The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century Part 8

Mr. Gibson's latest book of poems, _Hill-Tracks_ (1918), differs from his previous works in two respects. It is full of pictures of the open fields of Northumberland, the county where he was born; and nearly every piece is an attempt at a singing lyric, something seldom found in his _Collected Poems_. I say an "attempt" with deliberation, for song is not the most natural expression of this realistic writer, and not more than half of the fifty lyrics in this handsome volume are successfully melodious. Some are trivial, and hardly deserve such beauty of type and paper; others, however, will be gladly welcomed by all students of Mr. Gibson's work, because they exhibit the powers of the author in an unusual and charming manner. I should think that those familiar with the topography and with the colloquialisms constantly appearing in this book, would read it with a veritable delight of reminiscence.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Heatherland and bent-land-- Black land and white, G.o.d bring me to Northumberland, The land of my delight.

Land of singing waters, And winds from off the sea, G.o.d bring me to Northumberland, The land where I would be.

Heatherland and bent-land, And valleys rich with corn, G.o.d bring me to Northumberland, The land where I was born.

The shadow of the war darkens nearly every page of this volume, and the last poem expresses not the local but the universal sentiment of us who remain in our homes.

We who are left, how shall we look again Happily on the sun, or feel the rain, Without remembering how they who went Ungrudgingly, and spent Their all for us, loved, too, the sun and rain?

A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings-- But we, how shall we turn to little things And listen to the birds and winds and streams Made holy by their dreams, Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?

An interesting feature of the _Collected Poems_ is a striking unfinished portrait of the author by Mrs. Wise; but I think it was an error to publish all these verses in one volume. They produce an impression of grey monotony which is hardly fair to the poet. The individuals change their names, but they pa.s.s through the same typical woe of childbirth, desertion, loveless old age, incipient insanity, with eternal joyless toil. One will form a higher opinion if one reads the separate volumes as they appeared, and not too much at a time.

His contribution to the advance of English poetry is seen mainly in his grim realism, in his direct, unadorned presentation of what he believes to be the truth, whether it be the facts of environment, or the facts of thought. Conventional war-poetry, excellently represented by Tennyson's _Charge of the Light Brigade_, which itself harks back to Drayton's stirring _Ballad of Agincourt_, has not the slightest echo in these volumes; and ordinary songs of labour are equally remote. Face to face with Life--that is where the poet leads us, and where he leaves us. He is far indeed from possessing the splendid lyrical gift of John Masefield; he has nothing of the literary quality of William Watson. He writes neither of romantic buccaneers nor of golden old books. But he is close to the grimy millions. He writes the short and simple annals of the poor. He is a poet of the people, and seems to have taken a vow that we shall not forget them.

Ralph Hodgson was born somewhere in Northumberland about forty years ago, and successfully eluded the notice of the world until the year 1907. He is by nature such a recluse that I feel certain he would prefer to attract no attention whatever were it not for the fact that it is as necessary for a poet to print his songs as it is for a bird to sing them. His favourite companions are Sh.e.l.ley, Wordsworth, and a bull terrier, and he is said to play billiards with "grim earnestness." In 1907 he published a tiny volume called _The Last Blackbird_, and in 1917 another and tinier one called _Poems_.

During this decade he printed in a few paper booklets, which some day will be valuable curiosities, separate pieces such as _Eve_, _The Bull_, _The Mystery_. These are now permanently preserved in the 1917 book. This thin volume, weighing only two or three ounces, is a real addition to the English poetry of the twentieth century.

It is impossible to read the verse of Ralph Hodgson without admiration for the clarity of his art and respect for the vigour of his mind.

Although many of his works are as aloof from his own opinions as a well-executed statue, the strength of his personality is an immanent force. He writes much and publishes little; he is an intellectual aristocrat. He has the fastidiousness which was the main characteristic of the temperament of Thomas Gray; and he has as well Gray's hatred of publicity and much of Gray's lambent humour, more salty than satiric. His work is decidedly caviare to the general, not because it is obscure, which it is not, but because it presupposes much background. Lovers of nature and lovers of books will love these verses, and reread them many times; but they are not for all markets.

No contemporary poet is more truly original than he; but his originality is seen in his mental att.i.tude rather than in newness of form or strangeness of language. The standard metres are good enough for him, and so are the words in common use. His subjects are the world-old subjects of poetry--birds, flowers, men and women. Religion is as conspicuously absent as it is in the works of Keats; its place is taken by sympathy for humanity and an extraordinary sympathy for animals. He is as far from the religious pa.s.sion of Francis Thompson as he is from the sociological inquisitiveness of Mr. Gibson. To him each bird, each flower appears as a form of wors.h.i.+p. Men and women appeal to him not because they are poor or downtrodden, but simply because they are men and women. He is neither an optimist nor a pessimist; the world is full of objects both interesting and beautiful, which will pay a rich return to those who observe them accurately. This is as near as he has thus far come to any philosophy or any theology:

THE MYSTERY

He came and took me by the hand Up to a red rose tree, He kept His meaning to Himself But gave a rose to me.

I did not pray Him to lay bare The mystery to me, Enough the rose was Heaven to smell, And His own face to see.

