the number and quality of good short poems that have been written in
the last ten years, but that the prevalent tendency amongst the most
intelligent young men is to write poems, and short poems, cannot be
disputed. The paucity of good novels, and especially good novels by
young writers, is not entirely to be ascribed to the fact that during
the war many of those who might have written, and may write, good
novels were not in a position to write books at all. The deflation,
temporary perhaps, of the Novel has been proceeding for some years; the
absence of even tolerable new novelists has been too nearly complete
to be attributable to the peculiar war conditions. The novel of
"psychology," the novel of minute observation, the propagandist novel
are still produced in quantities; but the best literary brains are
not going into them. The drift towards poetry was noticeable before
the war; the war accelerated it. It is not a mere matter of change of
fashion, of a form being worked out and becoming tedious--though we
do, in fact, believe that the next revival of the novel will see a
new development of the novel. It is a matter of a change in attitude
towards life; a return on the broader emotions; a desire to acknowledge
and praise the things men love and find beautiful rather than to labour
at analysis and at speculation--not to mention sophistry. It is mostly
lyric poetry that men are writing; and it is one of the results of the
war, which has intensified our awareness of the old familiar things
around us, which were in a sense threatened for all, and the loss of
which was imminently before millions of individuals, that much of it is
poetry of the English landscape and especially of the English landscape
as a historic thing.
* * * * *
Long poetical works, large essays in the poetic drama, are complacently
manufactured by mediocre writers in most literary epochs. But it is
commonly remarked that in this age men of genius, and particularly
young men in whom genius is suspected, are mostly content with "short
pieces." It is rash to theorise about such things, as the wind has a
way of blowing where it listeth. No one can desire that men should
systematically force themselves to literary undertakings which are
uncongenial and towards which they feel no inner impulse. If a man
agree with that poet who--acutely conscious, it may be, of the nature
of his own talent--said that no good poem should or could be longer
than a couple of hundred lines, he will serve no useful purpose by
manufacturing large patchworks in cold blood. The presumption that any
long work is better than any short one by the same hand is made by
those (we are referring to intelligent men) who do not go to poetry
for the quintessence of poetry, the thing peculiar to it: it is from
those that we hear most insistently the demand for works on the large
scale, and the complaint that modern writers mostly insist (these are
the stock, if unjust and inaccurate, phrases) on writing sonnets to
their mistresses' eyebrows and carving peach-stones.
* * * * *
The fact remains that by the common consent of mankind lyrics
alone--even the lyrics of a Heine, a Herrick, or a Burns--will not
give a man rank with the greatest poetic artists. It may be that in
Poe's sense a work of thousands of lines, which maintains the highest
level of poetry, is impossible; that what Professor Quiller-Couch calls
"the Capital Difficulty of Verse" is insuperable: but this does not
invalidate the claim of the _Iliad_ or _Paradise Lost_ to be considered
greater than _Lycidas_ or the songs of Meleager. That they share in
some measure the defects of _The Purple Island_ and _Pharonnida_
does not prevent _The Fairy Queen_ and _Faust_ being the greatest of
their respective authors' works. From a poet as from another we want
something beyond "jewels five foot long," the loveliest impressions
of the most beautiful particular scenes, reflections of moods, verbal
chamber music, momentary vision, sensibility, song. By the common
consent of mankind the greatest things in the world are those works
which, while full of beautiful details and informed with the poetic
spirit, are moulded to a larger conception and attempt a larger picture
of the Universe, of the destiny of man, or of the moving life of
the world. We can, therefore, to some extent sympathise with those,
however broody and disgruntled, who, when they meet a volume of new and
exquisite lyrics, complain that the author has not written an epic or
a tragedy. Is it likely that the present imaginative revival, assuming
it to exist, will produce tragedies or epics, or works on the scale of
such?
* * * * *
To us it is difficult to believe that it will not: unless the nervous
unrest, the absence of leisure and of the inclination so to employ
leisure, are worse even than we suppose them to be. We see in much
of the work of the younger men a vigour, a passion, a catholicity of
interest, a zest for all life, that nothing but the most ambitious
tasks could satisfy. But when we ask of what nature such works are
likely to be we cannot answer. This one observation may be made: the
demand for long poems is commonly coupled with a demand for doctrine.
