Studies of Contemporary Poets Part 21

Because if among the poppies gay On the hill-side, now my eyes are dim, I could not fancy a child at play, And if I should pa.s.s by the pool in the quarry And never see him, a darling ghost, Sailing a boat there, I should be sorry-- If in the firelit, lone December I never heard him come scampering post Haste down the stair--if the soul that is lost Came back, and I did not remember.

Such poetry reveals the woman in the poet, and is precious for that reason: it brings its own new light to the book of humanity. But it is not especially characteristic of Mrs Woods' work, for much more often it is the poet in the woman who is revealed there. Powers which are independent of s.e.x--of imagination, of sensibility, and of thought, have gone to the making of that which is finest in her verse; and surely these are gifts which, in varying degree, distinguish the poetic soul under any guise. They are not equally present here, of course.

Imagination overtops them, darting with the lightness of a bird, or soaring majestically, or sweeping, strong and rapid, through a storm-cloud, or putting a swift girdle round the earth. Thought is a degree less powerful, perhaps. It is brooding, museful, tinged with a melancholy that may be wistful or pa.s.sionate; and though it commonly revolves the larger issues of life within the canons of authority, it is keen and clear enough to see beyond them, and even, upon occasion, to pierce a way through. But it is not always sufficiently strong to control completely so fertile an imagination; and there is no acute sense of fact to reinforce it with truth of detail. Instead of watching, recording, a.n.a.lyzing, after the method of so many contemporary poets, this is a mentality which contemplates and reflects. It leans lovingly toward the past, and has a sense, partly instinctive and partly scholarly, of historic values: while, for its artistic method, it pa.s.ses all the treasure that fancy has gathered, and even pa.s.sion itself, through the alembic of memory. So is created a softer grace, a serener atmosphere, and a richer dignity than the realist can achieve--and we will not be churlish enough to complain if, at the same time, the salt of reality is missing.

I should think that "The Builders, A Nocturne in Westminster Abbey,"

most fully represents this poet's lyrical gift. Individual qualities of it may perhaps be observed more clearly elsewhere; but here they combine to produce an effect of meditative sweetness and stately, elegiac grace which are very characteristic. The poem is in ten movements, of very unequal length and irregular form. It is unrhymed, and stanzas may vary almost indefinitely in length, as the verse may pa.s.s from a dimeter, light or resonant, up through the intervening measures to the roll of the hexameter. But this originality of technique, leaving room for so many shades of thought and feeling, was certainly inspired; and below the changeful form runs perfect unity of tone. The creative impulse is subdued to the contemplative mood induced in the mind of the poet as she stands in the Abbey at night and broods upon its history. Her thought goes far back, to the early builders of the fabric whose pale phantoms seem to float in the shades of the 'grey ascending arches.'

When the stars are m.u.f.fled and under them all the earth Is a fiery fog and the sinister roar of London, They lament for the toil of their hands, their souls' travail-- "Ah, the beautiful work!"

It was set to s.h.i.+ne in the sun, to companion the stars To endure as the hills, the ancient hills, endure, Lo, like a brand It lies, a brand consumed and blackened of fire, In the fierce heart of London.

Or, like Dante, this poet will follow the old ghosts to a more dreadful region, and bring them news of home--

Fain would my spirit, My living soul beat up the wind of death To the inaccessible sh.o.r.e and with warm voice Deep-resonant of the earth, salute the dead:

I also would bring To the old unheeded spirits news of Earth; Of England, their own country, choose to tell them, And how above St. Edward's bones the Minister Gloriously stands, how it no more beholds The silver Thames broadening among green meadows And gardens green, nor sudden s.h.i.+mmer of streams And the clear mild blue hills.

Rather so high it stands the whole earth under Spreads boundless and the illimitable sea.

The steps of the sentry, pacing over the stones which cover the great dead below, remind her of those other builders who lie there, makers of Empire.

Over what dust the atom footfall pa.s.ses!

Out of what distant lands, by what adventures Superbly gathered To lie so still in the unquiet heart of London!

Is not the balm of Africa yet clinging About the bones of Livingstone? Consider The long life-wandering, the strange last journey Of this, the heroic lion-branded corpse, Still urging to the sea!

And here the eventual far-off deep repose.

