Mary Sturgeon

“ Romance is reborn in the novel; the poetry of the old saga blooms again in the lyric; and a healthy new development has given to Ireland what she never before possessed—a native drama.
Now it is true that the larger figures of the movement have receded a little; the one in whom the flame of genius burned most fiercely has passed into silence. And Synge being gone, there is no hand like his, cunning to modulate upon every string of the harp. There is no voice of so full a compass, booming out of tragic depths or shrilling satiric laughter or sweet with heroic romance ”

“ Instead of watching, recording, analyzing, after the method of so many contemporary poets, this is a mentality which contemplates and reflects. It leans lovingly toward the past, and has a sense, partly instinctive and partly scholarly, of historic values: while, for its artistic method, it passes all the treasure that fancy has gathered, and even passion itself, through the alembic of memory. So is created a softer grace, a serener atmosphere, and a richer dignity than the realist can achieve—and we will not be churlish enough to complain if, at the same time, the salt of reality is missing. ”

“ From this brave and clear mentality comes a sense of fact which finds its artistic response in realism. Sometimes it will be found operating externally, on technique; but more often, with truer art, it will wed truth of idea and form, in grace as well as candour. From its detachment and quick perception of incongruity comes a rare humour which can laugh, thoughtfully or derisively, even at itself. It will stand aside, watching its own exuberance with an ironic smile, as in "The One Before the Last." It will turn a penetrating glance on passion till the gaudy thing wilts and dies. ”

“ Luckily, there is a poem called "Biography" which gives a clue and something more. It is a pæan of zest for life, of the intense joy in actual living which seems to be the dynamic of Mr Masefield's genius. There is, most conspicuous and significant, delight in beauty; a swift, keen, accurate response of sense to the external world, to sea and sky and hill, to field and flower. But there is fierce delight, too, in toil and danger, in strenuous action, in desperate struggle with wind and wave, in the supreme effort of physical power, in health and strength and skill and freedom and jollity ”

“ The poem called "The Seekers" is beautifully apt in this regard. Simply, clearly, directly, it expresses the alpha and omega of this genius: the zest which is its driving force and the [Pg 201] aspiration, the tireless and ceaseless pursuit of an ideal, which is its objective.
Not for us are content, and quiet, and peace of mind,
For we go seeking a city that we shall never find.
There is no solace on earth for us—for such as we—
Who search for a hidden city that we shall never see.
There is the spirit of adventure, the eternal allure of romance, as old and as potent as poetry itself. ”

“ Its charm is greatest when the creative energy of it is outpoured through what is called personality. Never was a poet more lavish in the giving of himself, yielding up a rich and complex individuality with engaging candour. And poems will be found in which all its qualities are blended in a soft and intricate harmony. Passion is subdued to tenderness: imagination stoops to fantasy: thought, in so far as it is not content merely to shape the form of the work, is bent upon ideas that are wistful, or sad or ironic. ”

“ It is not long, however, before we find that the two elements are beginning to combine; and we soon meet, astonishingly, with the third great quality of the poet's genius. It is strange that imagination always has this power to surprise us. No matter if we have taught ourselves that poetry cannot begin to exist without it: no matter how watchful and alert we think we are, it will spring upon us unaware, taking possession of the mind with amazing exhilaration. That is especially true of the quality as it is found in Rupert Brooke's poetry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An idle, good-for-nothing, lone old man?
The curious structure of the verse is apparent at a glance—the irregular pattern, the extreme variation in the length of the line, the absence of rhyme and the strange metrical effects. It is a new poetical instrument, having little outward resemblance to the grace and dignity of regular forms. Its unfamiliarity may displease the eye and the ear at first, but it is not long before we perceive the design which controls its apparent waywardness, and recognize its fitness to express the life that the poet has chosen to depict. ”

“ It is, in fact, nothing less than a flame of courage, a shining triumph of the spirit of humanity. Mr Shaw has made play with the facts of this poet's life, partly because 'it is his nature so to do,' and partly, one suspects, to hide a deeper feeling. But play as you will with the willing vagabondage, the happy irresponsibility, the weakness and excess and error of a wild youth, you will only film the surface of the tragedy. ”

“ But while in the first of these two poems the spirit's spark is struck into 'absolute human clay,' in "Dauber" it is burning already in the brain of an artist. Saul Kane, when his soul comes to birth at the touch of religion, puts off bestiality and rises to a joyful perception of the meaning of life. The Dauber, with that precious knowledge already shining within him, but twinned with another, the supreme and immortal glory of art, with his last breath cries holy defiance to the elements that snatch his life—It will go on. ”

“ 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 the conception, in its balance and comprehensiveness, is really great; for while on the one hand there is an humiliating indictment of our civilization (implicit, of course, but none the less complete) on the other hand there is a proud vindication of the invincible human spirit.
Viewed steadily thus, by a poetic genius which has subdued the conventions of its art, such themes are shown to possess a latent but inalienable power to exalt the mind. They are therefore of the genuine stuff of art, needing only the formative touch of the poet to evoke beauty. ”

“ Running through the piece—and more clearly perceived when the whole poem is read—is the thread of melancholy which is inseparably woven into all the poet's work of this kind. And it, too, was a gift of his fairy-godmother when he was born, light in texture as a gossamer and spun out of the softest silk. Melancholy is almost too big a word to fit the thing it is, for there is no gloom in it. It is like the silvery, transparent cloud of thoughtfulness which passes for a moment over a happy face ”

“ Exactly the same feature is discernible in the style of this verse. Look at the last passage for a moment and consider its effect. It is impossible to define in a single word, because of its complexity. The mind, lingering delightedly over the metaphor of life the mother, is suddenly awed by the magnitude of the idea which succeeds it. The æsthetic sense is taken by the light and colour of the middle lines, and then, as if the breath were caught on a half-sob, a wave of emotion follows, pensive at first, but rising abruptly to a note that is as rough as a curse. ”

