STUDIES OF CONTEMPORARY POETS * > STUDIES OF CONTEMPORARY POETS .* * By MARY C. STURGEON AUTHOR OF "WOMEN OF THE CLASSICS" ETC. REVISED AND ENLARGED NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY IN MEMORY OF W. H. H. AND W. R. T. Printed in Grtft Britain ty Turnbullcy S^tars Preface IN issuing a new edition of this book a word may be said which perhaps should have been said at first. It is a study of Con- temporary Poetry using the word contemporary in its full sense that is to say, poetry which is of our time not alone in the mere date of its appearance, but in its spirit and form ; poetry which, for good or evil, draws its breath from the more vital forces of its age. That is not to make any absolute claim for the poets in this group, either as to their art or thought ; nor to try to enthrone mere modernity. Still less would one attempt to appraise the poets relatively to each other or to the poets of earlier times. One sees simply that, despite faults, their work has much beauty and deep significance. It follows from the plan of the work that a good deal of poetry which is being written contem- poraneously is necessarily excluded, as, for one example only, that of Sir William Watson. The plan also explains why, in 1914, when the first edition was written, the greater figures of the group which is now added (and which is placed, for convenience, at the end of this volume) were not then included. Neither Mr Hardy nor s 438744 'Poets Mr Yeats were producing poetry at that time, but both have since published volumes which are different in character from their previous work and which are clearly signed of the new spirit ; and the most exciting work of Michael Field did not appear till quite recently. It was my belief when, before the War, this book was first planned, that a renaissance of poetry was quietly coming ; and one wished to serve, however humbly, the travail of that event. It appeared that an Age of Minstrels had dawned and was gathering power ; and I looked for that minstrel age to prepare the way for the great poet, and eventually to bring him forth. Then came the War, when hope of all kinds sickened ; and as the storm swept away one after another of the singers, one trembled for poetry. But, the immense night now over, one peeps out again and is rejoiced to see that the young upspringing spirit of poetry is not destroyed. By some miracle it is thriving lustily. MARY C. STURGEON December 1919 Acknowledgment THE author begs to offer warm thanks to the following poets and their pub- lishers for the use of the quotations given in these studies : Mr Masefield, Anna Wickham, " John Presland " (Mrs Skelton), and Anna Bunston (Mrs de Bary) ; Mr John Lane for the work of Mr Abercrombie, Mrs Woods, Olive Custance, and Helen Parry Eden ; Messrs Sidgwick and Jackson for the work of Miss Macaulay, Rupert Brooke and Mr John Drinkwater ; Mr A. C. Fifield and Mr Elkin Mathews for the work of Mr W. H. Davies ; Mr A. H. Bullen for the work of Mr W. B. Yeats, from the Collected, Works, published by the Shakespeare Head Press ; Mr T. Fisher Unwin for " The Lake Isle of Innisfree," from Poems, by W. B. Yeats ; Messrs Constable for the work of Mr De la Mare ; Mr Elkin Mathews, New Numbers, and the Samurai Press for the work of Mr W. W. Gibson ; the Poetry Bookshop for the work of Mr Hodgson ; Messrs Max Goschen, Ltd., for the work of Mr Ford Madox Hueffer ; Mr Seeker for the work of Mr J. C. Squire ; Messrs Maunsel and Co., Ltd., for the work of the members of " An Irish Group " and of Mr Stephens ; the Samurai Press and the Poetry Book- 7 ;:. Contemporary 'Poets shot) for ^ the work of Mr Monro ; Mr William Heinemann for the work of Mrs Naidu ; Messrs G. Allen and Unwin, Ltd., for the work of Miss Margaret M. Radford ; Messrs Macmillan and Co. for the work of Mr Thomas Hardy ; Mr Sturge Moore, Mr Eveleigh Nash, and the Poetry Bookshop for the work of Michael Field. Thanks are also due to The Englishwoman for permission to reprint the chapter on " Contem- porary Women Poets," and the author wishes to acknowledge especially the kind help she received from Miss Alida Klementaski in preparing the Bibliography. Contents LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE RUPERT BROOKE WILLIAM H. DAVIES 'WALTER DE LA MARE WILFRID WILSON GIBSON RALPH HODGSON FORD MADOX HUEFFER AN IRISH GROUP ROSE MACAULAY JOHN MASEFIELD HAROLD MONRO SAROJINI NAIDU JOHN PRESLAND (GLADYS SKELTON) JAMES STEPHENS MARGARET L. WOODS JOHN DRINKWATER MICHAEL FIELD (KATHARINE H. BRADLEY AND EDITH E. COOPER THOMAS HARDY J. C. SQUIRE CONTEMPORARY WOMEN POETS - W. B. YEATS BIBLIOGRAPHY PACK II 36 53 7* 8? 108 122 137 181 197 217 235 248 282 301 327 347 368 381 396 419 433 Lascelles Abercrombie IN the sweet chorus of modern poetry one may hear a strange new harmony. It is the life of our time, evoking its own music : con- straining the poetic spirit to utter its own message. The peculiar beauty of contemporary poetry, with its fresh and varied charm, grows from that ; and in that, too, its vitality is assured. Its art has the deep sanction of loyalty : its loyalty draws inspiration from the living source. There is a fair company of these new singers ; and it would seem that there should be large hope for a generation, whether in its life or letters, which can find such expression. Listening care- fully, however, some notes ring clearer, stronger, or more significant than others ; and of these the voice of Mr Abercrombie appears to carry the fullest utterance. It is therefore a happy chance that the name which stands first here, under a quite arbitrary arrangement, has a natural right to be put at the head of a group of the younger moderns. But that is not an implicit denial to those others of fidelity to their time. It is a question of degree and of range. Every poet in this band will be found to represent some aspect of our complex life its awakened social conscience or its frank joy in the II Contemporary T*oets world of sense: its mysticism or its repudiation of dogma, in art as in religion : its mistrust of materialism or keen perception of reality : its worship of the future, or assimilation of the heritage of the past to its own ideals : its lyrical delight in life or dramatic re-creation of it : its insistence upon the essential poetry of common things, or its discovery of rare new values in experience and expression. This poetry frequently catches one or another of those elements, and crystallizes it out of a mere welter into definite form and recognizable beauty. But the claim for Mr Abercrombie is that he has drawn upon them more largely : that he has made a wider synthesis : that his work has a unity more comprehensive and complete. It is in virtue of this that he may be said to represent his age so fully ; but that is neither to accuse him of shouting with the crowd, nor to lay on the man in the street the burden of the poet's idealism. He is, indeed, in a deeper sense than politics could make him, a democrat: perhaps that inheres in the poetic temperament under its shyness. But intellectu- ality and vision, a keen spirit and a sensuous equip- ment at once delicate and bountiful, are not to be leashed to the common pace. That is a truism, of course : so often it seems the destiny of the poet 12 Las cell es Abercrombie to be at one with the people and yet above them. But it needs repetition here, because it applies with unusual force. This is a poet whose instinct binds him inescapably to his kind, even when his intellect is soaring where it is sometimes hard to follow. One is right, perhaps, in believing that this affinity with his time is instinctive, for it reveals itself in many ways, subtler or more obvious, through all his work. As forthright avowal it naturally occurs most in his earlier poems. There