The poets are to add to scientific knowledge or to contribute new
notions towards political or moral development: they are to dogmatise,
to enlighten, to direct. Well, poets have done such things. But not
all poets have considered it their business to be religious teachers,
political liberators, or contentious intellectuals. The question: What
did Shakespeare stand for? is disputed to this day. They have read
many theories into him but got very few out of him. That he admired
fidelity, hated cruelty, believed in honour, and loved his country,
might be postulated of him; but the truths he stated there were old
truths, and he stated them only incidentally: he did not write his
plays with the primary object of illustrating principles, above all
principles invented by himself. Milton has been called the poet of
Puritanism, and Shelley the poet of Liberalism, but there is no "ism"
for Shakespeare, and a very, very small one for Keats. The very persons
who most insistently demand "ismatic" poetry are most contemptuous
of the didactic, informative and disputatious parts of the works of
the late Lord Tennyson, who began as a pure Keatsiam poet. _Non omnia
possumus omnes_: and, over and above this, it is most important to
remember that poets, like other men, are affected by the intellectual
conditions of their own times. If there is a clear tendency some of
the poets will be caught up in it. But the men are very rare who
generate their own spiritual revelations in some secluded corner of
an antipathetic world. Wordsworth and Shelley were what is called
"philosophic poets," but their age was the age of Rousseau and Godwin,
of the Libertarian movements that were part cause and part effect of
the French Revolution. If the human spirit is moving in one definite
direction at this moment we can only say that we do not know what that
is. A generation of thorough and often conscienceless scepticism,
followed by a breakdown of civilisation, has produced a mental and
moral chaos, a welter of doubt amid which numbers of the doubters make
random and mutually contradictory affirmations. Something concrete
will, if the race is to live, emerge; but we are not yet in a position
to see it. Nor are we, as mere holders up of the mirror of nature, in a
position as yet to see the vast events in our own material world. For
the great philosophic poem we have probably still many years to wait;
for the epic of the German war we may have a century to wait; for a
great drama we may arguably, owing to the peculiar conditions of the
theatre, have to wait for a generally accepted scale of values which
does not at present exist. But the imaginative temper is abroad, and
the next generation may be a great era in English literature.
LITERARY INTELLIGENCE
The announcement of a new and especially sumptuous edition of the
works of Mr. Thomas Hardy, to be known as the _Mellstock_, reminds us
that there are other authors to whom the same process might be applied
with equal benefit to themselves and to their readers. The collected
edition presents a writer's career in an orderly shape and in proper
perspective: it first permits a sober and probable judgment to be
passed on his achievement. We understand that the works of Mr. Joseph
Conrad will shortly be collected and issued as a whole; and this will
certainly reveal in a definite manner what is now vaguely felt as to
his greatness. We believe also that a definitive issue of the writings
of Mr. Max Beerbohm is in contemplation. It is to be hoped that it will
be found possible to include the full list of his drawings, in some
shape not too incompatible with the rest of the volumes. The _Collected
Poems_ of Mr. Walter de la Mare have been announced as in preparation;
and this will, we think, mark a definite stage in the career of a poet
whose real value is not yet fully appreciated. But there are authors,
concerning whom no announcement is made, who might be added to the list
with advantage. What might be called "selected-collected" editions
of Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton would very likely secure for these
writers a much higher place in contemporary literature than current
opinion is always ready to give them.
* * * * *
Mr. Chesterton will shortly start for the Holy Land. He intends to
write a book about it. The book may, and probably will, be his best,
for obvious reasons. It is commonly remarked even by those who think
him one of the greatest natural geniuses and, at bottom, one of the
wisest men of our time that he has never yet written the books of
which he is capable. His best books, such as _The Ballad of the White
Horse_ and _A Short History of England_, are, for all their fine
qualities, too slight to give his powers full room for display. As a
rule, though he cannot be accused of a lack of energy, he has seemed
never to put into a whole book that last effort which is necessary if
a work is to be completely satisfactory; he has bothered too little,
content to waste his imaginative largesse on hastily-written romances
and polemical articles. How good _The Flying Inn_ might have been had
a little more trouble been taken with it! In Palestine, away from
politics and journalism, with a new and romantic landscape around him,
in the home of our religion and on the fields of the Crusades, he may
provide the last answer to those who do not see an artist in him.
* * * * *
Mr. Percy Lubbock's edition of Henry James's letters will, it is
expected, be published in the spring. Mr. Edmund Gosse, with the
letters as a starting-point, has written his memories of James. These
will be published, in two instalments, in the LONDON MERCURY.