It is the absolute object that interests this poet, rather than vague or futile speculation about it. The flower in the crannied wall he would leave there. He would never pluck it out, root and all, wondering about the mystery of the life principle. No poet is more clean-eyed. His eyes are achromatic. He has lost his illusions gladly; every time he has lost an illusion he has gained a new idea. The world as it is seems to him more beautiful, more interesting than any false-coloured picture of it or any longing to remould it nearer to the heart's desire. He faces life with steady composure. But it is not the composure either of stoicism or of despair. He finds it so wonderful just as it is that he is thankful that he has eyes to see its beauty, ears to hear its melodies--enough for his present mortal state.

AFTER

"How fared you when you mortal were?

What did you see on my peopled star?"

"Oh, well enough," I answered her, "It went for me where mortals are!

"I saw blue flowers and the merlin's flight And the rime on the wintry tree, Blue doves I saw and summer light On the wings of the cinnamon bee."

There is in all this a kind of reverent wors.h.i.+p without any trace of mysticism. And still less of that modern att.i.tude more popular and surely more fruitless than mysticism--defiance.

There is a quite different side to the poetry of Mr. Hodgson, which one would hardly suspect after reading his outdoor verse. The lamplit silence of the library is as charming to him as the fragrant silence of the woods. He is as much of a recluse among books as he is among flowers.

No poet of today seems more self-sufficient. Although a lover of humanity, he seems to require no companions.h.i.+p. He is no more lonely than a cat, and has as many resources as Tabby herself.

Now when he talks about books, his poetry becomes intimate, and forsakes all objectivity.

His humour, a purely intellectual quality with him, rises unrestrainedly.

MY BOOKS

When the folks have gone to bed, And the lamp is burning low, And the fire burns not so red As it burned an hour ago,

Then I turn about my chair So that I can dimly see Into the dark corners where Lies my modest library.

Volumes gay and volumes grave, Many volumes have I got; Many volumes though I have, Many volumes have I not.

I have not the rare Lucasta, London, 1649; I'm a lean-pursed poetaster, Or the book had long been mine....

Near the "Wit's Interpreter"

(Like an antique Whitaker, Full of strange etcetera), "Areopagitiea,"

And the muse of Lycidas, Lost in meditation deep, Give the cut to Hudibras, Unaware the knave's asleep....

There lies Coleridge, bound in green, Sleepily still wond'ring what He meant Kubla Khan to mean, In that early Wordsworth, Mat.

Arnold knows a faithful prop,-- Still to subject-matter leans, Murmurs of the loved hill-top, Fyfield tree and c.u.mnor scenes.

The poem closes with a high tribute to Sh.e.l.ley, "more than all the others mine."

The following trifle is excellent fooling:

THE GREAT AUK'S GHOST

The Great Auk's ghost rose on one leg, Sighed thrice and three times winkt, And turned and poached a phantom egg, And muttered, "I'm extinct."

But it is in the love of unextinct animals that Mr. Hodgson's poetic powers find their most effective display. His masterpiece on the old unhappy Bull is surprisingly impressive; surprisingly, because we almost resent being made to feel such ardent sympathy for the poor old Bull, when there are so many other and more important objects to be sorry for. Yet the poet draws us away for the moment from all the other tragedies in G.o.d's universe, and absolutely compels our pity for the Bull. The stanzas in this poem swarm with life.

From a certain point of view, poets are justified in calling attention to the sufferings of our animal brothers. For it is the sufferings of animals, even more than the sorrows of man, that check our faith either in the providence or in the love of G.o.d. Human suffering may possibly be balanced against the spiritual gain it (sometimes) brings; and at all events, we know that there is no road to greatness of character except through pain. But what can compensate the dumb animals for their physical anguish? It is certainly difficult to see their reward, unless they have immortal souls. That this is no slight obstacle in the way of those who earnestly desire to believe in an ethical universe, may be seen from the fact that it was the sight of a snake swallowing a toad that destroyed once for all the religious beliefs of Turgenev; and I know a man of science in America who became an agnostic simply from observation of a particular Texas fly that bites the cattle. The Founder of Christianity recognized this problem, as He did every other painful fact in life, when He made the remark about the sparrow.

Yet even the pessimists ought not to be quite so sure that G.o.d is morally inferior to man. Even their G.o.d may be no more amused by human anguish then men are amused by the grotesque floppings of a dying fish.

The villains in the world are those who have no respect for the personality of birds and beasts. And their cruelty to animals is not deliberate or vindictive--it arises from cra.s.s stupidity.

STUPIDITY STREET

I saw with open eyes Singing birds sweet Sold in the shops For the people to eat, Sold in the shops of Stupidity Street.

I saw in vision The worm in the wheat, And in the shops nothing For people to eat; Nothing for sale in Stupidity Street.

The poet's att.i.tude toward the lion in the jungle, the bull in the field, the cat in the yard, the bird on the tree is not one of affectionate petting, for love and sympathy are often mingled--consciously or unconsciously--with condescension. There is no trace of condescension in the way Mr. Hodgson writes of animals. He treats them with respect, and not only hates to see them hurt, he hates to see their dignity outraged.

THE BELLS OF HEAVEN

'Twould ring the bells of Heaven The wildest peal for years, If Parson lost his senses And people came to theirs, And he and they together Knelt down with angry prayers For tamed and shabby tigers And dancing dogs and bears, And wretched, blind pit ponies, And little hunted hares.