country. But her thought, with something of the energy of the strenuous
West and something of its 'divine discontent,' plays upon the surface of
an older and deeper calm which is her birthright. So, in her "Salutation
to the Eternal Peace," she sings
What care I for the world's loud weariness,
Who dream in twilight granaries Thou dost bless
With delicate sheaves of mellow silences?
Two distinguished poet-friends of Mrs Naidu--Mr Edmund Gosse and Mr
Arthur Symons--have introduced her two principal volumes of verse with
interesting biographical notes. The facts thus put in our possession
convey a picture to the mind which is instantly recognizable in the
poems. A gracious and glowing personality appears, quick and warm with
human feeling, exquisitely sensitive to beauty and receptive of ideas,
wearing its culture, old and new, scientific and humane, with
simplicity; but, as Mr Symons says, "a spirit of too much fire in too
frail a body," and one moreover who has suffered and fought to the limit
of human endurance.
We hear of birth and childhood in Hyderabad; of early scientific
training by a father whose great learning was matched by his public
spirit: of a first poem at the age of eleven, written in an impulse of
reaction when a sum in algebra '_would not_ come right': of coming to
England at the age of sixteen with a scholarship from the Nizam college;
and of three years spent here, studying at King's College, London, and
at Girton, with glorious intervals of holiday in Italy.
We hear, too, of a love-story that would make an idyll; of passion so
strong and a will so resolute as almost to be incredible in such a
delicate creature; of a marriage in defiance of caste, a few years of
brilliant happiness and then a tragedy. And all through, as a dark
background to the adventurous romance of her life, there is the shadow
of weakness and ill-health. That shadow creeps into her poems,
impressively, now and then. Indeed, if it were lacking, the bright
oriental colouring would be almost too vivid. So, apart from its
psychological and human interest, we may be thankful for such a poem as
"To the God of Pain." It softens and deepens the final impression of the
work.
For thy dark altars, balm nor milk nor rice,
But mine own soul thou'st ta'en for sacrifice.
The poem is purely subjective, of course, as is the still more moving
piece, "The Poet to Death," in the same volume.
Tarry a while, till I am satisfied
Of love and grief, of earth and altering sky;
Till all my human hungers are fulfilled,
O Death, I cannot die!
We know that that is a cry out of actual and repeated experience; and
from that point of view alone it has poignant interest. But what are we
to say about the spirit of it--the philosophy which is implicit in it?
Here is an added value of a higher kind, evidence of a mind which has
taken its own stand upon reality, and which has no easy consolations
when confronting the facts of existence. For this mind, neither the
religions of East nor West are allowed to veil the truth; neither the
hope of Nirvana nor the promise of Paradise may drug her sense of the
value of life nor darken her perception of the beauty of phenomena.
Resignation and renunciation are alike impossible to this ardent being
who loves the earth so passionately; but the 'sternly scientific'
nature of that early training--the description is her own--has made
futile regret impossible, too. She has entered into full possession of
the thought of our time; and strongly individual as she is, she has
evolved for herself, to use her own words, a "subtle philosophy of
living from moment to moment." That is no shallow epicureanism, however,
for as she sings in a poem contrasting our changeful life with the
immutable peace of the Buddha on his lotus-throne--
Nought shall conquer or control
The heavenward hunger of our soul.
It is as though, realizing that the present is the only moment of which
we are certain, she had determined to crowd that moment to the utmost
limit of living.
From such a philosophy, materialism of a nobler kind, one would expect a
love of the concrete and tangible, a delight in sense impressions, and
quick and strong emotion. Those are, in fact, the characteristics of
much of the poetry in these two volumes, _The Golden Threshold_ and _The
Bird of Time_. The beauty of the material world, of line and especially
of colour, is caught and recorded joyously. Life is regarded mainly from
the outside, in action, or as a pageant; as an interesting event or a
picturesque group. It is not often brooded over, and reflection is
generally evident in but the lightest touches. The proportion of
strictly subjective verse is small, and is not, on the whole, the finest
work technically.
The introspective note seems unfavourable to Mrs Naidu's art: naturally
so, one would conclude, from the buoyant temperament that is revealed.
The love-songs are perhaps an exception, for one or two, which (as we
know) treat fragments of the poet's own story, are fine in idea and in
technique alike. There is, for example, "An Indian Love Song," in the
first stanza of which the lover begs for his lady's love. But she
reminds him of the barriers of caste between them; she is afraid to
profane the laws of her father's creed; and her lover's kinsmen, in
times past, have broken the altars of her people and slaughtered their
sacred kine. The lover replies:
What are the sins of my race, Beloved, what are my people to thee?
And what are thy shrine, and kine and kindred, what are thy gods to
me?
Love recks not of feuds and bitter follies, of stranger, comrade or
kin,
Alike in his ear sound the temple bells and the cry of the
_muezzin_.
There is also in the second volume the "Dirge," in which the poet mourns
the death of the husband whom she had dared to marry against the laws
of caste; and which almost unconsciously reveals the influence of
centuries of Suttee upon the mind of Indian womanhood.
Shatter her shining bracelets, break the string
Threading the mystic marriage-beads that cling
Loth to desert a sobbing throat so sweet,
Unbind the golden anklets on her feet,
Divest her of her azure veils and cloud
Her living beauty in a living shroud.
Even here, however, the effect is gained by colour and movement; by the
grouping of images rather than by the development of an idea; and that
will be found to be Mrs Naidu's method in the many delightful lyrics of
these volumes where she is most successful. The "Folk Songs" of her
first book are an example. One assumes that they are early work, partly
because they are the first group in the earlier of the two volumes; but
more particularly because they adopt so literally the advice which Mr
Edmund Gosse gave her at the beginning of her career. When she came as a
girl to England and was a student of London University at King's
College, she submitted to Mr Gosse a bundle of manuscript poems. He
describes them as accurate and careful work, but too derivative;
modelled too palpably on the great poets of the previous generation.
His advice, therefore, was that they should be destroyed, and that the
author should start afresh upon native themes and in her own manner. The
counsel was exactly followed: the manuscript went into the wastepaper
basket, and the poet set to work on what we cannot doubt is this first
group of songs made out of the lives of her own people.
There is all the hemisphere between these lyrics and those of
late-Victorian England. Here we find a "Village Song" of a mother to the
little bride who is still all but a baby; and to whom the fairies call
so insistently that she will not stay "for bridal songs and bridal cakes
and sandal-scented leisure." In the song of the "Palanquin Bearers" we
positively see the lithe and rhythmic movements which bear some Indian
beauty along, lightly "as a pearl on a string." And there is a song
written to one of the tunes of those native minstrels who wander, free
and wild as the wind, singing of
The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings,
And happy and simple and sorrowful things.
The "Harvest Hymn" raises thanksgiving for strange bounties to gods of
unfamiliar names; and the "Cradle Song" evokes a tropical night, heavy
with scent and drenched with dew--
Sweet, shut your eyes,
The wild fire-flies
Dance through the fairy _neem_;
From the poppy-bole,
For you I stole
A little, lovely dream.
In its lightness and grace, this poem is one of the exquisite things in
our language: one of the little lyric flights, like William Watson's
"April," which in their clear sweetness and apparent spontaneity are
like some small bird's song. Mrs Naidu has said of herself--"I sing just
as the birds do"; and as regards her loveliest lyrics (there are a fair
proportion of them) she speaks a larger truth than she meant. Their
simplicity and abandonment to the sheer joy of singing are infinitely
refreshing; and fragile though they seem, one suspects them of great
vitality. In the later volume there is another called "Golden
Cassia"--the bright blooms that her people call mere 'woodland flowers.'
The poet has other fancies about them; sometimes they seem to her like
fragments of a fallen star--
Or golden lamps for a fairy shrine,
Or golden pitchers for fairy wine.
Perchance you are, O frail and sweet!
Bright anklet-bells from the wild spring's feet,
Or the gleaming tears that some fair bride shed
Remembering her lost maidenhead.
The tenderness and delicacy of verse like that might mislead us. We
might suppose that the qualities of Mrs Naidu's work were only those
which are arbitrarily known as feminine. But this poet, like Mrs
Browning, is faithful to her own sensuous and passionate temperament.
