by the sterile spirit of derision. Its charm is greatest when the
creative energy of it is outpoured through what is called personality.
Never was a poet more lavish in the giving of himself, yielding up a
rich and complex individuality with engaging candour. And poems will be
found in which all its qualities are blended in a soft and intricate
harmony. Passion is subdued to tenderness: imagination stoops to
fantasy: thought, in so far as it is not content merely to shape the
form of the work, is bent upon ideas that are wistful, or sad or ironic.
Humour, standing aloof and quietly chuckling, will play mischievous
pranks with people and things. A satirical imp will dart into a line and
out again before you realize that he is there; and all the time a
clear-eyed, observing spirit will be watching and taking note with
careful accuracy.
Of such is "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester," in which the poet is
longing for his home in Cambridgeshire as he sits outside a café in
Berlin. The poem is therefore a cry of homesickness, a modern "Oh, to be
in England!" But there is much more in it than that; it is not merely a
wail of emotion. The lyrical reverie which recalls all the sweet natural
beauty that he is aching to return to is closely woven with other
strands. So that one may catch half a dozen incidental impressions which
pique the mind with contrasting effects and yet contribute to the
prevailing sense of intolerable desire for home. Thus, when the poet has
swung off into a sunny dream of the old house and garden, the watching
sense of fact suddenly jogs him into consciousness that he is not there
at all, but in a very different place. And that wakens the satiric
spirit, so that an amusing interlude follows, summing up by implication
much of the contrast between the English and German minds:
... _there_ the dews
Are soft beneath a morn of gold.
Here tulips bloom as they are told;
Unkempt about those hedges blows
An English unofficial rose;
And there the unregulated sun
Slopes down to rest when day is done,
And wakes a vague unpunctual star,
A slippered Hesper; and there are
Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton
Where _das Betreten's_ not _verboten_.
.....
=eithe genoimên= ... would I were
In Grantchester, in Grantchester!--
He slips back again into the softer mood of memory, not of the immediate
home scenes only, but of their associations, historical and academic.
Always, however, that keen helmsman steers to the windward of
sentimentality: better risk rough weather, it seems to say, than
shipwreck on some lotus-island. And every time the boat would appear to
be making fairly for an exquisite idyllic haven, she is headed into the
breeze again. But though she gets a buffeting, and even threatens to
capsize at one moment in boisterous jest, she comes serenely into port
at last.
Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand
Still guardians of that holy land?
The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,
The yet unacademic stream?
Is dawn a secret shy and cold
Anadyomene, silver-gold?
And sunset still a golden sea
From Haslingfield to Madingley?
And after, ere the night is born,
Do hares come out about the corn?
Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain?... oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?
_William H. Davies_
I should think that the work of Mr Davies is the nearest approach that
the poetic genius could make to absolute simplicity. It is a wonderful
thing, too, in its independence, its almost complete isolation from
literary tradition and influence. People talk of Herrick in connexion
with this poet; and if they mean no more than to wonder at a resemblance
which is a marvellous accident, one would run to join them in their
happy amazement. But there is no evidence of direct influence, any more
than by another token we could associate his realism with that of
Crabbe. No, this is verse which has "growed," autochthonic if poetry
ever were, unliterary, and spontaneous in the many senses of that word.
From that one fact alone, these seven small volumes of verse are a
singular phenomenon. But they teem with interest of other kinds too.
First and foremost there is, of course, the preciousness of many of the
pieces they contain, as pure poetry, undimmed by any other consideration
whatsoever. That applies to a fair proportion of this work; and it is a
delightsomeness which, from its very independence of time and
circumstance, one looks quite soberly to last the centuries through; and
if it lapse at all from favour, to be rediscovered two or three hundred
years hence as we have rediscovered the poets of the seventeenth
century.
It has, however, inherent interest apart from this æsthetic joy,
something which catches and holds the mind, startling it with an
apparent paradox. For this poetry, with its solitariness and absence of
any affiliation ancient or modern, with its bird-note bubbling into song
at some sweet impulse and seemingly careless of everything but the
impelling rapture, is at the same time one of the grimmest pages out of
contemporary life. In saying that, one pauses for a moment sternly to
interrogate one's own impression. How much of this apparent paradox is
due to knowledge derived from the author's astounding autobiography?
