V
This anthology, it has been remarked above, is one rather of particular poems than of well-known authors. Several names of repute are not to be found in the index. William Watson is only represented by "April," a little catch that might come to any man of feeling on a spring walk. To think in terms of these verses is at once not to mind having left an umbrella at home. Hilaire Belloc gives a sharp impression of early rising; he also sings in a great voice all the glories of his favourite part of England. W. H. Davies brings sheep across the Atlantic, and he talks to a kingfisher. Mrs Meynell contributes "The Shepherdess," that well-known description of a fine and serene mind, also two London poems, of which one is the lovely "November Blue." John Masefield is not to be read in his best style, but the three poems we find here are thoroughly English, full of the love of the island soil and of its sea, and are probably in the book for that reason. So much for some of the well-known contributors. Side by side with them we find the unknown name of H. H. Abbott, whose "Black and White" is a sketch of remarkable clarity and interest.
Death, so favourite a subject with poets, is seldom allowed to figure in this book. Betsey-Jane would insist on going to Heaven, but is told, in the charming verses by Helen Parry Eden, that it simply "would not do." The whole book is too full of pleasure and the experience of being alive: Betsey-Jane should read it. She might remember all her life the advice given on page [117], and be saved hundreds of pounds in lawyers' bills when she is grown up.
Let the reader turn to page [114]. Here is the style in which good poetry prefers to teach, and by which it achieves more in eleven lines than a Martin Tupper in 11,000. Mr Pepler has written down only one sentence, charmingly improved by a series of most natural rhymes. It is a very nasty hit at the lawyer. He does not tell him he is not a 'gentleman', or anything so strong as that. He pays him what might be taken for a compliment. He assumes that he does understand his own job. Then he enumerates the things he does not understand. He attaches no blame: he makes a statement only; one that the lawyer certainly will not think worth arguing about, but that his client may advisedly take to heart.
Ralph Hodgson's "Stupidity Street" argues in somewhat the same manner. It does not suggest that anyone should become vegetarian, or that it is wrong to kill birds. It names a street and gives a reason for doing so. It is an angry little Poem, but impersonal.
"The Bells of Heaven," by the same author, simply chances a hint that something might happen if something else did. It is a suggestion only, but made by one who knows what he thinks, and how to think it. Into a few lines a whole philosophy is concentrated.
Thus Pepler or Ralph Hodgson nudge peoples arms and draw attention to traditional stupidities.
Walter De la Mare puts the children to sleep with "Nod," or bewitches them with the Mad Prince's Song; or he takes us to an Arabia which never existed, but is one of those countries more beautiful than any we know, and therefore we love to imagine it.
Look at that full moon on page [53], which Dick saw "one night." Here is the possible experience of man, woman, child, dog, fox, bear—or even nightingale—all concentrated into the shortest and plainest account of something that happened to Dick. He and Betsey-Jane, though quite different in kind, belong to the same world. Betsey-Jane is plainly more romantic than Dick.
But, talking of the moon, we may turn back to Mr Chesterton on page [36]. Here we find something incongruous in the collection: a poem that wishes deliberately to strike a note. The donkey is a much better fellow than Mr Chesterton seems to think: he does not ask for glorification, nor would he utter that boast of the last two lines. Would a man not rather "go with the wild asses to Paradise" than have the case for the donkey pleaded before him in this obtrusive manner?
Turn back four pages and you will find:
For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle,
And the merry love to dance.
This, by W. B. Yeats, represents a much pleasanter type of thought. In these verses of the Irish poet we have the gaiety of a man who, knowing all about religion, can afford not to be sentimental. And here is the spirit of the book.
The happiness of those who love the earth is so different from the pleasure by proxy of those that abide it in the idea of going to some Heaven afterward. Mr Yeats' "Fiddler of Dooney" is that type of fellow who accepts the symbolism of a national religion only in so far as it may help him to enjoy the condition of being alive. And in his "Lake Isle of Innisfree" he imagines a Paradise which is of the earth only. And he takes you there by reason of his own longing.