is, for example, the humanitarianism of the fine " Indignation " ode in his first volume, called Interludes and Poems. This is an invocation of righteous anger against the deplorable conditions of the workers' lives. A fierce impulse drives through the ode, in music that is sometimes troubled by its own vehemence. Wilt thou not come again, thou godly sword, Into the Spirit 's hands ? . . Against our ugly wickedness, Against our wanton dealing of distress, The forced defilement of humanity, And shall there be no end to life's expense In mills and yards and factories, 13 Contemporary Poets With no more recompense Than sleep in warrens and low styes, And undelighted food ? Shall still our ravenous and unhandsome mood Make men poor and keep them poor ? In the same volume there is a passage which may be said to present the obverse of this idea. It occurs in an interlude called " An Escape," and is only incidental to the main theme, which is much more abstract than that of the ode. A young poet, Idwal, has withdrawn from the society of his friends, to meditate about life among the hills. All the winter long he has kept in solitude, his spirit seeking for mastery over material things. As the spring dawns he is on the verge of triumph, and the soul is about to put off for ever its veil of sense, when news reaches him from the outer world. His little house, from which he has been absent so long, has been broken into, and robbed, by a tramp. The friend who comes to tell about it ends his tale by a word of sympathy " I'm sorry for you " and Idwal replies : It's sorry I am for that perverted tramp. As having gone from being the earth's friend, Whom she would have at all her private treats. Now with the foolery called possession he Has dirtied his own freedom, cozen'd all 14 Lascel/es Abercrombie His hearing with the lies of ownership. The earth may call to him in vain henceforth, He's got a step-dame now, his Goods. . . . Evidence less direct but equally strong is visible in the later work. It lies at the root of the tragedy of Deborah, a heroine drawn from fisher- folk, who in the extremity of fear for her lover's life cries : O but my heart is dying in me, waiting : For us, with lives so hazardous, to love Is like a poor girl's game of being a queen. And it is found again, gathering materials for the play called The End of the World out of the lives of poor and simple people. Here the impulse is clear enough, but sometimes it takes a subtler form, and then it occasionally betrays the poet into a solecism. For his sense of the unity of the race is so strong that natural distinctions sometimes go the way of artificial ones. He has so completely identified himself with humanity, and for preference with the lowly in mind and estate, that he has not seldom endowed a humble personality with his own large gifts. Thus you find Deborah using this magnificent plea for her sweetheart's life : 15 Contemporary ^Poets . . . there's something sacred about lovers. For there is wondrous more than the joy of life In lovers ; there's in them God Himself Taking great joy to love the life He made : We are God's desires more than our own, we lovers, You dare not injure God ! Thus, too, a working wainwright suddenly startled into consciousness of the purpose of the life-force muses : Why was I like a man sworn to a thing Working to have my wains in every curve, Ay, every tenon, right and as they should be ? Not for myself, not even for those wains : But to keep in me living at its best The skill that must go forward and shape the world, Helping it on to make some masterpiece. And with the same largesse a fiddling vagabond, old and blind, thief, liar, and seducer, is made to utter a lyric ecstasy on the words which are the poet's instrument : Words : they are messengers from out God's heart Intimate with him ; through his deed they go, This passion of him called the world, approving All of fierce gladness in it, bidding leap To a yet higher rapture ere it sink. . . . There be 16 Lasce/les Abercrombie Who hold words made of thought. But as stars slide Through air, so words, bright aliens, slide through thought, Leaving a kindled way. Now, since Synge has shown us that the poetry in the peasant heart docs utter itself spontaneously, in fitting language, we must be careful how we deny, even to these peasants who are not Celts, a natural power of poetic expression. But there is a difference. That spontaneous poetry of simple folk which is caught for us in The Playboy of the Western World or The Well of the Saints, is generally a lyric utterance springing directly out of emotion. It is not, as here, the result of a mental process, operating amongst ideas and based on knowledge which the peasant is unlikely to possess. One may be justified, therefore, in a show of protest at the incongruity ; we feel that such people do not talk like that. The poet has transferred to them too much of his own intellectuality. Yet it will prob- ably be a feeble protest, proportionate to the degree that we are disturbed by it, which is practically not at all. For as these people speak, we are convinced of their reality : they live and move before us. And when we consider their complete and robust individuality, it would appear that the poet's method is vindicated by the dramatic B 17 Contemporary "Poefs force of the presentment. It needs no other vindication, and is no doubt a reasoned process. For Mr Abercrombie makes no line of separation between thought and emotion ; and having entered by imagination into the hearts of his people, he might claim to be merely interpreting them making conscious and vocal that which was already in existence there, however obscurely. There is a hint of this at a point in The End of the World where one of the men says that he had felt a certain thought go through his mind " though 'twas a thing of such a flight I could not read its colour." And in this way Deborah, being a human soul of full stature, sound of mind and body and all her being flooded with emotion, would be capable of feeling the complex thought attributed to her, even if no single strand of its texture had ever been clear in her mind. While as to the fiddling lyrist, rogue and poet, one sees no reason why the whole argument should not be closed by a gesture in the direction of Heine or Villon. We turn now to the content of thought in Mr Abercrombie's poetry an aspect of his genius to be approached with diffidence by a writer conscious of limitations. For though we believed we saw that his affinity with the democratic spirit of his age is instinctive, deeply rooted 18 Lascelles Abercrombie and persistent, his genius is by no means ruled by instinct. It is intellectual to an extreme degree, moving easily in abstract thought and apparently trained in philosophic speculation. In- deed, his speculative tendency had gone as far as appeared to be legitimate in poetry, when he wisely chose another medium for it in the volume of prose Dialogues published in 1913. It must not be gathered from this, however, that the philosophic pieces are dull or difficult reading. On the contrary, they are frequently cast into the form of a story with a dramatic basis ; and although the torrent of thought some- times keeps the mind astretch to follow it, it would be hard to discover a single obscure line. An astonishing combination of qualities has gone to produce this result : subtlety with vigour, deli- cacy with strength, and loftiness with simplicity. Things elusive and immaterial are caught and fixed in vivid imagery ; and often charged with poignant human interest. No other of the younger poets expresses thought so abstract with such force, or describes the adventures of the voyaging soul with such clarity. It is a combination which suggests high harmony in