IF I HAD A SON

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 26 November 1927, Page 9

IF I HAD A SON

Oh the diwn'i a-greying up on the starboard quarter. It’i time to strike the bell, and for my turn below; The wheel she’s a-kicking, there’s a chop to the water, The north’ard looks like wind, and I think that she’ll blow. “And it’s home, dearie, home” . . . Aye, homing to your dearie— That’s a song for some men, but not the likes o’ me, A sea-soaked sailorman that stiff and old and weary, His only home the fo’c's’le and the wide, salt sea. If I had a son now, I’d say to him: “my laddie, Don’t you go to sea, boy, but stay you snug ashore, For roving round the world, lad you'll learn, like your daddy, That roving holds no ; oy, but what the land holds more.” Talking to my son, I would din home one thing only—- “ Comfort’s by the heart, with a wife to fuss and fret; What’s to gain,” I’d say, “where the seas are wide and lonely But a lonely old age and a harvest of regret?” If I had a son now. I’d say to him: “My Johnny, Dance and fight and sing, lad, the while your life’s aglow; Make love to a lass while her eyes are bright and bonny, And take your fill of pleasure while the years run slow. Tie not what you’ve done that will trouble you hereafter, Not the friends that failed you, nor yet the girls you kissed, But the lone night-fret that will rob you of your laughter, Thinking what you might have done all the fun you’ve missed.” I know what I know, and if I’d a son to mind me, “Ev’ry port’s the same port,” I’d say, “to sailormen. Here am I a shellback, with all my years behind me, And what have I gained now from there and back again?” ( have no son to mind me—where’s the use in beefing? Ships and the lonely sea are all the kin I’ll know— It’s a-bliwing up to gale, and the sails want reefing, But the fo’c's’le my home when it’s my watch below. —DICK HARRIS. ***** BOOK OF EVERLASTING THINGS: ARTHUR MEE (Hodder and Stoughton, 7/6 net.) The title indicates the nature of the book: it is a collection of things everlasting in literature. In his preface Mr. Mee writes as follows:— “It is the spirit of God in the life of man that does not pass away. Working in the mind of man, it has made man’s work immortal. It has made it impossible that the memory of man should perish, whatever happens to the hills. The hills may change their shape, the flowers may fade, the river may wind another way to the sea, but the mind of man builds its eternal monuments. * “They have come down to us through the corridors of Time. They have lived from one age to another and renewed their youth. The poet lives and dies, his home may crumble into dust, his very race may pass away; but the poem he wrote is on the lips of men in a thousand years, in five thousand years, and will make men laugh and weep and lift up their hearts as long as Time shall last. Greece is where it is, its ancient greatness gone; but the words of Socrates are where they were. Caesar is a name, but Mark Anthony still sways a crowd the way he will. The Euphrates and the Tigris may run dry in their desert sands, but if these rivers should disappear for ever men would still remember the exiles from Jerusalem who by these waters of Babylon sat down and wept “ Such are everlasting things and we cannot hope to put them in a book. But we can pick among them here and there, and gather for ourselves a little company of things that men will love to have by their beds and on their tables and in their hearts, when most other things in our familiar world have passed away. It is good for ns to live with them, to turn to them often and feel that we are sharing something noble that the post has given to the future. When we pick up this book we can be living the intellectual life of men and women who will walk about the earth in a thousand years. They will love these things because they are of the stuff that we are made of, and the stuff they will be made of, for these things are a part of all mankind.” * * * * BITS FROM BOOKS a A MOTHER’S SONG. I can see her yet in our tiny Welsh cottage, her foot on a wooden cradle rocking a baby, my baby brother, her hands busy'with her knitting, her voice lifted in jubilant song for hours at a time. And all her songs were songs of praise. She thanked God for life and for strong hands to labour for her little ones. In those days furniture was rare, and few were the pieces in a worker’s home. It took a dozen years for her to acquire two feather beds. And when at last we owned two bedsteads, in those days harder to get than automobiles, we rated ourselves pretty rich. . . When I was sleeping five in a bed with my brothers, there was one long bolster for five hot little faces. . . A boy sang out: “Raise up.” We lifted our . s . . heads. “ Turn over.” Two boys turned the holster. “Lie down.” And we put our faces on the cool side and went to sleep. Those were not hardship-. . . and we awoke from our crowded b i. like birds in a nest awakened by their

