visualize, to make almost tangible, a poetic conception. So consummate
is this power that it dominates other qualities and might almost cheat
us into thinking that they did not exist. Thus we might not suspect this
transparent verse of reflective depths; and of course, it is not
intellectual poetry, specifically so-called. Yet reflection is implied
everywhere; and occasionally it is a pure abstraction which gets itself
embodied. The poem called "Time" illustrates this. In its opening
line--"Time, you old Gipsy-man"--the idea swings into life in a figure
which gains energy with every line. One positively sees this restless
old man who has driven his caravan from end to end of the world and who
cannot be persuaded to stay for bribe or entreaty. And it would be
possible quite to forget the underlying thought did not the gravity of
it peep between the incisive strokes of the third stanza.
Last week in Babylon,
Last night in Rome,
Morning, and in the crush
Under Paul's dome;
Under Paul's dial
You tighten your rein--
Only a moment,
And off once again;
Off to some city
Now blind in the womb,
Off to another
Ere that's in the tomb.
So it is too with this poet's imagination. It deals perpetually with
concrete imagery--as for instance when it pictures Eve:
Picking a dish of sweet
Berries and plums to eat,
or presents her, when the serpent is softly calling her name, as
Wondering, listening,
Listening, wondering,
Eve with a berry
Half-way to her lips.
Moreover, the poet does not in the least mind winging his fancy in a
homely phrase. He is not afraid of an idiomatic touch, nor of pithy,
vigorous words. His conception is vivid enough to bear rigorous
treatment; and in the same poem, "Eve," the serpent is found plotting
the fall of humanity in these terms:
Now to get even and
Humble proud heaven and
Now was the moment or
Never at all.
And when his wiles have been successful, Eve's feathered comrades,
Titmouse and Jenny Wren, make an indignant 'clatter':
How the birds rated him,
How they all hated him!
How they all pitied
Poor motherless Eve!
That is the nearest approach to fantasy which will be found in this
poetry. There is nothing subtle or whimsical here: no half-lights or
neutral tones or hints of meaning. This genius cannot fulfil itself in
an 'airy nothing.' The imaginative power is too firmly controlled by a
sense of fact to admit the bizarre and incredible; yet there can be no
doubt of its creative force when one turns for a moment to either of the
prize poems, and particularly to "The Bull." It would be hard to name a
finer specimen of verse in which imagination, high and sustained, is
seen to be operating through a purely sensuous medium. That is to say,
moving in a region of fact, accurately observing and recording the
phenomena of a real world, there is yet achieved an imaginative creation
of great power--a bit of all-but-perfect art. Quotation will not serve
to illustrate this, since the poem is an organic whole and a principal
element of its perfection is its unity. One could, however, demonstrate
over again from almost any line the poet's instinct for reality: as for
example in the truth, quiet but unflinching, of his presentment of the
cruelty inherent in his theme. The passages are almost too painful taken
out of their context; and there may be some for whom they will rob the
poem of complete beauty. But the same instinct may be observed
visualizing, in strong light and rich colour and incisive movement, the
teeming tropical world in which the old bull stands, sick, unkinged and
left to die.
Cranes and gaudy parrots go
Up and down the burning sky;
Tree-top cats purr drowsily
In the dim-day green below;
And troops of monkeys, nutting, some,
All disputing, go and come;
.....
And a dotted serpent curled
Round and round and round a tree,
Yellowing its greenery,
Keeps a watch on all the world,
All the world and this old bull
In the forest beautiful.
This poem is indeed very characteristic of its author's method. One
perceives the thought behind (apart, of course, from the mental process
of actual composition); and one realizes the magnitude of it. But again
it is implicit only, and reflection on 'the flesh that dies,' on
greatness fallen and worth contemned, hardly wins a couple of lines of
direct expression.
