Studies of Contemporary Poets Part 6

Then bending low, she spake sad voiced and sweet, The while grey terror crouched between them stark, "Sing now of Auca.s.sin and Nicolete."

The later work cannot be so readily ill.u.s.trated: it is at once subtler and stronger, and depends more upon the effect of the whole than upon any single part. But for the sake of the contrast we may wrest a short pa.s.sage out of its setting in _b.l.o.o.d.ybush Edge_. A couple of tramps have met at night on the Scottish border; one is a c.o.c.kney Londoner, a bad lot with something sinister about him and a touch of mystery. He has just stumbled out of the heather on to the road, cursing the darkness and the loneliness of the moor. The other, a Border man to whom night is beautiful and the wild landscape a familiar friend, protests that it is not dark, that the sky is 'all alive with little stars':

TRAMP. ... Stars!

Give me the lamps along the Old Kent Road; And I'm content to leave the stars to you.

They're well enough; but hung a trifle high For walking with clean boots. Now a lamp or so....

d.i.c.k. If it's so fine and brave, the Old Kent Road, How is it you came to leave it?

TRAMP. ... I'd my reasons ...

But I was scared: the loneliness and all; The quietness, and the queer creepy noises; And something that I couldn't put a name to, A kind of feeling in my marrow-bones, As though the great black hills against the sky Had come alive about me in the night, And they were watching me; as though I stood Naked, in a big room, with blind men sitting, Unseen, all round me, in the quiet darkness, That was not dark to them. And all the stars Were eyeing me; and whisperings in the heather Were like cold water trickling down my spine:

Putting an early and a late book side by side in this way, the contrast is astonis.h.i.+ng. And it is not an unfair method of comparison, because when the new ideal appears it strikes suddenly into the work, and sharply differentiates it at once from all that had been written before.

Like the larger movement which it so aptly ill.u.s.trates, the change is conscious, deliberate, and full of significance; and it is the cardinal fact in this author's poetical career. It marks the stage at which he came to grips with reality: when he brought his art into relation with life: when the making of poetic beauty as an end in itself could no longer content him; and the social conscience, already prompting contemporary thought, quickened in him too.

Humanity was the new ideal: humanity at bay and splendidly fighting. It appeared first in the two volumes of 1907 as dramatic studies from the lives of shepherd-folk. Four books had preceded these, in which the texture of the verse was woven of old romance and legend. Another book was yet to come, _The Web of Life_, in which the prettiness of that kind of romanticism would blossom into absolute beauty. But the new impulse grew from the date of _Stonefolds_; and when the first part of _Daily Bread_ appeared, the impulse had become a reasoned principle. In the poem which prefaces that volume it comes alive, realizing itself and finding utterance in terms which express much more than an individual experience. I quote it for that reason. The immediate thought has dignity and the personal note is engaging. There is, too, peculiar interest in the clarity and precision with which it speaks, albeit unconsciously, for the changing spirit in English poetry. But the final measure of the poem is the touch of universality that is latent within it. For here we have the expression of not only a law of development by which the poet must be bound, and not only a poetical synthesis of the most important intellectual movement of this generation, but an experience through which every soul must pa.s.s, if and when it claims its birthright in the human family.

As one, at midnight, wakened by the call Of golden-plovers in their seaward flight, Who lies and listens, as the clear notes fall Through tingling silence of the frosty night-- Who lies and listens, till the last note fails, And then, in fancy, faring with the flock Far over slumbering hills and dreaming dales, Soon hears the surges break on reef and rock; And, hearkening, till all sense of self is drowned Within the mightier music of the deep, No more remembers the sweet piping sound That startled him from dull, undreaming sleep: So I, first waking from oblivion, heard, With heart that kindled to the call of song, The voice of young life, fluting like a bird, And echoed that light lilting; till, ere long, Lured onward by that happy, singing-flight, I caught the stormy summons of the sea, And dared the restless deeps that, day and night, Surge with the life-song of humanity.

Being wise after the event, one can discover auguries of that change in the very early work. There is, for example, a group of little poems called _Faring South_, studied directly from peasant life in the south of France. They indicate that even at that time an awakening sympathy with toiling folk had begun to guide his observation; and they are in any case a very different record of European travel from that of the mere poetaster. There are studies of a stonebreaker, a thresher, a ploughman; there is a veracious little picture of a housemother, returning home at the end of market-day laden, tired and dusty; but happy to be under her own vine-porch once more. And most interesting of all the group, there is a shepherd, the forerunner of robuster shepherds in later books, and evidently a figure which has for this author a special attraction.

With folded arms, against his staff he stands, Sun-soaking, rapt, within the August blaze The while his sheep with moving rustle graze The lean, parched undergrowth of stubble lands.

Indifferent 'neath the low blue-laden sky He gazes fearless in the eyes of noon; And earth, because he craves of her no boon, Yields him deep-breasted, sun-steeped destiny.