the development of sense and spirit : it explains how it happens that a rapture of delight in the physical world can coexist with spiritual '9 Contemporary 'Poets exaltation : while it hints a reason for the poet's preoccupation with the duality in human life, and his vision of an ultimate union of the rival powers. We may note in passing how this reacts upon the form of his work. It has created a unique vocabu- lary (enriched from many sources but derived from no single one), which is nervous, flexible, vigorous, impassioned : assimilating to its grave beauty not only the wealth and dignity of our language, but words homely, colloquial, and quaint. Again, rather curiously, this complex thought has tended toward the dramatic form. At first glance that form would seem to be unsuitable for the expression of a prevailing reflectiveness. Yet here is a poet whose dominant theme might be defined, tritely, as the development of the soul ; and he hardly ever writes in any other way. The fact sends us back to the contrast with the Victorians. The representative poet then, musing about life and death and the evolution of the soul, felt himself impelled to the elegiac form. But the nature of the thought itself has changed. The representative poet now does not stand and lament, however exquisitely, because reality has shattered dogma ; neither does he try to create an epic out of the incredible theme of a perfect soul. He accepts reality ; and then he 20 Lascelles Abercrombie perceives that the perfect soul is incredible, besides being poor material for his art. But on the other hand, while he takes care to seize and hold fast truth : while it does not occur to him to mourn that she is implacable : he resolutely denies to phenomena, the appearance of things, the whole of truth. That is to say, he has transcended at once the despair of the Victorians and their materialism. He has banished their lyric grief for a dead past, along with their scientific and religious dogmas. That was a bit of iconoclasm imperatively demanded of him by his own soul ; but from the fact that he is a poet, it is denied to him to find final satis- faction in the region of sense and consciousness. Thus there arises a duality, and a sense of con- flict, which would account for the manner of this poet's expression, without the need to refer it to the general tendency of modern poetry toward the dramatic form. Doubtless, however, that also has been an influence, for the virility of his genius and the positive strain in his philosophy would lead that way. One can hardly say that there are perceptible stages in Mr Abercrombie's thought. He appears to be one of the few poets with no crudities to repent, either artistic or philosophic. Yet there is a poem in his first volume, a morality called 21 Contemporary T^oets " The New God " ; and there is another piece called "The Sale of St Thomas," first published in 1911, which are relatively simple. Here he is content to take material that is traditional, both to poetry and religion, and infuse into it so much of modern significance as it will carry. The first re-tells the mediaeval legend of a girl changed by God into his own likeness in order to save her from violence. There is, apt to our present study, but too long to give in full, at least one passage that is magnificent in conception and imagery alike. It is the voice of God, answering the girl's prayer that she may be saved by the destruction of her beauty. The voice declares that the petition is sweet and shall be granted, that he will quit the business of the universe, that he will " put off the nature of the world," and become God, when all the multitudinous flow Of Being sets backward to Him ; God, when He Is only glory. . . . The " Sale of St Thomas " also treats a legend, with originality and power. This remarkable poem is already well known : but one may at least call attention to the fitness and dignity with which the poet has placed the modern gospel upon the lips of the Christ. Thomas has been intercepted by his master, as he is about to run away for the second time from his mission to India. 22 Lascelles Abercrombie Now, Thomas, know thy sin. It was not fear ; Easily may a man crouch down for fear, And yet rise up on firmer knees, and face The hailing storm of the world with graver courage. But prudence, prudence is the deadly sin, And one that groweth deep into a life, With hardening roots that clutch about the breast. For this refuses faith in the unknown powers Within man's nature ; shrewdly bringeth all Their inspiration of strange eagerness To a judgment bought by safe experience ; Narrows desire into the scope of thought. But it is written in the heart of man, Thou shalt no larger be than thy desire. Thou must not therefore stoop thy spirit's sight To pore only within the candle-gleam Of conscious wit and reasonable brain ; But send desire often forth to scan The immense night which is thy greater soul ; Knowing the possible, see thou try beyond it Into impossible things, unlikely ends ; And thou shalt find thy knowledgeable desire Grow large as all the regions of thy soul, Whose firmament doth cover the whole of Being, And of created purpose reach the ends. Perhaps the thought here is not so simple as trie pellucid expression makes it to appear : yet the conventional material on which the poet is working restrains it to at least relative simplicity. When, 23 Contemporary *Poets however, his inspiration is moving quite freely, unhampered by tradition either of technique or of theme, the result is more complex and more charac- teristic. The tragedy called " Blind ", in his first volume, is an example. The plot of this dramatic piece is probably unique. If one gave the bald outline of it, it might seem to be merely a story of crude revenge. It is concerned with rude and outlawed people : it springs out of elemental passions fierce love turned to long implacable hatred, and then reverting to tenderness and pity and overwhelming remorse. And yet the three characters who enact this little tragedy are very subtly studied the woman who has reared her idiot son to be the weapon to avenge her wrongs upon the father he has never known ; the blind son himself ; and his father, the same fiddling tramp whom we have already noted. There are points in the delineation of all three which are quite brilliantly imagined : the change in the woman when she meets at last the human wreck who had once been her handsome lover ; the idiot youth hunger- ing to express the beauty which is revealed to him, through touch, in a child's golden hair, the warmth of fire, the mysterious presence of the dark: 24 Lascelles Abercrombte .... like a wing's shelter bending down. I've often thought, if I were tall enough And reacht my hand up, I should touch the soft Spread feathers of the resting flight of him Who covers us with night, so near he seems Stooping and holding shadow over us, Roofing the air with wings. It's plain to feel Some large thing's near, and being good to us. But, above all, there is the character of the fiddler. At first glance, the phenomenon looks common enough and all its meaning obvious. " A wastrel " one would say, glibly defining the phenomenon ; and add " a drunken wastrel," believing that we had explained it. But the poet sees further, apprehends more and understands better. Drunken indeed, but an intoxication older and more divine than that of brandy began the business ; and much brandy had not quenched the elder fire. It flamed in him still, mostly a sinister glow, fed from his bad and sorrowful past, but leaping on occasion to clear radiance, as in the talk with his unknown son, when some magnetic influence drew the two blind men together and made them friends before they had any knowledge of relationship. Of the