MEASURE AND POETRY.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 811, 7 May 1910, Page 9

MEASURE AND POETRY.

Sometimes, in reviewing a batch of books of verse, one or. other of the leading British weeklies will print an article that contains somo vital and valuable observations of a general char-' alter, on modern poetry. Such an one is the article "Measure' and Poetry," printed by the London "Nation." We quote it entire :—

The present age is, by common admission, under the presidency of reason, and it is, therefore, an age not very favourable to poets; yet the number of persons seriously attempting to write poetry nowadays is; bewildering. This lias puzzled many people; but perhaps: an old fable;may help us to understand, it.. The eagle,'says the fabulist, deliberately and with foresight makes ber nest thorny and uncomfortable, in order to encourage ber youngsters to take flight, as soon as possible. And this they do, finding it much more comfortable to "cleave tho aery way" than to sit at home iii the intolerable nest: May it not -be even so 'with our flocks of minor' poets?. Not that tho uncomfortable make of the age. in which they were hatched was built deliberately by. the Mother Destiny, on purpose to urge as many of her brood as possible into the poetic aether; such a doctrine would itself bo poetic, and so, nowadays, untenable. What is meant is simply that the ago undoubtedly is uncomfortable in many ways for persons of poetic perceptions and poetic feelings, and such persons are, therefore, mightily • tempted to flutter, however . unskilfully, into, the freedom, of poetic . self-expression, and also, since ■ they are human, into print. Wero the ago otherwise, -they might never be heard of; it is the pricking, of their poetic skins that sends them aloft into poetry and print, just as ..the pricked young eagles are all agog to be (lying. And .arising .out of this there is a further temptation—this time a serious one. For bno who strongly feels what, without being unduly lax, we-may. call the poetic,emotions, who knows, moreover, that such- feeling is uncommon, and will carry one into a kind of writing which is, at least, . typographically poetry—such an one is strongly tempted to believe that the possession of these emotions is enough to make,one a poet. Thus. Miss L. ffolliott, ;in her "Soiigs and "Fantasies," s.rys roundly that to feel like a poet is to be a poet; but, in. fact, she herself is an instance to t'lie contrary. The very poem in which she makes her assertion begins thus;— > "If you we - e- e'er scorched by consuming fire, ■■•-'. i ' . And felt all flow of words inadequate, If you experienced oft a wild' desire — A striving to be something'more than great," ..:;•'. .■ No, that is not how a' poet writes. From her vorsos.'.it is evident that Miss gollfott' feels < all that a poet should S»eJ; but she has no diction to inateh it. >

Sho can herself vicariously experience a dramatic moment; but she cannot put it jnto poetic shape. What sho lacks is the faculty of measure; and wo have

taken her (perhaps ungraciously) as an instance of tho fact that poetic emotions aro of no uso for poetry without moasurc.

