FROM A CANTERBURY HILLSIDE

Southland Times, Issue 23989, 2 December 1939, Page 11

FROM A CANTERBURY HILLSIDE

Poems by “Evelyn Hayes”

DAY AND NIGHT. By the author of “Time and Place.” The Caxton Press, Christchurch. Price 5/-.

[Reviewed by

M. H. HOLCROFT]

These poems by the author of Time and Place” (who is also the author of “From a Garden in the Antipodes” and who has been known in print as “Evelyn Hayes”) were written from a home on Cashmere Hills, near Christchurch. This fact should be mentioned because it explains the landscape that constantly appears as the background of stanzas which begin with the sensory intimations of plains, skies, remote mountains and the margin-of sea along the Canterbury coastline. It explains only partly the special quality ot outlook to be found in all the poems: a habit of looking down from the high places, an acquaintance with, stars ana mist, an affinity with distances that entice the soul, and a recurring impulse towards a spatial or cosmic background for meditation. To. trace further the shaping influences it would be necessary to intrude upon the presuppositions of character and mind. The opening stanza of Summer Daybreak” provides evidence of the poet’s outlook and of. the techmeal approach to its expression: Words are too dense, too dull, too blundering, Pigments too turbid; yet it must be limned This scene, it must be hymned, this hour; I am constrained to join the waking choir. To ease mine eyes of their acknowledgement. EXACT MEANINGS The sense of verbal inadequacy leaves few traces in “Summer Daybreak” (although there are some), and the theme mounts to a final parenthetical stanza which must not be robbed of its power of surprise and its climax of mystic suggestion by quotation apart from the body of the poem. But elsewhere the search for exactness has left its weight in lines that have been deprived of their first glow' and lightness; there are words which seem to come from the dictionary instead of the heart, and although they convey an extra strangeness, or are able to reach that final nuance of meaning, they do not always share the original impetus of song. An instance can be taken from “Morning Walk,” which opens as follows:

On a bright morning of winter I walked ■up the bitumined highway To forget the fret of the fetters of down-

tending detail, Of diurnal subsistence escape delight-dim-ming screen.

The third line reveals its meaning plainly enough, but only after a pause that weakens the effect of the second, which has a sullen emphasis of plodding footsteps. It is not easy to get those thickening syllables off the tongue: as in one or two other poems they bring an echo of Gerard Manley Hopkins, who imposes on his readers some hard encounters for the sake of brief, bright interludes. Few other literary influences can be noticed, and indeed there is small profit in tracking down odd resemblances that are likely in most cases to be fortuitous. At. least one phrase (“melting my limitations”) has the sound.;7/0f.7 ,RfikS‘,'. //and the psalmists have contributed' to the rhythm whenever the mood is contemplative; but there can be few other poets in New Zealand with so individual a talent. '<■ ■ Although the characteristic style oi these poems leans towards the richness of a cultivated art there are occasional verses which have an almost Chaucerian simplicity. Thus “Midwinter Dawn” opens with a joyous crispness: Sloth held me fast in pillowed nest But the ascetic birds would not let me rest; Such joy their clamorous hymns and praises voiced I got me up to see why they rejoiced. Of an equal simplicity is the lyric named “Candour,” which reflects as in a glass the whiteness of a morning dominated by “the high and snowy mountains.” And it ends with a beautiful simile:— Everything was white, this morning, Untroubled, luminous and tranquil pure; Bright as an affianced bride, adorning Herself with white upon the plighted morning; Past all debate, all hazard, still, and sure. AFTER SUNSET

But the most impressive work is to be found in a sequence of six pieces, “At the Lighting of the Lamps.” There are changes of metre to express a close analogy with musical composition, but the underlying rhythm is constant. The real changes are not so much of mood as of the thoughts which come from a single experience wherein the eyes bear witness to a wider vision within the mind. Although the eyes alone are asked to supply the stimuli for meditation the other senses are not excluded from the inner reconstruction. The opening lines convey the glory of a sunset as if it were a music to be heard among the distant hills, and this immediate translation of sight into sound is only partly a conscious artifice: it suggests also the desire of the poet to give completeness to moments that cannot contain the real beauty except within the whole personality. There are five stanzas in the first movement; but

two will suffice for quotation: — The solemn, soundless music Of the sun’s setting reverberates Along the low red cloud-reefs,

And the last echoing reflections Of his great incandescence Diminish among the mountain-tops.

Such verse makes it easier to understand why painters have so much to fear from sunsets which mock the nimblest brush by the swiftness of tonal transitions and by the extravagance of colours which are merely vulgar when separated from the motion that is the essence of their environment. Poetry is like music in that it understands the harmony within movement, whereas the painter seeks always to capture the moments, or to give them that appearance of arrested motion which satisfies briefly the longing all men have for permanence. In the two stanzas quoted above (and in those that follow) the colour is like a departure, and the mood which contains it is strengthened by the afterglow. The mountains turn from grey to darkness, and night covers the plains. But s&i from the deepening dark Of the dumb and slumbering plain, Sudden a new song springs; Gold lights on the plain Suddenly gleam and quiver, Suddenly, over all the plain Glimmer, now, golden lights. NIGHT THOUGHTS Only those who have watched the lights of the city spring up on the plain can share fully the pleasures of this “new song.” But the next transition needs no local association or memory: it is the universal awareness of the stars, known by all men in all places, but most of all and most deeply where the eyes can turn without artificial obstruction from hill or desert to the deep and splendid skies. This piece has dignity and quietness, with a fading music at the end that reproduces the spatial quality of Gustav Holst. It prepares a way for the religious mood that opens with a happy association of ideas: Were- you not wont, early Illumined Christians, To sing, at the time of lamp-lighting, hymns of confident praise? At this stage the poetry has taken a stronger note, as if the climax were near. In the following lines there is a vigorous preparation for praise: Sleep by the shrouded mountains, now, pastoral ministers, Wliile the Shepherd of Israel musters his flock of suns and moons, Sleep by the hidden rivers, now, fervent industrials, - While the Master of Music weaves with his time-space looms; Sleep, now, peering philosophers, venturing physicists, The Lord of Love his alembic allumes, ms crucible glows; The watcher* and holy ones of our darkness are cognisant, ' But no shadow of night their lucid vigil knows. In the fifth part the poem attains its full volume of music and meaning: the’organ stops are out, and the note of mystic surrender is enriched by a drawing together of the images and thoughts that have gone before. Then comes the final quietness, the return to night itself, deepened front its bare simplicity by the peace that follows meditation. And each mighty spark Sheds its gentle light Into the silent dark, The silent night, On and on, through the dark, the silent night. “At the Lighting of the Lamps” is the “best” poem in the collection in thesense that it displays in full and effective combination the qualities that are to be found throughout the book. There is no shorter poem, perhaps, which equals “The Long Harbour” and one or two other lyrics in the earlier book, “Time and Place,” But both collections are from the one harvest, and it is doubtful if any other New Zealand poet has offered so much that is worthy of retention as the work of a mind in which thought and discipline have found their alliance with an integrity of imagination and spirit. It is a pity that anonymity prevents this poet from becoming a name with a proper place in New Zealand literature.