She has not timidly sheltered behind a convention which, because some
women-poets have been austere, prescribes austerity, neutral tones, and
a pale light for the woman-artist in this sphere. And, as a result, we
have all the evidence of a richly-dowered sensibility responding frankly
to the vivid light and colour, the liberal contours and rich scents and
great spaces of the world she loves; and responding no less warmly and
freely to human instincts. Occasionally her verse achieves the
expression of sheer sensuous ecstasy. It does that, perhaps, in the two
Dance poems--from the very reason that her art is so true and free. The
theme requires exactly that treatment; and in "Indian Dancers" there is
besides a curiously successful union between the measure that is
employed and the subject of the poem--
Their glittering garments of purple are burning like tremulous dawns
in the quivering air,
And exquisite, subtle and slow are the tinkle and tread of their
rhythmical, slumber-soft feet.
The love-songs, though in many moods, are always the frank expression of
emotion that is deep and strong. One that is especially beautiful is the
utterance of a young girl who, while her sisters prepare the rites for a
religious festival, stands aside with folded hands dreaming of her
lover. She is secretly asking herself what need has she to supplicate
the gods, being blessed by love; and again, in the couple of stanzas
called "Ecstasy," the rapture has passed, by its very intensity, into
pain.
Shelter my soul, O my love!
My soul is bent low with the pain
And the burden of love, like the grace
Of a flower that is smitten with rain:
O shelter my soul from thy face!
But, when all is said, it is the life of her people which inspires this
poet most perfectly. In the lighter lyrics one sees the fineness of her
touch; and in the love-poems the depth of her passion. But, in the
folk-songs, all the qualities of her genius have contributed. Grace and
tenderness have been reinforced by an observant eye, broad sympathy and
a capacity for thought which reveals itself not so much as a systematic
process as an atmosphere, suffusing the poems with gentle pensiveness.
And always the artistic method is that of picking out the theme in
bright sharp lines, and presenting the idea concretely, through the
grouping of picturesque facts. There is a poem called "Street Cries"
which is a vivid bit of the life of an Eastern city. First we have early
morning, when the workers hurry out, fasting, to their toil; and the cry
'Buy bread, Buy bread' rings down the eager street; then midday, hot and
thirsty, when the cry is 'Buy fruit, Buy fruit'; and finally, evening.
When twinkling twilight o'er the gay bazaars,
Unfurls a sudden canopy of stars,
When lutes are strung and fragrant torches lit
On white roof-terraces where lovers sit
Drinking together of life's poignant sweet,
_Buy flowers, buy flowers_, floats down the singing street.
Another of these shining pictures will be found in "Nightfall in the
City of Hyderabad," Mrs Naidu's own city; and again in the song called
"In a Latticed Balcony." But there are several others in which, added to
the suggestion of an old civilization and strange customs, there is a
haunting sense of things older and stranger still. Of such is this one,
called "Indian Weavers."
Weavers, weaving at break of day,
Why do you weave a garment so gay?...
Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild,
We weave the robes of a new-born child.
.....
Weavers, weaving solemn and still,
Why do you weave in the moonlight chill?...
White as a feather and white as a cloud,
We weave a dead man's funeral shroud.
"_John Presland_"
The work of "John Presland" reminds one of the trend of contemporary
poetry towards the dramatic form. Out of eight volumes published by this
poet, five are fully-wrought plays, and one is a tragic love-story told
in duologue. That, of course, is a larger proportion of actual drama
than most of these poets give; but if an analysis were made, it would
probably be found that the dramatic impulse is strong in the work of
nearly all of them.
There are very few of those who are making genuine poetry, who are
content simply to sing. Indeed, it hardly seems to be a matter of
choice, but an urgency, secret and compelling as a natural instinct, by
means of which life is commanding expression in literary art. This is
not to suggest, however, that no lyrics are being composed. Current
poetry often reveals a true lyrical gift, especially in early work; and
so long as poets continue to be born young, we shall not lack for songs.