In "The Song of Honour" it would seem for the moment as if all that were
reversed. This poem is the re-creation of a spiritual experience, a hymn
of adoration. It is entirely subjective in conception, and is strangely
different therefore from the cool objectivity of "The Bull" or "Eve" or
"Time." In them the poet is working so detachedly that there is even
room for the play of gentle humour now and then. He is working with
delight, indeed, and emotion warm enough, but with a joy that is wholly
artistic, caring much more for the thing that he is making than for any
single element of it. But in "The Song of Honour" it is evident that he
cares immensely for his theme; and hence arise an ardour and intensity
which are not present in the other poems. Moreover, the work is the
interpretation of a vision, which would seem to imply a mystical quality
only latent hitherto; and there is a rapture of utterance which is not
found elsewhere.
The apparent contrast has no reality however. It is possible to catch,
though in subtle inflexions it is true, an undertone which runs below
even the simplest and clearest of these lyrics. No doubt it is as quiet,
as subdued, as it well could be--this soft, complex harmony flowing
beneath the ringing measure. But one can distinguish a note here and a
phrase there which point directly to the dominant theme of "The Song of
Honour." There is a hint of it, for example, in "The Mystery," where the
soul is imagined as standing, reverent but without fear, within the
closed circle of the unknown, and joyfully content to accept as the
pledge and symbol of that which it is unable to comprehend, the beauty
of the material world. One may see in that a familiar attitude of the
modern mind; the perception that there _is_ a mystery, which somehow
perpetually eludes the creeds and philosophies, but which seems to be
attaining to gradual revelation and fulfilment in actual existence. A
vision of the unity of that existence was the inspiration of this
greater poem: a realization, momentary but dazzling, of the magnificence
of being: of its joy, of its continuity, of the progression of life
through countless forms of that which we call matter to an ultimate goal
of supreme glory.
I do not say that any thesis, in those or kindred terms, was the origin
of this Song. I feel quite sure that it had no basis so abstract. It was
born in a mood of exaltation, kindled perhaps by such an instant of
flaming super-consciousness as may be observed in the spiritual
experience of other contemporary poets. The moment of its inception is
recorded in the opening of the poem:
I climbed a hill as light fell short,
And rooks came home in scramble sort,
And filled the trees and flapped and fought
And sang themselves to sleep;
Silence fell upon the landscape as darkness came and the stars shone
out.
I heard no more of bird or bell,
The mastiff in a slumber fell,
I stared into the sky,
As wondering men have always done
Since beauty and the stars were one,
Though none so hard as I.
It seemed, so still the valleys were,
As if the whole world knelt at prayer,
Save me and me alone;
So true is the poet to his impulse towards clarity and the concrete, so
unerringly does he select the strong, familiar word with all its meaning
clear on the face of it, that it is possible to regard the Song simply
as a religious poem--a hymn of adoration to a Supreme Being:
I heard the universal choir,
The Sons of Light exalt their Sire
With universal song,
Earth's lowliest and loudest notes,
Her million times ten million throats
Exalt Him loud and long,
Pure religion the poem is, but its implications are broader than any
creed. And, define it as we may, it remains suggestive of the most vital
current of modern thought. For it takes its stand upon the solid earth,
embraces reality and perceives in the material world itself that which
is urging joyfully toward some manifestation of spiritual splendour.
Thus the poet hears the Song rising from the very stocks and stones:
The everlasting pipe and flute
Of wind and sea and bird and brute,
And lips deaf men imagine mute
In wood and stone and clay,
The pæan is audible to him, too, from lowly creatures in whom life has
not yet grown conscious, from the tiniest forms of being, from the most
transient of physical phenomena.
The music of a lion strong
That shakes a hill a whole night long,
A hill as loud as he,
The twitter of a mouse among
Melodious greenery,
The ruby's and the rainbow's song,
The nightingale's--all three,
The song of life that wells and flows
From every leopard, lark and rose
And everything that gleams or goes
Lack-lustre in the sea.
But it is in humanity that the Song attains its fullest and noblest
harmony. Out of the stuff of actual human life the spiritual essence is
distilled, making the wraiths of a mystical imagination poor and pale by
comparison.
I heard the hymn of being sound
From every well of honour found
In human sense and soul:
The song of poets when they write
The testament of Beautysprite
Upon a flying scroll,
The song of painters when they take
A burning brush for Beauty's sake
And limn her features whole--
.....
