This little square book, the colour of meadow forget-me-nots, is so
modest and simple that it may very easily be passed over in a period
which has little sympathy with tenderness of feeling and simplicity of
expression. The verses, of which this small volume is full, resemble the
_stornelli_ and _rispetti_ of Italian songs rather than any kind of
verse which has preceded them in English literature, unless it be the
earliest and briefest songs of Robert Lytton, with which they have a
certain kindred, both in their measure and in their themes. Auberon
Herbert is known to the world as a daring and original thinker, a
sociologist who lives three centuries before his time, a fearless
preacher of new liberties and ideal creeds; in this tiny azure booklet
he is also a poet, or, as he would rather himself say, a singer. The
verse springs from the depths of his heart, and calls to those who, like
himself, have loved and suffered and found nothing endure except the
consolations of natural beauty.
'In the West is the golden glory,
As the great king goes to his rest;
In the East the purple staineth
The hills from foot to crest.
'And I stand and look in wonder
Till my heart is cleft in twain,
Half for the vision of glory,
And half for the dying pain.'
Like the Italian _canzone_, these little lyrics, brief as a summer
breeze, which momentarily sways the stalks of grass, must be heard with
the ear of the heart. Coldly criticised by the mind alone, they will lie
like the gathered field-poppy, inert and colourless. They are the cries
of the heart, like those brief verses which the southern lover sings to
the sobbing lute beneath the moon. He who has killed his heart in the
pressure of the world will find nothing in them. They who are steeped in
the chill indifference of mundane interests will no more heed them than
such heed the skylark's or the linnet's song, which they resemble. They
were not written in the study, or fashioned with the pruning-knife; they
were born by the edge of the sea, in the woodland shade, by the clover
path of the country hedge, in the falling rain of the peach and
pear-blossoms, in the starlight above the olives. They are the elder
children of the lonely shores and flowering pastures; they have never
known the gaslight of the streets or the electric light of the
drawing-room. They are as sweet and pure as violets.
To those who know, and respect as they should be respected, the virile
and original philosophies of the writer, there is an added charm in
these tender blossoms in the fact that they spring from the same
intelligence as that which proclaims individualism in its boldest forms
and attacks the tyrannies of social and political superstitions.
They are but little songs, short as a ripple of music from a woodlark's
throat, of no more account, if you will, than the blue stars of
mouse-ear by the brook's side, than the dog-rose on the bank; too simple
it may be said, speaking of emotions too trite, of sorrow too common, of
sights too familiar, in language that the dullest can scarce fail to
understand. Yes; no doubt, they are like field-flowers, like
hedge-birds; they claim to be no more than these; they were not wrestled
for as Wordsworth wrestled for an ode beneath the shadow of Rydal, or as
Coleridge strove with the rebellious forces of a halting sonnet when
lying down face foremost amongst 'the common grass.' They are
spontaneous utterances, as natural as the ripple of the water over the
cresses in a brook's bed beneath willow and alder. It may be easy to
dismiss them with indifference, to underrate them with hypercritic
sneer, and assuredly those who take pleasure in the strained archaic
obscurities of much modern verse will find no more charm in them than
the languid aesthete, musing over the pages of Verlaine and Mallarme,
would find in a sea-wet breeze blowing across a hayfield at early
morning. There is no studied mannerism, no sought-for darkness of
expression, no exaggerated ecstasy or pessimism; there is such a natural
feeling, of joy as of sorrow, as comes to the soul at once robust and
sensitive; and these are expressed with frank, unstudied _naivete_, with
the candour as of a child, and the self-control of a man blent in their
simplicity. 'Look in your own heart and write,' has been the only
precept which their creator has obeyed.
The most intense attachment in them is for the sea. The sea, whether
those grey sad tides which sway from the sands of Christchurch to the
rocks of Freshwater, or that azure radiance which rolls from the
headland of Antibes to the gardens of Porto Fino, has the same magic for
Auberon Herbert that it has for Algernon Swinburne; a charm much calmer
and more peaceful, but not less strong. Many of these little poems speak
of the sea only; are full of that happy sense of return and recognition
which so many amongst us feel when, after absence from the sea, we tread
again its wet salt sands, and feel its white spray dance against our
cheek. Swinburne is the great laureate of ocean, the chords of whose
mighty lyre reverberate with the ocean storm and echo the thunder of
breakers breaking upon iron shores, and of billows sweeping from pole to
pole. The song of Auberon Herbert is the homing cry of the sea-swallows
swaying on the crest of the waves.
'Back to the Sea Mother' he calls these yearning lines:--
'Kindest of mothers, from whom I have strayed,
Back again, tired, I come to thee,
Chaunting and crooning the old wave-song;
Sing it, oh! sing it again to me!
'Weary and spent as the hour draws near,
Hush me to sleep with the soft wave-song;
Wash all the cares away, wash all the strifes away,
All the old pains that to living belong.
'Down at thy side I place me to rest;
Slowly my senses are stealing from me;
Passions and pleadings have ceased in my breast,
Gently my spirit floats away free.'