up at least half-a- 
 dozen poets and come very near the top of the class. Yet, 
 if in The Emblems of Love, which has appeared since he 
 seems to us to have done but little to secure that pre- 
 eminence, this also should be promptly admitted. 
 
 In a definite number of stanzas Mr Herbert Trench's 
 fine gift of a musical style becomes one with felicity of 
 conception. It is worth while to know it, and to be 
 jealous over a single unit more or less. This ceaseless 
 movement and reorganisation of a man's judgment is a 
 condition of the growth of taste, and enables him to look 
 back on bygone admirations with the conviction that 
 those of to-day are stronger, more definite and yield him 
 purer delight. 
 
 But improviser and impressionist accept just what 
 happens to be there, and, while they try to record it un- 
 altered by reason or tendency, it dwindles for lack of the 
 nourishment that a puipose and reconsideration would 
 have given it. Impressionism should not be regarded as 
 the practice of a school of painters ; this bad habit is as 
 old as Jubal, the father of all such as handle the hai"p and 
 organ. Even the modern avowed and vainglorious im- 
 pressionism impoverished the art not only of AVliistler, 
 but that of Meredith ; nay, it had infected even such a 
 genius as Browning, and all but justifies what Mr San- 
 tayana, perhaps the finest literary critic alive, says of 
 him : 
 
 " Now it is in the conception of things' \mdamental and 
 ultimate that Browning is weak, he is strong in the con- 
 ception of things immediate. The pulse of emotion, the 
 bobbing up of thought, the streaming of reverie — these he 
 124 
 
THE BEST POETRY 
 
 can note down with picturesque force or imagine with 
 admirable fecundity. Yet the limits of such excellence 
 are narrow. For no man can safely go far without the 
 guidance of reason. His long poems have no structure. 
 . . . Even his short poems have no completeness, no lim- 
 pidity. . . . What is admirable in them is the pregnancy 
 of phrase, vividness of passion and sentiment, heaped-up 
 scraps of observation, occasional flashes of light, occasional 
 beauties of versification, all like — 
 
 ' The quick sharp scratch 
 And blue spurt of a lighted match.' 
 
 There is never anything largely composed in the spirit of 
 pure beauty, nothing devotedly finished, nothing simple 
 and truly just." ^ 
 
 Rossetti called a sonnet " a moment's monument." 
 Fortunately he did not mean all he might have meant 
 by it, and his own sonnets were the result of long hours 
 of meditation, and recast again and again. His phrase, 
 however, epitomises this theoiy ; a moment, not a choice 
 moment, but any single moment, is considered as worthy 
 of an eternal monument. With this end in view the writer 
 is more fortunate than the artist. He may record minute 
 after minute just what words come into his head, till at 
 last none come and his work is finished. And apprecia- 
 tion for such work is acquired in the same manner, by 
 stupefying reason and yielding oneself, like the smoker of 
 opium, to a stream of suggestions. 
 
 The out-and-out impressionist would be like a man who 
 should strip his clothes off in order to prove that his 
 honesty needed no disguise, and, when he was naked, must 
 be clapped int an asylum because he had lost his wits. 
 Instead of accumulating resources, the improviser or im- 
 pressionist whittles them away ; though he be rich at the 
 
 ^Poetry and Religion, "The Poetry of Barbarism," p. 20 8. 
 
 125 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 outstart, lie will always be poorer in the end. This pro- 
 cess has a widespread faseination even in practical life, as 
 the bankruptcy courts attest. Running downhill begets 
 its proper exhilaration, one moves faster and faster ; the 
 invigoration derived from ascending must maintain itself 
 in spite of decreasing speed. 
 
 Now not only do the victims of these many maladies of 
 taste which I have enumerated miss sound health, but, by 
 implacable necessity, they become passively or actively, 
 here or there, enemies and maltreaters of poetry, w4io 
 resist and persecute her best. 
 
 Why should we then wonder at the ups and downs of 
 literary' histon-, the blindness of contemporaries, the long- 
 continued bigotiy of worthless fashions, or at the lives 
 and misfortunes of poets ? 
 
 Poetry, as distinguished from prose, is formally 
 rhythmic ; and the reason why it is so, is that a majority 
 of the finest mentalities have considered formal rhythms 
 capable of greater beautj^ Apart from their beauty, they 
 are simply inconvenient. 
 
 Browning compares the ravishing depth and wamith of 
 colour, which Keats discovered the secret of, to Tyrian 
 purple, and says that he flooded the literary market an ith — 
 
 " Enough to furnish Solomon 
 Such hangings for his cedar-house. 
 That, Avhen gold-robed he took the throne 
 In that abyss of blue, the Spouse 
 Might swear his presence shone 
 
 Most like the centre-spike of gold 
 Which burns deep in the blue-bell's womb, 
 What time, with ardours manifold. 
 The bee goes singing to her groom. 
 Drunken and over- bold." 
 
 — stanzas whose beauty is worthy to rank with Keats's 
 own work, and which add to his luxurious rielmess of 
 
 126 
 
THE BEST POETRY 
 
 diction a directness and energy of movement such as he 
 has left no example of. 
 But Browning continues : 
 
 " And|there's the extract, flasked and fine 
 And priced and saleable at last ! 
 And Hobbs, Nobbs, Stokes and Nokes combine 
 To paint the future from the past, 
 Put blue into their line. 
 
