II.
Do the murex-fishers
drench you as they pass?
Do your roots drag up colour
from the sand?
Have they slipped gold under you;
rivets of gold?
Band of iris-flowers
above the waves,
you are painted blue,
painted like a fresh prow
stained among the salt weeds.
H. D. has her limitations, as I said before. They are the most obvious thing about her, except her perfection. But it is so ridiculous to cavil at them, as it would be to deny the loveliness of one of the sea flowers she writes about, because it is not a forest of lofty trees.
To pass from H. D. to Mr. John Gould Fletcher is something in the nature of a shock. It is a good deal like plunging into the ocean from a warm, sunny cliff. One’s ears, and nose, and mouth, are filled with rushing water. One feels in the grasp of an overwhelming power, and one struggles to the surface, breathless, half-drowned, but wholly invigorated.
To drop the figure, these two poems of Mr. Fletcher’s are so full of potentialities, so large in suggestion, that one hardly knows what to say about them. Does The Blue Symphony mean life? I confess I do not know. Is it merely a series of pictures? No, there is a vague undercurrent to the poem which makes that impossible. It is the sort of poem which a mystic might ponder over indefinitely and find new meanings every hour. And yet it is all done with the precision and clearness of the Imagist theory.
It is impossible to give any idea of the poem as a whole by quoting bits of it. But little pieces, even divorced from their context, have that succinct epigrammatic quality which is the stamp of genius. Here are three lines:
I have heard and have seen
All the news that has been:
Autumn’s gold and Spring’s green!
It is evident in this poem that Mr. Fletcher has been much influenced by the Japanese.
And now the lowest pine-branch
Is drawn across the disk of the sun.
is absolutely Japanese. But strangely enough it is a technique got from a study of Japanese painting rather than from Japanese poetry.
Mr. Fletcher’s versatility is shown by turning from The Blue Symphony, to his other poem, London Excursion. Here the note of mysticism of The Blue Symphony is entirely abandoned, and there is no hint of Japanese influence. If London Excursion follows any lead, it is the lead of the new schools of poetry and painting in France. But I will not insult Mr. Fletcher by suggesting that he is, in any way, a disciple of Marinetti and the Futurists. It is nearer the truth to say that he has realized the vividness of some of their methods, and modified them to his own use.
London Excursion is one of the most interesting poems in this volume. It is a poem of a man going into London in the morning by ’bus, spending the day walking about the streets and going into shops, and coming home at night by train. It sounds simple, but it is really the most amazing expression of light, color, and unrelated impressions that one can conceive. This is his impression of a street from his ’bus-top:
Black shapes bending,
Taxicabs crush in the crowd.
The tops are each a shining square
Shuttles that steadily press through wooly fabric
Drooping blossom,
Gas-standards over
Spray out jingling tumult
Of white-hot rays.
Monotonous domes of bowler-hats
Vibrate in the heat.
Silently, easily we sway through braying traffic,
Down the crowded street.
The tumult crouches over us,
Or suddenly drifts to one side.
Mr. Flint’s work is always delightful. He has a winning way of taking his reader into his confidence. This, and his love of nature, which he paints with real affection, gains our sympathy at once. It must be admitted that none of Mr. Flint’s seven poems quite equal two of his in the first anthology, London My Beautiful and The Swan. One feels in these two poems a groping quality, as though the poet were not quite satisfied with them himself. As though the first élan with which he adopted the vers libre medium were passing away, and he were beginning to realize that the form has its limitations.
If there is any truth in this, it is evident, however, that Mr. Flint has not yet made up his mind to try anything else. It would be almost a pity if he did, for few vers librists understand the manipulation of cadence as he does. Perhaps the following is the one of these poems which has most of his characteristic charm: