POETS AND POETRY.

SOME REJECTED CONTRIBUTIONS.

IN these days of poetio life and liberty we desire an oblique glimpse of something exquisite rather than the flawless state- ment of the commonplace. But even in this happy epoch there remains the yard-stick. Mr. Monro and Mr. Squire are exceed- ingly sure of the complete accuracy and efficacy of their measures. They are also quite sure that below a certain rather high standard of proficiency it is much better not to write, and it is sinful to publish. Probably they are right. The standard of technical ability, both in prose and verse, is low in England—much lower than in France, for instance. Our young poets—those who are most promising — are often the better for a good " head- masterish " talking to. Many of them need a fright which will lead them in future to take greater pains with their verses before they ask the durability of printers' ink for them. But in the parable of the Wheat and the Tares the householder was so anxious that the good seed should not be rooted up and spoilt that he was very lenient with the weeds. That, it seems to the present writer, should be the attitude of the critic. The immense volume of bad verse which pours weekly from a thousand ready pens is, after all, a negative evil. Keats said the last word about a beautiful thing. One beautiful poem is a positive good—a palpable new jewel for the public treasury. It more than cancels out the ninety and nine. But when we come to concrete examples we find that good and bad shade into each other in infinite gradation. Why are some obviously pleasant poems no more than pleasant ? What are the blemishes that for the most part help to spoil the current, faulty poem ? Not all the ninety and nine, for of

these fifty are always hopeless—but the remaining forty-nine? Two or three poets have been kind enough to allow us to

give, as samples of several varying grades in the art of poetic proficiency, verses which they have submitted to us for publica- tion. The first is a slight lyric, " Moon."

" Long years ago the moon,

.When earth was flame, Left his embrace and came Out to the arms of space, Hiding for shame her face.

Earth, when she fled, grew cold, Mourned her with tears in vain, But still as the seasons pass, Love draws the twain : Earth strives again to hold Moon, till she hides her face,

Fearing love's pain."

The first verse is particularly agreeable ; the second verse is surely manufactured. The first verse could not stand alone ; and, as Mr. Sturge Moore somewhere says, the poet " took stone or lead or anything that came handy when he ran out of gold " in

order to complete his statue. All poets inevitably do this to some extent ; it resolves itself into a question of quantity and of the workmanship of the pedestrian parts. In " Moon " there are seven stone and clay lines to five golden, and the faulti- ness of the last two lines is obvious.

Another poem by the same author is excellent despite a line which necessitates " saddening " and a slightly obscure allusion to " autumn's coloured floor." Many of the lines are, however, admirable ; for exampleolespite its doubtful ornithology: " All birds are silent, crouching in their nests, Rainaoaked and tossed unending by the wind."

The whole effect of dripping melancholy is very well achieved and maintained.

There is another poem on autumn in the bunch. The first fault we have to find with this is that it consists of seven verses, while the idea of the thing could, we should have thought, have been expressed in about four. In the second verse we find " 'tis autumn." This poem suffers severely from inversion.

Then in verse three :- " The leaves fall softly, red and brown, And now and then a chestnut ripe Few of God's choir seem now to pipe. The yearly sands are running dowse. And all is beautiful . . ."

" Few of God's choir seem now to pipe " is obviously bad. It is quite out of keeping with a poem which set out to be a visualization, a fairly realistic picture. To call birds " God's choir " belongs to a different imaginative " layer," and though it might conceivably be introduced effectively where a com- pletely fresh turn was to be given to a poem, it certainly must not be vaguely set in like that. " The yearly sands are running down " and " All is beautiful " are two disconnected ideas very unhappily married. Then later on the poet asks, What is the meaning of all this gentle beauty ?

it • • • • Need we ask ? To answer is an easy task.

Earth hears Death's footstep on the stair."

We thought we were out of doors—what stair ? As for verse seven, it is too weak to endure the torture of dissection. We pass on to a more robust victim.

Here is another long poem, " Legerdemain." Its author is

about eighteen:—

The Old Man of Dreams bore me, pickaback, Clasping his shoulders bent with magic sack."

He takes the narrator to the end of the world where stars are made. There sits Time, mighty, on a throne of fire : the Hours frolic round him. The Hours sing :- " Men shall always woo us (We care not for their love or hate). They think that they may bind us (We fashion their sorry fate) . . ."

This jolt is really atrocious, for the object of introducing short line lyrics into the middle of a narrative poem is to produce a musical effect, to edge, as it were, further away from the prose —characteristics that the narrative necessitated. Limping lines are here unforgivable, and in this. lyric of eight lines there are no fewer than four lame ones. But to continue. An Hour goes weeping to Time, saying she is lost ; she has not performed her appointed watch on earth and has missed her turn. Then the poet commits the hideous mistake of making Time rise from his throne, whereas before his description had given us quite a pleasing, Blakeian idea of him as a great elemental creature whose top reached to the heavens and whose feet were the ends of the earth. But when he stands to address the meeting he dwindles—momentarily. There follows an obscure verse in which the poet, prompted by the Old Man of Dreams, consents to take the Hour for his bride, and we end with the poet some- what entangled in his metaphor. It is difficult to make sure whether the Hour does or does not change from a personification to a subdivision of Time during which the poet may consider the charms of an earthly beloved.

We apologize to the authors of these four poems for dissecting only their mistakes and disregarding their virtues. Enough of the work of destruction. Now, how are faults to be avoided ? Our advice to young poets is that they read plenty of criticism of contemporary verse and as many parodies of it as possible. Mr. Squire has just published*, collection of his parodies, for example, which we hope to review shortly ; these should prove most whole- some. Then there are Mr. Sturge Moore's Four Soldier Poets,

Margaret Wilkinson's New Voices, and Mr. Harold Monro's Some Contemporary P04148 1920 which we -reviewed in these columns a fortnight ago. There is a certain danger for imitative people in reading contemporary poetry—it is extraordinarily difficult, not to echo some styles. For example, there are very few prose writers who would dare, to soak themselves in Sir Thomas Browne before sitting down to write. With books of criticism this danger is avoided. Delightful as it is, we do not think that Wordsworth's or Dr. Johnson's amusing, pointed discernment is of much direct use to the young poet nowadays. We are aiming, perhaps, at the same thing, but in so very different a way that their counsel seems off the point. A very excellent piece of advice was given by a French writer to young poets. Learn your own poems by heart and keep chanting them over to yourself. You will thus improve and polish them immensely. Do not consider them complete until you have rolled them under your tongue in this way and fully savoured them. Another piece of advice is, make somebody else read them aloud to you. Metrical roughness can be disguised in the most extraordinary way by the author to himself by a peouliarity of emphasis.