A VISION OF LIFE
A VISION OF LIFE
POEMS. BY DARRELL FIGGIS
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY GILBERT K. CHESTERTON
LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMIX
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH
TO
MY WIFE
For nigh four years now have these poems sought to snuff the open breeze, returning ever to me broken and disappointed. What bitterness was in this—how deep you alone know!—was yours also; but I alone knew that rarer bounty of your instant and unfailing comfort. Therefore, dear, these poems are dedicate to you beyond my power to alter or avert; and it lies for me now but to confirm the finding of the years.
INTRODUCTION
BY G. K. CHESTERTON
There are signs of a certain stirring in English poetry, a minor Renaissance of which Francis Thompson may be regarded as the chief ensign and example. It is partly the Elizabethan spirit, that permanent English thing working its way again to the surface; but, of course, like every Renaissance, it is in many ways unlike its origin and model. It is as true in art as it is in religion, that when a man is born again, he is born different. And the latest Elizabethanism has differed not only from the actual Elizabethan work, but from other revivals of it. The great romantic movement which was at its height about the beginning of the nineteenth century, the movement of which Coleridge is perhaps the most typical product, this movement was and even claimed to be a return to the Elizabethan inspiration. This, of course, it was in its revolt against the rhymed rationalism of Pope, in its claim that poetry was a sort of super-sense which Pope would have called nonsense. But there were two elements in the Coleridge and Wordsworth movement which prevented it, splendid as it was, from being perfectly Elizabethan.