MINOR POETRY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1043, 4 February 1911, Page 9

MINOR POETRY.

Half : a dozen new volumes of'poetry are the tejffc'on'which a writer "in the "Times Literary'Sul)ule'nieirt"-"makes a ■particulaily suggestive and stimulating article. He begins with a brief, historical consideration' of minor poetiy. "Tho great- mass of the minor poetry of the eighteenth century suffered from a, desire to bo major poetry.... There whs ;a dominant style and metre suited,- if not to great poets, at least to writers of .groat ability,i aud not.at:all suited to the 'minor poet-' who had perhaps*a few things to say that were worth saying in verse. He was quite unfitted for the task of writing long poems in heroic couplets; and yet he often tried to do so, and fell into vague and pompous elaborations of the commonplace. The golden age of the minor poet 'was the time of Elizabeth, for then he was content to write pleasant songs without 4ny pretence of strong passion or originality. He learnt his craft, and because it was a narrow craft he learnt it thoroughly. His poems also had a clear purpose. They were usually written to be sung, .and if they -were sung he had his reward and felt that ho had not: written 'them in vain. So wo can still read the .minor poetry of that time with pleasure; indeed, a'minor poet liko Campion pleases us so much that we almost regard him as a great poet.

"Nowadays there is 110 predominant metre _ that overstrains tho powers of . our minor poets, but still they are apt to set themselves tasks beyond their strength. .Too often they are not content to be modest amateurs, but eliooso the most difficult themes and try to express the most tremendous passions: We havo tho notion now that a man who writes verses is a peculiar person —arid often he has that notion of himself. We say of any 0110 who writes verses that he tries to bo a poet; and so ho cannot regard his vorso writing as a.pleasant amusement, but is driven to take- it very seriously. Sinco we insist that- bo is a poet or nothing, 110 ti'ies himself to be a poet liko Shelley or Wordsworth and to write as if poetry, were the chief business of his life. ■ ' "These reflections are suggested by two new volumes from Mr. Stephen Phillips. He has tried liard-to'be a great, poet, 'and has managed to' persuade a good many. people that ho is one. But his talent has been fatally overstrained in tho process, and tho strain is evident in nearly every lino that lie writes. "l'ietro of Siena" is a blank verso play wjtli tho theme o'f "Measnro for Measure." It is' not a tragedy, for it ends happily; but it aims at tragic intensity throughout, and in doing so misses most other qualities necessary to literature, whether poetry or prose. -In the first place, blank verso is the most' difficult, of all metres, and Mr. Phillips "has 110 command of it. His efforts, to distinguish it from prose are obvious, tho most obvious being a trick of inversion that only tulns it' into bad prose Who henceforth will trust A mler palpably, to beauty weak? and affain — Sir, this l man whom you have dispatched to iiie, A sister has All tho diameters talk in the samo way; that is to say, not liko peoplo absorbs in their own affairs, but like minor poets 011 the look out for somethin'' poetical to say. Luigi Gonzaga, tho dethroned tyrant, who is condemned to death, pleads for his life thus— Lot me still watch the'sun thro' prisoned bars, And.manacled behold the rising moon. Ah, send mo not from glory to the grave. 'The aim of poetry in the drama is to express what the characters would naturally' say or think with more power than proso is capablo of.' Mr. Phillips is usually most irrelevant when most poetical. Ho cannot fit his poetry to his action, and tho conscqiicncc is that his characters seem unreal and his events do not interest us. It is possible that tho play might act well, but, if it did, it would be in spite of the poetry and not because of it."

After censuring the same poet's "New Inferno" to much the same effect, tho critic finds in Dr. Ronald _ Ross ("Philosophies") "that rare kind of poet who is content to write about his own experience, and wiio can. make poetry out of it. lie has won fame by his discovery of the origin of malaria, and these poems, for the mcst part, express thoughts that came into his mind while he was studying malaria in India." Mr. John Masefield, ("Ballads and Poems") "is more of a lyric poet than Dr. Ross. Many of his poems seem to be written to tunes, and the tune dominates them • raoro than the thought," but "Mr. Masefield has his own music and makes his songs out of his own experience. Hero arc come lines from a poem called "Sea Fever":

I must go down to the seas again, to tho lonely sea and tho sky. And all 1 ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by; And tho wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking. Here the verse itself seems to get under way like a ship, and as you read it you feel .that the writer has made many voyages and set the memories of them all to his music. He has-, too, his own peculiar view of life, full both of painful memory and of eager expectation." Concerning "Reaping tho Whirlwind and Other' Poems,*' the critic finds that Mr. G. I>\ Bradby's verso is ■'hearer 'to prose than- the verse of either Mr. Masefield or Dr. Boss; hut it is not prosaic in the bad senso of the word, not more, prosaic than lie means it to bo. Tho thirteen poems. included under the title "Heaping tho Whirlwind" are concerned with tho French Revolution, and they are tho best in : tho book. They have their great merit, that they are interesting, which they would not be if Mr. Bradby had r.ot. found the right medium of expression. •I-Io often uses verse, as Pope and Browning used it, because things can; be said more concisely, in it than in prose. .... ' : "Many poets have written prose like clever amateurs. It is not their natural form of speech, and-they are inclined to be over-eager to prove thgir mastery,of it, to show that they have all its tricks at their command. . Milton himself could seldom bo at his ease in prose. Shelley and Swinburne had tile amateur's.facility in.it: Mr. .Eden Phillpotts, one <5f tho best of our novelists, has the sam'e^kind of facility in verse. You can see that it is not his natural form of speech from his anxiety to make it pcetie and.from the variety of his models. In pioso ho has a great deal to .soy. You cannot read ouo of his stories without seeing that h<\ knows men and women and has tho'usht much about life. Rut in his verse this knowledge and this thought do not . often succeed in oxpro-siliEr themselves. Most of it 'expresses littlo hut tho author's admiration of great poets. He is at his best-in the dialect poems, esnocially in one called "A Song," where, ho almost tells a story. We quote three verses of it:— With bow and scraps I then began— Sing hey, sing ho, sing honey. "Now do'e, I pray, let mo carry your . ■ can." She smiled and said, "Out o' my path, y.inng mail." Sing hey; sing honey ho! " Your pathway shall be mine," quoth I— Sing hey. sing ho, «ing honey— \ ■ "Yo'ii'm the loveliest-creature under the And for yon I'll live and for you I'll die!" Sing li'ey, sing honey ho! ' "•Gnde Lord! wheer'was you horn?",cried she Ping hey, sing ho, sing honey— " I'm the farmer's wife and the mother ■ ■ o' thr-ee! • ; . "Jfv eldest be coniin''to'-welcomß-.Tn?&. : i Sing hey, sing honey-ho! -.- |. this is good beeau'Se it" lias "th'e'qunrlities : of the author's prose, and the woman speaks like one of the women in his novels. The more verse of this kind hewrites the hotter, but in regular poetry lie, is onlv on a 1 level with ■ a hundred other skilful writers."