The song of beggars when they throw
The crust of pity all men owe
To hungry sparrows in the snow,
Old beggars hungry too--
The song of kings of kingdoms when
They rise above their fortune men,
And crown themselves anew,--
_Ford Madox Hueffer_
There is a collected edition of Mr Hueffer's poetry published in that
year of dreadful memory nineteen hundred and fourteen. It is a valuable
possession. Its verse-content may not--of course it cannot--appeal in
the same degree to all lovers of poetry. For reasons that we shall see,
it is more liable than most poetic art to certain objections from those
whose taste is already formed and who therefore, wittingly or
unwittingly, have adopted a pet convention. They may boggle at a word or
a phrase in terminology which is avowedly idiomatic. They may wince
occasionally at a free rhyme or grow a little restive at the
irregularities of a rhyme-scheme, or resent an abrupt change of rhythm
in the middle of a stanza just as they believed they had begun to scan
it correctly. If they are the least bit sentimental (and it is not many
who have cast out, root and branch, the Anglo-Saxon vice) they will be
chilled here and there by an ironic touch, repelled by an apparent
levity, or irritated at the contiguity of subjects and ideas which seem
inept and unrelated. The classicist will grumble that the unities are
broken; the idealist will shudder at a bit of actuality; the formalist
will eye certain new patterns with disfavour; and even the realist,
with so much after his own heart, will be graceless enough to be
impatient at recurrent signs of a romantic temperament.
So, in perhaps a dozen different ways, the literary person of as many
different types may find that he is just hindered from complete
enjoyment of what he nevertheless perceives to be beautiful work. If he
be honest, however, and master of his moods, he will be ready to admit
that it _is_ beautiful, and that none of these objections invalidate the
essential poetry of the book. That has its own winning and haunting
qualities, quite strong enough to justify the claim that the volume is a
valuable possession. That is to say, there is absolute beauty in it,
considered simply as a work of art and judged only from the point of
view of the conventional lover of poetry. There are other values
however, immediate or potential. There is, for example, to the believer
in Mr Hueffer's theory, promise of the power which his method would have
upon all the good, kind, jolly, intelligent, but unliterary people,
could they be induced to read poetry at all. As a mere corollary from
the literary quibbles already named, one would expect such people to
find this volume delightful--an expectation by no means daunted by the
declared fate of earlier productions. One sees that the evident
sincerity of the work, the attitude of that particular individuality to
life, the free hand and the right instinct in the selection of incident,
and the use of language that is homely and picturesque, ought to be
potent attractions to the reader who frequently finds the older poetry
stilted and artificial.
Moreover, so successful has the author's method been in many cases that
even the _littérateur_ must pause and think. He will observe how well
the new artistry suits the new material; he will note the exhilaration
of the final effect; and when, returning to his beloved poets of the
last generation, he finds that some of their virtue seems to have fled
meantime, he will ask himself whether the life of our time may not
_demand_ poetic presentation in some such form as this. Which is to say
that he will probably be a convert to Mr Hueffer's impressionism.
That point is debatable, of course; but what will hardly be questioned,
apart from the joy we frequently experience here in seeing a thing
consummately done, is the importance of this work as an experiment. That
is obviously another kind of value, with a touch of scientific interest
added to the æsthetics. And the importance of the experiment is
enhanced, or at any rate we realize it more fully, from the fact that
the poet has been generous enough to elaborate his theory in a preface.
That is no euphemism, as other prefaces and theories of exasperating
memory might seem to suggest. It is real generosity to give away the
fundamentals of your art, to show as clearly as is done here the
principles upon which you work and the exact means which are taken to
give effect to them. It is courageous too, particularly when confessions
are made which supply a key to personality. For the hostile critic is
thus doubly armed. But the 'gentle reader' is armed too; and Mr Hueffer
would seem to have been wise, even from the point of view of mere
prudence, to take the risk.