But these characters are not living people, they are types rather than individuals, and idealized a little. They are, as it were, seen from a distance, in pa.s.sing, and in a golden light. Years were to pa.s.s before knowledge and insight could envisage them completely and a dramatic sense could endow them with life. Meantime the more characteristic qualities of this early work were to develop independently. The lyrical power of it, in particular, was to enjoy its flowering time, revelling in the sweet melancholy of old unhappy love stories, in courts and rose-gardens, kings and queens, knights and ladies and lute-players.

Perhaps the most charming examples in this kind are "The Songs of Queen Averlaine." Here are a couple of stanzas from one of them, in which the queen is brooding sadly over the thought of her lost love and lost youth:

Spring comes no more for me: though young March blow To flame the larches, and from tree to tree The green fire leap, till all the woodland, glow-- Though every runnel, filled to overflow, Bear sea-ward, loud and brown with melted snow, Spring comes no more for me!

Spring comes no more for me: though May will shake White flame of hawthorn over all the lea, Till every thick-set hedge and tangled brake Puts on fresh flower of beauty for her sake; Though all the world from winter-sleep awake, Spring comes no more for me!

They are graceful songs, and their glamour will not fail so long as there remain lovers to read them. The critic is disarmed by their ingenuousness: he is constrained to take them as they stand, with their warmth and colour, their sweet music and the occasional flashes of observed truth (like the March runnels of this poem) which redeem them from total unreality. The reward lies close ahead. For even on this theme of love, and still in the lyric mood, sanity soon triumphs. It heralds its victory with a laugh, and the air is lightened at once from the scented gloom of romanticism. "Sing no more songs of lovers dead,"

it cries, sound and strong enough now to make fun of itself.

We are no lovers, pale with dreams, Who languish by Lethean streams.

Upon our bodies warm day gleams; And love that tingles warm and red From sole of foot to crown of head Is lord of all pale lovers dead!

The volume from which that stanza is taken, _The Web of Life_, contains this poet's finest lyrics. From the standpoint of art nothing that he has done--and he is always a scrupulous artist--can surpa.s.s it; and the seeker whose single quest is beauty, need go no further down the list of Mr Gibson's works. There are some perfect things in the book: poems like "Song," "The Mushroom Gatherers" and "The Silence," in which the early grace and felicity survive; and where the lyric ecstasy is deepened by thought and winged by emotion. In one sense, therefore, although this volume is only midway through the period we are concerned with, it has attained finality. We ought to pause on it. We see that it culminates and closes the 'happy singing-flight' with which this career began. We realize, too, that it has absolute value, as poetry, by virtue of which many a good judge might rank it higher than its remarkable successors.

And, indeed, it is hard to break away from its spell. But when we judge _The Web of Life_ relatively, when we place it back in the proper niche amongst its kindred volumes, its importance seems suddenly to dwindle.

Beside the later books, it grows almost commonplace; we perceive its charm to be of the conventional kind of the whole order of regular English poetry to which it belongs. That is to say, though there is no sign that the work has been directly modelled upon the accredited poets of an earlier generation, it has characteristics which relate it to them and secure a place in the line of descent. There are pieces which remind us of Keats or the younger Tennyson. Here is a stanza from the poem called "Beauty" which might have been the inspiration of the whole book:

With her alone is immortality; For still men reverently Adore within her shrine: The sole immortal time has not cast down, She wields a power yet more divine Than when of old she rose from out the sea Of night, with starry crown.

Though all things perish, Beauty never dies.

Or there are poems in which pa.s.sion trembles under a fine restraint, as in "Friends":

Yet, are we friends: the G.o.ds have granted this.

Withholding wine, they brimmed for us the cup With cool, sweet waters, ever welling up, That we might drink, and, drinking, dream of bliss.

O G.o.ds, in your cold mercy, merciless, Heed lest time raze your thrones; and at the sign, The cool, sweet-welling waters turn to wine; The spark to day, and dearth to bounteousness.

And there is the group of cla.s.sical pieces at the end of the book, in which one regretfully pa.s.ses over the flexible blank-verse of "Helen in Rhodos" and "The Mariners," to choose a still more characteristic pa.s.sage from "A Lament for Helen":

Helen has fallen: she for whom Troy fell Has fallen, even as the fallen towers.

O wanderers in dim fields of asphodel, Who spilt for her the wine of earthly hours, With you for evermore By Lethe's darkling sh.o.r.e Your souls' desire shall dwell.

But we who sojourn yet in earthly ways; How shall we sing, now Helen lieth dead?

Break every lyre and burn the withered bays, For song's sweet solace is with Helen fled.

Let sorrow's silence be The only threnody O'er beauty's fallen head.

But this book, which is so good an example of poetic art in the older English manner, is not Mr Gibson's distinguis.h.i.+ng achievement. That came immediately afterwards, and was the outcome of the changed ideal which we have already noted. _The Web of Life_ may be said to belong to a definite school--though to be sure its relation to that school is in affinity rather than actual resemblance. The books which follow have no such relation: they stand alone and refuse to be cla.s.sified, either in subject or in form. And while the earlier work would seem to claim its author for the nineteenth century, in _Daily Bread_ he is new-born a twentieth-century poet of full stature.