We may find, too, a rare singer like W. H. Davies, for whom genius,
temperament and circumstance have effected a happy isolation from the
complexity of modern existence. Owing allegiance chiefly to nature, he
is free as the air in body and soul. Unspoilt by books, and saving his
spirit humane and merry and sweet from the petty constraints of
civilization, he carols as lightly as a robin or a thrush. But he is
almost a solitary exception, and may serve to prove the rule that the
pure lyric--some intimate emotion bubbling over into music--cannot say
all that demands to be said when the poetic spirit is completely in
touch with life.
Now, in all the most vital of this modern verse, poetry has come so
close to life as to claim its very identity. It has left the twilight of
unreality and stepped into clear day. It has broken down the
exclusiveness which penned it within a prescribed circle of theme and of
language; and it has taken hold upon the world, real and entire.
Moreover, the life upon which it seizes in this way is wider, more
complex, more meaningful and varied than ever before. Political and
social changes have made humanity a larger thing--whether regarded in
the actual numbers which democracy thus brings within the poetic ken, or
in their manifold significance. Horizons, both mental and material, have
been extended. Science presses on in quiet confidence, the dogmatic
phase being over; and its methods as well as its data pass readily into
the collective mind. Religion, no longer synonymous with a single creed
or form of worship, can find room within itself for all the spiritual
activity of mankind everywhere; and in the juster proportion thus
attained, nobler syntheses are shaping. A constructive social sense
replaces the old negative commands with a positive duty of service.
Values are changing; new ideals quicken, struggle and fructify; fresh
aspects of life, and visions of human destiny, are opened up; while in
every sphere the spirit of inquiry and the experimental method generate
an energy of conflict which the timid and the sleepy loathe, but which
is nevertheless the dynamic of progress.
The poetry of to-day is the very spirit of that multiform life, giving
shape and permanence to whatever is finest in it; and for that reason
its manner of expression is almost infinitely varied, and often very
different from the poetic forms of other ages. That, indeed, is one sign
of its vitality: the fact that it is a living organism, capable of
adaptation, growth and development. Old forms are modified and new ones
created to embody the new ideas. All the resources of prosody are drawn
upon--when they will serve--and used with the utmost freedom. And when,
as frequently happens, they will not serve; when the established rules
of English verse seem inadequate to the present task, they are
challenged and thrown aside. Thus there arises, in the technique of
poetry itself, a corresponding conflict to that in the world of ideas,
indicating a similar vigour and equally prophetic of advance.
In all this variety, however, the dramatic element is a fairly constant
feature; and it seems to be growing stronger. It is present in many
poems which do not look like drama at all, as for instance in the
narratives of Mr Masefield. Here we may find vividly dramatic scenes,
astonishingly evolved in the form of an elaborate stanza, or the rhymed
couplet; just as the tragedies in _Daily Bread_ by Mr Gibson are wrought
out in a quite original unrhymed verse of extreme austerity. Again, much
of Mr Abercrombie's work is dramatic in essence, apart from his plays in
regular form; and Mrs Woods has completed a third poetical drama, having
already published two tragedies in her collected edition.
But there is one fact to be noted in coming from those poets to the
drama of "John Presland." With them the dramatic impulse is often
subconscious, and it has to fight its way, obscurely sometimes, against
a twin impulse towards lyricism. It is strong but not yet dominant;
vital, but not yet aware of its own potentiality. It throbs below the
surface of alien forms, but it rarely breaks away to an independent
existence. And even when it achieves consciousness, as it does most
completely perhaps in the work of Mrs Woods, traces of the struggle
cling about it still--in a lyrical _motif_, or a fragment of song
embedded in the structure of a play, or in a lyric intensity of feeling.
With "John Presland," however, the general tendency is reversed. The
dramatic impulse has become a definite and prevailing purpose, with the
lyrical element subordinated to it; and, as a consequence, we have here
a drama of full stature, a complete, organic, and acutely conscious
art-form.
This work reveals in its author an endowment of those qualities which
most insistently urge towards the dramatic form: imagination, both
creative and constructive, and a gift of almost absolute objectivity. In
all the five plays these qualities are conspicuous. Indeed, they are so
strong that they effectually screen the poet's personality; and, if he
had written nothing but the plays, it is little that one might hope to
discover of the individual mind behind them. That is naturally a very
desirable result from the dramatist's point of view, and one test of his
art. But it pricks mere human curiosity, and provokes unregenerate glee
in the fact that the poet has published lyrics too, three volumes of
them; and that they, from their more subjective nature, yield up the
outlines of a definite individuality.
