Studies of Contemporary Poets Part 5

There is a difference, and its implications are important; but the chief fact is that here, amongst this modern poetry of so different an order, you find work which seems like a lovely survival from the age of romance.

That is why one has the feeling that this poet has never grown up.

Partly from a natural inclination, and partly from a deliberate plan (like that of Coleridge) to produce a certain kind of art, he has created a faery, twilight world, a world of wonder and fantasy, which is the home of perpetual youth. He has never really lost that time when, as a little boy, he says that he listened to Martha telling her stories in the hazel glen. Martha, of 'the clear grey eyes' and the 'grave, small, lovely head' is surely a veritable handmaid of romance:

'Once ... once upon a time ...'

Like a dream you dream in the night, Fairies and gnomes stole out In the leaf-green light.

And her beauty far away Would fade, as her voice ran on, Till hazel and summer sun And all were gone:--

All fordone and forgot; And like clouds in the height of the sky, Our hearts stood still in the hush Of an age gone by.

That hush, invoking a sense of remoteness in s.p.a.ce and time, lies over all his work. It is as though, walking in the garden of this verse, a child flitted lightly before us with a finger raised in a gesture of silence. And it is not for nothing that his princ.i.p.al book is called _The Listeners_. Footfalls are light, and voices soft, and the wind is gentle: the noise of life is filtered to a whisper or a rustle or a sleepy murmur. It is a device, of course, as we quickly see if we peer too curiously at it: just a contrivance of the romantic artist to create 'atmosphere.' But it is so cunningly done that you never suspect the contriving; and if you would gauge the skill of the poet in this direction, you should note that he is able to produce the desired effect in the broad light of day as well as in shadow and twilight. It is a more difficult achievement, and much rarer. Evening is the time that the poets generally choose to work this particular spell: though moonlight or starlight, dawn, sunset, and almost any degree of darkness will serve them. Sunlight alone, wide-eyed, penetrating and inquisitive, is inimical to their purpose. Yet Mr de la Mare, in a poem called "The Sleeper," succeeds in spinning this hush of wondering awe out of the full light of a summer day. A little girl (Ann, a charming and familiar figure in this poetry: at once a symbol of childhood and a very human child) runs into the house to her mother, and finds her asleep in her chair. That is all the 'plot'; and it would be hard to find an incident slighter, simpler and more commonplace. But out of this homespun material the poet has somehow conjured an eerie, brooding, impalpable presence which steals upon us as it does upon the child in the quiet house until, like her, we want to creep quickly out again.

A sense of the supernatural, that constant component of the romantic temperament, is of the essence of this poetry. The manifestation of it is something more than a trick of technique, for it has its origin in the very nature of the poet's genius. In its simpler and more direct expression, it seems to spring out of the fearful joy which this type of mind experiences in contact with the strange and weird. Again, as in "The Witch," it may take the form of a bit of pure fantasy, transmitting the fascination which has already seized the poet with a lurking smile at its own absurdity. The opening stanzas tell of a tired old witch who sits down to rest by a churchyard wall; and who, in jerking off her pack of charms, breaks the cord and spills them all out on the ground:

And out the dead came stumbling, From every rift and crack, Silent as moss, and plundered The gaping pack.

They wish them, three times over, Away they skip full soon: Bat and Mole and Leveret, Under the rising moon.

Owl and Newt and Nightjar: They take their shapes and creep, Silent as churchyard lichen, While she squats asleep.

Names may be writ; and mounds rise; Purporting, Here be bones: But empty is that churchyard Of all save stones.

Owl and Newt and Nightjar, Leveret, Bat and Mole Haunt and call in the twilight, Where she slept, poor soul.

But in its subtler forms the supernatural element of this poetry is more complex and more potent. And it would seem to have a definite relation to the poet's philosophy. Not that it is possible to trace an outline of systematic thought in work like this, where every const.i.tuent is milled and sifted to exquisite fineness and fused to perfect unity. But if we follow up a hint here and there, and correlate them with the author's prose fiction, we shall not be able to escape the suggestion of a mystical basis to the elusive witchery of so many of his poems. We shall see it to be rooted in an extreme sensitiveness to what are called 'psychic' influences: a sensitiveness through which he becomes, at one end of the scale, acutely aware of the presence of a surrounding spirit world; and at the other, deeply sympathetic and tender to subhuman creatures.