 Hobbs hints blue, — straight he turtle eats : 
 Nobbs prints blue, — claret crowns his cup : 
 Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats, — 
 Both gorge. Who fished the murex up ? 
 What porridge had John Keats ? " ^ 
 
 — stanzas in which the artificial form of verse seems 
 merely to incommode that vigour and directness, so 
 eminently characteristic of Browning, both when he 
 writes poetry and when he distorts prose into its sem- 
 blance and caricature. 
 
 Take another instance of this abuse, from Wordsworth : 
 
 " Yes, it was the mountain echo, 
 Solitary, clear, profound, 
 Answering to the shouting cuckoo 
 Giving to her sound for sound. 
 
 Unsolicited reply 
 
 To a babbling wanderer sent ; 
 
 Like her ordinary cry 
 
 Like — but oh, how different ! " 
 
 These two stanzas enchant the ear, and kindle the mind 
 to joyous receptiveness. But alas ! the poet continues 
 much as the genius of the Salvation Army adapts the 
 tune of a successful music hall song to other words. 
 
 " Hears not also mortal life ? 
 Hear not we unthinking creatures 
 Slaves of folly, love, and strife — 
 Voices of two different natures ? 
 
 ^Browning's Works, "Popularity," vol. vi., p. 192. 
 
 127 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 Have not \vc too ? — yes, wc have 
 Answers, and wc know not whence ; 
 Echoes from beyond the grave 
 Recognised intelligence ! 
 
 Often as thy inward ear 
 Catches such rebounds, beware ! — 
 Listen, ponder, hold them dear ; 
 For of God, — of God they are." ^ 
 
 And one has almost forgotten that he was inspired 
 when he set out. The Muse was responsible for those 
 first delightful stanzas ; Mr Wordsworth, philosophical 
 member of the Church of England, for the three last, 
 commenda])le in many ways but not as poetry, since all 
 they say might have been expressed as well or even better 
 in prose. 
 
 Emerson says : 
 
 " The thought, the happy image, which expressed it, 
 and which was a true experience to the poet, recurs to the 
 mind, and sends me back in search of the book. And I 
 wish that the poet should foresee this habit of readers, 
 and omit all but important passages. Shakespeare is 
 made up of important passages, like Damascus steel 
 made up of old nails." ^ 
 
 It would have been much better if Wordsw^orth had 
 published his two stanzas and Browning his two, and 
 omitted the rest of their poems. Why did they not ? 
 
 Emerson shall tell us : 
 
 " Great design belongs to a poem and is better than any 
 skill of execution, — but how rare ! I find it in the poems 
 of Wordsworth, Laodamia and the Ode to Dion, and the 
 plan of The Recluse. We w^ant design, and do not forgive 
 
 ^ Poems of the Imagination, xxix. 
 
 ^Letters and Social Aims, "Poetry and Imagination," p. 152. 
 
 128 
 
THE BEST POETRY 
 
 the bards if they have only the art of enamelhng. We 
 want an architect and they bring us an upholsterer." ^ 
 
 It is this demand that makes the poet shy of proffering 
 his fragment of pure gold, and eggs him on to work it into 
 a statue by adding clay, iron, or anything else which he 
 has handy. 
 
 That ode on Dion, which Emerson mentions, set out to 
 be the finest ode in our language, and though less com- 
 plete, less successful than several of Keats 's, it still retains 
 some superiority over them. As a magical treatment of 
 the tragedy of heroism, it stands beside Milton's Samson 
 Agonistes, and the scene of the quarrel between Brutus 
 and Cassius in Julius Ccesar. That scene Nietzsche 
 considered the grandest in all Shakespeare, on account 
 of the importance and dignity of its theme ; and the 
 ode on Dion may claim a similar advantage among 
 other odes. 
 
 Wordsworth's subject was not Dion's tragedy, as told 
 by Plutarch, but his own sense of its import : yet he 
 seems to have felt uneasy at not telling the story, and 
 breaks off to paint a preliminary scene ; then the might 
 of his true subject seizes him again, and he rushes on to 
 his goal, the events that carry the moral. Now this 
 moral is the most important inference to be dra%\Ti from 
 experience, and raises the question about which men will 
 contend longest. 
 
 The facts necessaiy for the comprehension of the poem, 
 but not easily to be deduced from reading it, are that Dion 
 was a finely gifted man and Plato's disciple ; had been 
 unjustly exiled, and on his return, coming to the head of 
 affairs, intended to use power ideally, yet permitted the 
 opponent of his government to be illegally put to death ; 
 was reproached for this in a vision, and soon after fell a 
 victim to an assassin's knife. 
 
 ^ Letters and Social Aims, "Poetry and Imagination," p. 153. 
 1 129 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 In reading, I will omit the division of clay ; you can all 
 decide whether I am justified in so doing when you read 
 the poem for yovn'sclves at your leisure. 
 
 The beauty of Dion's character and its relation to that 
 of Plato are first compared to a white swan sailing in the 
 light of the moon. 
 
 ■' Fair is the swan, whose majesty, prevailing 
 O'er breezeless water, on Locarno's lake, 
 Bears him on while proudly sailing 
 He leaves behind a moon-illumined wake : 
 Behold ! the mantling spirit of reserve 
 Fashions his neck into a goodly curve ; 
 An arch thrown back between luxuriant wings 
 Of whitest garniture, like fir-tree boughs 
 To which, on some unruffled inorning. clings 
 A flaky weight of winter's purest snows ! 
 — Behold ! — as with a gushing impulse heaves 
 That downy prow, and softly cleaves 
 The mirror of the crystal flood. 
 Vanish inverted hill, and shadowy wood. 
 And pendent rocks, where'er, in gliding state, 
 Winds the mute Creature without visible mate 
 Or rival, save the Queen of night 
 Showering down a silver light, 
 From heaven, upon her chosen favomite ! 
 
 So pure, so bright, so fitted to embrace, 
 
 Where'er he turned, a natural grace 
 
 Of haughtiness without pretence. 
 
 And to unfold a still magnificence, 
 
 Was princely Dion, in the power 
 
 And beauty of his happier hour. 
 
 Nor less the homage that was seen to wait 
 
 On Dion's virtues, when the lunar beam 
 
 Of Plato's genius, from its lofty sphere 
 
 Fell round him in the grove of Academe, 
 
 Softening their inbred dignity austere — 
 
 That he, not too elate 
 
 With self-sufficing solitude, | 
 
 But with majestic lowliness endued, 
 
 130 
 
THE BEST POETRY 
 
 Might in the universal bosom reign, 
 And from affectionate observance gain 
 Help, under every change of adverse fate. 
 
 Mourn, hills and gToves of Attica ! and mourn 
 
 Illisus, bending o'er thy classic urn ! 
 
 Mourn, and lament for him whose spirit dreads 
 
 Your once sweet memory, studious walks and shades ! 
 
 For him who to divinity aspired. 
 
 Not on the breath of popular applause, 
 
 But through dependence on the sacred laws 
 
 Framed in the schools where Wisdom dM'elt retired, 
 
 Intent to trace the ideal path of right 
 
 (More fair than heaven's broad causeway paved with 
 
 stars) 
 Which Dion learned to measure with delight ; — 
 Bvit he hath overleaped the eternal bars ; 
 And, following guides whose craft holds no consent 
 With aught that breathes the ethereal element. 
 Hath stained the robes of civil power with blood, 
 Unjustly shed, though for the public good. 
 Whence doubts that came too late, and wishes vain, 
 Hollow excuses, and triumphant pain ; 
 And oft his cogitations sink as low 
 As, through the abysses of a joyless heart, 
 The heaviest plummet of despair can go — 
 But whence that sudden check ? that fearful start ! 
 He hears an uncouth sound — 
 Anon his lifted eyes 
 
 Saw. at a long-drawn gallery's dusky bound, 
 A shape of more than mortal size 
 And hideous aspect, stalking round and round ! 
 A woman's garb the Phantom wore, 
 And fiercely swept the marble floor, — 
 Like Auster whirling to and fro 
 His force on Caspian foam to try ; 
 Or Boreas when he scours the snow 
 That skins the plains of Thessaly, 
 Or when aloft on Maenalus he stops 
 His flight, 'mid eddying pine-tree tops ! 
 
 131 
 
SO^rK SOT.DIER POETS 
 
 So, hut from toil less sign of profit reaping, 
 The sullen Speetrc to her purpose bowed, 
 Sweeping —vehemently sweeping — 
 No pause admitted, no design avowed ! 
 ' Avaunt, incxplieable Guest ! — avaunt,' 
 Exclaimed tlie Chieftain — 'Let me rather see 
 The eoronal that coiling vipers make ; 
 The torch that flames with many a lurid flake. 
 And the long train of doleful pageantry 
 Which they behold, whom vengeful Furies haunt ; 
 Who, while they struggle from the scourge to flee, 
 Move where the blasted soil is not unworn. 
 And, in their anguish, bear what other minds have 
 born ! ' 
 
 But Shapes that come not at an earthly call. 
 
 Will not depart when mortal voices bid ; 
 
 Lords of the visionary eye whose lid, 
 
 Once raised, remains aghast, and will not fall ! 
 
 Ye Gods, thought He, that servile implement 
 
 Obeys a mystical intent ! 
 
 Your minister would brush away 
 
 The spots that to my soul adhere ; 
 
 But should she labour night and day, 
 
 They will not, cannot disappear ; 
 
 Whence angry perturbations, ^ — and that look 
 
 Which no philosophy can brook ! 
 
 Ill-fated chief ! there are whose hopes are built 
 
 Upon the ruins of thy glorious name ; 
 
 Who, through the portal of one moment's guilt, 
 
 Pursue thee with their deadly aim ! 
 
 O matchless perfidy ! portentous lust 
 
 Of monstrous crime ! — -that horror-striking blade, 
 
 Drawn in defiance of the Gods, hath laid 
 
 The noble Syracusan low in dust ! 
 
 Shudder 'd the walls — the marble city wept — 
 
 And sylvan places heaved a pensive sigh ; 
 
 But in the calm peace the appointed Victim slept. 
 
 As he had fallen in magnanimity ; 
 
 132 
 
THE BEST POETRY 
 
 Of spirit too capacious to require 
 
 That Destiny her course should change ; too just 
 
 To his own native greatness to desire 
 
 That wretched boon, days lengthened by mistrust. 
 
 So were the hopeless troubles, that involved 
 
 The soul of Dion, instantly dissolved. 
 
 Released from life and cares of princely state, 
 
 He left this moral grafted on his Fate : 
 
 ' Him only pleasure leads, and peace attends, 
 
 Him, only him, the shield of Jove defends 
 
 Whose means are fair and spotless as his ends.' " ^ 
 
 What magnificent language and rhythm ! Neverthe- 
 less this poem, compared with the Ode on the Intimations 
 of Immortality, may be classed as unknown ; yet it con- 
 tains more and better poetry. 
 
 Unfortunately the last three lines, if not clay, are not 
 pure gold ; for it is not true that pleasure leads and peace 
 attends, or that the shield of Jove defends the clean- 
 handed hero, and we notice something trite in the enuncia- 
 tion of the thought. Wordsworth should have found it 
 obviously false, since he accepted Jesus of Nazareth as the 
 perfect t^'pe. Yet, means fair and spotless as the end 
 proposed are ideal requirements both in art and heroism. 
 The contention that this scrupulousness, the ideal beauty 
 of which is freely recognised, should control business, 
 is probably the hardest bone of contention with which 
 humanity is provided — the one about which every com- 
 promise of necessit}^ begs the question. 
 
 Brutus, Dion and Samson (who for Milton represented 
 Cromwell) are such tragic figures because the beauty of 
 their heroism became tarnished and ended in failure. 
 
 For my fault-finding with Wordsworth I hope you will 
 think I have made amends ; I would fain do as much for 
 Browning, but time and capacity fail me for reading his 
 magnificent Artemis Prologizes, perhaps the most splendid 
 
 1 Poems of the Imagination, xxxii. 
 
 183 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 120 lines ol" l)lank verse in English. I will read one of his 
 successful lyrics instead. 
 
 BroAvning imagines a page-boy in love Avith a queen, 
 and, while tending her hounds and hawks, complaining 
 of this hopeless passion and overheard by her. 
 
 " Give her but a least excuse to love me ! 
 When — where — 
 
 How — can this arm establish her above me, 
 If fortune fixed her as my lady there, 
 There already, to eternally reprove me ? 
 (' Hist ! '^ — ^said Kate the Queen ; 
 But ' oh ! '■ — ^cricd the maiden, binding her tresses, 
 ' 'Tis only a page that carols unseen, 
 Crumbling your hounds their messes ! ') 
 
 Is she wronged ? — To the rescue of her honour, 
 
 My heart ! 
 
 Is she poor ? — What costs it to be styled a donor ? 
 
 Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part ? 
 
 But that fortune should have thrust all this upon her ! 
 
 (' Nay, list ! ' — bade Kate the Queen ; 
 
 And still cried the maiden binding her tresses, 
 
 ' 'Tis only a page that carols unseen. 
 
 Fitting your hawks their jesses ! ') " ^ 
 
 The turn of rhythm on "when — where — how" is so 
 felicitous that it seems madness for a poet to dream of 
 adding another stanza which, as coming second, should 
 be more perfect. 
 
 Yet when we read — 
 
 " Is she wronged ? — ^To the rescue of her honour. 
 My heart ! 
 Is she poor ? — What costs it to be styled a donor ? " — 
 
 we breathe free, and glory in his triumph. 
 
 Yet this song is not in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 
 where under Browning's name several obviously inferior 
 things appear. 
 
 ^ Pippa Passes^ Part 11. 
 134 
 
THE BEST POETRY 
 
 Ben Jonson, like Browning, produced a mass of work 
 pregnant with intelligence, but which rarely became pure 
 poetiy. However, he, like Browning, yields a handful 
 of perfect things. I will read one : 
 
 " See the chariot at hand here of Love, 
 Wherein my lady rideth ! 
 Each that draws is a swan or a dove, 
 And well the car Love guideth. 
 As she goes, all hearts do duty 
 Unto her beauty 
 
 And, enamoured, do wish, so they might 
 But enjoy such a sight. 
 That they still were to run by her side 
 Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride. 
 
 Do but look on her eyes, they do light 
 
 All that Love's world compriseth ! 
 
 Do but look on her hair, it is bright 
 
 As Love's star when it riseth ! 
 
 Do but mark, her forehead's smoother 
 
 Than words that soothe her ! 
 
 And from her arched brows, such a grace 
 
 Sheds itself through the face, 
 
 As alone there triumphs to the life 
 
 All the gain, all the good, of the elements' strife. 
 
 Have you seen but a bright lily grow. 
 
 Before rude hands have touched it ? 
 
 Have you marked but the fall of the snow 
 
 Before the soil hath smutched it ? 
 
 Have you felt the wool of beaver ? 
 
