POETS AND POETRY.

[WE print below the second of three articles by Mr. Robert Graves, the poet. In the first ho dealt with the " logic " of poetry and, dwelling upon its associative nature, showed it not to be so anarchic as it seems at first sight. In the following article he goes into the fundamental question of the psychological effects of poetry, indicating some of the ways in which those effects are brought about.—A. WiLuests-ECUs.]

U.

HOW MANY MILES TO BABYLON ? AN ANALYSIS.

How many miles to Babylon ?

Threescore miles and ten.

Can I get there by candlelight ?

Yes, and back again.

Tms nursery rhyme has won the eulogies of R. L. Stevenson and Mr. Walter de in Mare, among other distinguished poets, as being one of the most truly poetic pieces in the language. This appears to be generally accepted, but, when I first came to ask why, the same very insufficient answer was always given. " Oh, I couldn't tell you, I suppose because it's so simple." But I found that when I asked people to think about this poem on the lines of conflicting ideas reconciling themselves in symbolism by means of associative thought they admitted that, on the contrary, it was a poem of extra- ordinarily subtle and condensed argument. The following is a synthetic version of conversations on the same subject with several friends, Englishmen and Americans :-

" R. G.: The first version that I heard of the poem was t ' How many miles to Babyland ?

Threescore miles and ten ' (&c.).

How does that strike you ?

FRIEND : It ruins the poem.

R. G.: But suppose I am right in concluding that the rhyme came, like all or nearly all good rhymes, from the Lowland Scots, and Babby Lon' was converted by South Country mon into a single word ? What then ? FRIEND : Babylon ' is the best version in spite of scholiasts.

R. G.: But what does Babylon mean that Babyland doss not mean ? Is Babylon a more remote Timbuctoo, or is it something more ?

FRIEND : For me it has a great sense of magnificence, hanging gardens and all that, but also from the Book of Revelation, and from the prophetic Books of the Old Testament, it has the suggestion of a wicked power constantly coaxing and threatening the chosen people to destruction. A. G.: So the poem contrasts childish innocence, as expressed in ` candlelight,' with the world, flesh, and devil of ` Babylon ' ?

FRIEND : I suppose so, but there is more than innocence in the candlelight symbol.

R. G.: Loyalty ? FRIEND : Yes, loyalty and faith ; from the ecclesiastical tradition.

R. G.: Then perhaps you would accept this as a tentative analysis of the effect produced in you by the poem is a dialogue, the man who has gone astray after the lusts of the flesh and the sophistication of the world, addressing a child who lies innocently in bed. When the child asks the question, the man feels that, in spite of the child's apparent helplessness and his ignorance of the determinate side of life, he himself, with all his strength and worldly wisdom, is far inferior in power to the child.

FRIEND Except yo become as little children,' in fact ? I

admit that I get that feeling, but I don't see whore you deduce the ' sophistication ' and the ' determinate side of life.' R. G.: Well, what if I were to say : How many miles to Babylon ? Fourscore miles and six.'

Is_ threescore and ten merely an archaic ' seventy' ?

Fatewn : No, indeed. I see it now. Threescore and ten in the limit on life imposed by the psalmist, and associated in the memory with ' labour and heaviness.' But what about ' yes and back again ' ? R. G.: The remnant's return with all its disillusion and despondency. My mind rides with Ezra around the circuit of the soul's Jerusalem and finds all in ruins. The poem takes on fresh significance. ' Keep innocency,' it preaches, ' and you can pass through the Babylon of manhood, and return safe and sound with as much ease as in childhood you visited that magnifi- cent city in your dreams and came back before the candle had burned to its socket.'

FRIEND : The old dialogue, then, of body and soul ? But I think you have disregarded another buried suggestion in the ' threescore and ten.' Only a remnant attains fourscore, only a remnant wins back from Babylon, and they are both confronted with the hopeless task of repairing a lifetime's damage to their spiritual sense. R. G.: That improves the argument. Probably Babyland is only a nursery stupidity. That Babylon is the original version seems proved -by the interaction of the other symbols too closely for coincidence.

Plumy]) : That is likely. Nursery rhymes and fables are the 'detritus beds of very ancient history and thought.

R. G.: The whole process of romantic poetry is shown in this Babylon rhyme. To read or write poetry is to escape under rhythmic hypnotism to a primitive state of thought in which the oppression of time and space is no longer felt. Poetry is the Lubberland of the legend, where the traveller's mouth needs only to open and food drops from the trees into it, where roasted sucking-pigs run about with knife and fork sticking into their backs, the land where whatever is wanted is.

FREEND : Would you say that within the limits of the Christian group to -which the associations of Babylon, candlelight, and threescore and ten are common, the poem strikes the same chords in the unconscious mind ?

R. G.: Not quite. As there are degrees of implication, so there are degrees of perception. There is a common core of experience, certainly, but each individual has, for instance, different personal associations with candlelight, which alter the force of the conflict, whether the candle is thought of more particularly as a- friendly charm against darkness or whether the aspect of the short flickering life of the candle may associate itself more nearly with the threescore and ten idea. An un- fortunate identification of Babylon with the Church of Rome would make candlelight into a Popish attribute, and make havoc of the sense. That shows the insecurity of the appeal, even in_ poems_ most universally accepted as achieving their and."

ROBERT GRAVES.