many finer touches in this poem, none is more delicate and none more moving than the suggestion of uncon- scious affinity between these two : the idiot, 25 Contemporary 'Poets with his half-awake mind, groping amidst shadows of ideas which to the older man are quick with inspiration. SON. What are words ? TRAMP. God's love ! Here's a man after my own heart ; We must be brothers, lad. But besides his dramatic and psychological in- terest, the fiddler is important because he seems to represent the poet's philosophy in its brief icono- clastic phase. For we find placed in his lips a destructive satire of the old theological doctrine of Good and Evil. The passage is too long to quote, and it would be unfair to mutilate it. Incidentally we may note, however, the keen salt humour of it, and how that quality establishes the breadth and sanity of the poet's outlook. The point of peculiar interest at the moment is that this phase passes with the particular poem an early one ; and thence- forward it is replaced by more constructive thought. We come to " The Fool's Adventure," for instance, and find the "Seeker" travelling through all the regions of mind and spirit to find God, and the nature and cause of sin. His quest brings him first to the Self of the World, and he believes that this is God. But the Sage corrects him : 26 Lascelles Abercrombie . . . Poor fool, And didst thou think this present sensible world Was God ? ... . It is a name, .... The name Lord God chooses to go by, made In languages of stars and heavens and life. And when, finally, he has won through to a certain palace at the " verge of things," he cries his question to the unseen king within. SEEKER. Then thou art God ? WITHIN. Ay, many call me so. And yet, though words were never large enough To take me made, I have a better name. SEEKER. Then truly, who art thou ? WITHIN. I am Thy Self. Another aspect of the same idea, caught in a more lyrical mood, will be found in the poem called "The Trance." The poet is standing upon a hill- side alone at night, watching the " continual stars " and overawed by the vastness and " fixt law " of the universe. Then, in a sudden revelation of perhaps a fraction of a minute : I was exalted above surety And out of time did fall. As from a slander that did long distress, A sudden justice vindicated me From the customary wrong of Great and Small. 27 Contemporary ^Poets I stood outside the burning rims of place, Outside that corner, consciousness. Then was I not in the midst of thee Lord God ? That, however, is the triumphant ecstasy of a moment. More often he is preoccupied with the duality in human nature, and in "An Escape" there is a fine simile of the struggle : Desire of infinite things, desire of finite. . . . 'tis the wrestle of the twain makes man. As two young winds, schooled 'mong the slopes and caves Of rival hills that each to other look Across a sunken tarn, on a still day Run forth from their sundered nurseries, and meet In the middle air. . . . And when they close, their struggle is called Man, Distressing with his strife and flurry the bland Pool of existence, that lay quiet before Holding the calm watch of Eternity. The incidence of finite and infinite is felt with equal force : sense is as powerful as spirit, and therein of course lives the keenness of the strife. In "Soul and Body " there is a passage only one of many, however in which the rapture of sensuous beauty is expressed. The spirit is imagined to be just ready to put off sense, to be for ever caught out of 28 Lasce/les Abercrombie " that corner, consciousness." And the body re- minds it : Thou wilt miss the wonder I have made for thee Of this dear world with my fashioning senses, The blue, the fragrance, the singing, and the green. Great spaces of grassy land, and all the air One quiet, the sun taking golden ease Upon an afternoon : Tall hills that stand in weather-blinded trances As if they heard, drawn upward and held there, Some god's eternal tune ; We may take our last illustration of this subject from a passage at the end of the volume called Emblems of Love. It is from a poem so rich in beauty and so closely woven, that to quote from it is almost inevitably to do the author an injustice. But the same may be said about the whole book : while single poems from it will disclose high in- dividual value, both as art and philosophy, their whole effect and meaning can only be completely seized by reading them as a sequence, and in the light of the conception to which they all con- tribute. The book is designed to show, in three great movements representing birth, growth, and per- fection, the evolution of the human spirit in the 29 Contemporary Toets world. The spirit, which is here synonymous with love, is traced from the instant which is chosen to mark its birth (the awakening sense of beauty in primitive man), through its manifold states of excess and defect, up to a transcendent union which draws the dual powers into a single ecstasy. The great- ness of the central theme is matched by the dignity of its presentment, while the dramatic form in which it is embodied saves it from mere abstraction. We see the dawn of the soul in the wolf-hunter, suddenly perceiving beauty in nature and in women : the vindication of the soul by Vashti, magnificently daring to prove that it is no mere vassal to beauty : and the perfecting of the soul in the terrible paradox of Judith's virginity. But it is in one of the closing pieces, called fittingly "The Eternal Wedding," that the poet attains the summit of his thought along these lines ; prefiguring the ultimate union of the conflicting powers of life in one perfect rapture. ... I have Golden within me the whole fate of man : That every flesh and soul belongs to one Continual joy ward ravishment . . . That life hath highest gone which hath most joy. For like great wings forcefully smiting air And driving it along in rushing rivers, 30 Lascel/es Abercrombie Desire of joy beats mightily pulsing forward The world's one nature. . . . .... so we are driven Onward and upward in a wind of beauty, Until man's race be wielded by its joy Into some high incomparable day, Where perfectly delight may know itself, No longer need a strife to know itself, Only by its prevailing over pain. That is the topmost peak that his philosophy has gained for just so long as to give assurance that it exists. But no one supposes that he will dwell there : it is altogether too high : the atmosphere is too rare. It was reached only by the concentration of certain poetical powers, chiefly speculative imagi- nation, which carried him safely over the chasms of a lower altitude. But when other powers are in the ascendant, as for instance in The End of the World: when he is recalled to actuality by that keen eye for fact which is so rare a gift to genius of this type, the terror of those lower chasms is re- vealed. Here is one of the characters reflecting on the thought of the end of the world, which he believes to be imminent from an approaching comet : Life, the mother who lets her children play So seriously busy, trade and craft, Life with her skill of a million years' perfection To make her heart's delighted glorying 31 Contemporary ^Poets Of sunlight, and of clouds about the moon, Spring lighting her daffodils, and corn Ripening gold to ruddy, and giant seas, And mountains sitting in their purple clothes O life I am thinking of, life the wonder, All blotcht out by a brutal thrust of fire Like a midge that a clumsy thumb squashes and smears. That passage will serve to point the single com- ment on technique with which this study must close. It has not been selected for the purpose, and therefore is not the finest example that could be chosen. It is, however, typical of the blank-verse form which largely prevails in this poetry, and which, in its very texture, reveals the same extraordinary combination of qualities which we have observed in the poet's genius. We have already seen that spiritual vision is here united with intellectuality as lucid as it is power- ful : that the mystic is also the humanitarian : that imagination is balanced by a good grip on reality ; and that the sense-impressions are fine as well as exuberant. We have seen, too, that this diversity and apparent contrast, although resulting in an art of complex beauty, do not tend towards confusion or ob curity. There has been a complete fusion of the elements, and the molten stream that is poured for us is of glowing clarity. 