The huge majority of books of poetry published to-day arc of this kind—full of the right thought and feeling, right in their kind, at least, but devoid of measure, save for its obvious species, metre. A hook that might servo as a touchstone, in this matter is Mr. William Porter's charming translation of the "Hyaku-nin-isshiu." Bead in a book of modern poetry, and then read' one of these "Hundred Verses from Old Japan," and you will certainly feel what is wrong with tho former, if there is anything' wrong with it. The translation may not bo entirely adequate, but through it ono can plainly see the chief wonderful characteristic of tho original, tho perfection of measure, in this antiquo Japanese poetry. Tho themes of tho verses are usually slight, but always tho thought is wrought into exquisite form, and the expression confined in a verbal shape of delicate rigour, like porcelain. . But the measure which we demand in poetry must not bo taken to be only of a repressive, confining kind, a faculty of shaping matter, as it were, from tho outside. By this repressive species of measure a man may certainly work his thoughts and . feelings into something which is poetry. The process is really ono of taste. In it, measure does the office of the cardener's shears, and prunes and shapes the poet's thought into some exquisite convention of topiary work. A good- example is Mr. Edward Sforers "Ballad of tho Mad Bird." Tho, innermost idea is quite a good one, but nothing unusual —the quest of the First Beauty (or, as it is hero called, Truth). Mr. Storer, however, has fashioned this into a charming fantasy, tho detail of which, tho_ diction and .'imagery, is deliberately curious and extravagant. This is natural; for the workmanship hero is everything, and in the workmanship whatever originality Mr. .Storer may have must appear. The same is true of most of Mr. Le Gallienue's "New Poems"; they are largely made of material which 'is the common stock of poets, shaped according to received taste; and any , effect of . novelty in them comes from the detail of the shaping, some curiosity-of phrase, as when a night-jar is called, "a toad of sound" and "Browning among tho birds," and London becomes "that mighty sob, that splendid tear." No sensible person will quarrel with poetry which ,is made by this topiary-work kind of measure; when tho shaping is really well done, it has the undeniable charm of all thoroughly artificial, things. - But, nevertheless, one soon tires of it, and it is refreshing to find in Mr. Le Gallienue's volume a little of the other kind of poetry, the poetry which has received its. measure, not !from without,, but from within, from some internal energy that naturally makes for formf. not from, the gardener's shears, but from, some strong propensity in tho vital sop. Such aro the political poems, "The Cry of tho Little Peoples," and others, in which a genuineMndignatjon hrfs grown naturally • into poetic form, and such aro also a few lyrics, like one from Hafiz,. of which the first verse runs thus prettily:— , "A Caravan from China comes; For miles it sweetens all the air With fragrant silks and dreaming gums, Attar and myrrh— A Caravan from China comes." I

Little of the anxious external fashioning appears in Miss Ruth Young's slim book of poems, and there is no need of it. Jhc substance of her poems has gons into form and. niea'snre by. reason of an activo virtue in tho substance, like the virtue which compels, tho substance of a crystal to.submit.from? within to the rigor of beauty. Miss Young has no,need to borrow either matter .or.-techniquo from the..common stock, of poetry'; her matter is all her own,; and her technique has no cultivated distinction. But, by reason of this crystallising power in her thought, she can make poetry of a thcino like,that of her title-poem, "The' Philanthropists," " a theme which is certainly not poetic until a poet makes it so. Still more to our purpose, as an • instance of crystals lino measure in poetry, is Mr. Cripps's "Lyra Evangelistica." Mr. Ci'ipps is an African missionary, and the most of his poems deal'with the experiences, the exultations and depressions, of his profession. This is poetic , matter enough, but that .would hot; and - certainly does hot, in the hands of most missionary poets,'ln'oke.it'p'oetry'. But with . Mr. Cripps • .his thought always crystallises :.it. has''clean and true form, ;and will hold,, the. light. "Lyra EvanJgelistica" •is . something; , much better i than an earnest expression .of deep feeling; it is a. book of good poetry. The following, "In Deserto," will do for a fair specimen:—

