THE POET
So much for Mr. Belloc's most copious revelation of his personality. But
this is true--that the most personal expression of all for any man is in
verse: even though it be small in quantity and uneven in quality. It is
as though, here, in a more rarefied and more complex form of
composition--we will not say "more difficult"--some kind of effort or
struggle called out all of a man's characteristics in their intensest
shape. Such emotions as a man has to express will be, perhaps not more
perfectly, but at any rate more keenly, set out in verse. It gives you
his characteristics in a smaller space. This is true of nearly all
writers who have used both forms of expression. It applies--to quote
only a few--to Arnold, to Meredith, and to Mr. Hardy.
Now we must admit at the outset that Mr. Belloc's verse does not satisfy
the reader, in the same sense that his prose satisfies. It is
fragmentary, unequal, very small in bulk, apparently the outcome of a
scanty leisure. But it is an ingredient in the mass of his writing that
cannot be dismissed without discussion.
Mr. Belloc realizes to the full the position of poetry in life. He gives
it the importance of an element which builds up and broadens the
understanding and the spirit. He has written some, but not very much,
literary criticism; and, of a piece with the rest of thinking, he thinks
of poetry as a factor in, and a symptom of, the growth and maintenance
of the European mind. He would not understand the facile critics who
only yesterday dismissed this necessary element of literature as
something which the modern world has outgrown.
But, curiously, he is a disappointing critic of Literature. His essays
in this regard are, like his essays on anything else, obviously in
touch with some substratum of connected thinking, a growth which springs
from a settled and confident attitude towards man and the world. But
they are, as it were, less in touch with it; they are more on the
surface, more accidental, less continuous.
His little--very little--essays on the verse of the French Renaissance
are extremely unsatisfactory. His criticism of Ronsard's _Mignonne,
allons voir si la rose_ is a little masterpiece of delicate
discrimination:
If it be asked why this should have become the most famous of
Ronsard's poems, no answer can be given save the "flavour of
language." It is the perfection of his tongue. Its rhythm reaches
the exact limit of change which a simple metre will tolerate: where
it saddens, a lengthy hesitation at the opening of the seventh line
introduces a new cadence, a lengthy lingering upon the last
syllables of the tenth, eleventh and twelfth closes a grave
complaint. So, also by an effect of quantities, the last six lines
rise out of melancholy into their proper character of appeal and
vivacity: an exhortation.
This passage, which, as a demonstration of method, is not altogether
meaningless, even without the text beside it, shows the accuracy and
nicety of his criticism. And _Avril_ contains a number of similar
observations which are valuable in the extreme as aids to judgement and
pleasure. But the book has written all over it a confession, that this
is a department of writing which the author is content, comparatively,
to neglect. The essays are short and, again comparatively, they are
detached: they examine each poem by itself, not in its general aspect.
And it is, too, a singular example of book-making: there are more blank
pages, in proportion to its total bulk, than one could have believed
possible.
The rare studies dealing with poetry which one finds among his general
essays also bear witness to his discrimination and determined judgement.
The essay on Jose-Maria de Heredia in _First and Last_ is a remarkable
example of these, a remarkable analysis of a poet who is, if not
obscure, at least reticent and difficult to like, and in whom Mr. Belloc
sees the recapturer of "the secure tradition of an older time." And this
essay relates the spirit of a poet to the general conception of Europe
and its destiny.
Such a relation is rare. Poetry seems to lie, to an extent, apart from
Mr. Belloc's definite and consistent view of life. He takes other
pleasures, beer, walking, singing and what not, with the utmost
seriousness: this he treats, at bottom, casually and disconnectedly. We
can just perceive how he links it up with his general conception of
life, but we can only just see it. The link is there, but he has never
strengthened it.
And when we turn from his opinions on other men's poetry to his own
compositions, we find the same broad effect of casualness varied with
passages of singular achievement. His verse is very small in bulk:
between two and three thousand lines would cover as much of it as he has
yet published. Within this restricted space there are numerous
variations of type, but these, in verse, are so subtle and so fluid that
we are forbidden to attempt a rigid classification.