 Or swan's down ever ? 
 
 Or have smelt o' the bud o' the brier ? 
 
 Or the nard in the fire ? 
 
 Or have tasted the bag of the bee ? 
 
 O so white ! O so soft ! O so sweet is she ! " ^ 
 
 Palgrave failed to observe the marvellous perfection 
 of this song. It is not in his Golden Treasury, which yet 
 
 ^ Underwoods, iv. 
 
 135 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 contains so nmcli poor stuff. It is by such felicities as 
 the climax — 
 
 " O so white ! O so soft ! O so sweet is she ! " — 
 
 that the form of evei-}' lyric should be a discovery. 
 
 The sui-j)risc of this kind that seems to have fallen most 
 directly out of heaven is the line — 
 
 " Sad true lover never find my grave " — 
 
 from the dirge in Twelfth Night. 
 
 " Come away, come away, death, 
 And in sad cypress let me be laid. 
 Fly away, fly away, breath ; 
 I am slain by a fair cruel maid. 
 j\Iy shroud of white, stuck all with }'ew, 
 Oh, prepare it ! 
 
 ]\Iy part of death, no one so true 
 Did share it. 
 
 Not a flower, not a flower sweet. 
 
 On my black coffni let there be strown ; 
 
 Not a friend, not a friend greet 
 
 My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown : 
 
 A thousand thousand sighs to save 
 
 Lay me, Oh, where 
 
 Sad true lover never find my grave 
 
 To weep there ! " 
 
 The difficulty of accounting for the scansion of that 
 disquieted Shakespearean editors for upwards of two 
 hundred j-ears, till at last it was observed that the 
 irregularity was exceedingly beautiful. So easily is the 
 goal of a?sthetic research obscured even for men as in- 
 telligent as Pope or Capel. 
 
 Now, for fear of enervating our taste by an over-constant 
 effort to appreciate what is perfect, let us compare a 
 stanza from the great lyric in IMatthew Arnold's Emjjedocles, 
 and one from Bro^^Tling's much- vaunted Rabbi Ben Ezra, 
 with one from Shelley's To a Skylark. 
 
 186 
 
THE BEST POETRY 
 
 " In vain our pent wills fret, 
 And would the world subdue ; 
 Limits we did not set 
 Condition all we do ; 
 Born into life we are, and life must be our mould." 
 
 Undoubtedly that is a true thought, and expressed -with 
 more cogency and clearness than — 
 
 " Grow old along with me 1 
 The best is yet to be, 
 
 The last of life for which the first was made : 
 Our times are in His hand 
 Who saith, ' A whole I planned. 
 Youth shows but half ; trust God ; see all nor be afraid ! ' " 
 
 It is obviously more often than not impossible to obey 
 the command to grow old along with any genial old gentle- 
 man ; it is often, also, untrue that the best is yet to be. 
 No doubt it would be very consoling if experience bore 
 out the old Rabbi ; but it does not. 
 
 Now listen to Shelley, for the desired, the enchanting, 
 the ever-acceptable accent which creates beauty and joy 
 even out of depression : 
 
 " We look before and after 
 And pine for what is not : 
 Our sincerest laughter 
 With some pain is fraught ; 
 Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought." 
 
 True. To a Skylark treats continually of lovely and 
 agreeable things, but so does Rabbi Ben Ezra ; he com- 
 pares passionate youth with serene old age, and, refurbish- 
 ing the hackneyed image of the potter and the clay, 
 substitutes for the nondescript " vessel " a Grecian urn. 
 Yet with all these opportunities he never turns a single 
 stanza so beautiful as the most abstract of Shelley's. 
 
 The fact is. Browning represents Rabbi Ben Ezra as a 
 prosperous old man enjoying a stately decline, who allows 
 
 187 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 his after-dinner optimism to get the better of his o])Scrva- 
 tion and experience. He is moved by thouglit, Ijut less 
 conscious of its truth or beauty than of its supposed 
 efhcacy for cheering, that is bamboozhng : and tliis 
 pui-pose of his cannot beget afflatus sufficient to rise to a 
 fine fonii and movement, so his utterance is outclassed not 
 only by Sliellcy's, which is beautiful, but by Arnold's, 
 which, though plain, is sincere. 
 
 I mentioned that some of the best poetry has been 
 honestly charged with immorality. Such accusations are 
 usually made by people who regard the fact that poets 
 can and often do preach excellent sermons as the only 
 excuse for verse. Now to elucidate this difficulty we 
 must conceive of English morality as something dependent 
 on the customs and habits of the English, not as an 
 absolute criterion of worth. In practical life it is a mis- 
 take to run counter to one's neighbours without a 
 weighty reason without being prepared to suffer as a 
 consequence. 
 
 But in the realm of contemplation, whither poetry 
 should lift us, morality, instead of being established, is a 
 project. 
 
 There, if it is not to prove futile, neither deed nor doer 
 must be left unconsidered, but the whole reality must be 
 harmoniously reviewed. For this reason we should wel- 
 come all who can give fine literary form to any accident, 
 however inconvenient that accident may be in a mun- 
 dane sphere. An unpalatable truth thvis becomes 
 associated with beauty — an object for contemplation, 
 yielding refreshment and recreation. 
 