"God's Fire-ball rolling smooth o'er heavens of glass, God's, Hand-fed hawk with wide unfluttered gait, Are o'er me—as feet wrench'd and worn i I pass By black-burnt clods, by sandy furrows strait. They do their best so lightly, bird and sun, But all my struggling leaves my best undone." With Mr. Cripps, indeed, we arc come to the poetry in which both kinds of men sure arc. evident;' there is the crystallising first, and then there is the polishing of the crystal. Mr. Ezra Pound would, no doubt, scorn to be thought a poet who polishes his crystals; but it does seem to us that in his "Exultations" he is -beginning to allow some.outward form to bis verses. It was, indeed, remarkable that such a passionate lover of Dante, Villon, and tho poets of. Provence, should have been content with a savage and often ludic T rous crudity of expression. Ho seemed to trust entirely to the formative power inherent in his ideas; but those ideas were neither very potent for form nor very interesting as rjoctic substance. In these "Exultations" of, bis he is less derivative in matter, his thoughts aro often his own, and they aro more intense, and, though not free from absurdity, the book contains much that is externally, as well as internally, captivating, as thus: — "Palo hair that the moon has shaken Down ■ over the dark breast of the sea, O magic, her beauty has shaken About tho heart of nie." If Mr. Pound will go on with the development in method shown in this latest volume of his, he will add to English poetry something which is unusual riches, and not merely a sot of curios. Two poems,' at least, in "Exultations" give warrant for this; "Histrion," by virtue of its idea, and tho "Ballad of'the Goodly. Fere," by virtuo both of its idea and its execution. . After Mr. Pound's somewhat feverish eccentricities, "Tho Mountain}' Singer" of Mr. Seosamh MncCathmhaoil (tho brutal Saxon calls him Mr. Joseph Campbell !) seems a book of serene orthodoxy. ' Yet not very many years ago most of it would have boon called outrageously extravagant. That Mr. Campbell /■■•• bo as modern as anyone, yet keep his work true to the-ancient, canons, lot, this exquisite 1 little picture in unmotrical verse show :— "Night. anJ I travelling An open door by the wayside, Throwing out a shaft of warm yellow light. A whiff of peat-smoke; A gleam of delf on the dresser within: A woman's voice crooning, as if to a child. I pass on into the darkness." With that incisive, simplicity and subtle melody which is native in Ireland, Mr. Campbell writes of the earth and mankind, choosing for the latter those figures which have replaced kinrjs and knights as poetic emblems of human-

ity, fiddlers, pedlars, and ploughmen. As. in most modern Irish pootrv, one is nevei very far off politics in .Mr. Campbell's sonijs. Politic?, in fact, interfuse the- characteristic mixture of realism and mysticism. Several poems, for instance, aro of ploughing; and tho plough is always botli a mystical and a political emblem. This is a strength and n weakness; tho mysticism is more vehement for the politics, hut it is also narrower. To say of a ploughman that "All life is bare Beneath your share. All love is in your lusty hands." is to make him a mystical lignre; to say that, where the ploughman is not, "Tho silence of unlaboured fields. ■ Lies like a judgment on tho air." is oven moro striking; but it is more politics than mysticism, and it is not altogether truo. But when we como to "Grasslands aro not wrought, Ploughlaiids swell with thought," we feel that politics and mysticism have kissed each other; and tho meeting is memorable. Tho late Eugene Lee-Hamilton was one of the finest.of recent sonneteers; and ho-was a poet, therefore, in whom both kinds of measure were in exquisite balance. His thought wont into poetic form as naturally as crystalline substance goes into its system nf planes and angles; and his conscience would polish and smooth and purify until he 'came as near perfection as ho might. Mrs. Lee Hamilton, in. a brief preface to "Mi'mma Bella," describes the tragic suffering which made up most of his lifo; and it will always be a wonder that- such poetic perfection came out of such physical distress. "Mimma Bella" is, a sonnet-series"'in memory of his little daughter; and the tender familiarity of sorrowing reminiscences is invariably wrought elaborately into art. But good sonnets may. not bo described; only a sample can show what Eugeuo Lee-Hamilton's art could do:—

"Lo, through tho open window of tho

room That was her nursery, a small bright spark ■'.■■/ Comes wandering in, as falls lhe summer dark. And with a measured-flight explores tho gloom, ■ As if it sought among the things that . loom Vague in the dusk for some familiar mark, And liko a light on some woe unseen bark,.... It tacks in search of who knows what or whom? ' I. know./tis but a fire-fly; yet its flight, So straight, so measured, round the empty bed, , ■ Might bo a little soul's that night eets free; ' . . • And as it nears, I feel my heart grow tight With something like a superstitious -. dread, • . .» And watch it breathless, lest it should be sho."