* * * * *
It is five years since James Elroy Flecker died and over three since
his _Collected Poems_ were published. Some of his other literary
remains will probably appear this year. There will be a collected
volume of prose studies and critical articles, and another volume
containing his play _Hassan_, which is awaiting production by Mr. Basil
Dean. Some of those who have read this play say that it is the best
tragedy since Shakespeare. The claim is not so large a one as it may
appear at first sight. There are Ford and Webster. There is _Venice
Preserved_ and there is _The Cenci_, which last is not a great acting
play, though it has magnificent scenes in it and contains sublime
poetry. He who reflects on the history of the English drama since the
age of Elizabeth and James I will be surprised at the paucity of plays
of permanent interest, other than comedies, that have been produced.
* * * * *
Monsieur Yves Delage has presented before the Académie des Sciences
a most interesting note by Monsieur V. Galippe on micro-organisms in
paper. It was, of course, known that paper-making materials of all
kinds abounded with these low forms of life, but it was generally
assumed that they were destroyed by the chemicals and heat employed
during the processes of manufacture. Monsieur Galippe's exhaustive
experiments prove that this is not the case, and, moreover, the
micro-organisms retain their vitality even in printing paper,
apparently irrespective of the lapse of time. Ovoid bacilli were found
both free in the mass and in the fibres of papers of all ages.
The method of examination employed was the following: The paper was
reduced to fragments and steeped in sterilised distilled water, being
frequently stirred. The paper was then dried and again steeped for
several hours in sterilised water saturated with ether. After once more
drying, cultures were taken from the paper.
Eighteenth-century paper thus treated gave positive results within
twenty-four hours, microscopic examination revealing large numbers of
rodlike organisms as well as ovoid diplo-bacilli. A leaf from a printed
book of 1496 gave a quantity of large micrococci, those from the
mass being endowed with movement, and those from the fibre remaining
immobile, though preserving the faculty of multiplication. Old Chinese
manuscripts and Egyptian papyri dating back ten centuries gave similar
results. It is to be noted that exposure to light and air does not
appear to have the slightest influence on these organisms.
Although the bibliophile is more particularly concerned in problems
relating to fox-marks and the ravages of the borer insect, nevertheless
these experiments are of great interest. These investigations, if
carried further, may well furnish some explanation of the processes
leading to the ageing of paper. From such a vantage-point the
technologist might possibly go forward to discover a palliative against
the decay of documents and printed paper. Pessimists would probably
consider this a doubtful blessing, but, on the whole, it would prove a
great boon.
POETRY
_A Glimpse from the Train_
At nine in the morning there passed a church,
At ten there passed me by the sea,
At twelve a town of smoke and smirch,
At two a forest of oak and birch,
And then, on a platform, she.
Her I could see, though she saw not me:
I queried, "Get out to her do I dare?"
But I kept my seat in my search for a plea,
And the wheels moved on. O could it but be
That I had alighted there!
THOMAS HARDY
_Tarantella_
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the spreading
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of the tar?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
(Under the dark of the vine verandah)?
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,
Do you remember an Inn?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
Who hadn't got a penny,
And who weren't paying any,
And the hammer at the doors and the Din?
And the Hip! Hop! Hap!
Of the clap
Of the hands to the twirl and the swirl
Of the girl gone chancing,
Glancing,
Dancing,
Backing and advancing,
Snapping of the clapper to the spin
Out and in----
And the Ting, Tong, Tang of the Guitar!
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
Never more;
Miranda,
Never more.
Only the high peaks hoar:
And Aragon a torrent at the door.
No sound
In the walls of the Halls where falls
The tread
Of the feet of the dead to the ground.
No sound:
Only the boom
Of the far Waterfall like Doom.
H. BELLOC
_Lines Written in Gallipoli_[8]
[8] _The author of this poem, a Fellow of All Souls, went
out to Gallipoli in the Royal Naval Division with
Charles Lister, Rupert Brooke, and Denis Browne. He
was afterwards killed in France._
I saw a man this morning
Who did not wish to die,
I ask and cannot answer
If otherwise wish I.
Fair broke the day this morning
Against the Dardanelles,
The breeze blew soft, the morn's cheeks
Were cold as cold sea shells.
But other shells are waiting
Across the Ægean sea,
Shrapnel and high explosive,
Shells and hells for me.