“ On the other hand, there is a lyric form of less pretension and wilder grace; music so fresh and apparently artless as to mock the idea of derivation. Yet it, too, owes its vitality to the same impulse, and is, perhaps, its healthiest blossoming.
The treasury of Irish romance has been eagerly drawn upon by the literary poet; and splendid stories they are for his purpose. Every one by this time knows the incomparable Deirdre legend, in one or other of the fine versions by Mr Yeats, Mr Trench or Synge. Deirdre, as a heroine of the ancient world, positively shines beside a Helen or a Cleopatra. ”

“ Subjective this poet may be—is it not a virtue in the lyricist?—but he does not confide his religion to us in so many words. He has an artistic conscience. But the avowal, though it is by way of allegory and grows up out of the imagery of the poem as naturally as a blossom from its stem, is clear enough. And is supported elsewhere, implicitly, or by a mental attitude, or outlined now and then in figurative brilliance. There can be no reason to doubt its strength and its sincerity—and there is every reason to rejoice in it—for it reveals Mr Stephens as a poet of the future. ”

“ They partake of youth in their essence; and they would seem to proceed from that strain in the Irish nature which has always adored the young and beautiful, and which dreamed, many centuries ago, a pagan paradise of immortal youth which has never lost its glamour:
Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,
Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,
Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.
Doubtless we owe this air of newness largely to the rebirth of literature in the Isle. When we say that poetry has never slumbered there, we get as near to the truth as is possible ”

“ Thus, too, in the third stanza, the recurrent idea of an alien spirit is caught into imagery which glows with light and colour: imagery so simple and sensuous as almost to mock abstraction and quite to disguise it; but bearing at its heart the essence of a philosophy. Again the soul is imagined as standing at the barrier of the two countries, when reality has melted to an apparition and the sense of that other realm has grown acute. ”

“ In Mr Stephens what we may call the poetic instinct of the age works not merely to escape from the past, but to advance into the future—and it has become a conscious, reasoned hope in human destiny. It does not with him so much influence the form of the work as it directs the spirit of it. And that spirit is an absolute and impassioned belief in the future of mankind. ”

“ Now precisely in that way, though not of course in the same superlative degree, one may see Rupert Brooke standing for the England of his time. And when this poet died at Lemnos on April 23, 1915, those who knew and loved his work must have felt the tragic fitness of the date with the event. If the gods of war had decreed his death, they had at least granted that he might pass on England's day. In him indeed was manifested the poetic spirit of the race, warm with human passion and sane with laughter: soaring on wings of fire but nesting always on the good earth. ”

“ It is as though the two famous principles on which [Pg 83] the Lyrical Ballads were planned had in the fulness of time become united in the creative impulse of a single mind. That is not to charge Mr de la Mare with the combined weight of those two earlier giants, of course, but simply to observe the truth which Rupert Brooke expressed so finely when he said that the poetic spirit was coming back "to its wider home, the human heart." So that even a born romanticist like this cannot escape; and into the chilly enchantment of an older manner warm sunlight streams and fresh airs blow. ”

“ Humanity was the new ideal: humanity at bay and splendidly fighting. It appeared first in the two volumes of 1907 as dramatic studies from the lives of shepherd-folk. Four books had preceded these, in which the texture of the verse was woven of old romance and legend. Another book was yet to come, The Web of Life, in which the prettiness of that kind of romanticism would blossom into absolute beauty. But the new impulse grew from the date of Stonefolds; and when the first part of Daily Bread appeared, the impulse had become a reasoned principle. ”

“ And that is, perhaps, the final significance of Mr Monro's work. With less temptation to waywardness than a more exuberant genius, he has achieved a completer harmony. But it was not so easy a task as the quiet manner would cheat one into supposing; and, of course, it has not always been so successfully done. There are many pieces—beautiful nevertheless—where external influences have not been completely subdued. From them one may measure the strength with which contemporary thought claims this poet. ”

“ It is in any case safe to say that a sense of reality—shown in human sympathy and tenderness for lowly creatures, in love of nature and perception of beauty, in truth to fact, in a touch of shrewd insight and a sense of humour bred of the habit of detachment—is very strong. I do not suggest that these qualities are everywhere apparent. By their nature they are such as could not often enter into the framework of poems so subtly wrought. But they are woven into the texture of the poet's mentality, and have even directed its method. ”

“ A wider range is taken, and comedy enters, with an accession of urbanity from which characterization gains a mellower note. The world of nature, too, banished for a time in the exclusive study of humanity, returns to enrich this later poetry with a store of loving observation, an intimate knowledge of wild creatures, and the refreshing sense of a healthful open-air life in which, over a deep consciousness of sterner things, plays a jolly comradeship with wind and weather. ”

“ So, although their minds may be steeped in older poetry, they deliberately turn away from its influence, seeking inspiration in life itself. There is no doubt that they are building up a new kind of poetry, with values that sound strange perhaps to the unfamiliar ear, but which bid fair to enlarge the field for the poetic genius and enrich it permanently. But the crux of the question for us at this moment is the fact of effort, the deliberate endeavour which is made by those poets to escape from tradition. ”

“ And then, finally, the poet does not shrink from the last and grimmest reality. He seems to say—Let material force do its utmost against this man. Admit the most dreadful possibility; shatter the life, with its fine promise, its aspiration and toil and precious perception of beauty, and fling it to the elements which claim it. ”

“ Owing allegiance chiefly to nature, he is free as the air in body and soul. Unspoilt by [Pg 249] 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. ”