From a Cornish Window Part 5

"O that I were lying under the olives!" But since my own garden must content me this year, let me conclude with a decent letter of thanks to the friend who sent me, from Devons.h.i.+re, a box of violet roots that await the spring in a corner which even the waves of the equinox cannot reach:--

TO A FRIEND WHO SENT ME A BOX OF VIOLETS.

Nay, more than violets These thoughts of thine, friend!

Rather thy reedy brook --Taw's tributary-- At midnight murmuring, Descried them, the delicate, The dark-eyed G.o.ddesses.

There by his cressy beds Dissolved and dreaming Dreams that distilled in a dewdrop All the purple of night, All the s.h.i.+ne of a planet.

Whereat he whispered; And they arising --Of day's forget-me-nots The duskier sisters-- Descended, relinquished The orchard, the trout-pool, The Druid circles, Sheepfolds of Dartmoor, Granite and sandstone, Torridge and Tamar; By Roughtor, by Dozmare, Down the vale of the Fowey Moving in silence.

Brus.h.i.+ng the nightshade By bridges Cyclopean, By Glynn, Lanhydrock,

Restormel, Lostwithiel, Dark woodland, dim water, dreaming town-- Down the vale of the Fowey, Each in her exile Musing the message-- Message illumined by love As a starlit sorrow-- Pa.s.sed, as the shadow of Ruth From the land of the Moabite.

So they came-- Valley-born, valley-nurtured-- Came to the tideway, The jetties, the anchorage, The salt wind piping, Snoring in equinox, By s.h.i.+ps at anchor, By quays tormented, Storm-bitten streets; Came to the Haven Crying, "Ah, shelter us, The strayed amba.s.sadors!

Lost legation of love On a comfortless coast!"

Nay, but a little sleep, A little folding Of petals to the lull Of quiet rainfalls,-- Here in my garden, In angle sheltered From north and east wind-- Softly shall recreate The courage of charity, Henceforth not to me only Breathing the message.

Clean-breath'd Sirens!

Henceforth the mariner, Here on the tideway Dragging, foul of keel, Long-strayed but fortunate, Out of the fogs, the vast Atlantic solitudes, Shall, by the hawser-pin Waiting the signal-- "Leave-go-anchor!"

Scent the familiar Fragrance of home; So in a long breath Bless us unknowingly: Bless them, the violets, Bless me, the gardener, Bless thee, the giver.

My business (I remind myself) behind the window is not to scribble verses: my business, or a part of it, is to criticise poetry, which involves reading poetry. But why should anyone read poetry in these days?

Well, one answer is that n.o.body does.

I look around my shelves and, brus.h.i.+ng this answer aside as flippant, change the form of my question. Why do we read poetry? What do we find that it does for us? We take to it (I presume) some natural need, and it answers that need. But what is the need? And how does poetry answer it?

Clearly it is not a need of knowledge, or of what we usually understand by knowledge. We do not go to a poem as we go to a work on Chemistry or Physics, to add to our knowledge of the world about us. For example, Keats' glorious lines to the Nightingale--

"Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird . . ."

Are unchallengeable poetry; but they add nothing to our stock of information. Indeed, as Mr. Bridges pointed out the other day, the information they contain is mostly inaccurate or fanciful. Man is, as a matter of fact, quite as immortal as a nightingale in every sense but that of sameness. And as for:

"Magic cas.e.m.e.nts opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn,"

Science tells us that no such things exist in this or any other ascertained world. So, when Tennyson tells us that birds in the high Hall garden were crying, "Maud, Maud, Maud," or that:

"There has fallen a splendid tear From the pa.s.sion-flower at the gate: She is coming, my dove, my dear; She is coming, my life, my fate; The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near'; And the white rose weeps, 'She is late' . . ."

The poetry is unchallengeable, but the information by scientific standards of truth is demonstrably false, and even absurd.

On the other hand (see Coleridge's _Biographia Literaria_, c. xiv.), the famous lines--

"Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November, . . ."

Though packed with trustworthy information, are quite as demonstrably unpoetical. The famous senior wrangler who returned a borrowed volume of _Paradise Lost_ with the remark that he did not see what it proved, was right--so far as he went. And conversely (as he would have said) no sensible man would think to improve Newton's _Principia_ and Darwin's _Origin of Species_ by casting them into blank verse; or Euclid's _Elements_ by writing them out in ballad metre--

The king sits in Dunfermline town, Drinking the blude-red wine; 'O wha will rear me an equilateral triangle Upon a given straight line?'

We may be sure that Poetry does not aim to do what Science, with other methods, can do much better. What craving, then, does it answer? And if the craving be for knowledge of a kind, then of what kind?

The question is serious. We agree--at least I a.s.sume this--that men have souls as well as intellects; that above and beyond the life we know and can describe and reduce to laws and formulas there exists a spiritual life of which our intellect is unable to render account.