O Hell of ships and cities,
Hell of men like me,
Fatal second Helen,
Why must I follow thee?
Achilles came to Troyland,
And I to Chersonese:
He turned from wrath to battle,
And I from three days' peace.
Was it so hard, Achilles,
So very hard to die?
Thou knowest and I know not,
So much the happier I.
I will go back this morning
From Imbros over the sea.
Stand in the trench, Achilles,
Flame-capped, and shout for me.
PATRICK SHAW-STEWART
_November_
As I walk the misty hill
All is languid, fogged and still;
Not a note of any bird,
Nor any motion's hint is heard
Save from soaking thickets round
Trickle or water's rushing sound,
And from ghostly trees the drip
Of runnel dews or whispering slip
Of leaves, which in a body launch
Listlessly from the stagnant branch,
To strew the marl, already strown
With litter sodden as its own.
A rheum, like blight, hangs on the briers,
And from the clammy ground suspires
A sweet frail sick autumnal scent
Of stale frost furring weeds long spent,
And wafted on, like one who sleeps,
A feeble vapour hangs or creeps,
Exhaling on the fungus mould
A breath of age, fatigue and cold.
Oozed from the bracken's desolate track,
By dark rains havocked and drenched black,
A fog about the coppice drifts
Or slowly thickens up and lifts
Into the moist despondent air.
Mist, grief, and stillness everywhere....
And in me, too, there is no sound
Save welling as of tears profound
Where in me cloud, grief, stillness reign,
And an intolerable pain
Begins.
Rolled on as in a flood there come
Memories of childhood, boyhood, home
And that which, sudden, pangs me most,
Thought of the first-beloved, long lost,
Too easy lost! My cold lips frame
Tremulously the familiar name,
Unheard of her upon my breath:
"Elizabeth! Elizabeth!"
No voice answers on the hill.
All is shrouded, sad and still ...
Stillness, fogged brakes and fog on high.
Only in me the waters cry
Who mourn the hours now slipped for ever.
Hours of boding, joy and fever,
When we loved, by chance beguiled,
I a boy and you a child;
Child! But with an angel's air.
Astonished, eager, unaware,
Or elfin, wandering with grace
Foreign to any fireside race;
And with a gaiety unknown
In the light feet and hair back-blown;
And with a sadness yet more strange
In meagre cheeks which knew to change
Or faint or fired more swift than sight,
And forlorn hands and lips pressed white,
And fragile voice and head downcast
To hide tears, lifted at the last
To speed with one pale smile the wise
Glance of the grey immortal eyes.
How strange it was that we should dare
Compound a miracle so rare
As, twixt this pace and Time's next pace,
Each to discern th' elected's face;
Yet stranger that the high sweet fire,
In hearts nigh foreign to desire,
Could burn, sigh, weep and burn again,
As oh, it never has since then!
Most strange of all that we so young
Dared learn but would not speak love's tongue,
Love pledged but in the reveries
Of our sad and dreaming eyes....
Now upon such journey bound me,
Grief, disquiet and stillness round me,
As bids me where I cannot tell,
Turn I and sigh, unseen, farewell:
Breathe the name as soft as mist,
Lips, which nor kissed her nor were kissed,
And again--a sigh, a death--
"Elizabeth! Elizabeth!"
No voice answers, but the mist
Glows for a moment amethyst
Ere the hid sun dissolves away,
And dimness, growing dimmer gray,
Hides all ... until I nothing see
But the blind walls enclosing me,
And no sound and no motion hear
But the vague water throbbing near,
Sole voice upon the darkening hill,
Where all is blank and dead and still.
ROBERT NICHOLS
_Draft for "A First and Last Song"_
Deep in the harvest of the night the sickle of the moon is
sweeping,
We have sowed, O my desire, now is the time for reaping!
Turn not your face, O heart, give not your love
To aught of heaven or the stars above,
These dauntless robbers purloined long ago
The crown of Kaous, the belt of Kai Khosro;
And what have we to search for in the skies
Who have the blue pavilion of your eyes?
Or what need of the gold gates flung apart
Having the crimson portals of your heart?
... So shall it be when some day by and by
You mount the glitt'ring ramparts of the sky,
Loud to the wheeling heavens you shall boast:
"O sun and moon and Pleiads at the most
You're worth a wisp of barley or of straw
Unseen, unheeded, on Love's threshing floor:
And God the praises that your angels sing
Are all celestial but can never bring
The simple wonder of a mortal's doubt
Upon those faces upturned and devout
That every blessing of Your work recall,
Nor ever need to ask: What means it all?"
Be peace! The hour is passing. Here or there
The curtain swings to lay life's secret bare.
Ah, when the dawn of ending breaks around,
Be it that in Love's garden I am found.
To immortality I leave but this:
Your head reclining in a swoon of bliss,
Your hand uplifted to pour out the wine,
The minstrels singing this one song of mine.
COLERIDGE KENNARD
_A Country Mood_
Take now a country mood,
Resolve, distil it:
Nine Acre swaying alive,
June flowers that fill it,
Spicy sweetbriar bush,
The uneasy wren
Fluttering from ash to birch
And back again,
Milkwort on its low stem,
Spread hawthorn-tree,
Sunlight patching the wood,
A hive-bound bee,
Girls riding nim-nim-nim.
Ladies, trot-trot,
Gentlemen hard at gallop,
Shouting, steam-hot.
Now over the rough turf
Bridles go jingle,
And there's a well-loved pool
By Fox's Dingle
Where Sweetheart, my brown mare,
Old Glory's daughter,
May loll her leathern tongue
In snow-cool water.
ROBERT GRAVES
_Scirocco_
Out of that high pavilion
Where the sick, wind-harassed sun
In the whiteness of the day
Ghostly shone and stole away--
Parchèd with the utter thirst
Of unnumbered Libyan sands,
Thou, cloud-gathering spirit, burst
Out of arid Africa
To the tideless sea, and smote
On our pale, moon-coolèd lands
The hot breath of a lion's throat.
And that furnace-heated breath
Blew into my placid dreams
The heart of fire from whence it came:
Haunt of beauty and of death
Where the forest breaks in flame
Of flaunting blossom, where the flood
Of life pulses hot and stark,
Where a wing'd death breeds in mud
And tumult of tree-shadowed streams--
Black waters, desolately hurled
Through the uttermost, lost, dark,
Secret places of the world.
There, O swift and terrible
Being, wast thou born; and thence,
Like a demon loosed from hell,
Stripped with rending wings the dense
Echoing forests, till their bowed
Plumes of trees like tattered cloud
Were toss'd and torn, and cried aloud
As the wood were rack'd with pain:
Thence thou freed'st thy wings, and soon
From the moaning, stricken plain
In whorlèd eagle-soarings rose
To melt the sun-defeating snows
Of the Mountains of the Moon,
To dull their glaciers with fierce breath,
To slip the avalanches' rein,
To set the laughing torrents free
On the tented desert beneath,
Where men of thirst must wither and die
While the vultures stare in the sun's eye;
Where slowly sifting sands are strown
On broken cities, whose bleaching bones
Whiten in moonlight stone on stone
Over their pitiful dust thy blast
Passed in columns of whirling sand,
Leapt the desert and swept the strand
Of the cool and quiet sea,
Gathering mighty shapes, and proud
Phantoms of monstrous, wave-born cloud,
And northward drove this panoply
Till the sky seemed charging on the land....
Yet, in that plumèd helm, the most
Of thy hot power was cooled or lost,
So that it came to me at length,
Faint and tepid and shorn of strength,
To shiver an olive-grove that heaves
A myriad moonlight-coloured leaves,
And in the stone-pine's dome set free
A murmur of the middle sea:
A puff of warm air in the night
So spent by its impetuous flight
It scarce invades my pillar'd closes,--
To waft their fragrance from the sweet
Buds of my lemon-coloured roses
Or strew blown petals at my feet:
To kiss my cheek with a warm sigh
And in the tired darkness die.
FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG
Anacapri
THE CREATURES
By WALTER DE LA MARE
It was the ebbing light of evening that recalled me out of my story
to a consciousness of my whereabouts. I dropped my little red book to
my knee and glanced out of the narrow and begrimed oblong window. We
were skirting the eastern coast of cliffs, to the very edge of which
a ploughman, stumbling along behind his two great horses, was driving
the last of his dark furrows. In a cleft far down between the rocks a
cold and idle sea was soundlessly laying its frigid garlands of foam. I
stared over the flat stretch of waters, then turned my head, and looked
with a kind of suddenness into the face of my one fellow-traveller.