Modern British Poetry Part 26

His original poetry is intellectual but simple, sometimes metaphysical and always interesting technically in its fluent and variable rhythms.

A collection of his best verse up to 1919 was published under the t.i.tle, _Poems: First Series_.

A HOUSE

Now very quietly, and rather mournfully, In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires, And all the stubble-fields that were so warm to him Keep but in memory their borrowed fires.

And I, the traveller, break, still unsatisfied, From that faint exquisite celestial strand, And turn and see again the only dwelling-place In this wide wilderness of darkening land.

The house, that house, O now what change has come to it.

Its crude red-brick facade, its roof of slate; What imperceptible swift hand has given it A new, a wonderful, a queenly state?

No hand has altered it, that parallelogram, So inharmonious, so ill-arranged; That hard blue roof in shape and colour's what it was; No, it is not that any line has changed.

Only that loneliness is now accentuate And, as the dusk unveils the heaven's deep cave, This small world's feebleness fills me with awe again, And all man's energies seem very brave.

And this mean edifice, which some dull architect Built for an ignorant earth-turning hind, Takes on the quality of that magnificent Unshakable dauntlessness of human kind.

Darkness and stars will come, and long the night will be, Yet imperturbable that house will rest, Avoiding gallantly the stars' chill scrutiny, Ignoring secrets in the midnight's breast.

Thunders may shudder it, and winds demoniac May howl their menaces, and hail descend: Yet it will bear with them, serenely, steadfastly, Not even scornfully, and wait the end.

And all a universe of nameless messengers From unknown distances may whisper fear, And it will imitate immortal permanence, And stare and stare ahead and scarcely hear.

It stood there yesterday; it will to-morrow, too, When there is none to watch, no alien eyes To watch its ugliness a.s.sume a majesty From this great solitude of evening skies.

So lone, so very small, with worlds and worlds around, While life remains to it prepared to outface Whatever awful unconjectured mysteries May hide and wait for it in time and s.p.a.ce.

_Lascelles Abercrombie_

Lascelles Abercrombie was born in 1884. Like Masefield, he gained his reputation rapidly; totally unknown until 1909, upon the publication of _Interludes and Poems_, he was recognized as one of the greatest metaphysical poets of his period. _Emblems of Love_ (1912), the ripest collection of his blank verse dialogues, justified the enthusiasm of his admirers.

Many of Abercrombie's poems, the best of which are too long to quote, are founded on scriptural themes, but his blank verse is not biblical either in mood or manner. It is the undercurrent rather than the surface of his verse which moves with a strong religious conviction.

Abercrombie's images are daring and brilliant; his lines, sometimes too closely packed, glow with a dazzling intensity that is warmly spiritual and fervently human.

FROM "VASHTI"

What thing shall be held up to woman's beauty?

Where are the bounds of it? Yea, what is all The world, but an awning scaffolded amid The waste perilous Eternity, to lodge This Heaven-wander'd princess, woman's beauty?

The East and West kneel down to thee, the North And South; and all for thee their shoulders bear The load of fourfold s.p.a.ce. As yellow morn Runs on the slippery waves of the spread sea, Thy feet are on the griefs and joys of men That sheen to be thy causey. Out of tears Indeed, and blitheness, murder and l.u.s.t and love, Whatever has been pa.s.sionate in clay, Thy flesh was tempered. Behold in thy body The yearnings of all men measured and told, Insatiate endless agonies of desire Given thy flesh, the meaning of thy shape!

What beauty is there, but thou makest it?

How is earth good to look on, woods and fields, The season's garden, and the courageous hills, All this green raft of earth moored in the seas?

The manner of the sun to ride the air, The stars G.o.d has imagined for the night?

What's this behind them, that we cannot near, Secret still on the point of being blabbed, The ghost in the world that flies from being named?

Where do they get their beauty from, all these?

They do but glaze a lantern lit for man, And woman's beauty is the flame therein.

SONG

(_From "Judith"_)

Balkis was in her marble town, And shadow over the world came down.

Whiteness of walls, towers and piers, That all day dazzled eyes to tears, Turned from being white-golden flame, And like the deep-sea blue became.

Balkis into her garden went; Her spirit was in discontent Like a torch in restless air.

Joylessly she wandered there, And saw her city's azure white Lying under the great night, Beautiful as the memory Of a wors.h.i.+pping world would be In the mind of a G.o.d, in the hour When he must kill his outward power; And, coming to a pool where trees Grew in double greeneries, Saw herself, as she went by The water, walking beautifully, And saw the stars s.h.i.+ne in the glance Of her eyes, and her own fair countenance Pa.s.sing, pale and wonderful, Across the night that filled the pool.

And cruel was the grief that played With the queen's spirit; and she said: "What do I here, reigning alone?

For to be unloved is to be alone.

There is no man in all my land Dare my longing understand; The whole folk like a peasant bows Lest its look should meet my brows And be harmed by this beauty of mine.

I burn their brains as I were sign Of G.o.d's beautiful anger sent To master them with punishment Of beauty that must pour distress On hearts grown dark with ugliness.

But it is I am the punisht one.

Is there no man, is there none, In whom my beauty will but move The l.u.s.t of a delighted love; In whom some spirit of G.o.d so thrives That we may wed our lonely lives.

Is there no man, is there none?"-- She said, "I will go to Solomon."

_James Elroy Flecker_

Another remarkable poet whose early death was a blow to English literature, James Elroy Flecker, was born in London, November 5, 1884.

Possibly due to his low vitality, Flecker found little to interest him but a cla.s.sical reaction against realism in verse, a delight in verbal craftsmans.h.i.+p, and a pa.s.sion for technical perfection--especially the deliberate technique of the French Parna.s.sians whom he wors.h.i.+pped.

Flecker was opposed to any art that was emotional or that "taught"

anything. "The poet's business," he declared, "is not to save the soul of man, but to make it worth saving."

The advent of the war began to make Flecker's verse more personal and romantic. The tuberculosis that finally killed him at Davos Platz, Switzerland, January 3, 1915, forced him from an Olympian disinterest to a deep concern with life and death. He pa.s.sionately denied that he was weary of living "as the pallid poets are," and he was attempting higher flights of song when his singing ceased altogether.

His two colorful volumes are _The Golden Journey to Samarkand_ (1913) and _The Old s.h.i.+ps_ (1915).

THE OLD s.h.i.+PS

I have seen old s.h.i.+ps sail like swans asleep Beyond the village which men still call Tyre, With leaden age o'ercargoed, dipping deep For Famagusta and the hidden sun That rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire; And all those s.h.i.+ps were certainly so old-- Who knows how oft with squat and noisy gun, Questing brown slaves or Syrian oranges, The pirate Genoese h.e.l.l-raked them till they rolled Blood, water, fruit and corpses up the hold.

But now through friendly seas they softly run, Painted the mid-sea blue or sh.o.r.e-sea green, Still patterned with the vine and grapes in gold.

But I have seen, Pointing her shapely shadows from the dawn And image tumbled on a rose-swept bay, A drowsy s.h.i.+p of some yet older day; And, wonder's breath indrawn, Thought I--who knows--who knows--but in that same (Fished up beyond Aeaea, patched up new --Stern painted brighter blue--) That talkative, bald-headed seaman came (Twelve patient comrades sweating at the oar) From Troy's doom-crimson sh.o.r.e, And with great lies about his wooden horse Set the crew laughing, and forgot his course.

It was so old a s.h.i.+p--who knows, who knows?

--And yet so beautiful, I watched in vain To see the mast burst open with a rose, And the whole deck put on its leaves again.

_D. H. Lawrence_