POETRY AND ACTION

Evening Star, Issue 25565, 18 August 1945, Page 11

POETRY AND ACTION

[Written by Maui' Scott for the ' Evening Star.'] One feels no particular surprise at finding a soldier turning from- the violence of battle to find comfort and pleasure in poetry, music, or art. Warriors, from Lovelace to Rupert Brooke, have often ■ been' poets too. Yet, in these days of specialised and highly mechanised warfare,, there seems something vaguely incongruous in the commander-in-chief of a great army who possesses a wide and profound knowledge of.- English poetry; who knows literally hundreds of poems by heart, and who admits that he loves to |' declaim '' them when riding or driving alone. It is remarkable that Lord Wavell, who turned from the heavy duties of commander to the no less onerous ones of statesman; should : have: had time not only to make-a; comprehensive collection of other men's verse, but "also to annotate it and to publish it- .''■''': Personally, 1 feel very grateful tohim. Not that 1 welcomed ~the arrival of 'Other Men's Flowers'. in the bouse; I didn't like the- title, and 1 fancied that a soldier's'collection, would ■ deal,top'exclusively with his profession, I .was entirely mistaken. ... The; anthology is divided into nine ;sections, and war comes in for only-it's'due share. Asfor ; the title, it is a quotation which 1 failed to. recognise from ,Mqi\taigne": "I have gathered a posie of other mdn's flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds- them- is my own."' The words struck a note of modesty characteristic of all I have heard of Lord Wavell. Going a little further, I was completely won over by the foreword—hateful inflictions as a rule. Who could resist reading on after the story: " Horatius was the earliest poem 1 got by heart as a small bo.v. Admiring aunts used to give me threepence for reciting it from beginning to end; a wiser uncle gave me sixpence for a promise to do nothing of the kind." I liked his criticism of Browning, and Kipling: '.'.They have courage and humility and their feet are usually on the ground." Not that his poets must always be earth-bound:" I have enjoyed the poetry of those whose eyes are on. the stars without memorising much of it " —for this collection, be it noted, consists entirely of poems that the anthologist has once known by heart. Oi Masefield and Chesterton he writes admiringly,-but his criticism of Tennyson and Wordsworth, doubtless regarded as blasphemy by many-, seems to me to hold a great deal of truth. " They have never registered an impression upon my memory; they seem to me to belong to a limbo which is earthy without being quite human, and stargazing without being inspired." He loves to quote, on the other hand, some of the Elizabethans, and mystics such as Blake and Francis Thompson. He refuses to apologise for his taste; he does not even defend it; it just happens to be his own. The collection comprises some 400 pages, and ranges from Kipling to Yeats, from Raymond Asquith to Flecker. The fact that the' anthologist once knew these hundreds of poems by heart shows that his memory is phenomenal. "I cannot claim that 1 can now repeat by heart all the poems in this anthology. I think I can safely claim that I once could; a*nd I can still repeat to myself nearly all that is printed here." For modern poetry, in the strict sense, Wavell admits, that he has.: little taste, .adding,, with characteristic modesty, "But my son, for whose judgment I have very great respect, reads both the old and the new poets, and, on the whole, prefers the latter; so : perhaps it is'just-that 1 am growing old." He is humorous about his incurable love of repeating poetry: "My A's.D.C. have to listen politely when I quote verse to them—that is a privilege of a commander-in-chief; my wife and daughters have quietly but firmly cured me of the habit as far as they are concerned. I would warn young men, when they find young women willing, even apparently anxious, to listen to them repeat poetry, to watch their step very | carefully." - He apologises for the notes which follow some of the poems:" Written hurriedly in the short leisure of a very busy life, they should not be taken too seriously. The notes are not altogether my fault; the publisher asked for them." The publisher was wise; the book would lose much of its interest without them. Some are explanatory, elucidating points in _ the poem, telling its origin and allusions; others, including the prefaces _to the various sections, are both wise and witty. They show us the real man, the brave soldier", the wise leader who had to bear the burden of other men's errors, the great commander whom his men loved and trusted, and to whom contemporary, history has as yet done 6caii.t justice. There are little, illuminating comments, as when he quotes Kipling's poem on 'Boxing,' with its last two lines:—

Man cannot tell, but Allah knows,

How much the other side was hurt, adding: "This illustrates my favourite military maxim, that, when things are going badly in battle, the best tonic is to take one's mind off one's own troubles by considering what a rotten time one's opponent must be having." Enlightening, top, is the mention off his discovery of the poem called ' London Under Bombardment,' in an Egyptian paper, /and of his committing it to memory as he flew from Cairo to Barce at the beginning of April, 1941. " I was uncomfortable in body, for the bomber was cramped and draughty, and in mind, because I knew that 1 had been caught with insufficient strength to meet a heavy counter-at-tack " ; learning this poem had helped, he says simply—nor does he mention that it was no fault of his that found him " with insufficient strength." One understands, too, that in his present position in India he feels " a great fellow feeling for Valdez. the sea gipsy chained to a battleship, who is betrayed to bondage in high places.- .. . . I hope he kept a sense olf humour and did not become pompous." : One can feel very sure that his sense of humour will not desert Lord Wavell in his present difficult task—and that never under.any circumstances will he become pompous. I find that I have said very little of the actual anthology, finding so much that is interesting in the revelation of a character that has always seemed to be admirable. But the collection is excellent —all that an anthology should be. You will meet there with ■•all-your favourite poems or nearly all of them, provided you be not ultra-modern ; you will have the satisfaction o'f rereading some almost forgotten versos: and you will have the infinite joy of tracing to their lairs many elusive quotations that have been worrying you for years. And what more can ' one ask of any anthology?