But, indeed, one's delight is not pure mischief. It is partly at least
in seeing the artistic virtue of this largesse in the lyric--the
spontaneity which is equally a merit with the reticence of drama. One is
glad, too, of the light thus thrown upon the poet's own philosophy, his
affiliations, his outlook, his attitude to life. Judging by the plays
alone, we might be cheated into a belief in the complete detachment of
our author. The use of historical themes and the rigour of his art
create an effect of isolation. He would seem to stand outside the stress
of his own time and aloof from the influences which commonly shape the
artist. The lyrics show that impression to be false and help to correct
it. For while they do not relate the poet, in any narrow sense, to what
are specifically called 'modern movements,' they prove that he has an
eager interest in his world, and that, being in that world and of it, he
is yet 'on the side of the angels.' There is, for example, a splendid
fire of reproach in the poem "To Italy," proving a capacity for noble
indignation at the same time as a close hold upon current affairs. The
poem is dated September 29, 1911, and is a protest at the action of
Italy against Tripoli:
Hearken to your dead heroes, Italy;
Hearken to those who made your history
A bright and splendid thing ...
... What Mazzini said
Have you so soon forgotten? You, who bled
With Garibaldi, and the thousand more?
He spoke, and your young men to battle bore
His gospel with them, of men's brotherhood,
Of Justice, that before the tyrant, stood
Accusing, and of truth and charity.
His dust to-day lies with you, Italy;
Where lie his words? That sword is in your hand
To seize unrighteously another's land--
Your fleet in foreign waters. By what right
Dare you act so, save arrogance of might,
Such cruel force as ground the Austrian heel
Upon your Lombard cities, ringed with steel
Unhappy Naples and despairing Rome,
That exiled Garibaldi from his home,
That served itself with sycophants and knaves,
That filled the prisons and the nameless graves,
Till, like a sunrise o'er a stormy sea,
Flashed out the spirit of free Italy?
Like all Mr Presland's work, this poem is closely woven: quotation does
not serve it well, but this passage will at least indicate its theme and
temper, and thus light up personality. There is, in the same volume,
_Songs of Changing Skies_, a bit of spiritual autobiography called "To
Robert Browning." It destroys at once any fiction of literary isolation;
although to be sure there are cute critics who will declare that the
resemblance to Browning in some of these lyrics is too obvious to need
the discipular confession. It may be that these clever people are right.
Yes, perhaps one would recognize certain signs in poems like "A Present
from Luther" and "An Error of Luther's." But the whole question of
influence is nearly always made too much of, especially in its mere
outward marks. Granting the love of Browning and the debt to his
teaching, which are honourably admitted here, some effect upon thought
and style would be inevitable. But a deeper and more potent cause of the
resemblance lies in a real affinity of mind, in buoyancy and breadth and
tenacious belief in good; and in a similar poetic equipment. One must
not launch upon a comparison, but it may be observed that he has
profited by his master's faults, artistic and philosophical, at least as
much as by his merits. For, probably warned by example, this poet works
with patient care to express his thought simply; and he has attained a
style of perfect clearness. While his philosophy, though full of brave
hope, has escaped the unreason of that optimism which declares that
'All's well.' True, he makes Joan say, in the last words of his "Joan of
Arc":
... so near eternity
The evil dwindles, good alone remains,
And good triumphant--God is merciful.
But that is dramatically appropriate--the logic of Joan's character. And
it seems to me that a more intimate and sincere expression is to be
found in the chastened mood of a sonnet called "To April":
There will be other days as fair as these
Which I shall never see; for other eyes
The lyric loveliness of cherry trees
Shall bloom milk-white against the windy skies
And I not praise them; where upon the stream
The faëry tracery of willows lies
I shall not see the sunlight's flying gleam,
Nor watch the swallows sudden dip and rise.
Most mutable the forms of beauty are,
Yet Beauty most eternal and unchanged,
Perfect for us, and for posterity
Still perfect; yearly is the pageant ranged.
And dare we wish that our poor dust should mar
The wonder of such immortality?