[_6 July '11_]
Recent spectacular events at Court have been the cause of a considerable
amount of verse, indifferent or offensive. But it is to be noticed that
the poets of this realm have not been inspired by the said events. I mean
such writers as W.B. Yeats, Robert Bridges, Lord Alfred Douglas, W.H.
Davies. And yet I see no reason why a Coronation, even in this day of
figure-heads and revolting snobbery, should not be the subject of a good
poem--a poem which would not be afflicting to read, either for the
lettered public or for the chief actor in the scene. However, the time for
such poems has apparently not yet arrived. And meanwhile the
sea-and-slaughter school have been doing an excellent work these last few
weeks in demonstrating how entirely absurd the sea-and-slaughter school
is. Mr. Alfred Noyes has been very prominent, not only in his native page,
_Blackwood's_, but also in the _Fortnightly Review_. Mr. Noyes is, I
believe, the only living versifier whose books are, in the words of an
American editor, "a commercial proposition." He is by many thought to be a
poet. Personally, I have always classed him with Alfred Austin, not yet
having come across one single stanza of his which would fall within my
definition of poetry. Here is an extract from his "A Salute from the
Fleet":
_Mother, O grey sea-mother, thine is the crowning cry!_--
I am bound to interrupt the quotation here in order to vent my feelings of
extreme irritation caused by the mere phrase. "O grey sea-mother." Why
should this phrase drive me to fury? It does. Well, to recommence:
_Mother, O grey sea-mother, thine is the crowning cry!_
_Thine the glory for ever in the nation born of thy womb!_
_Thine is the Sword and the Shield and the shout that Salamis heard,_
_Surging in Æschylean splendour, earth-shaking acclaim!_
_Ocean-mother of England, thine is the throne of her fame!_
Fancy standing on the shore to-day and addressing the real sea in these
words and accents! Fancy the poet doing it! The mood and the mentality are
prehistoric. I would not mind Mr. Noyes putting himself lyrically into
the woaded skin of our ancestors. But I do think he might have got a
little nearer the mark in indicating the "throne of her fame." Because I
expect Mr. Noyes knows as well as anybody that the real throne of
England's fame is not in the sea at all. England's true fame springs from
the few acts of national justice which she has accomplished, and from the
generous impulses which as a nation she has had--as, for example, in her
relations with Italy; as, for example, in the Factory Acts which prevented
children from working eighteen hours a day six or seven days a week. The
patriotic versifiers of this country will, if they persist, end by making
the sea impossible for a plain man to sail on. I have long felt that I
want never again to read anything about the sea, except the advertisements
of auxiliary yawls and cutters in the _Yachting World_. I recommend these
advertisements as a balm for sores caused by rhymed marine Jingoism.