This poem is characteristic, both in the way it blends imagination and profound feeling with pensive thought, and in its literary flavour. One may note the opulent language, enriched from older sources, the historical lore and the allusive touch so fascinating to those who love literature for its own sake. But the poet can work at times in a very different manner. There is, for instance, another piece of unrhymed verse, "March Thoughts From England," which is a riot of light and colour, rich scent and lovely shape and bewitching sound--the sensuous rapture evoked by a Provencal scene 'recollected in tranquillity.' Or there is "April," with the keen joy of an English spring, also a glad response to the direct impressions of sense. Imagination is subordinated here; but if we turn in another direction we are likely to find it paramount. It may be manifested in such various degrees and through such different media that sharp contrasts will present themselves. Thus we might turn at once from the playful fancy of "The Child Alone" (where a little maid has escaped from mother and nurse into the wonderful, enchanted, adventurous world just outside the garden) to the thrice-heated fire of "Again I Saw Another Angel." Here imagination has fanned thought to its own fierce heat; and in the sudden flame serenity is shrivelled up and gives place to pa.s.sionate despair. In a vision the poet sees the awful messenger of the Lord leap into the heavens with a great cry--

Then suddenly the earth was white With faces turned towards his light.

The nations' pale expectancy Sobbed far beneath him like the sea, But men exulted in their dread, And drunken with an awful glee Beat at the portals of the dead.

I saw this monstrous grave the earth Shake with a spasm as though of birth, And shudder with a sullen sound, As though the dead stirred in the ground.

And that great angel girt with flame Cried till the heavens were rent around, "Come forth ye dead!"--Yet no man came.

But from the intensity of that we may pa.s.s to the dainty grace of the Songs, where the poet is weaving in a gossamer texture. Or we may consider a love-lyric like "Pa.s.sing," a fragile thing, lightly evoked out of a touch of fantasy and a breath of sweet pain.

With thoughts too lovely to be true, With thousand, thousand dreams I strew The path that you must come. And you Will find but dew.

I break my heart here, love, to dower With all its inmost sweet your bower.

What scent will greet you in an hour?

The gorse in flower.

In the plays there are lyrics, too, delicately stressing their character of poetic drama, and giving full compa.s.s to the author's powers in each work. Indeed, the combination of lyric and dramatic elements is very skilfully and effectively managed. There is a ballad which serves in each case to state the _motif_ at the opening of the play: not in so many words, of course, but suggested in the tragical events of some old story. And s.n.a.t.c.hes of the ballad recur throughout, crooned by one of the persons of the drama, or played by a lutist at a gay court festival.

But always the dramatic scheme is subserved by the lyrical fragments.

Sometimes it will fill a short interval with a note of foreboding, or make a running accompaniment to the action, or induce an ironic tone, or, by interpreting emotion, it will relieve tension which had grown almost too acute. But, fittingly, when the crisis approaches and action must move freely to the end, the lyric element disappears.

"The Ballad of the Mother," which precedes "Wild Justice," creates the atmosphere in which the play moves from beginning to end. It prefigures the plot, too, in its story of the dead mother who hears her children weeping from her grave in the churchyard; and, after vainly imploring both angel and s.e.xton to let her go and comfort them, makes a compact with the devil to release her.

"Then help me out, devil, O help me, good devil!"

"A price must be paid to a spirit of evil.

Will you pay me the price?" said the spirit from h.e.l.l.

"The price shall be paid, the bargain is made."

Boom! boom! boom!

From the tower in the silence there sounds the great bell.

"I am fixing the price," said the devil from h.e.l.l.

The mother in the play is Mrs Gwyllim, wife of a vicious tyrant. For twenty-one years she had borne cruelty and humiliation at his hands. She had even been patient under the wrongs which he had inflicted on her children: the violence which had maimed her eldest son, Owain, in his infancy; which had hounded another boy away to sea and had driven a daughter into a madhouse. But at the opening of the play a sterner spirit is growing in her: meekness and submission are beginning to break down under the consciousness of a larger duty to her children. We find that she has been making appeals for help, first to their only accessible relation; and that failing, to the Vicar of their parish. But neither of these men had dared to move against the tyrant. They live on a lonely little island off the coast of Wales, where Gwyllim practically has the small population in his power. He had built a lighthouse on the coast; and at the time of the action, which is early in the nineteenth century, he is empowered to own it and to take toll from pa.s.sing vessels. Thus he controls the means of existence of the working people; and the rest are deterred, by reasons of policy or family interest, from putting any check upon him.