 "It is all very well in a book," as people say of ex- 
 travagant behaviour, implying that in practice it is less 
 pardonable ; and what they say is quite true. Only 
 their tone of voice may be disparaging to literature and 
 betray the penury of their taste. 
 
 A consequence of this more comprehensive horizon 
 138 
 
THE BEST POETRY 
 
 which poetiy demands is that a poem must not only 
 be enthralhng by beauty and intensity, but, if it be of 
 any length, by its interest. 
 
 Rossetti rightly queried whether a long poem ought 
 not to be as absorbing as a novel. It ought. A novel 
 need only fail of being a poem by that degree of beauty 
 which formal rhythms have over informal. Most novels 
 do fail in many other ways, but many long poems fail just 
 where good novels succeed. It is in vital interest that 
 Shakespeare's Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet and Othello are so 
 superior to Paradise Lost, though that poem perhaps 
 maintains a higher level of beauty than they do. 
 
 Can the interest proper to great poems be distinguished 
 from that aroused by imaginative prose ? By intensity ? 
 Hardly : rather by quality, by perfection. Poetry 
 transports us into its newly created world more delicately, 
 with a finer respect for the bloom of the soul. The 
 superiority is of mood rather than of power. The mind 
 is carried among objects and events with a motion that 
 more nearly satisfies innate desire : even so Zephyros 
 conveyed Psyche from the piled logs on the rocky peak 
 to a lawn in the gardens of Love's house. In like manner 
 dancing contents the body better than walking or running 
 or drilling. In the flight of some birds and in the swim- 
 ming of certain fish we recognise an ideal smoothness and 
 continuity, but dancing adds to this a conscious ecstasy ; 
 skill triumphs over known difficulties, elation lifts the 
 body, which no longer merely serves, but becomes the 
 disinterested vehicle of the soul, its partner and friend. 
 Thus the movement of poetry weds the mind's desire. 
 
 Wordsworth found fault with The Ancient Mariner 
 because the chief character remains passive, is acted on 
 but does little. Now perhaps he appealed to a traditional 
 error in thus accounting for the small effect produced by 
 the Lyrical Ballads when first issued. We are, I think, 
 as a matter of fact, as much interested by what happens 
 
 139 
 
SOIVIE SOLDIER POETS 
 
 to a man as by what he docs. "N^'c do not understand the 
 universe ; tlieret'ore, thougli -we contemplate the actions 
 of men witli more intuitive comprehension, more awe and 
 curiosity is aroused by the working of external agencies 
 as it affects men's lives. Science has not yet explained 
 any force, not even those which we intuitively compre- 
 hend because we feel them in motion within ; the imagina- 
 tion therefore freely lends a conditional credence to stories 
 of spirits and phantoms, and the knowledge that our for- 
 bears were fully contented with them powerfully seconds 
 their appeal. 
 
 Still the shooting of an albatross remains a trifling 
 action compared with its results and with the length of the 
 poem, and Ilart Leap Well assuredly treats a like theme 
 with more proportion. Yet small actions sometimes 
 have gigantic effects ; a sudden shout may dislodge an 
 avalanche, therefore we cannot regard such proportion 
 as essential to a work of art. The only fault with 
 which I can reproach Coleridge's masterpiece was due 
 to Wordsworth's prompting. 
 
 " He prayeth best who loveth best 
 All things both great and small : 
 For the dear God, who loveth us. 
 He made and loveth all." 
 
 Though these words come quite convincingly from the 
 old sailor, by their position they seem in part addressed 
 to us by the poet, and acquire a tinge of aesthetic imperti- 
 nence. Besides their insistence detracts from that passion- 
 ate fondness for the Albatross which caused the lonely 
 spirit to follow the ship nine fathom deep, by treating his 
 action as a cog in the machinery of providence. Apart 
 from this slight strain introduced at Wordsworth's sugges- 
 tion, we are Hfted and absorbed by the story with a delicate 
 completeness unrivalled by any poem of equal or greater 
 length since written. Michael and The Ruined Cottage, 
 profoundly organised though they are, attain nothing like 
 140 
 
THE BEST POETRY 
 
 this felicity of movement. Though Enoch Arden and The 
 Ring and the Book are as interesting as novels, they fall 
 like novels also, the one by lack of the distinction that an 
 utter sincerity gives, the other by lack of the conciseness 
 that the love of beauty dictates. Keats's Lamia, Arnold's 
 Empedocles, though less absorbing, more nearly marry a 
 considerable interest to a proportionate beauty ; Sohrab 
 and Rustum, which perhaps does more, yet remains too 
 conscious of Homer's example to escape a certain flavour 
 of pedantry. Again, Mr Yeats's dramas succeed in ming- 
 ling interest and beauty better than any of those by the 
 Victorian poets ; though several, like Browning's Strafford, 
 are more powerful, or like Swinburne's Atalanta, more 
 original, or like Tennyson's The Cup, more theatrical. 
 