The most striking evidence of the change is in the subject-matter.

_Daily Bread_, like _Fires_, is in three parts, and each of them contains six or seven pieces. There is thus a total of about forty poems, every one of which is created out of an episode from the lives of the working poor. Thus we find a young countryman, workless and dest.i.tute in a London garret, joined by his village sweetheart who refuses to leave him to starve alone. A farm labourer and his wife are rising wearily in the cold dawn to earn bread for the six sleeping children. There are miners and quarrymen in some of the many dangers of their calling, and their womenfolk enduring privation, suspense and bereavement with tireless courage. There is a stoker, dying from burns that he has sustained at the furnace, whose young wife retorts with pa.s.sionate bitterness to a hint of compensation:

Money ... woman ... money!

I want naught with their money.

I want my husband, And my children's father.

Let them pitch all their money in the furnace Where he ...

I wouldn't touch a penny; 'Twould burn my fingers.

Money ...

For him!

There are fishermen in peril of the sea; the printer, the watchman, the stonebreaker, the lighthousekeeper, the riveter, the sailor, the shopkeeper; there are school-children and factory girls; outcasts, tramps and gipsies; and a splendid company of women--mothers in childbirth and child-death, sisters, wives and sweethearts--more heroic in their obscure suffering and toil than the n.o.blest figure of ancient tragedy. With deliberate intention, therefore, the poet has set himself to represent contemporary industrial life: the strata at the base of our civilization. He has, as it were, won free at a leap from illusion, from a dominant idealism, and the jealous, tyrannical instinct for mere beauty. Life is the inspiration now, and truth the objective. The facts of the workers' lives are carefully observed, realized in all their significance and faithfully recorded. Sympathy and penetration go hand in hand. Personal faults and follies, superst.i.tions and vices, play their part in these little dramas, no less than the social wrongs under which the people labour. And the conception, in its balance and comprehensiveness, is really great; for while on the one hand there is an humiliating indictment of our civilization (implicit, of course, but none the less complete) on the other hand there is a proud vindication of the invincible human spirit.

Viewed steadily thus, by a poetic genius which has subdued the conventions of its art, such themes are shown to possess a latent but inalienable power to exalt the mind. They are therefore of the genuine stuff of art, needing only the formative touch of the poet to evoke beauty. And thus we find that although the normal process seems to have been reversed here: although the poet has sought truth first--in event, in character and in environment--beauty has been nevertheless attained; and of a type more vital and complete than that evoked by the statelier themes of tradition.

As might have been expected the new material and method have directly influenced form; and hence arises another distinction of these later works. The three parts of _Daily Bread_ and the play called _Womenkind_ are the extreme example; and their verse is probably unique in English poetry. It has been evolved out of the actual substance on which the poet is working; directly moulded by the nature of the life that he has chosen to present. The poems here are dramatic; and whether the element of dialogue or of narrative prevail, the language is always the living idiom of the persons who are speaking. It is nervous, supple, incisive: not, of course, with much variety or colour, since the vocabulary of such people could not be large and its colour might often be too crude for an artist's use. Selection has played its part, in words as in incidents; but although anything in the nature of dialect has been avoided, we are convinced as we read that this is indeed the speech of labouring folk. We can even recognize, in a light touch such as an occasional vocative, that they are the st.u.r.dy folk of the North country.

There is a dialogue called "On the Road" which ill.u.s.trates that, as well as more important things. Just under the surface of it lies the problem of unemployment: a young couple forced to go on tramp, with their infant child, because the husband has lost his job. That, however, inheres in the episode: it is not emphasized, nor even formulated, as a problem.

The appeal of the poem is in its fine delineation of character, the interplay of emotion, the rapid and telling dialogue--the pervasive humanitarian spirit; and, once again, an exact and full perception of the woman's point of view. Mr Gibson is a poet of his time in this as well--in his large comprehension and generous acknowledgment of the feminine part in the scheme of things. I do not quote to ill.u.s.trate that, because it is an almost constant factor in his work. But I give a pa.s.sage in which the Northern flavour is distinctly perceptible, in addition to qualities which are limited to no locality--the kindliness of the poor to each other and their native courtesy. An old stonebreaker has just pa.s.sed the starving couple by the roadside and, divining the extremity they are at, he turns back to them:

Fine morning, mate and mistress!

Might you be looking for a job, my lad?

Well ... there's a heap of stones to break, down yonder.

I was just on my way ...

But I am old; And, maybe, a bit idle; And you look young, And not afraid of work, Or I'm an ill judge of a workman's hands.

And when the job's done, lad, There'll be a s.h.i.+lling.

Nay, but there's naught to thank me for.

I'm old; And I've no wife and children, And so, don't need the s.h.i.+lling.