"IN ENGLAND—NOW!"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21467, 15 April 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

"IN ENGLAND—NOW!"

BY GEOFFREY POLLETT

A SIMPLE MAN'S CREDO.

It is easy to sentimentalise over youthful impressions—and even more dangerously easy to be cynical of them Yet neither sentimentalism nor cynicism is begotten of the heart; whereas sincerity emphatically is. And so, those emotions that spring deeply within us, if we tap them at their fount, where all is pure, and not wait till they are clouded and muddled by the sediment of our fallible intelligences, may refresh us with a degree of truth no other source of our natures can supply. When Browning wrote his " Home Thoughts, from Abroad" ho was not sentimentalising, because he wrote from his heart, which loved England with a deep yet simple affection. He might so easily have lapsed into the " sounding brass " of rhetoric, the " tinkling cymbal " of sentimentality. Other and greater poets have so lapsed. To some, a genuine love of country would yet have found its expression (though how far less movingly than Browning's) in a gesture of flamboyant patriotism; or, again, in the mere recollection of a sentiment, which is sentimentalism. But in " Home Thoughts" there is no pretty " recollection of sentiment": the poem breathes the most vital sentiment itself. That is the difference between love and love of love. What was the England Browning pictured as his thoughts sped homeward, like the returning swallows that so reminded him of his exile? What were the rich associations, which seemed to the poet's mind so much brighter than his gaudy Italian melon-flower? Tiny, sprouting flecks of green about an elm bole; the song of the chaffinch and of the thrush; and common little buttercups—that is all! That was his royal treasury of remembered loveliness; a treasury the meanest of us might have shared with him. And can share yet, praise God. ' Glory of the Commonplace It is always so. The sincerest, the deepest emotion answers to the call of something usually quite commonplace. Overpowering beauty may strike us with a fervent awe, as dawn beheld from some towering alp is said to do. Yet supreme beauty is incommunicable. But these lesser things, sounds, sights, a scent even, that are within the reach of every man—it is to these humbler stimuli that the human heart most readily responds. The human heart that is kept in trim, at least; too many hearts, like gates long closed, grow agerusty before their day. We probably, each of us, have our special, our peculiar set of associations that infallibly switch us off the beaten track of the present, back into once familiar paths deep-trodden in childhood or youth; a magic formula that, intoned by the wondering sense, weaves its spell about us until we are wanderers in a far land. It is not difficult to be ' crazed with the spell of far Arabia", so we have once been travellers there. And journeys, even arduous ones, undertaken' in our youth have an inclination to recur in the aging mind shed of all save their bravest raiment. I suppose the surest, readiest way for many who would return to that'ever widening horizon we call the past is through the magic of the written word. We do not all, unfortunately, read and love poetry. (I say " unfortunatelv" because I cannot but believe this would be a happier world if we so did.) We do not all care, even, to make that pilgrimage backwards. Yet, to those of us who do both, a poem such as Jtebert Browning's is our magic formula . . . one of them. Loveliness It t is not the least splendid of the poets tasks that he has sometimes to transport the mind, and, far more important, the soul of man, from realm to realm, whithersoever his sentiment shall lead. And, freed of its association with idle repetition at school (how dovdisn a practice, this!), and deliberately meeting them with a sense of freshness, one cannot read again those opening lines Oh, to bo in England Now Hint April's there, And whoever wakes in England bees, eiiiiie morning, unaware without feeling oneself so transported. It is the cry of the exiled spirit for something precious, something lost—and now, momentarily, found again. "In England—now!" . . . Had I been the poet I think that I had been tempted to cast in a second mark of exclamation! Surely the thought demands it. For in England, now that April's there, no loveliness on this earth can surpass that which those who wake in England will be seeing—perhaps this very morning. April, there, stands for wonder: breathless, wide-eyed wonder before the miracle of rebirth; as when, some morning, early, we walk a familiar path to greet old, familiar sights—and, instead, meet with the strangest aclventuro in all the world, the Adventure of Spring! Eor, like all miracles, the change works suddenly. Someone has waved an enchanter's wand—and all nature has responded! Last night the earth was the friendly place we had come to recognise and love for so many months gone: but this morning it is different, oh, quite, quite different—though exactly wherein that dilferenco lies it might puzzle any to say. If April is the lady'that some have called her, then it is as though we who walk early abroad this morning have gazed upon her with a stranger's eye, and, gazing, encountered love at first sight! And as for the rest of the world that rises a little later, if they do not also read love in the lady's eyo and feel it beating in their own hearts, then they are indeed dull, oafish fellows past all praying for! They had far, far bettor stay abed. The world, when " the year's at the spring and day's at the morn," is no place for such. The Miracle of Rebirth But though the miracle of spring is wrought suddenly, and in our own hearts rather than in the new apparel of nature (which is more the lovely, outward symbol of that miracle), its wonder lingers on, ripens and bears for fruit tho spiritual certainty that there is no " growing old," only a "growing-up" toward whatever awaits us in the end. The beautiful white blossom of early summer has become the fruit that we call faith, which is to comfort and sustain us when winter's gloom and cold is upon us and the " time of rebirth " so incredibly far away. That is why it is fitting —for sonio of us, indeed, necessary—to remember the miracle even when it is separate from us by a full summer's length, or distant, half tho world. Vet lime and space mean littlo to the poot, serving rather but to quicken his dosiro for escape. What the heart of mini fools, that is real. Reality is not tho narrow dream of circumstance (too often but a sordid nightmare), but the infinite dominion of love. But only love, love and faith, can unlock the gates to the freedom of the infinite. So, when Browning turns from his beloved Italy to' his yot more beloved England, ho does so as one seeking in homely things the symbol of a far greater love, a far greater reality. The " all that is, at all, Lasts ever, past recall; Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure." And wo men, perhaps, may read our immortality in tho changing' earth, tho new-garmented earth, and the song of a bird. . . . For "... the chaffinch sings on tho orchard bough in England—now!"