Turn painfully back for a moment to the thoughts and feelings aroused by
that book: recall the rage against the stupidity of life which brings
genius to birth so carelessly, endowing it with appetites too strong for
the will to tame and senses too acute for the mind to leash until the
soul had been buffeted and the body maimed. And admit at once that such
a tale, all the more for its quiet veracity, could not fail to influence
one's attitude to this poetry. No doubt it is that which gives
assurance, certainty, the proof of actual data, to the human record
adumbrated in the poems. But the record is no less present _in_ the
poems. It often exists, implicit or explicit, in that part of the verse
which sings because it must and for sheer love of itself. And in that
other part of the work where the lyric note is not so clear: in the
narrative poems and queer character-studies and little dramatic pieces,
the record lives vivid and almost complete. Perhaps it is the nature of
the record itself which denies full inspiration to those pieces: perhaps
Mr Davies' lyric gift cannot find its most fitting expression in themes
so grim: in any case it is clear that these personal pieces are not
equal to the lighter songs.
Now if one's conscience were supple enough to accept those lighter songs
as Mr Davies' complete work: if we could conveniently forget the
autobiography, and when visualizing his output, call up some charming
collected edition of the poems with the unsatisfactory ones carefully
deleted, we could go on with our study easily and gaily. We might pause
a moment to marvel at this 'isolated phenomenon': we might even remark
upon his detachment, not only from literature, but almost as completely
from the ordinary concerns of life. That done, however, we should at
once take a header into the delicious refreshment of the lyrics. Such a
study would be very fascinating; and from the standpoint of Art as Art,
it might not be inadequate. But it would totally lack significance. Even
from the point of view of pure poetry, the loss would be profound--not
to realize that behind the blithest of these trills of song is a
background as stormy as any winter sky behind a robin on a bare bough.
There is this one, for example, from the volume called _Foliage_:
If I were gusty April now,
How I would blow at laughing Rose;
I'd make her ribbons slip their knots,
And all her hair come loose.
If I were merry April now,
How I would pelt her cheeks with showers;
I'd make carnations rich and warm,
Of her vermilion flowers.
Since she will laugh in April's face,
No matter how he rains or blows--
Then O that I wild April were,
To play with laughing Rose.
The gaiety of that, considered simply in its lightness of heart, its
verbal and metrical felicity, is a delightful thing. And it recurs so
frequently as to make Mr Davies quite the jolliest of modern poets. So
if we are content to stop there, if we are not teased by an instinct to
relate things, and see all round them, we may make holiday pleasantly
enough with this part of the poet's work. The method is not really
satisfying, however, and the inclusion of the more personal pieces adds
a deeper value to the study. Not merely because the facts of a poet's
life are interesting in themselves, but because here especially they are
illuminating, explanatory, suggestive: connecting and unifying the
philosophical interest of the work, and supplying a background,
curiously impressive, for its art.
For that reason one would refuse to pass over in silence Mr Davies'
first book of poems, _The Soul's Destroyer_, published in 1907. Not that
it is perfect poetry: indeed, I doubt whether one really satisfying
piece could be chosen from the whole fourteen. But it has deep human
interest. The book is slim, sombre, almost insignificant in its paper
wrappers. But its looks belie it. It is, in fact, nothing less than a
flame of courage, a shining triumph of the spirit of humanity. Mr Shaw
has made play with the facts of this poet's life, partly because 'it is
his nature so to do,' and partly, one suspects, to hide a deeper
feeling. But play as you will with the willing vagabondage, the happy
irresponsibility, the weakness and excess and error of a wild youth, you
will only film the surface of the tragedy. Underneath will remain those
sullen questions--what is life about, what are our systems and our laws
about, that a human creature and one with the miraculous spark of genius
in him, is chased hungry and homeless up and down his own country,
tossed from continent to continent and thrown up at last, broken and all
but helpless, to be persecuted by some contemptible agent of charity and
to wander from one crowded lodging-house to another, seeking vainly for
a quiet corner in which to make his songs. The verses in _The Soul's
Destroyer_ were written under those conditions; and by virtue of that it
would seem that the drab little volume attains to spiritual
magnificence.