We have (it is believed) affinity with this spiritual world, and we hold it by virtue of something spiritual within us, which we call the soul. You may disbelieve in this spiritual region and remain, I dare say, an estimable citizen; but I cannot see what business you have with Poetry, or what satisfaction you draw from it. Nay, Poetry demands that you believe something further; which is, that in this spiritual region resides and is laid up that eternal scheme of things, that universal _order_, of which the phenomena of this world are but fragments, if indeed they are not mere shadows.

A hard matter to believe, no doubt! We see this world so clearly; the spiritual world so dimly, so rarely, if at all! We may fortify ourselves with the reminder (to be found in Blanco White's famous sonnet) that the first man who lived on earth had to wait for the darkness before he saw the stars and guessed that the Universe extended beyond this earth--

"Who could have thought such darkness lay conceal'd Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find, Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood reveal'd, That to such countless...o...b.. thou mad'st us blind?"

He may, or may not, believe that the same duty governs his infinitesimal activity and the motions of the heavenly bodies--

"Awake, my soul, and _with the sun_ Thy daily stage of duty run . . ."

--That his duty is one with that of which Wordsworth sang--

"Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong."

But in a higher order of some sort, and his duty of conforming with it, he does not seem able to avoid believing.

This, then, is the need which Poetry answers. It offers to bring men knowledge of this universal order, and to help them in rectifying and adjusting their lives to it. It is for gleams of this spiritual country that the poets watch--

"The gleam, The light that never was on sea or land. . . ."

"I am Merlin," sang Tennyson, its life-long watcher, in his old age--

"I am Merlin, And I am dying; I am Merlin, Who follow the gleam."

They do not claim to see it always. It appears to them at rare and happy intervals, as the Vision of the Grail to the Knights of the Round Table. "Poetry," said Sh.e.l.ley, "is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds."

If this be the need, how have our poets been answering it of late years? How, for instance, did they answer it during the South African War, when (according to our newspapers) there was plenty of patriotic emotion available to inspire the great organ of national song? Well, let us kick up what dust we will over 'Imperial ideals,'

we must admit, at least, that these ideals are not yet 'accepted of song': they have not inspired poetry in any way adequate to the n.o.bility claimed for them. Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Henley saluted the Boer War in verse of much truculence, but no quality; and when Mr.

Swinburne and Mr. Henley lacked quality one began to inquire into causes. Mr. Kipling's Absent-minded Beggars, Muddied Oafs, Goths and Huns, invited one to consider why he should so often be first-rate when neglecting or giving the lie to his pet political doctrines, and invariably below form when enforcing them. For the rest, the Warden of Glenalmond bubbled and squeaked, and Mr. Alfred Austin, like the man at the piano, kept on doing his best. It all came to nothing: as poetry it never began to be more than null. Mr. Hardy wrote a few mournfully memorable lines on the seamy side of war. Mr. Owen Seaman (who may pa.s.s for our contemporary Aristophanes) was smart and witty at the expense of those whose philosophy goes a little deeper than surface-polish. One man alone--Mr. Henry Newbolt--struck a note which even his opponents had to respect. The rest exhibited plenty of the turbulence of pa.s.sion, but none of the gravity of thoughtful emotion. I don't doubt they were, one and all, honest in their way.

But as poetry their utterances were negligible. As writers of real poetry the Anti-Jingoes, and especially the Celts, held and still hold the field.

I will not adduce poets of admitted eminence--Mr. Watson, for instance, or Mr. Yeats--to prove my case. I am content to go to a young poet who has his spurs to win, and will ask you to consider this little poem, and especially its final stanza. He calls it--

A CHARGE

If thou hast squander'd years to grave a gem Commissioned by thy absent Lord, and while 'Tis incomplete, Others would bribe thy needy skill to them-- Dismiss them to the street!

Should'st thou at last discover Beauty's grove, At last be panting on the fragrant verge, But in the track, Drunk with divine possession, thou meet Love-- Turn, at her bidding, back.

When round thy s.h.i.+p in tempest h.e.l.l appears, And every spectre mutters up more dire To s.n.a.t.c.h control And loose to madness thy deep-kennell'd Fears,-- Then to the helm, O Soul!

Last, if upon the cold, green-mantling sea Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar, Both castaway, And one must perish--let it not be he Whom thou art sworn to obey.

The author of these lines is a Mr. Herbert Trench, who (as I say) has his spurs to win. Yet I defy you to read them without recognising a note of high seriousness which is common to our great poets and utterly foreign to our modern bards of empire. The man, you will perceive, dares to talk quite boldly about the human soul. Now you will search long in our Jingo bards for any recognition of the human soul: the very word is unpopular. And as men of eminence write, so lesser wits imitate. A while ago I picked up a popular magazine, and happened on these verses--fluently written and, beyond a doubt, honestly meant. They are in praise of King Henry VIII.:--

King Harry played at tennis, and he threw the dice a-main, And did all things that seemed to him for his own and England's gain; He would not be talked to lightly, he would not be checked or chid; And he got what things he dreamed to get, and did-- what things he did.