SUNDAY READING .

Gisborne Times, Volume LXVIII, Issue 10752, 24 November 1928, Page 11

SUNDAY READING .

(By the Bov. .Tames Ait-ken, M.A.)

TUT! EVERLASTING MERCY. (Masefield.)

You have heard me say more than once that I believe that the poets are our prophets. A poet is a man who sees and feels more of the truth of things than we ordinary mortals do, and who tries to make us sharers of his vision. John Masefield is undoubtedly one of the greater poets of our time, and in his poem “The Everlasting Mercy” hie has '.something vital and important to say to us. “The Everlasting Mercy” is a. .story in. verse, not too pleasant a, story either, told, much of it, in the rough language natural to the chief character. It is not a! poem one would read for the sheer pleasure of it, but none the less it. repays a somewhat close study. The hero is called Saul Kane. You must picture him as one of the worst characters about a small, country town in England. He / is idle, he is drunken, he is profligate. Respectable people shun him. Before ho is five and twenty he has been nineteen times in jail. Such a man. in England, if he lias any spirit about him at all, is sure to be a poacher. So Saul poaches, poaches systematically, makes agreements with his friends just

‘Which fields and coverts each should poach in”

so that- they may work amicably together,, observing the principle of honor among thieves. It is out of one- of those agreements, an understanding with his friend, Billy Myers, that a quarrel rises. Saul is in fthe wrong: he knows he is in the wrong: hk has Iroen setting his snares on ground that he. had agreed should be Billy’s. Tempers are hot, coarse hard words pass between thorn. In the end Saul challenges his friend to fight for it, and Billy agrees. But the fight has to he postponed a month or two, because Billy has a sprained thumb. However, a date is fixed, a moonlight night, and a pints- : and what might have been a mere one night’s row develops into a great protraetdd excitement iu which all the roughs of the villago are interested, and each of the contestants has his backers and inanv bets are lakh "While the weeks pass, however, Saul is more and more disturbed with tills- thought that ho is in the wrong in this quarrel. Ho lias broken liis word, lie has lied, he has been disloyal to his friend. When at length the-night comes and the little crowd . fathers in Wood Top field and the t two men strip to it, Saul is already a beaten man. His feeling is that, ho deserves to he beaten, and ho expoets to be beaten. TIo would go and own up and shake hands with. Bill oven yet; but there is the group of onlookers, every one keen on the fight, -every one with his stake in the issue—what they would think and what they would say is 100 much for Sfinl.

When Bill was stripped down to his

bends -i 1 thought how long we two’d. been friends , And in my mind, about that wire, I thought, ‘He’s right, t am a liar. I’ll have no luck to-night,’ thinks I, ‘l’m fighting to defend a lie; And this moonshiny evening’s fun Is worse than aught I ever done.’ And thinking that way my heart bled 'so T almost slept to Bill and said so. But no-. I put the thought away For fear of wlmt my friends would

say. They’d backed, me, see? O Lord, the sin Done for Lhe things there’s money in.

As,ho waited for the signal to begin, his mind, uneasy, wanders to other escapades of which even his conscience condemns—tiro- girl who loved him and whom lie betrayed. And.his sense of the hopelessness of the fight increases. Again ho would shak'o hands and call it off. But lie daren’t. There’s the public opinion of his set to consider. “They’ld think I was afraid of Billy.”

Note’ this* man has some good in him. Dngward, libertine, jail bird —vet himself for castwoman who trusted him and t»fnng against a, friend. That’s true Wo nature, isn’t it? That is one of the things Masefield wants to say to us, there is nobody wholly and utterly had, \Ye ought not to need that said to us—wc ought to know it by this time; for Christ has then saying it to us for nineteen hundred years. But it is a truth that is difficult to net upon and easy to forget, so it is well to bo reminded of it' from time to time.

There are. other virtues tarnished and overlaid in poor Saul’s character. He is sensitive to the beauty of the world about him. Thei moonlight ori the limestone rock catches his attention at a moment when you would expect him.’to be blind to everything. The sound of the brook is music in his ears. He welcomes tlie coolness of the evening breezes—there’s grace in it, lie * says. The brilliant sunset and the gathering clouds, foretelling a stormy night, lie can’t help noting them and gazing at them. He is interested in and sympathetic towards all humble and helpless life. The dog, the eat, this rooster, 'the w:ild-duck, the peacock, the pigeons—he feteE friendly towards them all. And a little child in trouble tames his wildness for the time being and he becomes almost gentle. Moreover, rough, impetuous, sensual as he is, he is yet alive, to the mystery of,life and death, cif time and eternity.' He passes the graveyard and thinks of all the ghosts that dance there at Christmas time,

“When Christ’s own star comes over the wood.”