No crude claim is made on behalf of any mystical creed; and still less would one violate the fragile and mysterious charm of a poem like "The Listeners" by so-called interpretation. But placed beside "The Witch,"

it is clearly seen to treat the supernatural on a higher plane: it is, indeed, a piece of rare and delicate symbolism. There is no recourse to the ready appeal of the grotesque and the marvellous; and although we find here all the 'machinery' of a sensational poem in the older romantic manner--the great empty house standing lonely in the forest, moonlight and silence, and a traveller knocking unheeded at the door--it is a very subtle blending of those elements which has gone to produce the peculiar effect of this piece. Twice the traveller knocks, crying: "Is there anybody there?" but no answer comes:

... only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken By the lonely Traveller's call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, 'Neath the starred and leafy sky; For he suddenly smote on the door, even Louder, and lifted his head:-- 'Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word,' he said.

Running through the piece--and more clearly perceived when the whole poem is read--is the thread of melancholy which is inseparably woven into all the poet's work of this kind. And it, too, was a gift of his fairy-G.o.dmother when he was born, light in texture as a gossamer and spun out of the softest silk. Melancholy is almost too big a word to fit the thing it is, for there is no gloom in it. It is like the silvery, transparent cloud of thoughtfulness which pa.s.ses for a moment over a happy face; and it has something of the youthful trick of playing with the idea of sadness. Hence come the early studies of "Imogen" and "Ophelia," where the poet is so much in love with mournfulness that he revels in making perfect phrases about it.

Can death haunt silence with a silver sound?

Can death, that hushes all music to a close, Pluck one sweet wire scarce-audible that trembles, As if a little child, called Purity, Sang heedlessly on of his dear Imogen?

But even when this verse approaches a degree nearer to the reality of pain it is still, as it were, a reflected emotion; and there is no poignance in it. It is a winning echo of sorrowfulness, caught by one who has the habit of turning back to listen and look. Thus the studies of old age which we sometimes find here are drawn in the true romantic manner, with a sunset halo about them, and lightly shadowed by wistfulness and faint regret. And the thought of death, when it is allowed to enter, comes as caressingly as sleep. The little poem called "All That's Past," where the poet is thinking of how far down the roots of all things go, is only one example of many where melancholy is toned to the faintest strain of pensive sweetness:

Very old are the woods; And the buds that break Out of the briar's boughs, When March winds wake, So old with their beauty are-- Oh, no man knows Through what wild centuries Roves back the rose.

Very old are we men; Our dreams are tales Told in dim Eden By Eve's nightingales; We walk and whisper awhile, But, the day gone by, Silence and sleep like fields Of amaranth lie.

So we might continue to cull pa.s.sages which represent one aspect or another of the specific quality of Mr de la Mare's poetry. The choice is embarra.s.singly rich, for there is remarkable unity of tone and technical perfection here. But there is a danger in the process, especially with work of so fine a grain; and one feels bound to repeat the warning that it is impossible to dissect its ultimate essence in this way. We can only come back to our comparison, and recalling the magical music of poems like "Arabia," "Queen Djenira," or "Voices"--in which all the characteristics noted are so intimately blended that it is impossible to disengage them--reiterate the fact that they possess the same inexplicable charm as the romantic work of Coleridge.

But that reminds us of the difference, and all that it implies. For, after all, this poet is a romanticist of the twentieth century, and not of the late eighteenth. It is true that his genius has surprisingly kept its youth (even more, that is to say, than the poet usually does); but it is a nonage which is clearly of this time and no other. The signs of this are clear enough. First and foremost, there is his humanity--in which perhaps all the others are included, and with which are certainly a.s.sociated the simplicity and sincerity of his diction. It is as though the two famous principles on which the _Lyrical Ballads_ were planned had in the fulness of time become united in the creative impulse of a single mind. That is not to charge Mr de la Mare with the combined weight of those two earlier giants, of course, but simply to observe the truth which Rupert Brooke expressed so finely when he said that the poetic spirit was coming back "to its wider home, the human heart." So that even a born romanticist like this cannot escape; and into the chilly enchantment of an older manner warm sunlight streams and fresh airs blow.

Obvious links with the life-movement of his time are not lacking, though as mere external evidence they are relatively unimportant. Of such are the synthesis of poetry and science in "The Happy Encounter"; and the detachment suggested in "Keep Innocency," where the poet reveals a full consciousness of the gulf between romance and reality. But the influence goes deeper than that. It is because he is a child of his age that he has observed children so lovingly, and has wrought child-psychology into his verse with such wonderful accuracy. That also is why he calls so gently out of 'thin-strewn memory' such a homely figure as the shy old maid in her old-fas.h.i.+oned parlour; and thence, too, comes the sympathy with toiling folk--considering them characteristically in the serene mood when their work is done--which underlies such pieces as "Old Susan" and "Old Ben":

Sad is old Ben Thistlewaite, Now his day is done, And all his children Far away are gone.

