TEN BIST WOMEN POETS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 123, 26 May 1928, Page 21

TEN BIST WOMEN POETS

JWQ; IRISH CANDIDATES (By : "Ajax.") Though the "Observer's" competition mentioned in my. last notes asked for "a list of the ten greatest poet-, esses," it was natural that a British vote should give all ttic places to British writers. It was a case not so much of patriotic bias as of linguistic limitation. Most of us find it hard enough to keep .track of our own poetesses without gallivanting after - foreigners. There were, howover, some competitors who took a broader view, and one of tho.lists was wide enough to have passed muster at Geneva: — (I) Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (England).' VI) Eossetti, Christina (England). (II) O'Neill, Moira (Ireland). (■1) Gore-Booth, Eva (Ireland). (5) Ferguson, Elizabeth (America)., (ijj Deshoulleres, Antoinette. (France). (7) Swarth, Helen (Holland). _ » ■ • (8) Akhmatov, Anna (Russia)'. (9) Pan, Lady (China). . i (10) Ono no Komacht (Japan). A selection which gives Ireland the same representation as England and twice as much as the United. States is "prima facie" suggestive of an Irish origin, but there is "nothing provincial in the distribution of the other five places, which beats me altogether. « '*.._■» ' * ' Let me also confess that I sympathise 'Very strongly with the claims of both the Irish ladies included in this list. They may not bo strong enough to deservo the places next to Mrs. Browning and Miss Eossetti, which were given to Alice Mcynell and Emily Bronte by tho "Observer's" .correspondents. But among the other six chosen by these correspondents—Mrs. Hemans, Ella Whoeler Wilcox, Jean Ingelow, Lady Nairne, Anna, Barbauld, and Edith Sitwell—;there must be at least two or three whose high-water-mark falls below that of' Eva Gore-Booth and Moira O'Neill. I say "high-water-mark" advisedly, for I cannot pretend to a knowledge of much of the work of any of these writers, but it'seems a reasonable presumption that tho best part of it is to be found hi the anthologies. If a single piece is a fair test, few among the last six in. the "Observer's" list are entitled to a higher place than the writer of-THE-LITTLE WAVES OF' BREFFNY. The grand road from the mountain goes shinIng to the\sca, And there is traffic on it, and many a horse and cart; But the little roads of Cloonagh are dearer far to me, ' And the little roads of Cloonagh go rambling through my heart. A' great storm from the ocean goes shouting o'er the hin, And there is glory in it, and terror on the wind; . But the haunted air of twilight is very strange ana still. And the little winds of twilight are dearer to my mind. The great waves of the Atlantic sweep storming on their way. Shining green'and silver with tho hidden herring shoal; But the Little Waves of Breffny have drenched my heart in spray. And the Little Waves of Breffliy go stumbling through my soul. ..'. ■; ■ —Eva Gore-Booth. »:. .■■,#' •' « * It is a strange thing that the writer of these exquisite lines—Miss Eva GoreBooth —should have been the sister of "the Green-Countess," tho Countess Markiewitz,. who was one of the moat irreconcilable of the Sinn Fein Diehards. Here is a still more characteristically Irish piece of tho -other Irish poetess above mentioned, Moira O'Neilf:— CORRYMEELA. Over hero in England I'm helpin' wi' the hay, An' I wisfat I was in Ireland the livelong day; Woary on the English hay an'^sorra take the wheat! ;. . ,-• •• . . . Ochl Corrymeeman' the blue sky over it: Thcro a deep dumb river flowin' by bcyont the heavy trees, This llvin' air is moithered wl' the bummln' o' tha bees, I wlsht I'd hear the Claddagh burn go runnln' through the heat Past Corrymeela, wi' tho blue sky over it. The people that's In England is richer nor the Jews, . . There" not the smallest young gossoon but travels in his shoes! '. I'd glvo the pipe between mo teeth to see a barefut child, ■' "? ' ] Ochl Corrymcela an' the low south wind. Here's hands so full o' money an' hearts so full ' o' care, By tho luck o' lovol I'd still go light for air I did-go'bare. .• . "God save ye, colleen dhas," I said: tho girl she thought me wild. Tar Corrymeela, an' tho low south wind. D'yo mind me now, tho song at night is mortial hard to raise. Tho girls aro heavy goin' here, the boys are ill to please; . . When one'st I'm out this workin' hive, 'tis I'll be back again— Ay, Corrymeela, in tho samo soft rain. The puff o' smoke from one ould roof before an' English town I Tor a shaugh wld Andy Ifcelan here I'd give a silver crown, Tor a curl o' hair like Mollle's yell ask the like in vain, Sweet Corrymcela, an' the same soft rain. • * ' « ■» The origin of the "Observer's" competition was,, as I mentioned last week, Lord Birkenhead's invidious contrast between tho sexes in respect of literary distinction and tho spirited way in which some women authors had taken up the challenge. It was only, a mat.- . tor of opportunity, they argued, and in due course women, who had already done well as novelists, would shine also as poets and philosophers. The ''Saturday Review" expressed its surprise that so familiar a truism as the paucity of great women writers should have excited so much comment, but added that the explanation of the truism was as far off as ever. : The educational excuse is, it said, silly, since for ono thing it was technical and professional rather than literary education which was long denied women, and since for another there is no sure relation between learning and tho creative faculty. Possibly the tendency of wo- ' men towards immediate expression of emotion may. bo hostilo to artistic creation. Possibly— but the possible, partial, unsatisfactory explanations are innumerable. What is certain is that'in our literature there is only one indubitably, great woman poet, Christina Rossettl; that we have never had a great woman dramatist; that no woman critic has come within measurable, distance of Coleridge, Lamb, or Pater; and that, despite Jane Austen and a multitude of exceedingly ablo subsequent, novelists, even in our fiction tho men have a marked advantage. So with other literatures. Education and the ivote will not alter something that is evidently a permanent fact. # * •» » Though tlje "Saturday Review" declares Miss Bossetti to be our '' only one . indubitably great woman poet," the general opinion agrees with the •' Observer s competitors in putting Mrs; Browning above her. But a matter which divides the experts is not one on which a layman can presume to speak with confidence. Mrs. Browning had'a much wider range than Miss Eossetti and many more contacts with life, but her obvious faults wero an almost irresistible diffuseness and unpardonably bad rhymes. In "Aurora Leigh" her genius had a free run with deplorable results. He who has read It once, says Professor Hugh Walker, shrinks from travelling again through its many fiats, of commonplace. , And ho who has not read it may be excused for shrinking from making a, start. Yet the weary traveller who does hot faint by the way has his rich rewards. Have even the greatest, of our poets more admirably described the deli-