What, then, is our impression on surveying this collection of poetry? It
includes a number of small amusing books for children, a volume called
_Verses_ and a few more verses scattered in the prose, most notably (as
being not yet collected) in _The Four Men_. The general impression is,
as we have said, one of confusion and lack of order: verse, the
revealing instrument, seems to be to Mr. Belloc a pastime for moments of
dispersion, and most of these poems seem to point to intervals of
refreshment, periods of a light use of the powers, rather than to the
seconds of intense feeling whereof verse, either at the time or later,
is the proper expression.
It goes without saying that little enough of this verse is dull: it
nearly all has character, a distinct personal flavour in phrasing and
motive. Yet this flavour is best known to the public in its development
by the first of brilliant young men to be influenced by Mr. Belloc's
style, as apart from his ideas. We may pause a moment to examine this
point, for its own special interest and for the guide it will give us to
Mr. Belloc's poetry.
Rupert Brooke has been called too often the disciple of Dr. Donne: no
critic, so far as we are aware, has called attention to his debt to Mr.
Belloc. This debt was neither complete nor immediately obvious, but it
existed. Brooke knew it, spoke of Mr. Belloc with admiration,
and quoted his poems with surprising memory. Some of these
were--necessarily--unpublished and may be apocryphal: they cannot be
repeated here. The resemblance between the styles of the two men was
most noticeable in Brooke's prose: his letters from America show a touch
in working and a point of view singularly close to those of Mr. Belloc.
But it is also to be discovered in his poetry. Put a few lines from
_Grantchester_ beside a few lines from one of Mr. Belloc's poems of
Oxford and you will realize how curiously the younger man was fascinated
by the older. We will quote the passages we have in mind. The first is
by Brooke:
"In Grantchester, their skins are white,
They bathe by day, they bathe by night;
The women there do all they ought;
The men observe the Rules of Thought.
They love the Good; they worship Truth;
They laugh uproariously in youth."
And the second is from Mr. Belloc's _Dedicatory Ode_:
"Where on their banks of light they lie,
The happy hills of Heaven between,
The Gods that rule the morning sky
Are not more young, nor more serene....
... We kept the Rabelaisian plan:
We dignified the dainty cloisters
With Natural Law, the Rights of Man,
Song, Stoicism, Wine and Oysters."
There is a difference, for two men of different character are speaking:
but there is more than the accidental resemblance that comes from two
men making the same sort of joke.
But Brooke was, in his own desire and in the estimation of others, first
a poet: and Mr. Belloc has written his verses, as it would seem, at
intervals. The common level of them is that of excellent workmanship,
the very best are simply glorious accidents.
Now the common level, if we put away the books for children which will
be more conveniently dealt with in another chapter, is represented by
such poems as _The Birds_, _The Night_, _A Bivouac_, and a Song of which
we may quote one verse, as follows:
"You wear the morning like your dress
And are with mastery crowned;
When as you walk your loveliness
Goes shining all around.
Upon your secret, smiling way
Such new contents were found,
The Dancing Loves made holiday
On that delightful ground."
That is to say, these poems are of a certain grace and charm, neither
false nor exalted, pleasant indeed to say over, but without that
intensity of feeling which even in a small and light verse transfigures
the written words. The carols and Catholic poems are of this delightful
character, curiously one in feeling with such old folk-carols as are
still preserved. One of these compositions rises to a much higher plane
by a truly extraordinary felicity of phrase, one of those inspired
quaintnesses which move the reader so powerfully as the nakedest pathos
or the most ornate grandeur. We mean the poem _Courtesy_, where the poet
finds this grace in three pictures:
"The third it was our Little Lord,
Whom all the Kings in arms adored;
He was so small you could not see
His large intent of Courtesy."