In the first scene the mother announces to her daughter Nelto and her favourite son Shonnin the result of her appeal to the Vicar. His only reply had been to affront her with a counsel of patience, though Gwyllim's misconduct is as notorious as his wife's long-suffering. We are thus made to realize the isolation and helplessness of the family before we proceed to the second scene, with its culmination of Gwyllim's villainy and the first hint of rebellion. He comes into the house, furious at the discovery of what he calls his wife's treachery. Owain, the crippled son, is present during part of the scene; and Nelto pa.s.ses and repa.s.ses before the open door of an inner room, hus.h.i.+ng the baby with stanzas of the ballad which opens the play. In the presence of their children, Gwyllim raves at his wife, taunts her with her helplessness, boasts of his own infidelity, and flings a base charge at her, of which he says he has already informed the parson; while Nelto croons--

The angels are fled, and the s.e.xton is sleeping, And I am a devil, a devil from h.e.l.l.

The mother does not answer; but Owain is goaded to protest. This only excites Gwyllim further, and he strikes Owain as he sits in his invalid chair; while Shonnin, coming in from the adjoining room, brings the scene to a climax by asking of his father the money that he needs to go away to school. Gwyllim replies, taking off his coat meanwhile, that there is a certain rule in his family. When a son of his is man enough to knock him down he shall have money to go out into the world; but not before. He invites Shonnin to try his strength:

GWYLLIM. ... Come on. Why don't you come on? I'm making no defence.

SHONNIN. Mother?

GWYLLIM. Leave her alone. Strike me, boy. I bid you do it.

SHONNIN. Then I will; with all my might, and may G.o.d increase it!

OWAIN. There is no G.o.d.

Shonnin strikes three times; and is then felled by a blow from his father, who goes out, shouting orders to wife as he retreats. The scene closes in a final horror. Nelto, a pretty, high-spirited girl, has. .h.i.therto taken little part in the action. Her character, however, has been clearly indicated in one or two strong touches. We realize that she is young, impulsive, warm-hearted; keenly sensitive to beauty, wilful and bright; thrilling to her fingertips with life that craves its birthright of liberty and joy. But we see, too, that with all her ardour she is as proud and cold in her att.i.tude to love as a very Artemis. And when she declares that she also has reached the point of desperation, and that sooner than remain longer in the gloom and terror of her home she will fling herself into a shameful career, we feel that the climax has indeed been reached.

In the third scene the plan of wild justice is formulated. It had originated in the mind of Owain, who had fed his brooding temper on old stories of revenge. To him the dreadful logic of the scheme seemed unanswerable. No power on earth or heaven could help them; either they must save themselves, or be destroyed, body and soul. He puts his plan before Shonnin--to lure their father by a light wrongly placed, as he rows home at night, on to the quicksands at the other side of the island. But Shonnin, if he has less strength of will than Owain, is more thoughtful and more sensitive. He is appalled at the proposal. Owain reminds him of their wrongs; asks him what this monster has done that he should live to be their ruin. And Shonnin, seeing the issues more clearly, replies

... Nothing; But then I have done nothing to deserve To be made a parricide.

But Nelto has been listening, and hers is a nature of a very different mettle. Besides, as she has put the alternative to herself, it means but a choice between two evils; and this plan of Owain's seems at least a cleaner thing than the existence she had contemplated. She declares that she will be the instrument of the revenge.

The rest of the play is occupied with the execution of the plan. Scene IV shows us Nelto going on her way down to the sea at night with the lantern that is to lead Gwyllim on to the sands. She is trying not to think; but the very face of nature seems to reflect the horror that is in her soul--

... Down slips the moon.

NELTO. Broken and tarnished too? Now she hangs motionless As 'twere amazed, in a silver strait of sky Between the long black cloud and the long black sea; The sea crawls like a snake.

The figure of a woman suddenly appears in the path. It is her mother; she has overheard their plans, and for a moment Nelto is afraid that she has come to frustrate them. But Mrs Gwyllim has a very different purpose: she intends to take upon herself the crime that her children are about to commit--

All's fallen from me now But naked motherhood. What! Shall a hare Turn on the red-jawed dogs, being a mother, The unpitying lioness suckle her whelps Smeared with her heart's blood, this one law be stamped For ever on the imperishable stuff Of our mortality, and I, I only, Forbidden to obey it?

But Nelto sees that she is too frail and weak for the task; and entreats her mother to return to the house. Time is slipping, and her father is waiting for the boat.

MRS. GWYLLIM. Ellen, you are too young; You should be innocent--

NELTO. Never again After this night. Come, mother, I am yours; Make me a wanton or an avenger.