 We, like the folk of many previous ages, have it dinned 
 into our ears that poetry, to be great, must treat of actual 
 preoccupations, and not harp on any which are as notably 
 neglected as was the ideal of justice in Dante's day. Well, 
 well, let us allow that a most worthy kind of people at 
 present discuss plans for mitigating the evils of social in- 
 equality. How does the best poetry treat this problem ? 
 
 Not in Lloyd George's way, nor yet like Mr and Mrs 
 Webb, nor even like Bernard Shaw. Their ways are, of 
 course, aimed at and achieve a different kind of success. 
 But do they as grandly allay our passions and restore us 
 to as propitious a frame of mind ? 
 
 The opinions of Byron and Shelley took their cue from 
 the advanced political thinkers of that day, but failed 
 to inspire their loftiest verse. Such themes as personal 
 guilt and loneliness, or some woman, some cloud, a skylark 
 or the healing power of night inspired their happiest 
 flights. They chanted freedom, indeed, but are on this 
 theme outclassed by Wordsworth, who was soon to become 
 a hopeless reactionary. However, a poet never praised 
 for thought conceived our problem in very lovely verse, 
 almost as we realise it to-day. 
 
 141 
 
SOME SOT.DIER POETS 
 
 " With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt 
 Enriehcd from ancestral nierchancUzc, 
 And for them many a weary liand did swelt 
 In toreiied mines and noisy factories. 
 And many once proiid-qiiiver'd loins did melt 
 In blood from stinging whip ;- — with hollow eyes 
 Many all day in dazzling river stood. 
 To take the riehor'd driftings of the flood. 
 
 For them the Ceylon diver held his breath. 
 And went all naked to the hnngry shark ; 
 For them his ears giish'd blood ; for them in death 
 The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark 
 Lay full of darts ; for them alone did seethe 
 A thousand men in troubles wide and dark : 
 Half-ignorant, they turned an easy wheel. 
 That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel. 
 
 Why were they proud ? Because their marble founts 
 Gushed with more pride than do a wretch's tears ? — 
 Why were they proud ? Because fair orange-mounts 
 Were of more soft ascent than lazar stairs ? — 
 Why were they proud ? Because red-lined accoimts 
 Were richer than the songs of Grecian years ? — 
 Why were they proud ? again we ask aloud, 
 Why in the name of Glory were they proud ? " 
 
 That question is so much more winsome than an accusa- 
 tion. What have we, any of us, added to favouring cir- 
 cumstance to warrant pride ? Asked not in the name of 
 justice, but of Glory. How universal the difficulty of a 
 reply appears ! To rail at tyrants is by comparison as 
 though, when a little girl was naughty, we should scold 
 her dolls ; for kings and governors are only the toys of 
 that lust for possessing which makes us all, rich and poor 
 alike, so negligent of nobler things. 
 
 Though the first line of Endymion has become a pro- 
 verb and already smells musty, serious people have not 
 acquired the habit of looking for truth in beauty, where 
 the nearest approach to it can be made. They expect and 
 
 142 
 
THE BEST POETRY 
 
 recommend precisely the opposite course, and approved 
 Lord Tennyson when in Locksley Hall Sixty Years After 
 he set the turbid accusations of Carlyle and Ruskin to 
 tuneful numbers, although he failed of Keats's success. 
 Whereas a living poet, never mentioned by those who 
 plume themselves on preoccupation with these problems 
 has, I think, surpassed those slightly rhetorical stanzas 
 in Keats's Pot of Basil, which had remained the high- 
 water mark of expression on this theme. 
 
 A vision of those who suffer ranged like beggars on 
 either side of the streaming street of active life has come 
 to this poet. Like figures conceived by Rembrandt or 
 Rodin, they appeal to us with patience and resignation, 
 and he bids the nimble-footed crowd gaze on these their 
 fellows whose feet are so slow that from age to age they 
 seem to have advanced no more than statues. For him 
 they are the statues cut out of flesh more enduring 
 than marble, that in spite of change is ever the same in 
 its capacity to suffer. 
 
 " Tarry a moment, happy feet 
 That to the sound of laughter glide ! 
 O glad ones of the evening street, 
 Behold what forms are at your side ! 
 
 You conquerors of the toilsome day 
 Pass by with laughter, labour done ; 
 But these within their durance stay ; 
 Their travail sleeps not with the sun. 
 
 They like dim statues without end, 
 Their patient attitudes maintain ; 
 Your triumphing bright course attend. 
 But from your eager ways abstrain. 
 
 Now, if you chafe in secret thought, 
 A moment turn from light distress. 
 And see how Fate on these have wrought. 
 Who yet so deeply acquiesce. 
 
 143 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 Rcliold them, stricken, silent, weak. 
 The maimed, the mnte. the lialt. the blind. 
 Condemned in liopeless hope to seek 
 The thing which they shall never find. 
 
 They haunt the shadows of your ways 
 In masks of perishable mould : 
 Their souls a changing flesh arrays, 
 But they are changeless from of old. 
 
 Their lips repeat an empty call. 
 But silence wraps their thoughts around. 
 On them, like snow, the ages fall ; 
 Time muffles all this transient sound. 
 