These verses are certainly, as we have said, charming. They are really
mediaeval, for Mr. Belloc admires the spirit of that age from within,
which makes truth, not from without, which makes affectation.
There is another class of poem which is jolly--it is the best term--to
read and better to sing. The _West Sussex Drinking Song_, a rather
obvious reminiscence of Still's famous song, is perhaps the best known
but by no means the best. (It is, however, an excellent guide to the
beers of West Sussex.) We would give this distinction to a song in _The
Four Men_, which begins:
"On Sussex hills where I was bred,
When lanes in autumn rains are red,
When Arun tumbles in his bed
And busy great gusts go by;
When branch is bare in Burton Glen
And Bury Hill is a whitening, then
I drink strong ale with gentlemen;
Which nobody can deny, deny,
Deny, deny, deny, deny,
Which nobody can deny."
We must speak here, however, since our space is limited, not of these
sporadic and inessential excellences, but of the isolated and admirable
accidents--for so they seem--which make Mr. Belloc truly a poet.
One of these is the well-known, anthologized _The South Country_;
another is a passage in the mainly humorous poem called _Dedicatory Ode_
which we have quoted in another connexion; two occur in _The Four Men_.
All of them deal with places and country, they are all by way of being
melancholy and express the quite human sadness that goes normally with
the joy in friends and in one's own home.
Such a verse as this in praise of Sussex is inspired, sad and gracious:
"But the men that live in the South Country
Are the kindest and most wise.
They get their laughter from the loud surf,
And the faith in their happy eyes
Comes surely from our Sister the Spring
When over the sea she flies;
The violets suddenly bloom at her feet,
She blesses us with surprise."
The rhythm, apparently wavering, but in reality very exact, alone
reflects in this stanza the sadness which elsewhere in the poem is put
more directly. It is a delicate, ingenuous rhythm, suited most admirably
to (or rather, perhaps, dictating) the unstrained and easy words.
The same mood, the same rhythm, are repeated in a poem in _The Four
Men_:
"The trees that grow in my own country
Are the beech-tree and the yew;
Many stand together,
And some stand few.
In the month of May in my own country
All the woods are new."
But the summit of these poems is reached in another composition in the
same book. He has set it cunningly in a description of the way in which
it was written, so as to be able to strew the approaches to it with
single lines and fragments which he could not use, but which were too
good to be lost. The poem itself runs like this:
"He does not die that can bequeath
Some influence to the land he knows,
Or dares, persistent, interwreath
Love permanent with the wild hedgerows;
He does not die but still remains
Substantiate with his darling plains.
The spring's superb adventure calls
His dust athwart the woods to flame;
His boundary river's secret falls
Perpetuate and repeat his name.
He rides his loud October sky:
He does not die. He does not die.
The beeches know the accustomed head
Which loved them, and a peopled air
Beneath their benediction spread
Comforts the silence everywhere;
For native ghosts return and these
Perfect the mystery in the trees.
So, therefore, though myself be crosst
The shuddering of that dreadful day
When friend and fire and home are lost
And even children drawn away--
The passer-by shall hear me still,
A boy that sings on Duncton Hill."
It is of a robuster sort than the other poems and in a way their climax
for it expresses the same emotion. It is indeed the final movement of
the book which treats in particular of the love of Sussex, but also of
the general emotion of the love of one's own country. There is
melancholy mixed with this feeling, as with all strong affections: with
it are associated the love of friends and the dread of parting from them
and regret for the accomplishment of such a thing.
In these few poems, his best, Mr. Belloc seems to have expressed this
mood completely and so to have shown--we have said as it were by
accident--an abiding and fundamental mood. We have been constrained to
criticize his poetry much as he has criticized the poetry of others,
that is to say, sporadically and without continuity. But we have touched
here perhaps on a thing, the obscure existence of which also we
indicated, the secret root that shows his poetry to be a true and native
growth of the soil from which his other writings have sprung.