The Sphere of Poetry
The Love Concealed. . By Laurence Housman. (Sidgwick
and Jackson. 7s. 6d.) . .
Select Poems, Divine and Humane. By Thomas Beedome.
(Nonesuch Press. 1-5e.) - PaosE steadily encroaches upon the subjects which once belonged to poetry and., hie hungry highlanders with a few Peaks and clouds left tu them for territory, poets look down upon the green and ample lowlands; which they have lost, in spiritual timidity. The contemporary significance of Mr. -Alfred Noyes is that helms refused to surrender half an acre or a- bright jot -to the pressure of prose. If poetry is good enough for a man, it should be capable of expressing all his manifold interests in life. The militant enthusiasm of Mr. 'Noyes must eventually rally the faint-hearted, for he has seen several specialized--poetic -schools come and go. He seeks every horizon-and the varied range in this collected edition of Ballads and Poems represents only .half of his interests ; though we find here episodes on a'•London 'bus, the silver of wet mountain laurel flashing in California, the star-gazing of Galilen, the noisy gathering of Elizabethan poets in a tavern—with mighty thumping of sub-lunary tables, little chimney - sweepers, the wreck of the Armada, Japanese glimpses, sprites from the forest of Arden, and seagulls on the Serpentine. The ballad of " The Highwayman " must be the best of our time, for every line is tightened to the very girths :- He'd a French cocked-hat on- his forehead, a bunch -of lace at
his chin, . . .
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh. And he rode with a jewelled twinkle, His pistol butts a-twinkle, His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.
The poem beats, by a short head, " Dick Turpin" and, " The Forty Singing Seamen." The epic poetry of Mr. Noyes depends for its effect upon its totality, for he does not stay to blot his lines ; but his spiritual enthusiasm is a heartening influence, though it be careless as a March wind which moves the great clouds, dandies a young flower or blows an umbrella inside out at the street corner. .
Literary criticism is another subject lost to verse since Shelley summed up Coleridge in his Epistle to Maria Gisborne. Giant and Pygmy, Mr. Gilson's poetic criticism of Thomas Hardy comes, therefore, as a novelty ; and the generous.. or shrewd comment, in octosyllabic lines, is gratifying. Ope complains only that the poem is too brief, but this may be because it is printed. on beautiful goat-skin parchment, which must be a rare commodity.- Shrewdness and dainty device are to be found too in Miss Wylic's ballads of Herod, Puritans, and Virginian ladies ; but she can really write :- The immaculate bosom of the mother-tongue Flowed milkily in mercy to the young, Dispensing balsam to the infant dreamer. How delicately did the silver skimmer Of natural love select the cream. . . .
This American book must surely be an early work of hers.
The ballad measures in Mr. Laurence Housman's hook, also, are the best, though the blade drips too redly upon Bad- combe Fair night and the colloquy- of the lianas' is positively incarnadined. Interest in crime is still a stout instinct, though ballad-mongers have given place to news ; but Mr. Houseman has gone to literary tradition. The suave and tender poems on Love remind us that poets mourn over a courtliness that has vanished from modern manners.- There is child magic in the nursery poem; of "Johnnie Iii-Garrow and good building in the religious poem, " The Father's House " :— Windows made wide for letting in the view, Yet curtains to shut out the darkness too. What needs it, then to give this House ite rest Why, nothing, but the well-expected guest., For whom all these prepare ! Who's that to be ? Nay, who but Everyman ? • Thomas Beedome, a forgotten Elizabethan who paid word shipful tribute to the genius of John Donne, in his own Divine and Humane poems, would have recognized Mr. Housman's concrete religious imagery, though he went further himself in
achieving :—
Like a sweete odor upward as it goes It yeelds a perfume to th' Almightics nose But search finds no finer lines in Beedome's poems than the quatrain quoted by the editor, -Mr. Francis Meynell :- Drake; who the world bast eonqueid like a, serole ; Who saw'st the Artieke and Antartieke Pole ; If men were silent, starres would make thee knowne, Phoebus forgets not his companion.
The great courtesy of Rabindranath Tagore is surely shown by the- fact that he composed spiritual maxims and sayings for almost three hundred ceremonial fans and pieces of silk, while travelling in China and Japan. So unwearied a guest could not hope to escape an occasional platitude, or merely pretty fancy—either of the head. or of the heart. .1 AUSTIN CLARKE.
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