The themes in this book and those of _New Poems_, published in the same
year, are of that personal kind of which we have already spoken. But you
will be quite wrong if you suppose that they are therefore gloomy. On
the contrary, though there is an occasional didactic piece, like that
which gives its title to the first volume, there is more often a vein of
humour. Thus we have the astonishing catalogue of lodging-house humanity
in "Saints and Lodgers" with the satirical flavour of its invocation:
Ye saints, that sing in rooms above,
Do ye want souls to consecrate?
And there is "The Jolly Tramp," a scrap of autobiography, perhaps the
least bit coloured:
I am a jolly tramp: I whine to you,
Then whistles till I meet another fool.
I call the labourer sir, the boy young man,
The maid young lady, and the mother I
Will flatter through the youngest child that walks.
In "Wondering Brown" there is surely something unique in poetry: not
alone in theme, and the extraordinary set of circumstances which enabled
such a bit of life to be observed, by a poet, from the inside; but in
the rare quality of it, its sympathetic satire, the genial incisiveness
of its criticism of life:
There came a man to sell his shirt,
A drunken man, in life low down;
When Riley, who was sitting near,
Made use of these strange words to Brown.
"Yon fallen man, that's just gone past,
I knew in better days than these;
Three shillings he could make a day,
As an adept at picking peas."
.....
"You'd scarcely credit it, I knew
A man in this same house, low down,
Who owns a fish-shop now--believe
Me, or believe me not," said Brown.
"He was a civil sort of cove,
But did queer things, for one low down:
Oft have I watched him clean his teeth--
As true as Heaven's above!" cried Brown.
This humorous quality is the most marked form of an attitude of
detachment which may be observed in most of the personal pieces. So
complete is this detachment sometimes, as in "Strange People" or "Scotty
Bill" or "Facts," that one is tempted to a heresy. Is it possible, in
view of this lightness of touch, this untroubled pace and coolness of
word and phrase, that the poet did not see the implications of what he
was recording, or seeing them, was not greatly moved by them? Now there
are certain passages which prove that that doubt is a heresy: that the
poet did perceive and feel the complete significance of the facts he was
handling. Otherwise, of course, he were no poet. There is evidence of
this in such a poem as "A Blind Child," from which I quote a couple of
stanzas:
We're in the garden, where are bees
And flowers, and birds, and butterflies;
There is one greedy fledgling cries
For all the food his parent sees!
I see them all: flowers of all kind,
The sheep and cattle on the leas;
The houses up the hills, and trees--
But I am dumb, for she is blind.
There is, too, the last stanza of "Facts," a narrative piece which
relates the infamous treatment by workhouse officials of an old and
dying man:
Since Jesus came with mercy and love,
'Tis nineteen hundred years and five:
They made that dying man break stones,
In faith that Christ is still alive.
A hideous scrap of notoriety for A.D. 1905!--and proof enough to
convince us of our author's humanity. At the same time, however, it is
the fact that there is little sign of intense emotion in this work. One
comes near it, perhaps, in a passage in "The Forsaken Dead," where the
poet is musing in the burial-place of a deserted settlement, and breaks
into wrath at the tyranny which drove the people out:
Had they no dreamer who might have remained
To sing for them these desolated scenes?
One who might on a starvèd body take
Strong flights beyond the fiery larks in song,
With awful music, passionate with hate?
But that is a rare example. Deep emotion is not a feature of Mr Davies'
poetry: neither in the poems of life, which might be supposed to awaken
it directly; nor, stranger still, in the infrequent love poems; nor in
the lyrics of nature. It would be interesting to speculate on this, if
there were any use in it--whether it is after all just a sign of
excessive feeling, masked by restraint; whether it may be in some way a
reaction from a life of too much sensation; or whether it simply means
that emotion is nicely balanced by objective power. Perhaps an analysis
would determine the question in the direction of a balance of power; but
the fact remains that though sensibility has a wide range, though it is
quick, acute and tender, it is not intense.