He looks at the churcli and remembers how. aforetime, the monks used to wa+cli for the star, their faces alt aglow; lie thinks how they are all gone now—so many folks all gone. The vow houses in the"street seem to

“. . . put their heads together Talking, perhaps, so dark and sly, Of all the folk they’d seen go by, Children and men and women merry all Wlio’d spiiio day pass that way to burial.”

He wonders why life should be at all: “If this life’s all,” lie says, “the beasts are better.” . Masefield’s point is this. Saul Kane is just as bad a man as you like to make him. There is no lust lie lias not indulged in, no sin ha hns not committed. But still he’s a man, and underneath all the evil that encrusts him, he lias his thoughts and feelings; there still remains potentiality of good. To come back to the fight- in WoodTop field. Saul wins it after all: Bill’s thumb' gives way again in t-lio middle of it, and the odds are too much against him. When it is over Saul offers him his hand, hut lie re*fuses it.

“I’ve been about and had some fun with you,” he says, But you’re a liar, and I’m done with

you.” Saul’s feelings are not- exultant as his friends lead him down to the public house to celebrate the victory. It is no victory to him. His cause was wrong and he won by a fluke. He is inwardly ashamed. And now begins a wild midnight orgy painted by Masefield in vivid lurid colors. Three, hours' go- by in drinking, swearing, singing of lewd songs. Saul abandons himself to.it, but lie is uneasy through it. Drink

will not altogether drown thoughts. Do as he will, the inward shame burns.. A battle, more fierce than the boxing Tout on Wind Top field is raging in his breast. He is a man divided against himself, and the discord in the heart of him persists through all his beastly intoxication, till shoer madness—the madness ot delirium overtakes him. His companions are now deep in drunken slumber. He strips off his clothes and rushes out. naked, into the night. The evil'in himself which the spark of hotter nature left in him condemns and scorns, he projects out of himself upon the world of men about him. He conceives that he is a prophet sent to denounce the sin cf the world and declare the judgment of God. A moment after as the fever of his delirium surges within him, he thinks he is Satan came to kindle the fires of Gomorrah in the wicked town. As he tears along the street he sQ?s the firebell and sets it ringing. Immediately the town is awake, there is hue and cry after him. But being naked he easily escapes from thorn and is not recognised. He gets hack to the public house, is taken in and put to bed. Sleep and Mine food partly restore .him ; as the afternoon of the next day wears on, however. a second bout of madness seizes him—less violent than the first; but it <1 lives him out to the street again. The streets are full of people. He runs against the vicar and breaks out in a long drunken tirade against the church and the squire and the conditions of life generally. A crowd gathers. The vicar answers him quietly and sensibly. Things are not so Wad as Saul paints them: to mend the ills that exist is a harder task than he imagines. “Then

As to whether true or sham That hook of Christ, whose priest I

am, The Bible is a lie, say you, Where do you stand suppose it true ?

Ho bids, him good-hve in quite friendly fashion, advising him—

.. . . . ’twould be no sin To mix mono water in your gin

The net result of that encounter is to strengthen the sense of shame in Saul.

Parson proved to people’s eyes That I was drunk and he was wise And people grinned and women tittered And little children mocked and twittered.

With the increase of shame comes, naturally enough, increased determination to drown it in liquor.

“So, blazing mad, I stalked to bar To show how noble drunkards are; And puzzled spirits like a. beast, To snow contempt for Church and priest.”

That, is -psychologically true. Good and evil, angel and devil, contending in a man, make a long struggle ot

ft comes evening. Saul is out in the. streets again, very drunk. He helps himself to a. couple of pears from a hough that overhangs a garden wall ; eats one, and then stumbles on a crying child. It is a boy whose mother has left him to go into a shop, and he is crying for sheer loneliness. Saul gives him his second pear and talks to him. tells him a story to amuse him, and has the lib ( tlk> follow quite comforted. But meanwhile’ this one and that one among the passers-by, seeing him talking to the. child, are scandalised and .send word to the mother. She comes tearing out of the shoj>, vents her anger first on the hoy, then, turning to Saul, she lets loose, her passion in measureless vituperation. Her language is by no means refined. I should not like to read you all. she says to him. But Saul understands it, and it goes home, and reinforces the self contempt which is torturing him. He sees himself as the; people in the street and as this vulgar mother sees him, a low' down, selfish, callous brute,

“This old mother”'' lie says, “made mo see The harm T done ly being me.” (To be Continued.)