Modern British Poetry Part 9

MODERN BEAUTY

I am the torch, she saith, and what to me If the moth die of me? I am the flame Of Beauty, and I burn that all may see Beauty, and I have neither joy nor shame, But live with that clear light of perfect fire Which is to men the death of their desire.

I am Yseult and Helen, I have seen Troy burn, and the most loving knight lie dead.

The world has been my mirror, time has been My breath upon the gla.s.s; and men have said, Age after age, in rapture and despair, Love's poor few words, before my image there.

I live, and am immortal; in my eyes The sorrow of the world, and on my lips The joy of life, mingle to make me wise; Yet now the day is darkened with eclipse: Who is there still lives for beauty? Still am I The torch, but where's the moth that still dares die?

_William Butler Yeats_

Born at Sandymount, Dublin, in 1865, the son of John B. Yeats, the Irish artist, the greater part of William Butler Yeats' childhood was spent in Sligo. Here he became imbued with the power and richness of native folk-lore; he drank in the racy quality through the quaint fairy stories and old wives' tales of the Irish peasantry. (Later he published a collection of these same stories.)

It was in the activities of a "Young Ireland" society that Yeats became identified with the new spirit; he dreamed of a national poetry that would be written in English and yet would be definitely Irish. In a few years he became one of the leaders in the Celtic revival. He worked incessantly for the cause, both as propagandist and playwright; and, though his mysticism at times seemed the product of a cult rather than a Celt, his symbolic dramas were acknowledged to be full of a haunting, other-world spirituality. (See Preface.) _The Hour Gla.s.s_ (1904), his second volume of "Plays for an Irish Theatre," includes his best one-act dramas with the exception of his unforgettable _The Land of Heart's Desire_ (1894). _The Wind Among the Reeds_ (1899) contains several of his most beautiful and characteristic poems.

Others who followed Yeats have intensified the Irish drama; they have established a closer contact between the peasant and poet. No one, however, has had so great a part in the shaping of modern drama in Ireland as Yeats. His _Deirdre_ (1907), a beautiful retelling of the great Gaelic legend, is far more dramatic than the earlier plays; it is particularly interesting to read with Synge's more idiomatic play on the same theme, _Deirdre of the Sorrows_.

The poems of Yeats which are quoted here reveal him in his most lyric and musical vein.

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the sh.o.r.e; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core.

THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHER

I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow.

And then I must scrub, and bake, and sweep, Till stars are beginning to blink and peep; But the young lie long and dream in their bed Of the matching of ribbons, the blue and the red, And their day goes over in idleness, And they sigh if the wind but lift up a tress.

While I must work, because I am old And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.

THE CAP AND BELLS

A Queen was beloved by a jester, And once when the owls grew still He made his soul go upward And stand on her window sill.

In a long and straight blue garment, It talked before morn was white, And it had grown wise by thinking Of a footfall hushed and light.

But the young queen would not listen; She rose in her pale nightgown, She drew in the brightening cas.e.m.e.nt And pushed the bra.s.s bolt down.

He bade his heart go to her, When the bats cried out no more, In a red and quivering garment It sang to her through the door.

The tongue of it sweet with dreaming Of a flutter of flower-like hair, But she took up her fan from the table And waved it off on the air.

'I've cap and bells,' he pondered, 'I will send them to her and die.'

And as soon as the morn had whitened He left them where she went by.

She laid them upon her bosom, Under a cloud of her hair, And her red lips sang them a love song.

The stars grew out of the air.

She opened her door and her window, And the heart and the soul came through, To her right hand came the red one, To her left hand came the blue.

They set up a noise like crickets, A chattering wise and sweet, And her hair was a folded flower, And the quiet of love her feet.

AN OLD SONG RESUNG

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She pa.s.sed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.

She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.

She bid me take life easy, as the gra.s.s grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

_Rudyard Kipling_

Born at Bombay, India, December 30, 1865, Rudyard Kipling, the author of a dozen contemporary cla.s.sics, was educated in England. He returned, however, to India and took a position on the staff of "The Lah.o.r.e Civil and Military Gazette," writing for the Indian press until about 1890, when he went to England, where he has lived ever since, with the exception of a short sojourn in America.

Even while he was still in India he achieved a popular as well as a literary success with his dramatic and skilful tales, sketches and ballads of Anglo-Indian life.

_Soldiers Three_ (1888) was the first of six collections of short stories brought out in "Wheeler's Railway Library." They were followed by the far more sensitive and searching _Plain Tales from the Hills_, _Under the Deodars_ and _The Phantom 'Rikshaw_, which contains two of the best and most convincing ghost-stories in recent literature.

These tales, however, display only one side of Kipling's extraordinary talents. As a writer of children's stories, he has few living equals.

_Wee Willie Winkie_, which contains that stirring and heroic fragment "Drums of the Fore and Aft," is only a trifle less notable than his more obviously juvenile collections. _Just-So Stories_ and the two _Jungle Books_ (prose interspersed with lively rhymes) are cla.s.sics for young people of all ages. _Kim_, the novel of a super-Mowgli grown up, is a more mature masterpiece.

Considered solely as a poet (see Preface) he is one of the most vigorous and unique figures of his time. The spirit of romance surges under his realities. His brisk lines conjure up the tang of a countryside in autumn, the tingle of salt spray, the rude sentiment of ruder natures, the snapping of a banner, the lurch and rumble of the sea. His poetry is woven of the stuff of myths; but it never loses its hold on actualities. Kipling himself in his poem "The Benefactors"

(from _The Years Between_ [1919]) writes:

Ah! What avails the cla.s.sic bent And what the cultured word, Against the undoctored incident That actually occurred?

Kipling won the n.o.bel Prize for Literature in 1907. His varied poems have finally been collected in a remarkable one-volume _Inclusive Edition_ (1885-1918), an indispensable part of any student's library.

This gifted and prolific creator, whose work was affected by the war, has frequently lapsed into bombast and a journalistic imperialism. At his best he is unforgettable, standing mountain-high above his host of imitators. His home is at Burwash, Suss.e.x.

GUNGA DIN

You may talk o' gin an' beer When you're quartered safe out 'ere, An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it; But if it comes to slaughter You will do your work on water, An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it Now in Injia's sunny clime, Where I used to spend my time A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen, Of all them black-faced crew The finest man I knew Was our regimental _bhisti_,[5] Gunga Din.