Modern British Poetry Part 25

As the spent radiance Of the winter sun, So is a woman With her travail done,

Her brood gone from her, And her thoughts as still As the waters Under a ruined mill.

_James Stephens_

This unique personality was born in Dublin in February, 1882. Stephens was discovered in an office and saved from clerical slavery by George Russell ("A. E."). Always a poet, Stephens's most poetic moments are in his highly-colored prose. And yet, although the finest of his novels, _The Crock of Gold_ (1912), contains more wild phantasy and quaint imagery than all his volumes of verse, his _Insurrections_ (1909) and _The Hill of Vision_ (1912) reveal a rebellious spirit that is at once hotly ironic and coolly whimsical.

Stephens's outstanding characteristic is his delightful blend of incongruities--he combines in his verse the grotesque, the buoyant and the profound. No fresher or more brightly vigorous imagination has come out of Ireland since J. M. Synge.

THE Sh.e.l.l

And then I pressed the sh.e.l.l Close to my ear And listened well, And straightway like a bell Came low and clear The slow, sad murmur of the distant seas, Whipped by an icy breeze Upon a sh.o.r.e Wind-swept and desolate.

It was a sunless strand that never bore The footprint of a man, Nor felt the weight Since time began Of any human quality or stir Save what the dreary winds and waves incur.

And in the hush of waters was the sound Of pebbles rolling round, For ever rolling with a hollow sound.

And bubbling sea-weeds as the waters go Swish to and fro Their long, cold tentacles of slimy grey.

There was no day, Nor ever came a night Setting the stars alight To wonder at the moon: Was twilight only and the frightened croon, Smitten to whimpers, of the dreary wind And waves that journeyed blind-- And then I loosed my ear ... O, it was sweet To hear a cart go jolting down the street.

WHAT TOMAS AN BUILE SAID IN A PUB

I saw G.o.d. Do you doubt it?

Do you dare to doubt it?

I saw the Almighty Man. His hand Was resting on a mountain, and He looked upon the World and all about it: I saw him plainer than you see me now, You mustn't doubt it.

He was not satisfied; His look was all dissatisfied.

His beard swung on a wind far out of sight Behind the world's curve, and there was light Most fearful from His forehead, and He sighed, "That star went always wrong, and from the start I was dissatisfied."

He lifted up His hand-- I say He heaved a dreadful hand Over the spinning Earth. Then I said, "Stay, You must not strike it, G.o.d; I'm in the way; And I will never move from where I stand."

He said, "Dear child, I feared that you were dead,"

And stayed His hand.

TO THE FOUR COURTS, PLEASE

The driver rubbed at his nettly chin With a huge, loose forefinger, crooked and black, And his wobbly, violet lips sucked in, And puffed out again and hung down slack: One fang shone through his lop-sided smile, In his little pouched eye flickered years of guile.

And the horse, poor beast, it was ribbed and forked, And its ears hung down, and its eyes were old, And its knees were knuckly, and as we talked It swung the stiff neck that could scarcely hold Its big, skinny head up--then I stepped in, And the driver climbed to his seat with a grin.

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

And n.o.body knows how their days will cease, And the poor, when they're old, have little of peace.

_John Drinkwater_

Primarily a poetic dramatist, John Drinkwater, born in 1882, is best known as the author of _Abraham Lincoln--A Play_ (1919) founded on Lord Charnwood's masterly and a.n.a.lytical biography. He has published several volumes of poems, most of them meditative and elegiac in mood.

The best of his verses have been collected in _Poems, 1908-19_, and the two here reprinted are used by permission, and by special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.

RECIPROCITY

I do not think that skies and meadows are Moral, or that the fixture of a star Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees Have wisdom in their windless silences.

Yet these are things invested in my mood With constancy, and peace, and fort.i.tude; That in my troubled season I can cry Upon the wide composure of the sky, And envy fields, and wish that I might be As little daunted as a star or tree.

A TOWN WINDOW

Beyond my window in the night Is but a drab inglorious street, Yet there the frost and clean starlight As over Warwick woods are sweet.

Under the grey drift of the town The crocus works among the mould As eagerly as those that crown The Warwick spring in flame and gold.

And when the tramway down the hill Across the cobbles moans and rings, There is about my window-sill The tumult of a thousand wings.

_James Joyce_

James Joyce was born at Dublin, February 2, 1882, and educated in Ireland. He is best known as a highly sensitive and strikingly original writer of prose, his most celebrated works being _Dubliners_ (1914) and the novel, _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ (1916). His one volume of verse, _Chamber Music_, was published in this country in 1918.

I HEAR AN ARMY

I hear an army charging upon the land, And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees: Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand, Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.

They cry unto the night their battle-name: I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.

They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame, Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair: They come out of the sea and run shouting by the sh.o.r.e.

My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?

My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?

_J. C. Squire_

Jack Collings Squire was born April 2, 1884, at Plymouth, of Devonian ancestry. He was educated at Blundell's and Cambridge University, and became known first as a remarkably adroit parodist. His _Imaginary Speeches_ (1912) and _Tricks of the Trade_ (1917) are amusing parodies and, what is more, excellent criticism. He edited _The New Statesman_ for a while and founded _The London Mercury_ (a monthly of which he is editor) in November, 1919. Under the pseudonym "Solomon Eagle" he wrote a page of literary criticism every week for six years, many of these papers being collected in his volume, _Books in General_ (1919).