mother’s morning song. For, as I have said, my mother was always singing. Her voice was our consolatiin and delight. One of the most charming recollections of my boyhood is that of my mother standing at our gate with a lamp in her hands, sending one boy out in the early morning darkness, to his work, and al the same time welcoming another boy home. My brother was on the day shift and I on the night, which meant that he left home as I was leaving the mills, about half past two in the morning. On dark nights—and they were all dark at that hour—my mother, thinking my little brother afraid, would go with him to the gate, and holding an old-fashioned lamp high in her hands, would sing some Welsh song while he trudged out toward the mills and until he got within the radius of the glare from the stacks as they belched forth furnace flames. And as he passed from the light of the old oil burner into the greater light of the mills, I walked wearily out from that reflection and was guided home by my mother's lamp and the song on her lips. Happy is the race that sings, and the Welsh are singers. After the tiring labour in the mills “we still had joy that found its voice in song. When I was six years old 1 joined a singing society. The whole land of Wales re-echoes with the folk songs of a people who sing because they must. . . . When blue days came for me, and hardship almost forced me to despair, I turned my thoughts to her, singing as she rocked a cradle, and from her spirit my own heart took hope again.—From “The Iron Pudduler,” by JAMES J. DAVIS. * * * * A PALACE FEAST He laughed aloud and went forward, and soon discovered a tiny girl cowering under a thorn. When she saw him she ran quickly and grasped his sleeve and hid her face in it and wept. She was small for her years, which were not more than eight. Young Gerard, who was big for his, picked her up Ind looked at her kindly and curiously. “What is it, you little thing?” said he. “I got lost,” said the child shyly through her tears. “Well, now you’re found,” said Young Gerard, “so don’t cry any more.” “Yes, but I’m hungry,” sobbed the child. “Then come with me. Will you?” “Where to?” “ To a feast in a palace.” “Oh, yes!” she said. Young Gerard set her on his shoulder, and went back the way he had come, till the dark shape of his wretched shed stood big between them and the sky. . . . He then carried her into the shed, and she looked around eagerly to see what a palace might be like inside; and it was full of flickering lights and shadows and the scent of burning wood, and she did not see how poor and dirty the room was, for the firelight gleamed upon a mass of golden fruit and silver bloom embroidered on the covering of the settle by the hearth, and sparkled against a silver and crystal lantern hanging in the chimney. And between the cracks on the walls Young Gerard had stuck wands of gold and silver palm and branches of snowy blackthorn, and on' the floor was a dish full of celandine and daisies and a broken jar of small wild daffodils. And the child knew that all these things were the treasures of queens and kings. . . . Then he looked about and found his own wooden cup, and went away and came back with the cup full of milk, set on a platter heaped with primroses, and when he brought it to her she looked at it with shining eyes and asked: “Is this the feast?” “That it,” said Young Gerard. And she drank it eagerly. And while she drank Young Gerard fetched a pipe and began to whistle tune on it as mad as any thrush, and the child began to laugh and jumped up, spilling her leaves and primroses, and danced between the fitful lights and shadows as though she were now a shadow taken shape, and now a flame. Whenever he paused she cried, “Oh, let me dance! Don’t stop! Let me go on dancing!” until at the some moment she dropped, panting, on the hearth, and he flung his pipe behind him and fell on his back with his heels in the air, crying, “Pouf! d’you think I’ve the four quarters of heaven in my lungs or what?” But as though to prove he had yet a capful of wind under his ribs, i-e suddenly began to sing a song she’d never heard before, and it went like this: “I looked before me and behind, I looked beyond the sun and wind, Beyond the rainbow' and the snow, And saw a land I used to know. The floods rolled up to keep me still A captive on my heavenly hill. . . . I laughed aloud, You shining seas, I’ll run away the /lay I please! I am not winged like any plover, Yet I’ve a way shall take me over, I am not finned like any bream, Yet I can cross you, lake and stream. And I my hidden land will find That lies beyond the sun and wind— Past drowned grass and drowning trees I’ll run away the day I please, With my bonny in my arms.” I’ll run like one whom nothing harms -ELEANOR FARJEON, in “Martin Pippin, in the Apple Orchard.” * ft * * LITERARY ADVANCEMENT VIEWS OF SIR EDMUND GOSSE. Perhaps one of the most impressive autobiographies ever written is that entitled “Father and Son,” by Sir Edmund Gosse, in which he describes his gradual emancipation from the cruelly narrow environment of an ultrapruitanical upbringing. We note with interest the account of interview recently given by him to a representative of the “ Liverpool Post,” in which he gives his views regarding the progress of modern literature. “‘At seventy-eight,’ he said, ‘I find life much the same as at twenty-eight.

