BABBLING OF GREEN FIELDS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 770, 19 March 1910, Page 9

BABBLING OF GREEN FIELDS.

"Tell me, if you can," says the Poet Laureate in "The Times," "of a single English poet, of really great and enduring distinction, who has not preferred the simple country life." What (an objector retorts iu an English journal) about • Wordsworth and -Westminster Bridge? , , ..... Earth has not anything to show more ii'air. • . ■ ■ ~" What about Keats? ' Souls of poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known,. Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern? "Field," mark you. And what about Herrick on London? 0 place,. 0 people, manners framed to please . ' . All: nations, customs, kindred, languages; 1 am a free-boni 'Itoman: suffer then That I among you like a citizen. And on the simple country life in Devonshire? ■ ■ ..

More discontents T never had, Since I was born, than here, Where I have been, and still am, sad In this dull Devonshire. Mr. Austin builds on Shakespeare's having made tho Duke in "Measure. for Measure" say that he had ''ever loved the life' removed." Here "one seems," ih-.; Austin .thinks,, "to hear Shakespeare himself.'. speaking." But Herrick. .might have seemed to hear Shakespeare himself speaking, where Touchstone says, that in respect that the pastoral life is private it is very vile. "Do you think," said jliiss Ethci Nowcome,; "that a young.lady of my pretensions is to bury herself iii u damp house in Warwickshire?" And so thought Shakespeare too, to judge bf his active career. AVhen he did go back to Stratford at last he'pointedly avoided pastoral quietude and. built, himself- a house with the parish church hells over his. head and the Grammar School bojs shouting just'round the corner.

Kot that we believe that Shakespeare or any,other great artist ever really disliked either , country or town. Tho fashions about preferring town or country, certainly change a good deal among us ordinary stupid people. In Cicero's -time it' could be mentioned as -a curiosity .'that "man is so constituted that be can stand sylvan and even mountain scenery"; Homer and Horace abused the sea as if it were itself one of the "great, muckle, gutsy blawin' whales" to which ■.a ■• non-sentimentalist in : Stevenson- objected among- its" other contents. '■ Nowjfulays; the "quite r commonplSce minds" al.'.wa.vs cry..up"'the' c6untfy'' ! 'and' the 'seaimd run down the town on'the ground of deficiency in "romance" and "charm." They are like the man in yellow boots in Mr. Kipling's fine "M'Andreiv's Hymn," who said to the chief engineer: V, Mister.-: M'Andrew,; don't. you' 'think "steam spoils • romance at sea ? jpn jivhiohvMi'Androw pungently. observed: \ '''Danitfod"ijjit!- , ' , -and proceeded :to 'show> the romance of .steam to some purpose. v : You might' almost know a true poet, or >tho : possible makings, of a. true poet, by 'his. freedom .from this :habit" of finding "cities, steamers, .-trains, motors, urban, canals, and gasometers unclean and mon. ■ .-..-, ■ ..-..,.,'.; "Farewell, Eomance!" - . the Cave-men said s . S, ' ■ "With boue well carved he went away. Flint arms the ignoble arrowhead, And jasper tips the spears to-day." Our sentimentalists are like the Cavemen's; they., sit. and moan for stagocoacnes-.-. and "somewhere off the beaten track,"'while the real poets turn to; 'as the posts: , of. all ages did, and.'revel; in life as it .comes-to them,', not. as it ''came to their grandfathers. "London, London, ojir delight!" sings llr. Le Grillienno; Henley.makes poetry out;of the city Tom cat going home in the morning; Mr. Kipling atones : for a world of blunders by ennobling trains and liners with-his genius; the of the, painters and. etchers no longer go hunting for picked rural "bits" and pastoral dainties—they see the turbid glories of city sunsets and the curious beauty and state of city, scaffoldings. It is not that which goes in at an artist's eye-rhat defileth his art; that which goes out at.his eye is what counts; -whatever, we do, let us not try to keep our poets: from casting on London, and Monciicster the glance that makes all things anew and better. Wo' ail go so. far as to say that a poet is not bound to live on piles in a lakedwelling; let us go -tho whole way nnd owiuthat'it'is just as well for him, and much better for us, that he should live in a suburban terrace and go about by tram. . •