He sits beneath his jasmined porch, His stick between his knees, His eyes fixed vacant On his moss-grown trees.

But as in pale high autumn skies The swallows float and play, His restless thoughts pa.s.s to and fro, But nowhere stay.

Soft, on the morrow, they are gone; His garden then will be Denser and shadier and greener, Greener the moss-grown tree.

From the same humane temper come the poet's kindly feeling for animals and his affectionate understanding of them. Over and over again its positive aspect finds expression, either quaint, comical or tender. And twice at least the negative side of it appears, coming as near to rage at the wanton destruction of animal life as so mellow and balanced a nature would ever get. It is a significant fact that at such moments he takes refuge in his humour--that humour, at once rich and delicate, which is perhaps the most precious quality of this poetry, and which, growing from a free and sympathetic contact with life, holds the scale counterpoised to a nicety against the glamorous romantic sense. Thus we have this sc.r.a.p of verse, lightly throwing off a mood of disgust in whimsical idiom:

I can't abear a Butcher, I can't abide his meat, The ugliest shop of all is his, The ugliest in the street; Bakers' are warm, cobblers' dark, Chemists' burn watery lights; But oh, the sawdust butcher's shop, That ugliest of sights!

And thus in "t.i.t for Tat" we find this apostrophe to a certain Tom Noddy, just returning from a day of 'sport' with his gun over his shoulder:

Wonder I very much do, Tom Noddy, If ever, when you are a-roam, An Ogre from s.p.a.ce will stoop a lean face, And lug you home:

Lug you home over his fence, Tom Noddy, Of thorn-stocks nine yards high, With your bent knees strung round his old iron gun And your head dan-dangling by:

And hang you up stiff on a hook, Tom Noddy, From a stone-cold pantry shelf, Whence your eyes will glare in an empty stare, Till you are cooked yourself!

The humour there, corresponding in degree to the indignation for which it is a veil, is relatively broad. There are many subtler forms of it, however, and one will be found in a charming piece which is apt to our present point. It is called "Nicholas Nye," and tells about an old donkey in an orchard. He is an unprepossessing creature, lame and worn-out: just a bit of animal jettison, thrown away here to end his days in peace. And the poet had a great friends.h.i.+p with him:

But a wonderful gumption was under his skin, And a clear calm light in his eye, And once in a while: he'd smile:-- Would Nicholas Nye.

Seem to be smiling at me, he would, From his bush in the corner, of may,-- Bony and ownerless, widowed and worn, k.n.o.bble-kneed, lonely and grey; And over the gra.s.s would seem to pa.s.s 'Neath the deep dark blue of the sky, Something much better than words between me And Nicholas Nye.

_Wilfrid Wilson Gibson_

There are a dozen books by this author, the work of about a dozen years.

They began to appear in 1902; and they end, so far as the present survey is concerned, with poems that were published in the first half of 1914.

They make a good pile, a considerable achievement in bulk alone; and when they are read in sequence, they are found to represent a growing period in the poet's mind and art which corresponds to, and epitomises, the transition stage out of which English poetry is just pa.s.sing. That is to say, in addition to the growth that one would expect--the ripening and development which would seem to be a normal process--there has occurred an unexpected thing: a complete change of ideal, with steady and rapid progress in the new direction. So that if Mr. Gibson's later books were compared directly with the early ones, they might appear to be by an entirely different hand. Place _Urlyn the Harper_--which was first published--beside a late play called _Womenkind_ or a still more recent dramatic piece called _b.l.o.o.d.ybush Edge_; and the contrast will be complete. On the one hand there is all the charm of romance, in material and in manner--but very little else. On the other hand there is nothing to which the word charm will strictly apply; an almost complete artistic austerity: but a profound and powerful study of human nature.

On the one hand there is a dainty lyrical form appropriate to the theme: there are songs like this one, about the hopeless love of the minstrel for the young queen who is mated with an old harsh king:

I sang of lovers, and she praised my song, The while the King looked on her with cold eyes, And 'twixt them on the throne sat mailed wrong.

I sang of Launcelot and Guenevere, While in her face I saw old sorrows rise, And throned between them cowered naked Fear.

I sang of Tristram and La Belle Isoud, And how they fled the anger of King Mark To live and love, deep sheltered in a wood.