Temperament doesn’t change, neither does one’s outlook very much. I have been a writer for sixty years, and am the author of a terribly long shelf of books. My life has been entirely devoted to literature, and I suppose very few people have been so completely men of letters all their lives as I have. People talk about the consolations of literature. -No one could be more thankful for them than I. My life has been spent between my books and my friends, and books have been the companions of my life. “ ‘ Do I notice many changes in literature to-day? That is a very interesting question. I see changes, some favourable and some unfavourable. I think the general level of writing is very much higher than it was in my youth. Such a very large number of people write in a really distinguished way. On the other hand, I don’t think there is the same creative vitality there was. “‘1 am struck by the fact that people write very carefully and pleasantly over and over the same theme. I have the feeling that the subjects are getting rather dangerously worn out, but a change will come in that respect. The Great War, I think, produced a certain intellectual fatigue that is now displaying itself. “ ‘ A very striking thing, to my mind, is the advance of women in literary work. It was very unusual for a woman to write well fifty or sixty years ago, but now, not merely in novel writing, but in many branches of study and science and scholarship, women are doing admirable work. * * * * PILGRIM’S PROGRESS The SjP.C.K. have published (3/6 net), a rearrangement of John Buchan’s interpretation of “ The Pilgrims Progress” for the particular needs of children. The work has been done by Miso Jean Marian Matthews, and the book is attractively illustrated by Mr H. J. Ford.

In an- introductory note Miss Matthews acutely points out that “ many children have been hindered from reading “ The Pilgrim’s Progress” by the long conversations, setting forth the various points of doctrine, with which the story is often interrupted.” “In this edition,” she continues, “these have been left out as far as possible, and John Bunyan’s beautiful allegory, true for all time, remains undisturbed in his own words.” It may be open to question whether the Bedford tinkler himself would have appoved of this drastic sub-editing of his immortal allegory; it may even be questioned it he would have credited the fact that his work would one day constitute the world’s best story for children. Nevertheless, we welcome all such capable attempts to simplify and make more clear the essential facts of the great pilgrimage. The writer remembers well the incident of the little girl who always fidgetted at certain parts of the story as her mother turned over the pages. When remonstrated with, she said, “Oh well, it’s a lovely story if only you wouldn't explain it.” And Dr. Kelman somewhere alludes to the brother divine who averred that he could follow' the story itself without difficulty, but had been endeavouring in vain for years to understand the footnotes. Miss Matthew’s achievement in ridding the story of its explanations and footnotes is one for which she is to be heartily commended. ft ft ft ft JACQUELINE (By Georgia Rivers. Hodder and Stoughton. 7 S 6d net.) A vivid story, this, of the lovable Jacqueline, written about present-day-youth in Melbourne. You are kept warmly interested in the everyday doings of Jacqueline, her family, and her friends. The description of the way in which her childishlv cold heart is gently warmed into a blaze of love is unusual and delicate. The loveinterest in the book is like a medallion of soft, rich tones, with suud-n flashes of rare exotic colour. The characters are living and warm. Jacqueline. small, slender, rebellious, with unusual coffee-coloured hair and a capacity for attracting attention, friendship and mild adventures: her brother Len, gtill in his teens, living in a maze of the wild, splendid dreams of youth; and the vounger brother Wallace, with thoughts and aims wholly mercenary, and homework his particular hete-noir; Mrs Gowman, their quiet, ladylike mother always understanding and helpful; Jacqueline’s friend Garde, a sterling character, who hides his fineness and seriousness under a surface flow of light nonsense, and Manuel Boscan, the ideal lover (in a Rudolph Valentino way) a golden Spaniard almost too handsome to be true in a world of bustle and slang. Your interest is held all the way through, and a big surprise awaits .the reader of Jacqueline. One’s sympathies go out to the poor woman who stood at the street corner and san- “Mv Ross Serie, Mv Rose Serie”— to a painfully unhnanoial audience. The book is written in extraordinarily good style. “'The loveliness of the room stabbed her like a nhrase,’’ may be take nas a sample of th fine English this story contains. There are one or two minor errors, such as “pealed off his sock” on page 75, and “here” men instead of “mere” men on page 87. “Under Arnold and I” (as Jacqueline says on page 121. is hardly worthy of that dainty lady. An excellent story, well written and well worth reading; clean, wholesome and invigorating.