AMONG THE POETS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 375, 30 August 1946, Page 23

AMONG THE POETS

THANKS BEFORE GOING. By John Masefield. (William Heinemann, Ltd., London). ‘THE poems of D. G. Rossetti were once as ardently admired and acclaimed as the paintings which made him the leader of the Pre-Raphaelite school. But for sOme reason they have fallen out of favour, and are now seldom read or even (except for "The Blessed Damozel") represented in anthologies. This small book by the Poet Laureate may do something to re-awaken the attention they undoubtedly deserve. It takes the form of a commentary, warmly appreciative but by no means uncritical, of some of Rossetti’s original poems, and is imbued with the reverent affection of one fine poet for another whose romantic personality first won his hero-worship and whose art became an inspiration. "With Rossetti,’ says Masefield, "the mind is a person; some of the thoughts met by the mind may seem to be persons, living in a world of symbols, which can be so painted that those who brood upon them may understand." This is particularly true of his sonnet-and-song sequence The House of Life, which contains the most beautiful and poignant of his personal utterances. It is not easy poetry. In spite of the Pre-Raph-aelite principle permitting nothing vague or indefinite, in spite of Rossetti’s own "honest habit of precise thought," there is a strange veiled elusiveness about it. The thought is subtle, unusual, and even in the finest passages the sense is not always caught at first reading. But an age disciplined to the understanding of Eliot’ and Pound, George Barker and Dylan Thomas, should not grudge Rossetti a little effort. For truly he is too good to miss. Though he can be luscious and rhetorical, at his best he _ rivals Shelley and Bridges as the poet of love, human and divine, love triumphant, and love under the shadow of death. His verse is full of tender and exquisite lines, and charged with the deep emotion of one whose Beatrice (Elizabeth

Siddal) made of his life a Vita Nuova, then dying left him desolate, but still courageous and hopeful. Thanks Before Going is not only a touching tribute to the character but a fine appraisal of the art of one who = (in Masefield’s words) "an unusual, spired, and kindling being from a eat love brought much, in whom anguish of mind checked much, whose work and spirit went out against the anguish and left an inspiration to us."

Basil

Dowling