It would be unfair, however, to suggest that these earlier volumes are
only interesting on the personal side. The pure lyric note is uttered
first here: once or twice in a small perfect song, as "The Likeness" and
"Parted"; but oftener in a snatch or a broken trill, as
He who loves Nature truly, hath
His wealth in her kind hands; and it
Is in safe trust until his death,
Increasing as he uses it.
Or a passage from "Music," invoking the memory of childhood:
O happy days of childhood, when
We taught shy Echo in the glen
Words she had never used before--
Ere Age lost heart to summon her.
Life's river, with its early rush,
Falls into a mysterious hush
When nearing the eternal sea:
Yet we would not forgetful be,
In these deep, silent days so wise,
Of shallows making mighty noise
When we were young, when we were gay,
And never thought Death lived--that day.
Or a fragment from "The Calm," when the poet has been thinking of his
"tempestuous past," and contrasts it with his present well-being, and
the country joys which he fears will be snatched away again:
But are these pleasant days to keep?
Where shall I be when Summer comes?
When, with a bee's mouth closed, she hums
Sounds not to wake, but soft and deep,
To make her pretty charges sleep?
The love of Nature which supplies the theme here is a characteristic
that persists throughout the subsequent volumes. It recurs more and more
frequently, until the autobiographical element is almost eliminated; and
just as it is the main motive of the later poetry, so it is its happiest
inspiration. It is rather a pagan feeling, taking great joy in the
beauty of the material world, revelling in the impressions of sight and
scent, sound and taste and touch. It is humane enough to embrace the
whole world of animal life; but it seeks no spirit behind the phenomena
of Nature, and cares precisely nothing about its more scientific aspect.
Its gay lightsomeness is a charming thing to watch, an amazing thing to
think about:
For Lord, how merry now am I!
Tickling with straw the butterfly,
Where she doth in her clean, white dress,
Sit on a green leaf, motionless,
To hear Bees hum away the hours.
Or again, from "Leisure," in _Songs of Joy_:
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
.....
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
.....
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
And a "Greeting," from the volume called _Foliage_:
Good morning, Life--and all
Things glad and beautiful.
My pockets nothing hold,
But he that owns the gold,
The Sun, is my great friend--
His spending has no end.
Hail to the morning sky,
Which bright clouds measure high;
Hail to you birds whose throats
Would number leaves by notes;
Hail to you shady bowers,
And you green fields of flowers.
The poet does not claim to be learned in nature lore: indeed he declares
in one place that he does not know 'the barley from the oats.' But he
has a gift of fancy which often plays about his observation with
delightful effect. One could hardly call it by so big a name as
imagination: that suggests a height and power of vision which this work
does not possess, and which one would not look for in this type of
genius. It is a lighter quality, occasionally childlike in its naïveté,
fantastical, graceful, even quaint. It is seen in simile sometimes, as
this from _The Soul's Destroyer_, describing the sky:
It was a day of rest in heaven, which seemed
A blue grass field thick dotted with white tents
Which Life slept late in, though 'twere holiday.
Or this account of the origin of the Kingfisher, from "Farewell to
Poesy":
It was the Rainbow gave thee birth,
And left thee all her lovely hues;
And, as her mother's name was Tears,
So runs it in thy blood to choose
For haunts the lonely pools, and keep
In company with trees that weep.
Or a fancy about the sound of rain from _Nature Poems_:
I hear leaves drinking rain;
I hear rich leaves on top
Giving the poor beneath
Drop after drop;
'Tis a sweet noise to hear
Those green leaves drinking near.
It plays an important part too in the poems upon other favourite themes,
on a woman's hair, on her voice, on music. Such are "Sweet Music" and "A
Maiden and her Hair" in _Nature Poems_: as well as "The Flood," from
which I quote. It will be found in _Songs of Joy_:
I thought my true love slept;
Behind her chair I crept
And pulled out a long pin;
The golden flood came out,
She shook it all about,
With both our faces in.
Ah! little wren I know
Your mossy, small nest now
A windy, cold place is:
No eye can see my face,
Howe'er it watch the place
Where I half drown in bliss.