3 2 Lascelles Abercrombie Exactly the same feature is discernible in the style of this verse. Look at the last passage for a moment and consider its effect. It is impossible to define in a single word, because of its complexity. The mind, lingering delightedly over the metaphor of life the mother, is suddenly awed by the magnitude of the idea which succeeds it. The aesthetic sense is taken by the light and colour of the middle lines, and then, as if the breath were caught on a half-sob, a wave of emotion follows, pensive at first, but rising abruptly to a note that is as rough as a curse. There are more shades of thought, lightly reflective or glooming with prescience ; and there are more degrees of emotion, from tenderness to wrath, than we have time to analyze. The point for the moment is the manner in which they are conveyed, and the adequacy of the instrument to convey them. The texture of the verse itself will provide evi- dence of this. Here are barely a dozen lines of our English heroic verse ; and they will be found to contain the maximum of metrical variety. Prob- ably only two, or at most three of them (it depends upon scansion, of course) are of the regular iambic pentameter : that is to say, built up strictly from the iamb, which is the unit of this form. All the others are varied by the insertion at some point c 33 Contemporary ^Poets in the line, and frequently at two or three points, of a different verse-unit, dactyl, anapaest, trochee or spondee ; and no two lines are varied in exactly the same way. But, besides the range of the instrument, there is the exquisite harmony of it with mood or idea. The strong down-beat of the trochee summons the intellect to consider a thought : the dactyl will follow with the quick perception of a simile : the iamb will punctuate rhythm : anacrusis will suggest the half-caught breath of rising emotion, and turbulent feeling will pour through spondee, dactyl, and anapaest. And so with the diction. Just as we find a measure which is both vigorous and light, precise and flexible, easily bending law to beauty ; so in the language there is a correspond- ing union of strength and grace, homeliness and dignity. Could a great conception be stated in a simpler phrase than that of the two first lines ? Life, the mother who lets her children play So seriously busy, trade and craft and yet this phrase, simple and lucid as it is, conveys a sense of boundless tenderness and pity, playing over the surface of a deeper irony. Doubtless its strength and clarity come from the fact that each word is of the common coin of daily life ; but its 34 Lascelles Abercrombie atmosphere, an almost infinite suggestiveness of familiar things brooded over in a wistful mood, comes partly at least through the colloquial touch. Mr Abercrombie has no fear to be colloquial, when that is the proper garment of his thought, the outer symbol of the inner reality. Nor is he the least afraid of fierce and ugly words, when they are apt. The last line of our passage illus- trates this. Taken out of its setting, and consider- ing merely the words, one would count a poet rash indeed who would venture such a harsh colloca- tion. But repeat the line aloud, and its metrical felicity will appear at once : put it back in its setting, as the culmination of a wave of feeling that has been gathering strength throughout : remember the idea (of beauty annihilated by senseless law and blind force), which has kindled that emotion ; and then we shall marvel at the art which makes the line a growl of impotent rage. All of which is merely to say that the spirit of this poetry has evolved for itself a living body, wearing its beauty delightedly, rejoicing in its own vitality, and unashamed either of its elemental impulse or its transcendent vision. 35 Rupert Brooke Born at Rugby on August 3, 1 887 ; Died at Lemnos on April 23, 1915 PROBABLY most English people who love their country and their country's greatest poet have at some time taken joy to identify the spirit of the two. England and Shakespeare : the names have leapt together and flamed into union before the eyes of many a youngster who was much too dazzled by the glory to see how and whence it came. But returning from a festival performance on some soft April midnight, or leaning out of the bedroom window to share with the stars and the wind the exaltation which the play had evoked, the revelation suddenly shone. And thenceforward April 23 was by some- thing more than a coincidence the day both of Shakespeare and St George. Reason might come back with the daylight to rule over fancy ; and the cool lapse of time might remove the moment far enough to betray the humour of it. But the glow never quite faded ; or if it did it only gave place to the steadier and clearer light of conviction. One came to see how the poet, by reason of his complete humanity, 36 Rupert Brooke stood for mankind ; and how, from certain sharp characteristics of our race, he stood pre-eminently for English folk. And coming thence to the narrower but firmer ground of historical fact, one saw how shiningly he represented the Elizabethan Age, with its eager, inquisitive, and adventurous spirit ; its craving to fulfil to the uttermost a gift of glorious and abundant life. Now precisely in that way, though not of course in the same superlative degree, one may see Rupert Brooke standing for the England of his time. And when this poet died at Lemnos on April 23, 1915, those who knew and loved his work must have felt the tragic fitness of the date with the event. If the gods of war had decreed his death, they had at least granted that he might pass on England's day. In him indeed was manifested the poetic spirit of the race, warm with human passion and sane with laughter : soaring on wings of fire but nesting always on the good earth. And though one does not claim to find in him the highest point or the extremest advance to which the thought of his day had gone, he stands pre-eminently for that day in the steel- clear light of his gallant spirit. The title of Rupert Brooke's posthumous book 1914 signifies that moment of English history which is reflected in his work. He is the symbol 37 Contemporary 'Poets of that year in a double sense. He represents the calamitous political event of it in his voluntary- service to the State, and the manner of his death. Thus by the accident of circumstance which made him eminent and vocal, he serves to speak for the silent millions of English men and women who splendidly sprang to duty. But in his poetry there is a closer and deeper relation to that tragic year. /Incomplete as it may be : youth- ful and prankish as some of it is, the thought and manner of the time are imaged there. A certain level of humane culture had been reached, a certain philosophy of life had been evolved, and a definite attitude to reality taken. Lightly but clearly, these things which reflect the colour of our civilization at August 1914 are crystallized in Rupert Brooke's poetry to that date. But at that point the image, like the whole order of which it was the reflection, was shattered by the clash of arms ; and the few poems which he wrote subsequently are preoccupied with the spiritual crisis which the war precipitated. Most of the admirers of this poet have seen only in his last pieces the singular identity of his spirit with the spirit of his country. And that is so noble a concord that it cannot be missed. For when England plunged into the greatest war of history, she flung off in the act several centuries of her age. 38 Rupert Brooke Priceless things, slowly and patiently acquired, went overboard as mere impedimenta ; but in the relapse, the slipping backward to an earlier time and con- sequent recovery of youth, with its ardour and passion, its recklessness and generosity and courage, the optimist saw a reward for all that was lost. So with the poetry of Rupert Brooke. Those few last sonnets, as it were the soul of rejuvenated England, seem to the same hopeful eye a complete compensation, not only for the wasted individual life, but for the beauty and significance of the age for which he stood, now irrevocably lost. Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead ! There's none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. These laid the world away ; poured out the red Sweet wine of youth ; gave up the years to be Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene, That men call age ; and those who would have been, Their sons, they gave, their immortality. Blow, bugles, blow ! They brought us, for our dearth, Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain. Honour has come back, as a king, to earth, And paid his subjects with a royal wage j And Nobleness walks in our ways again ; And we have come into our heritage. Before that renunciation one can only stand with 39 Contemporary *Poets bowed head, realizing perhaps more clearly than the giver did, the splendour of the gift. But he too, being representative of his age, had weighed in full the value of the life that he was casting away. It was to him a " red sweet wine," precious for the " work and joy " it promised, and the sacred seed of immortality. It is this, above all, that his poetry signifies ; a rich and exuberant life, keenly conscious of itself, and fully aware of the realities by which it is surrounded. Its nature grows from that sen- suous and spiritual, passionate and intellectual, in- genuous and ironic, tragic and gay. Not even in Donne, whom, perhaps, as some one has suggested, he does resemble was such intensity of feeling coupled with such merciless clarity of sight : mental honesty so absolute, controlling a flame of ardour. From the fusion of those two powers comes the distinctive character of this poetry : the peculiar beauty of its gallant spirit. They are constant features of it from first to last, but they are not always perfectly fused nor equally present. In the earlier poems, to find which you must go back to the volume of 1911 and begin at the end of the book, they enter as separate and distinct com- ponents. One would expect that, of course, at this stage ; and we shall not be surprised, either, if we discover that there is here a shade of excess 40 Rupert Brooke in both qualities : a touch of self-consciousness and relative crudity. The point of interest is that they are so clearly the principal elements from which the subtle and complex beauty of the later work was evolved. Thus, facing one another on pages 84 and 85, are two apt examples. In "The Call " sheer passion is expressed. The poet's great love of life, taking shape for the moment as love of his lady, is here predominant. Out of the nothingness of sleep, The slow dreams of Eternity, There was a thunder on the deep : I came, because you called to me. I broke the Night's primeval bars, I dared the old abysmal curse, And flashed through ranks of frightened stars Suddenly on the universe ! I'll break and forge the stars anew, Shatter the heavens with a song ; Immortal in my love for you, Because I love you, very strong. But on the opposite page, the sonnet called " Dawn " swings to the extremest point from the magniloquence of that. It is realistic in a literal sense : a bit of wilful ugliness. Yet it springs, however distortedly, from the root of mental clarity and courage which 41 Contemporary 'Poets was to produce such gracious blossoming thereafter. It is engaged with an exasperated account of a night journey in an Italian train : all the discomfort and weary irritation of it venting itself upon two unfortunate Teutons. One of them wakes, and spits, and sleeps again. The darkness shivers. A wan light through the rain Strikes on our faces, drawn and white. Somewhere A new day sprawls ; and, inside, the foul air Is chill, and damp, and fouler than before. . . . Opposite me two Germans sweat and snore. It is not long, however, before we find that the two elements are beginning to combine ; and we soon meet, astonishingly, with a third quality of the poet's genius. It is strange that imagination always has this power to surprise us. No matter if we have taught ourselves that poetry cannot begin to exist without it : no matter how watch- ful and alert we think we are, it will spring upon us unaware, taking possession of the mind with amazing exhilaration. That is especially true of the quality as it is found in Rupert Brooke's poetry. For, however you have schooled yourself, you are not looking for imaginative power of the first degree in alliance with sensuous joy so keen, and irony so acute. Yet in a piece called " In Examina- 42 Rupert Brooke tion " the miracle is wrought. This, too, is an early- poem, which may be the reason why one can disengage the threads so easily; whilst a notable fact is that the delicate fabric of it is woven directly out of a commonplace bit of human experience. The poet is engaged with a scene that is decidedly unpromising for poetical treatment all the stupidity of examination, with its dull, unhappy, " scribbling fools." Lo ! from quiet skies In through the window my Lord the Sun ! And my eyes Were dazzled and drunk with the misty gold, . And a full tumultuous murmur of wings Grew through the hall ; And I knew the white undying Fire, And, through open portals, Gyre on gyre, Archangels and angels, adoring, bowing, And a Face unshaded . . . Till the light faded ; And they were but fools again, fools unknowing, Still scribbling, blear-eyed and stolid immortals. There are at least two poems, " The Fish " and " Dining- Room Tea," in which imaginative power prevails over every other element ; and if imagina- tion be the supreme poetic quality, these are Rupert 43 Contemporary *Poefs Brooke's finest achievement. They are, indeed, very remarkable and significant examples of modern poetry, both in conception and in treatment. In both pieces the subjects are of an extremely difficult character. One, that of " The Fish," is beyond the range of human experience altogether ; and the other is only just within it, and known, one supposes, to comparatively few. The imaginative flight is therefore bold : it is also lofty, rapid, and well sustained. In "The Fish " we see it creating a new material world, giving substance and credibility to a strange new order of sensation : In a cool curving world he lies And ripples with dark ecstasies. The kind luxurious lapse and steal Shapes all his universe to feel And know and be ; the clinging stream Closes his memory, glooms his dream, Who lips the roots o' the shore, and glides Superb on unreturning tides. But there the night is close, and there Darkness is cold and strange and bare ; And the secret deeps are whisperless ; And rhythm is all deliciousness ; And joy is in the throbbing tide, Whose intricate ringers beat and glide 44 Rupert Brooke In felt bewildering harmonies Of trembling touch ; and music is The exquisite knocking of the blood. Space is no more, under the mud ; His bliss is older than the sun. Silent and straight the waters run. The lights, the cries, the willows dim, And the dark tide are one with him. We see, all through this poem (and the more convincingly as the whole of it is studied) the " fundamental brain-stuff " : the patient con- structive power of intellect keeping pace with, fancy every step of the way. So, too, with " Dining-Room Tea." Imagination here is busy with an idea that is wild, elusive, intangible : on the bare edge, in fact, of sanity and consciousness. It is that momen- tary revelation, which comes once in a lifetime perhaps, of the reality within appearance. It comes suddenly, unheralded and unaccountable : it is gone again with the swiftness and terror of a! lightning-flash. But in the fraction of a second that it endures, aeons seem to pass and things un- utterable to be revealed. Only a poet of undoubted genius could re-create such a moment, for on any lower plane either imagination would flag or in- tellect would be baffled, with results merely chaotic. And only to one whose quick and warm humanity 45 Contemporary T^oets held life's common things so dear could the vision shine out of such a homely scene. But therein Rupert Brooke shows so clearly as the poet of his day : that through the familiar joys of comradeship and laughter : through the simple concrete things of a material world the " pouring tea and cup and cloth," Reality gleams eternal. When you were there, and you, and you, Happiness crowned the night ; I too, Laughing and looking, one of all, I watched the quivering lamplight fall Flung all the dancing moments by With jest and glitter. . . . Till suddenly, and otherwhence, I looked upon your innocence. For lifted clear and still and strange From the dark woven flow of change Under a vast and starless sky I saw the immortal moment lie. One instant I, an instant, knew As God knows all. And it and you I, above Time, oh, blind ! could see In witless immortality. But the precise characteristic of this poetry is not one or other of these individual gifts. It is an intimate and subtle blending of them all, shot Rupert Brooke through and through with a gallant spirit which reso- lutely and gaily faces truth. From this brave and clear mentality comes a sense of fact which finds its artistic response in realism. Sometimes it will be found operating externally, on technique ; but more often, with truer art, it will wed truth of idea andj form, in grace as well as candour. From its de-j tachment and quick perception of incongruity comes a rare humour which can laugh, thoughtfully or derisively, even at itself. It will stand aside, watching its own exuberance with an ironic smile, as in "The One Before the Last." It will turn a penetrating glance on passion till the gaudy thing wilts and dies. It will pause at the height of life's keenest rapture to call to death an undaunted greeting : Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill, Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass. You said, " Through glory and ecstasy we pass ; Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still, When we are old, are old. ..." " And when we die All's over that is ours ; and life burns on Through other lovers, other lips," said I, " Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won ! " " We are Earth's best, that learnt her lesson here. Life is our cry. We have kept the faith ! " we said ; " We shall go down with unreluctant tread Rose-crowned into the darkness ! " . . . Proud we were, 47 Contemporary 'Poets And laughed, that had such brave true things to say. And then you suddenly cried, and turned away. Perception keen and fearless, piercing readily through the half-truths of life and art, has its own temptation to mere cleverness. Thence come the conceits of the sonnet called " He Wonders Whether to Praise or Blame Her," a bit of the deftest juggling with ideas and words. Thence, too, the alle- gorical brilliance of the " Funeral of Youth " ; and the merry mockery of the piece called " Heaven." This is an excellent example of the poet's wit, as distinct from his richer, more pervasive, humour. It is very finely pointed and closely aimed in its satire of the Victorian religious attitude. And if we put aside an austerity which sees a shade of ungraciousness in it, we shall find it a richly enter- taining bit of philosophy : Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond ; But is there anything Beyond ? This life cannot be All, they swear, For how unpleasant, if it were ! One may not doubt that, somehow, Good Shall come of Water and of Mud ; And, sure, the reverent eye must see A Purpose in Liquidity. We darkly know, by Faith we cry, The future is not Wholly Dry. Rupert Brooke Mud unto Mud ! Death eddies near Not here the appointed End, not here ! But somewhere, beyond Space and Time, Is wetter water, slimier slime ! And in that Heaven of all their wish, There shall be no more land, say fish. But, on the whole, one loves this work best when its genius is not shorn by the sterile spirit of derision. Its charm is greatest when the creative energy of it is outpoured through what is called personality. Never was a poet more lavish in the giving of himself, yielding up a rich and complex individuality with; engaging candour. And poems will be found in which all its qualities are blended in a soft and intricate harmony. Passion is subdued to tender- ness : imagination stoops to fantasy : thought, in so far as it is not content merely to shape the form of the work, is bent upon ideas that are wistful, or sad or ironic. Humour, standing aloof and quietly chuckling, will play mischievous pranks with people and things. A satirical imp will dart into a line and out again before you realize that he is there ; and all the time a clear-eyed, observing spirit will be watching and taking note with careful accu- racy. Of such is " The Old Vicarage, Grantchester," in D 49 Contemporary 'Poets which the poet is longing for his home in Cambridge- shire as he sits outside a cafe in Berlin. The poem is therefore a cry of homesickness, a modern " Oh, to be in England ! " But there is much more in it than that ; it is not merely a wail of emotion. The lyrical reverie which recalls all the sweet natural beauty that he is aching to return to is closely woven with other strands. So that one may catch half a dozen incidental impressions which pique the mind with contrasting effects and yet contribute to the prevailing sense of intolerable desire for home. Thus, when the poet has swung off into a sunny dream of the old house and garden, the' watching sense of fact suddenly jogs him into consciousness that he is not there at all, but in a very different place. And that wakens the satiric spirit, so that an amusing interlude follows, summing up by implication much of the contrast between the English and German minds : . . . there the dews Are soft beneath a morn of gold. Here tulips bloom as they are told ; Unkempt about those hedges blows An English unofficial rose ; And there the unregulated sun Slopes down to rest when day is done, And wakes a vague unpunctual star, A slippered Hesper ; and there are 50 Rupert Brooke Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton Where das Betre ten's not verboten. eWe yevoi/JLiriv . . . would I were In Grantchester, in Grantchester ! He slips back again into the softer mood of memory, not of the immediate home scenes only, but of their associations, historical and academic. Always, how- ever, that keen helmsman steers to the windward of sentimentality : better risk rough weather, it seems to say, than shipwreck on some lotus-island. And every time the boat would appear to be making fairly for an exquisite idyllic haven, she is headed into the breeze again. But though she gets a buffeting, and even threatens to capsize at one moment in boisterous jest, she comes serenely into port at last. Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand Still guardians of that holy land ? The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream, The yet unacademic stream ? Is dawn a secret shy and cold Anadyomene, silver-gold ? And sunset still a golden sea From Haslingfield to Madingley ? And after, ere the night is born, Do hares come out about the corn ? Oh, is the water sweet and cool, Gentle and brown, above the pool ? 51 Contemporary ^Poets And laughs the immortal river still Under the mill, under the mill ? Say, is there Beauty yet to find ? And Certainty ? and Quiet kind ? Deep meadows yet, for to forget The lies, and truths, and pain ? . . . oh ! yet Stands the Church clock at ten to three ? And is there honey still for tea I H^illiam H. TDavies I SHOULD think that the work of Mr Davies is the nearest approach that the poetic genius could make to absolute simplicity. It is a wonderful thing, too, in its independence, its almost complete isolation from literary tradition and influence. People talk of Herrick in connexion with this poet ; and if they mean no more than to wonder at a resemblance which is a surprising acci- dent, one would run to join them in their happy amazement. But there is no evidence of direct influence, any more than by another token we could associate his realism with that of Crabbe. No, this is verse which has " growed," autochthonic if poetry ever were, unliterary, and spontaneous in the many senses of that word. From that fact alone, these seven small volumes of verse are a singular. phenomenon. But they teem with interest of other kinds too. First and foremost there is, of course, the preciousness of many of the pieces they contain, as pure poetry, undimmed by any other consideration whatsoever. That applies to a fair proportion of this work ; and it is a delight- someness which, from its very independence of time and circumstance, one looks quite soberly to last the centuries through ; and if it lapse at all from 53 Contemporary 'Poets favour, to be rediscovered two or three hundred years hence as we have rediscovered the poets of the seventeenth century. It has, however, inherent interest apart from this aesthetic joy, something which catches and holds the mind, startling it with an apparent paradox. For this poetry, with its solitariness and absence of any affiliation ancient or modern, with its bird- note bubbling into song at some sweet impulse and seemingly careless of everything but the impelling rapture, is at the same time one of the grimmest pages out of contemporary life. In saying that, one pauses for a moment sternly to interrogate one's own impression. How much of this apparent paradox is due to knowledge derived from the author's astounding autobiography ? Turn pain- fully back for a moment to the thoughts and feelings aroused by that book : recall the rage against the stupidity of life which brings genius to birth so carelessly, endowing it with appetites too strong for the will to tame and senses too acute for the mind to leash until the soul had been buffeted and the body maimed. And admit at once that such a tale, all the more for its quiet veracity, could not fail to influence one's attitude to this poetry. No doubt it is that which gives assurance, certainty, the proof of actual data, to the human record adumbrated 54 W&illiam H. Da vies in the poems. But the record itself is no less present there. It often exists, implicit or explicit, in that part of the verse which sings because it must and for sheer love of itself. And in that other part of the work where the lyric note is not so clear : in the narrative poems and queer character-studies and little dramatic pieces, the record lives vivid and almost complete. Perhaps it is the nature of the record itself which denies full inspiration to those pieces : perhaps Mr Davies' lyric gift cannot find its most fitting expression in themes so grim : in any case it is clear that these personal pieces are not equal to the lighter songs. Now if one's conscience were supple enough to accept those lighter songs as Mr Davies' complete work : if we could conveniently forget the auto- biography, and when visualizing his output, call up some charming collected edition of the poems with the unsatisfactory ones carefully deleted, we could go on with our study easily and gaily. We might pause a moment to marvel at this * isolated phe- nomenon ' : we might even remark upon his detachment, not only from literature, but almost as completely from the ordinary concerns of life. That done, however, we should at once take a header into the delicious refreshment of the lyrics. Such a study would be very fascinating ; and from 55 Contemporary *Poefs the standpoint of Art as Art, it might not be in- adequate. But it would totally lack significance. Even from the point of view of pure poetry, the loss would be profound not to realize that behind the blithest of these trills of song is a background as stormy as any winter sky behind a robin on a bare bough. There is this one, for example, from the volume called Foliage : If I were gusty April now, How I would blow at laughing Rose ; I'd make her ribbons slip their knots, And all her hair come loose. If I were merry April now, How I would pelt her cheeks with showers ; I'd make carnations rich and warm, Of her vermilion flowers. Since she will laugh in April's face, No matter how he rains or blows Then O that I wild April were, To play with laughing Rose. The gaiety of that, considered simply in its lightness of heart, its verbal and metrical felicity, is a delightful thing. And it recurs so frequently as to make Mr Davies quite the j oiliest of modern poets. So if we are content to stop there, if we are not teased by an instinct to relate things, and see all round them, we may make holiday pleasantly enough with this part of the poet's work. The 56 P^illiam H . Davies method is not really satisfying, however, and the inclusion of the more personal pieces adds a deeper value to the study. Not merely because the facts of a poet's life are interesting in themselves, but because here especially they are illuminating, explanatory, suggestive : connecting and unifying the philosophical interest of the work, and supply- ing a background, darkly impressive, for the bright colours of its art. For that reason one would refuse to pass over in silence Mr Davies' first book of poems, The Soul's Destroyer, published in 1907. Not that it is per- fect poetry : indeed, I doubt whether one really satisfying piece could be chosen from the whole fourteen. But it has deep human interest. The book is slim, sombre, almost insignificant in its paper wrappers. But its looks belie it. It is, in fact, nothing less than a flame of courage, a shin- ing triumph of the spirit of humanity. Mr Shaw has made play with the facts of this poet's life, partly because ' it is his nature so to do,' and partly, one suspects, to hide a deeper feeling. But play as you will with the willing vagabond- age, the irresponsibility, the excess and error of exuberant youth, you will only film the surface of the tragedy. Underneath will remain those sullen questions what is life about, what are our systems 57 Contemporary and our laws about, that a human creature and one with the miraculous spark of genius in him, is chased hungry and homeless up and down his own country, tossed from continent to continent and thrown up at last, broken and all but helpless, to be persecuted by some contemptible agent of charity and to wander from one crowded lodging-house to another, seeking vainly for a quiet corner in which to make his songs. The verses in 77>