 When Shalmaneser pitched his tent 
 By Tigiis, and his flag unfurled, 
 And forth his summons proudly sent 
 Into the new unconquered world ; 
 
 Or when with spears Cambyses rode 
 Through Memphis and her bending slaves. 
 Or first the Tyrian gazed abroad 
 Upon the bright vast outer waves ; 
 
 When sages, star-instructed men, 
 To the young glory of Babylon 
 Foreknew no ending ; even then 
 Innimierable years had flo^Ti, 
 
 Since first the chisel in her hand 
 Necessity, the sculptor, took. 
 And in her spacious meaning planned 
 These forms, and that eternal look ; 
 
 These foreheads, moulded from afar. 
 These soft, unfathomable eyes. 
 Gazing from darkness, like a star ; 
 These lips, whose grief is to be wise. 
 
 144 
 
THE BEST POETRY 
 
 As from the mountain marble rude 
 The growing statue rises fair. 
 She from immortal patience he^^ ed 
 The limbs of ever-young despair. 
 
 There is no bliss so new and dear. 
 It hath not them far-off allured. 
 All things that we have yet to fear 
 They have already long endured. 
 
 Nor is there any sorrow more 
 Than hath ere now befallen these. 
 Whose gaze is as an opening door 
 On wild interminable seas. 
 
 O Youth, run fast upon thy feet. 
 With full joy haste thee to be filled. 
 And out of moments brief and sweet 
 Thou shalt a power for ages build. 
 
 Does thy heart falter '': Here, then, seek 
 What strength is in thy kind ! With pain 
 Immortal bowed, these mortals weak 
 Gentle and unsubdued remain." 
 
 That I think is first-rate poetrJ^ It does not attribute 
 to human agency what possibly lies beyond its scope, in 
 order either to praise or blame. It recognises that some 
 virtues are almost always the work of adversity, others of 
 prosperity ; some proper to youth and health, others to 
 age and suffering ; and it is thus considerate while rapt 
 in an ecstasy of contemplation such as can but clothe 
 itself in delightful phrases and felicitous images. 
 
 To my mind the stanza about aged stricken folk is the 
 finest : 
 
 " There is no bliss so new and dear, 
 It hath not them far-off allured. 
 All things that we have yet to fear 
 They have already long endured " — 
 
 K 145 
 
SOME SOLDIER POETS 
 
 Avhile above all the others I prize the two Hnes— 
 
 " She from immortal patience hewed 
 The limbs of ever-young despair." 
 
 Yet while I thus distinguish, I reprove myself for separat- 
 ing them from the wave of five stanzas, of which they 
 form the crest : 
 
 " Since first the chisel in her hand 
 Necessity, the sculptor, took. 
 And in her spacious meaning planned 
 Tliese forms, and that eternal look ; 
 
 These foreheads, moulded from afar, 
 These soft, unfathomable eyes. 
 Gazing from darkness, like a star ; 
 These lips, whose grief is to be wise. 
 
 As from the mountain marble rude 
 The gi'owing statue rises fair. 
 She from immortal patience hewed 
 The limbs of ever-young despair. 
 
 There is no bliss so new and dear. 
 It liath not them far-off allured. 
 All things that we have yet to fear 
 They have abeady long endured. 
 
 Nor is there any sorroM' more 
 Than hath ere now befallen these. 
 Whose gaze is as an opening door 
 On wild interminable seas." 
 
 That I think is more successful poetry than any in 
 Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra or in Tennyson's Locksley 
 Hall ; nay, more successful than any produced by those 
 great poets after the fii-st glorious flush had paled on the 
 forehead of their youthful genius. Is it not well described 
 by Shelley's line — 
 
 146 
 
THE BEST POETRY 
 
 " Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest 
 thought " ? 
 
 It is the work of Laurence Binyon, and published in his 
 London Visions. 
 
 Now these are merely my opinions, and should not be 
 adopted by you : nor need they ever become yours, 
 luiless your progress towards the distant goal of a 
 perfect appreciation of excellence should happen to lead 
 you over the very same spot where I now stand. 
 
 Each one of you is a traveller over these delectable 
 mountains, and not what has delighted me or any other 
 pilgrim brings you on your way and holds off fatigue and 
 depression, but what delights you. Only be occupied and 
 ever anew eager in arranging what you admire by order 
 of merit. Examine your preferences, do not rest content 
 with enjoying them, and you will grow aware of niceties 
 and differences in what is admirable that otherwise would 
 have escaped your notice. You will invigorate and 
 render rational what may have seemed the truly mystical 
 fascination which verse exerted over you. 
 
 Let me warn you against negative standards. Never 
 record your impressions by enumerating faults, as the 
 newspaper critic so often does. Never accept the absence 
 of apparent flaws as proof of the presence of excellence. 
 Keep to the positive merits and try to define them ; 
 merely turn away from what calls for blame. Disparaging 
 wai-ps the mind far worse than over-lauding. Above all, 
 institute comparisons whenever you find two poets 
 treating the same theme or using the same form with 
 felicity to diverse effect, or in any way rivalling one 
 another. Animals see, breathe and feel, man alone dis- 
 covers, appreciates and admires ; it is not enough to 
 passively enjoy ; we must create order in our experiences. 
 
 147 
 
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