cate charm of English landscape than Mrs. Browning in these lines? , And when at last Escaped, so many a groen slope built on slopo Betwixt mo and tho evening's houso behind, I dared to rest, or w«nder In a rest Made sweeter for tho step upon the grass. And view tho ground's most gontlo dimplemcnt, (As if God's finger touched, but did not press In making England) such sin up and down Of verdure—nothing too much up or down, A rlpplo of land; such Ilttlo hills, the sky Can stoop so tenderly and tho whcatflclds climb: Such nooks of valleys lined with orchises. Fed full of noises by Invisible streams; And open pastures where you scarcely toll White daisies from white dew,—at Intervals The mythic oaks and elm-trees standing out Self-poised upon their prodigy of shade. * ■» tt ■» But we' may take it from those who have completed the journey through the wide, dry, open spaces of "Aurora Leigh" that such delightful oases as this dp not often intervene to break the monotony. If Mrs. Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese" constitute her surest title to immortality, it is partly because they represent an outpouring, unique in our literature, of a woman's love for a man in beautiful verse, and partly because the strict limits of the sonnet supplied an antidote .to the discursiveness of the writer's genius which apparently nothing else could cure. There is certainly no waste of words in such-lines as these: — : GRIEF. I tell you. hopeless grief is passionless; The only men Incredulous of despair, Half-taught In anguish, through the midnight air Beat 'upward to God's throne In loud access Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness In souls as countries lieth silent-bare XTndcr the blanching vertical eye-glaro Of tho absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted mail, express Grief for thy Dead in silenco like to death— Moat like a monumental statuo set In everlasting watch and moveless woo Till itself crumble to the dust beneath. Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet: If it could weep, it could . ariso and go. «• ; « <> « . As economy and compression came as naturally to Miss Eossetti as prolixity to Mrs. Browning, she did not need the discipline of the sonnet to prevent her from wandering. She is, says Professor Raleigh, the least ambitious, and some would add tho greatest, of English poetesses. She has the rarest of gifts—the gift of expressing deep feeling in quiet speech and perfect, musical cadence. Her best sonnets, though they have not the splendour of the greatest of Shakespeare's or Milton's or Wordworth's or Kossetti's, yet come -nearer than any of these to the purity and simplicity and perfection of form that mark the finest Italian sonnets. Her. thoughts run into a lyrical mould, and there is no sense of effort in all her work. ' . It must also be remembered that much of Miss Eossetti's best achievement was in devotional verse—a field in which the extraordinary difficulty of attaining even to mediocrity is patent to every reader of "Hymns Ancient and Modern" or Lord Selborne's "Book of Praise." ■ . The great New Year hymn of Miss Rossettl is, says Swinburne, so much the noblest of sacred poems in our language that there is none comes near enough to stand second— ' j a compliment which puts Milton, among others, exactly where the women writers cited last week were expecting to see him put by the epic poetess of the future. « * «• # Limited by ■my space to a single specimen of Miss Eossetti's work, I select . „ PASSING AWAY. Passing away, saith the World, passing away; Chances, beauty and youth sapp'd day by day: Thy life never continueth In one "stay. Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to gray That hath won neither laurel nor bay? I,shall clotho myself in Spring and bud in May; Thou, root-stricken, shalt jiot rebuild thy decay On my ■ bosom for aye. Then I answer'd: Yea. Passing away, saith my Soul, passing away: With its burden of fear" and hope, of labour and play, ' Hearken what the past doth witness.and say: Rust in thy gold, a moth Is In thine array, A canker is in thy bud, thy.leaf must decay. At midniplit, at cockcrow, at morningj ono certain day, Lo, tho Bridegroom shall come and shall not delay: Watch thou and pray. Then I answer'd: Yea. Passing away, saith my God, passing away; passeth after the long delay: New grapes on the vine, new flgs on the tender spray, ' Turtle calleth turtle in Heaven's May. Though I tarry, wait for me, trust me, watch and pray. Arise, come away; night is past,'and 10. it is day; My love, my sl3ter, my spouse, thou shalt hear me say— ' Then I answer'd: Yea.