THE VIRILE POET.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1252, 7 October 1911, Page 9

THE VIRILE POET.

Most poets, however sensitive to criticism, are proof against the criticism of tiio matter-of-fact persons who have no trattc.with poetry. Sufficiently convinced ottho sublimity of their calling, they nave no occasion to heed those who cannot sliaro their world of imagination and beauty; and tho readers and upholders ot poetry everywhere agreo to put the poet beyond the reach of a criticism from wmcu prose can never be, wholly • exoinpt. » o are not thinking Only of those' notions and fancies which the common man is supposed to denounce as "gcod-ior-iiothing" and the cultured-person recognises as marks of genius; but rather of those notions arid fancies which are tolerated only because they are expressed in attractive metrical language."" The matter-of-tactviow boing put'out of court in the judgment of poetry, the poet is en-couraged-to believe that he. is not concerned, with the samo universe as that of common faot. We have hea.nl literary critics speak of romantic or hisrhly imaginative novels, saying "it is all delicate fancy and imagination; it is not concerned with realities; it is sheer poetry" —as if poetry were not concerned with realities! And, again, we have heard persons spoak of the prose works of Mr. A. C. Benson:—"This is all too musical, and. sentimental, and self-centred; this sort of, thing .cannot bo done in prose; it should bo done in poetry"—as if nonsense becamo less nonsensical by means of metre or rhyme! This easy-going view of tho "greatest of tho fine arts" has borne fruit in practice. Amongst living poets wo have a host of Mr. Bensons, Mr. Lawrence Binyon has written hundreds of limpid lines spiced with just that samo wistful and trite reflectiveness. Mr. Stephen Phillips even more had that fluent, mellifluous manner which carried off so slender a burden of thought or emotion. Wo could name many living bards who consider that any sort of fancy or feeling is good enough for poetry so long as it ba prettily handled. And thus poetry is degraded to the position of tho easiest, as to-day it is assuredly the least prized, of tho fine arts. ..." . .:■

This-havoc has been 'wrought in. part by what we may calL,|ho,,dwtrine.of the sensitive soul. There-JiavaVJjpon" sensitive poets before Keats, but Keats is the classic example of .tho poet who lived and died through sensitiveness. Romanticism and transcendentalism wrought tho mischief. Coleridge taught his successors to believe in tho transcendental imagination: the postic perception or vision was glorified; the secret feelings gained a new warrant and value, and if men learnt that it is boorish to conceal their fine feelings, they also learnt to express feelings which tho common man experiences only with shame. Henco the excessive softness, tho iudefini tenets, the languishing, and tho efficiency which were abundant in the poetry of tho nineteenth century, and characterises that of. the twentieth. It is significant that the most admired poem of Keats begins with words which wo should agreo to detest in prose. "My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock! had drunk."

Wo aro disposed to contend that as this sentiment would be intolerable in prose, neither is it to be -sufTer«l in poetry.

A great deal of niodern verse is manufactured out of tins one feeling—qneriilousness. There is also somo really admirable poetry which is constantly disfigured by another ■ feeling—just that vagueness which accompanies all poetic aspiration or desire when it is fruitlessly analysed. Fiona Macleod was a pcet of the indefinite, and most of the modern Celtic poets, by no means excluding Mr. Teats- himself, aro infected with this vagueness or windiness, which reiterates that "the weary of heart have faded away," and endorses • the criticism that poetry is concerned with unrealities. J. M. Synge was a great exception. He may well be claimed as no less a poet than a dramatist. He was hard where sometimes Mr. Yeats is soft. He was precise and concrete where the other was prone to universalise. Ho was realistic, if the word must bo dragged in, and yet ho many times reached tho highest point of poetic idealism, and disturbed the' imagination more than any other British writer of this century.

Our plea is for a certain hardness and masculinity which became rarer in poetry from the time of Coleridge onwards. The plea is for. more grit and more brain in poetry, and we claim that this is simply a plea for more poetry, for a stronger imagination. There is unquestionably one writer Who produces such work—Mr. Doughty, author of "The Dawn in, Britain." It is unfortunate that Mr. Doughty's archaisms present formidable difficulties for the reading of anything that he writes. ' There is another such poet, Mr. Lascolles Abercrombie. Tho little volume which ho has just published himself from Dyinock, Gloucestershire, "Tho Sale of Saint Thomas," is a worthy successor to that beautiful allegory, "Mary and tho Bramble." It is an example of how the pootic imagination ripens into food for adults when virility and intellect have gone to the making of it. There is no mere prettiness in . Mr. Abercrombie's writing. The wearisome refrain of sex, disappointed or desirous, neither haspart in the argument nor supplies, him with images or asides. Innumerable things and events upon tho earth appeal to him because, of that full-bodied experience which they carry to the wakeful and the zestful, experience which is manifold, which lills all the chinks of memory, which may recall pain, which may he charged with pathos, but is never morbid; -beautifully he masses vigorous impressions of sense under a large imaginative idea. Hero thero is no pale, languishing phantom of beauty, but that which men may delight in without the preliminary unmanning of aestheticism. Wo must not be misunderstood to hove been arguing that the end of poetry is not an ideal one. Tho poetic dialogue. servM to show the Apostlo Thomas torn in the conflict between human prudence and an infinite ideal. It is a wholly imaginary sceno based upon an old tradition: "When, for the gospelling of tho world, tho Apostles sorted" the countries among themselves, tho lot of India fell to Thomas. After somo hesitation, ho obeyed the lot, being shamed thereto by his Master, as is hero set forth." The ship's captain with whom Thomas converses tells him of tho great dangers of the sea which he must cross, of the cruelties of the men of India, thu horrors of flics and scorching heat; and Thomas, listening fearfully, overcomes his fears; but arguing with himself, yields to prudence, till a godlike stranger approaches and sells Thomas as his alave to the

captain,-declaring him (obe a slave whom ho himself has iiiftnictcd in noble carpentry, capable of building Mich a palaco as the King has commanded. And to Thomas ho says: . "Hut it is written in the heart of man, Thou shalt no larger be than thy desire. Knowing the possible, see thou try beyond it Into impossible things, unlikely ends." Tho dialogue between the captain and Thomas lends opportunity for giving description and metaphor which is Elizabethan in its ferocity, though the rellections of Thomas have a spiritual quality which is entirely modern. We hear "Of monkeys, those lewd mammeta of mankind." And of (lies starine "Out of their little faces of gibbous eyes." And there are lines such as "Men there have been who could so grimly look ' ■ . . . That soldiers' hearts went out like' candlo (lames Before their eyes, and the blood perisht in them." Which might bo placed side by side with Marlowe's "The frowning looks of fierv Tamburlaine That with his tcrrour and imperious eies, Commands the hearts of his associates." And wo may 'contrast these vehement records of things with the more philosophic passages: "Thou must not therefore stoop thy spirit's sight To poro only within tho candle-gleam Uf conscious wit and reasonable brain; But. search into the sacred darkness lying Uutsido thy knowledge of thvself, the vast Measureless late, full of the power of stars, The outer noiseless heavens of thy soul." We may well think that tho immediate future of poetry deponds upon men of tho stamp of Mr. Abercrombic, men for whom poetry is neither a plaything, nor a sweetsounding expression of desire or anguish or vague ideas; but a serious attempt to grapple with life through combined experience, thought, and vision. Long ago Meredith urged.that if fiction was to go on living, it must give us "brainstulf" and "food-stuff." But.no poet has since arisen to make some similar claim for poetry; to urge that within its proper sphero and in its own appropriate way it should attack the larger life of man with intelligence, with the common senses, and with virile passion.—London "Na.tion." ...