I have sat here happy in the gardens,
Watching the still pool and the reeds
And the dark clouds
Which the wind of the upper air
Tore like the green leafy boughs
Of the divers-hued trees of late summer;
But though I greatly delight
In these and the water lilies,
That which sets me nighest to weeping
Is the rose and white colour of the smooth flag-stones,
And the pale yellow grasses
Among them.
I think that is one of the best poems which Mr. Aldington has done. “The
rose and white colour of the smooth flag-stones” almost sets me weeping
too, so desolate are they, with the yellow grasses growing up between
them.
I suppose the thing which is so satisfying in Mr. Aldington’s work is
the intense feeling which underlies the astringent utterance. With all
his stern, uncompromising technique (for Mr. Aldington is a remarkable
technician) goes a passionate violence of feeling. The Imagists are
constantly accused of being inhuman, mere intellectuals. How strange it
is that the feeling which merely turns white and makes no movement
should go unperceived, while hysterical screams and lamentations, over
in a moment, pass for the outpourings of true passion! What we have
outgrown on the stage still holds in poetry, it seems.
Feeling there surely is in _Childhood_, printed in _Some Imagist Poets_.
Yet, somehow, the poem is not as good as it ought to be. I suspect that
Mr. Aldington has not yet quite mastered the technique of the long poem.
Feeling is there, and we get the dullness of the little town perfectly,
and the stale, salt smell of the harbour; and there are excellent
descriptions—the public park, and the wonderful box in the attic—but the
poem as a whole does not “get over.” Necessarily more discursive than
the shorter poems, it has not enough command of the dramatic to succeed.
Having taught himself for years to say things in the fewest possible
words, the length of this poem has weakened the poet’s method. He must
study the requirements of the longer poem a little more before he will
be quite at home in it. Such as it is, _Childhood_ is interesting as
showing the broadening of its author’s mind and interests. He no longer
sees with the eyes of other centuries; he sees things about him, and as
they are.
Here is a perfectly modern picture: