POET LAUREATE

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 139, 12 May 1930, Page 7

POET LAUREATE

POPULAR APPOINTMENT. MASEFIELD GENERAL FAVOURITE WAS KIPLING RULED OUT? (United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright). LONDON, May 10. Mr John Masefield’s appointment as Poet Laureate was announced from the Lord Chamberlain’s office in Buckingham Palace in this manner:— “The King has graciously been pleased to appoint John Masefield, Esq., B.Litt.., to be Poet Laureate in Ordinary to His Majesty in the Room of Robert Bridges, Esq., 0.M., B.Litt., M.A., deceased.” Mr Masefield was the “general favourite” for the post. Perhaps he is the only Poet Laureate who ever earned a living by handing pots of beer over a bar in a public bouse. This was thirty years ago, when he was stranded in New York. Everybody appears thoroughly pleased with the appoinment. Bernard Shaw says: “The King could not have appointed a better man.” The Daily Express says: “If we must have a Poet Laureate, then Mr Masefield is as good as any of the half-dozen who might- have filled the silences left by Mr Bridges.” Though frequently denied, the view still persists with the public that Rudyard Kipling was ruled out for the post owing" to his “Widow of Windsor” poem. It is generally believed, however, that he would not have accepted the position in any case. VIGOROUS AND UNCONVENTIONAL STYLE. (British Official Wireless.) Received Mav 12. 11.0 a.m. RUGBY, May 10. Mr John Masefield’s appointment has given great pleasure in literary ciicles, and especially among his fellow poets. The new Laureate, who is aged 55, has written several novels, as well as long narrative poems, which display an intense love of the sea and of the English countryside. When ho took up writing seriously, he wrote sea sketches for the Manchester Guardian, some notable short poems, including the well-known “Sea Fever” and then a series of long poems, beginning with “The Everlasting Mercy,” the vigorous and unconventional style of which attracted much attention.

His most recent book was “The Hawbuckt,” which was published last year. It is a story of the hunting shires. Mr Masefield lives at Boxhill, Oxford, and was a neighbour and close friend of his predecessor, Dr Bridges. He is of an extremely shy temperament, and is glad that the Laureatcship does not these days involve writing to order. In strong contrast with his contemporary Kipling, John Masefield approached the kingdom of letters through years of laborious apprenticeship. In his earlier works he revealed a sense of great and unexplored potentialities—undeveloped estates of tho mind and of experience that time would reveal. Kipling came into bis kingdom at a bound: Masefield has come to it with no sudden blast of a trumpet but stealthily, industriously, modestly. He brought rich argosies from strange lands, stories of memories of great solitudes and mighty seas, of the spacious splendours of earth and sky and of fierce contact with humanity in its most elemental expressions. He was still young, but he was very old in the knowledge of life at first hand. While ho had been poring over books and following in the track of other men's steps he had been plunging alone into the wilderness of the world, revelling in its wonders, drinking deep of its miseries, facing its dangers, seeing much of its squalor. Masefield early felt the call of shins and the sea, and he fled, as a boy, from the West Country pastures to the life before the mast. Then ho turned his steps to America, living a free life, sleeping in barns, working on farms and finally turning up in New York, where he got a job at ten dollars a month in tho Colonial Hotel, where he earned his living pouring out beer, shining brass and ejecting noisy customers. Then ho returned, unknown, to England, where ho started bis apprenticeship in letters, writing ballads of the sea, criticisms of Shakespeare and other tiling?. Finally he found his true sphere in a remarkable series "of tales in verso, beginning with “The Everlasting Mercy.” In these tales he has struck a new note in literature. They came hot and defiant from the furnace of his own spiritual experience. They tell of coarse lies coarsely. They trample on the proprieties of verso with a rude heel and tear away the disguises of things with a fierce scorn. But the essential qualities of the stories at their best is noble and exhilarating. Tho clothes are ragged but the soul within is capable of immortal things and of splendid heroisms. “Salt Water Ballads,” published in 1902 when he was 27, and “Ballads,” 1903, arc rich in emotion, strength and music of phrase. “The Widow in tho Bye Street” and “Dauber” and then came “The Daffodil Fields,” all showing a new realism and a mastery of language. In 1909 he wrote “The Tragedy of Nan,” which ranks among the best of modern plays. “In Pompey the Great” he held the torch of poetic drama over a field in which ho might hove achieved great things. In 1917 there appeared _ “Reynard the Fox,” his greatest effort in poesy, which proved greatly successful. In prose also Masefield achieved distinction, “Sard Harkcr” being probably the most read in recont years. His little book on Shakespeare is one of the mostvaluable in the language. His “Gallipoli” is regarded as ono of the few classics of war literature. In 1922 he was made an honorary doctor of literature of Oxford University.