The reader of this book then will find the poems doubly interesting in
the light that the preface throws upon them. He may, of course, read and
enjoy them without a single reference to it--that is the measure of
their poetic value. Or, on the other hand, he may read the preface, brim
full of stimulating ideas, without reference to the poetry. But the full
significance of either can only be appreciated when they are taken in
conjunction. For instance, we light upon this phrase indicating the
material of the poet's art: "Modern life, so extraordinary, so hazy; so
tenuous, with still such definite and concrete spots in it." It is a
charming phrase, and from its own suggestiveness gently constrains one
to think. But if we turn at once to the most considerable poem of the
collection, "To All the Dead," we shall see our poet in the very act of
recording the life that he visualizes in this way; and we shall see how
remarkably the texture of the poem fits the description in the passage
just quoted: "life hazy and tenuous, with such definite and concrete
spots."
To tell the truth, haze is the first thing we see when observing the
effect of this poem. It is pervasive too, and for a time nothing more is
visible save two or three islets of concrete experience, projecting
above it and appearing to float about in it, unstable and unrelated.
This first effect is rather like that of a landscape in a light autumn
ground-mist, which floats along the valley-meadows leaving tree-tops and
hillsides clear. Or it is like trying to recollect what happened to you
on a certain memorable day. The mood comes back readily enough, golden
or sombre; but the events which induced it, or held it in check, or gave
it so sudden a reverse only return reluctantly, one by one, and not even
in their proper order; so that we have to puzzle them out and rearrange
and fit them together before the right sequence appears.
Such is the main impression of "To All the Dead." Only the artist has
been at work here selecting his incidents with a keen eye and sensitive
touch, brooding over them with a temperament of complex charm, and for
all their apparent disjunction, relating and unifying them, as in life,
with the subtlest and frailest of links. As a consequence, at a second
glance the haze begins to lift, while at a third the whole landscape is
visible, a prospect very rich and fair despite the ugly spots which the
artist has not deigned to eliminate, and which, as a fact, he has
deliberately retained.
But there is no doubt the first glance is puzzling. If one were not
caught by the interest of those concrete spots it might even be
tiresome, and one would probably not trouble to take the second glance.
But they are so curious in themselves, and so boldly sketched, that we
are arrested; and the next moment the general design emerges. First the
picture of the ancient Chinese queen--a Mongolian Helen--
With slanting eyes you would say were blind--
In a dead white face.
That, with its quaint strange setting and its suggestion of a guilty
love story, is a thing to linger over for its own sake, apart from its
apparent isolation. Nor do we fully realize till later (although
something subtler than intelligence has already perceived it), that in
this opening passage the theme has been stated, and that the key-note
was struck in the line
She should have been dead nine thousand year....
But we pass abruptly, in the second movement, to our own time and to the
very heart of our own civilization. We are paying a call on a garrulous
friend in the rue de la Paix. He is an American and therefore a
philosopher; but as he descants on the 'nature of things,' doubtless in
the beautiful English of the gentle American, we let our attention
wander to things that touch us more sharply, to sights and sounds
outside the window, each vividly perceived and clearly picked out, but
all resolving themselves into a symbol, vaguely impressive, of the
complicated whirl of life. And this passage again, with its satiric
flavour and dexterity of execution, we are content to enjoy in its
apparent detachment, until we glimpse the link which unites it to the
larger interest of the whole.
The link with that ancient queen is in a flash of contrast--a couple of
Chinese chiropodists, grinning from their lofty window at a _mannequin_
on the opposite side of the street. And as the theme is developed,
episodes which seem irrelevant at first, are soon found to have their
relation with the thought--of death and tragic passion--on which the
poet is brooding. At a chance word dropped by the American host the
confused and perplexing sights and sounds of the outer world vanish; and
the philosophical lecture, droning hitherto just on the edge of
consciousness, fades even out of hearing--
... I lost them
At the word "Sandusky." A landscape crossed them;
A scene no more nor less than a vision,
All clear and grey in the rue de la Paix.
He is seven years back in time and many hundreds of miles away, pushing
up a North American river in a screaming, smoky steamer, between high
banks crowned with forests of fir:
And suddenly we saw a beach--
A grey old beach and some old grey mounds
That seemed to silence the steamer's sounds;
So still and old and grey and ragged.