A development of technique in the later work lends ease and precision to
the poet's use of his instrument. Little faults of metre and of rhyme
are corrected: banalities of phrase and crudities of thought almost
disappear, so that the verse acquires a new grace. It gains, too, from a
wider variety of form: for the verses may be as short as one foot, or as
long as five: and there may be stanzas of only two lines, or anything up
to eight. There are even pieces written in the closed couplet and in
blank verse. But Mr Davies is by no means an innovator in his art, as so
many of his contemporaries are. The variety we have noted is, after all,
only a modification of traditional form and not a departure from it; and
always as its basis, the almost constant unit is the iamb. Very rarely
is any other measure adopted; and so well does the iamb suit the simple
and direct nature of this work in thought, word and phrase, that one
would not often alter it. One of the perfect examples of its fitness is
in "The Battle," from _Nature Poems_:
There was a battle in her face,
Between a Lily and a Rose:
My Love would have the Lily win
And I the Lily lose.
I saw with joy that strife, first one,
And then the other uppermost;
Until the Rose roused all its blood,
And then the Lily lost.
When she's alone, the Lily rules,
By her consent, without mistake:
But when I come that red Rose leaps
To battle for my sake.
Occasionally, however, and especially in the longer poems, the regular
recurrence of the iamb is a little monotonous. Then a wish just peeps
out that Mr Davies were more venturous: that he had some slight
experimental turn, or that he did not stand quite so far aloof from the
influences which, within his sight and hearing, are shaping a new kind
of poetic expression. But the regret may be put aside. The fresh forms
which those others are evolving are valid for them--for life as they
conceive it--for the wider range and the more complex nature of the
experience out of which they are distilling the poetic essence. For him,
however, the lyric mood burns clear and untroubled, kindling directly to
the beauty of simple and common things. And instinctively he seeks to
embody it in cadence and measure which are sweetly familiar. When some
exhilarating touch quickens and lightens his verse with a more tripping
measure, as in "The Laughers" (from _Nature Poems_) its gay charm is
irresistible.
Mary and Maud have met at the door,
Oh, now for a din; I told you so:
They're laughing at once with sweet, round mouths,
Laughing for what? does anyone know?
Is it known to the bird in the cage,
That shrieketh for joy his high top notes,
After a silence so long and grave--
What started at once those two sweet throats?
Is it known to the Wind that takes
Advantage at once and comes right in?
Is it known to the cock in the yard,
That crows--the cause of that merry din?
Is it known to the babe that he shouts?
Is it known to the old, purring cat?
Is it known to the dog, that he barks
For joy--what Mary and Maud laugh at?
Is it known to themselves? It is not,
But beware of their great shining eyes;
For Mary and Maud will soon, I swear,
Find cause to make far merrier cries.
It is hard to close even a slight study of Mr Davies' work without
another glance at his originality. One hesitates to use that word,
strained and tortured as it often is to express a dozen different
meanings. It might be applied, in one sense or another, to nearly all
our contemporary poets, with whom it seems to be an article of artistic
faith to avoid like the plague any sign of being derivative. So,
although their minds may be steeped in older poetry, they deliberately
turn away from its influence, seeking inspiration in life itself. There
is no doubt that they are building up a new kind of poetry, with values
that sound strange perhaps to the unfamiliar ear, but which bid fair to
enlarge the field for the poetic genius and enrich it permanently. But
the crux of the question for us at this moment is the fact of effort,
the deliberate endeavour which is made by those poets to escape from
tradition. No sign of such an effort is visible in Mr Davies' work, and
yet it is the most original of them all--the newest, freshest, and most
spontaneous.
The reason lies, of course, in the qualities we have already noted. It
is not entirely an external matter, as the influence of his career might
lead us to believe. That has naturally played its part, making the
substance of some of his verse almost unique; and, more important still,
guarding him from bookishness and leaving his mind free to receive and
convey impressions at first hand. From this come the bracing freshness
of his poetry, its naïveté of language, its apparent artlessness and
unconscious charm. But the root of the matter lies deeper than that,
mainly I think in the sincerity and simplicity which are the chief
qualities of his genius. Both qualities are fundamental and constant,
vitalizing the work and having a visible influence upon its form. For,
on the one hand, we see that simplicity reflected not only in the
thought, and themes, but in the language and the technique of this
poetry; while on the other hand there is a loyalty which is absolutely
faithful to its own experience and the laws of its own nature.
_Walter De La Mare_