Store of Poetry
THE most debatable thing about Mr. Chesterton is perhaps the significance of his poetic output, yet even this presents such an imposing front to the world that when, as in this book, one is faced with the greater portion of it all in one burst as it were, there is simply nothing to be done but admit to being fairly knocked out. All opinion about " G. K. C. " must be intensely individual, but, in the opinion of the present writer at any rate, he has written in " The Ballad of the White Horse " one of the most vivid and rollicking poems in the English language : " The Song of Quoodle " is alone a sound enough basis for a reputation as a master of delicious buffoonery : and who but " G. K. C. " could have produced this mass of light verse—breezy, musical, nonsensical, obscure, verse with a wasp's sting in its tail,
everything by turns—such as a whole succession of court jesters might well have envied, and still retained his right to be taken as seriously as any poet of his day ?
We are not, indeed, always inclined to take Mr. Chesterton's more ferocious moods as earnestly as he does himself, but when, in the altogether delightful dedication referred to in the ballad alluded to above, he asks :—
" Where seven sunken Englands
Lie buried one by one, Why should one idle spade, I wonder, Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder To smoke and choke the sun ? "
one feels that the more dust of this sort he kicks up the better, for when it blows away, something stark and shapely remains, something very bright and sparkling, as though seen in the clear shining after rain. Mr. Chesterton delights in tricking himself up like one of those fantastic figures at a flower carnival, but when all the frills are gone he certainly emerges as in every way the biggest minor poet of his generation.
It is hard to appreciate the motives which actuated Mr. Robert Graves to exclude from his Poems, 1914 to 1926, that verse which he groups under the heading "anthology pieces." Happily his word has been more severe than his action, and one can here renew the acquaintance of many poems which have appeared in collections. But is there any good reason why this volume should not have been made more definitive ?
The work divides itself into three groups. The earlier poems, dealing with the more elemental subjects of war and peace, introduced Mr. Graves to a wide public. They read to-day as vigorous and vivid as on the day of their publication. But it is from the next period that his best work conies. Poems like the beautiful Sullen Moods " are instinct with sincerity, and in their treatment are worked out to a logical and inevitable conclusion. In the work of the last two years things are not so straightforward, and one may perhaps be excused for wondering aloud where Mr. Graves's cerebration is going to lead him. To what purpose will he turn his increased idiom and fluency when he has come through the present thick forest of his thoughts ?
It is good to have Mr. Gordon Bottomley's best poems collected in one volume one feels that here is the garnered harvest of a mind that has not merely accepted the realization of beauty as a poet's heritage, but has looked on all things thoughtfully, rejecting much that others might have passed as " good enough," going through the store of years without sentiment and without true vision in any way being blinded. These poems will last, they will not die—even if the songs from plays have to carry quite a number of the poet's earlier and younger pieces on their airy wings. And " Night and Morning Songs " are still as dewily fresh as they were when we read them first, if not perhaps in 1896, at least so long ago that we should have forgotten them had they not been of the lasting stuff that the years cannot hurt. This book is, indeed, a joy for ever.
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