For there they lay, the tumuli, barrows,
The Indian graves....
So, rather obliquely perhaps as to method, but with certainty of effect,
we are prepared for the culmination in the third movement. The poet has
fled from civilization and 'Modern Movements' to the upland heather of a
high old mound above the town of Trêves. And here, on a late autumn
evening, he lingers to think. He remembers that it is the eve of All
Souls' Day; and remembers too that the mound on which he is seated is an
old burying-place of great antiquity. In the cold and dark of his eerie
perch, certain impressions of the last few days return to him, just
those which have been subtly galling a secret wound and impelling him to
flee--the tragedy of the Chinese queen, the vision of the old tumuli at
Sandusky Bay, the unheeded platitudes of his friend--
... "_From good to good,
And good to better you say we go._"
(There's an owl overhead.) "_You say that's so?_"
My American friend of the rue de la Paix?
"_Grow better and better from day to day._"
Well, well I had a friend that's not a friend to-day;
Well, well, I had a love who's resting in the clay
Of a suburban cemetery.
One has felt all through that something weird is impending; but I am
sure that no ghost-scene so curiously impressive as that which follows
has ever been written before. It could not have been done, waiting as it
was for the conjuncture of time and temperament and circumstance. But
here it is, a thing essentially of our day; with its ironic mood, its
new lore, its air of detachment, its glint of grim humour now and then,
and its intense passion, both of love and of despair, which the
fugitive show of nonchalance does but serve to accentuate. Passion is
the dominant note as the myriad wraiths of long-dead lovers crowd past
the brooding figure in the darkness.
And so beside the woodland in the sheen
And shimmer of the dewlight, crescent moon
And dew wet leaves I heard the cry "Your lips!
Your lips! Your lips." It shook me where I sat,
It shook me like a trembling, fearful reed,
The call of the dead. A multitudinous
And shadowy host glimmered and gleamed,
Face to face, eye to eye, heads thrown back, and lips
Drinking, drinking from lips, drinking from bosoms
The coldness of the dew--and all a gleam
Translucent, moonstruck as of moving glasses,
Gleams on dead hair, gleams on the white dead shoulders
Upon the backgrounds of black purple woods....
That poem naturally comes first in a little study, because it is the
most considerable in the collection, and again because it is the most
characteristic. It is very convenient, too, for illustrating those
theories of the preface, as for example, that the business of the poet
is "the right appreciation of such facets of our own day as God will let
us perceive ... the putting of certain realities in certain aspects ...
the juxtaposition of varied and contrasting things ... the genuine love
and the faithful rendering of the received impression." But on æsthetic
grounds one is not so sure of "To All the Dead" for the first place.
Perhaps it tries to include too many facets of life--or death; perhaps
we get a slight impression as regards technique that the poet is
_consciously_ experimenting; and there is a shade of morbidity haunting
it. In many of the shorter pieces there is a nearer approach to
perfection. "The Portrait," for instance, a symbolical picture of life,
has only one flaw; a slight excess of a trick of repetition which is a
weakness of our author. It is mere carping, however, to find fault with
a piece which is so noble in idea and gracious in expression; and it
seems a crime to spoil the lovely thing by mutilating it. But with a
resemblance of theme, the poem is so strongly contrasted in manner with
"To All the Dead" that one cannot resist quoting from it at this point.
The idea, although great, is relatively simple: life, symbolized in the
figure of a woman, seated upon a tomb in a sequestered graveyard. The
mood is one of serene melancholy, not rising to passion or dropping to
satire; and the gentle unity of thought and feeling leaves the mind free
to receive the impression of beauty.
She sits upon a tombstone in the shade;
.....
Being life amid piled up remembrances
Of the tranquil dead.
... So she sits and waits.
And she rejoices us who pass her by,
And she rejoices those who here lie still,
And she makes glad the little wandering airs,
And doth make glad the shaken beams of light
That fall upon her forehead: all the world
Moves round her, sitting on forgotten tombs
And lighting in to-morrow.