.....
Being life amid piled up remembrances
Of the tranquil dead.
... So she sits and waits.
And she rejoices us who pass her by,
And she rejoices those who here lie still,
And she makes glad the little wandering airs,
And doth make glad the shaken beams of light
That fall upon her forehead: all the world
Moves round her, sitting on forgotten tombs
And lighting in to-morrow.
That was written earlier than "To All the Dead," but, like the two songs which come immediately after it in this volume, and like the "Suabian Legend," it is amongst Mr Hueffer's best things. One precious quality is the temperament which pervades it—and the principal artistic significance of all this work is to have expressed so strikingly an exuberant and complex personality. Sensibility rules, perhaps; but reflective power is visibly present, with a vein of irony running below it, precipitated out of its own particular share of the bitterness that nobody escapes. In one aspect after another this individuality is revealed, and the changing moods are matched by changing forms. It follows that there are many varied measures here; and most of them have some new feature. A few are very irregular, and all are, of course, modelled to suit the author's impressionistic theory. And the fact that these forms are in the main so well adapted to their themes: that they are so successful in conveying the desired impression, is as much as to say that the poet has evolved a technique which perfectly suits his own genius. It may or it may not carry much further than that; and the extent to which the new instrument would respond to other hands may be problematical. One would suppose that some of its qualities at least would be a permanent gain, particularly the larger range which brings within its compass so many fresh aspects of life on the one hand and on the other a richer idiom. But whether or no these are qualities which will pass into the substance of future poetry, there can be no question that life seen through this particular temperament is interpreted vividly by this method.
Thus we have the fulmination of "Süssmund's Address to an Unknown God"; violent, bitter, and unreasoned, the mere rage of weary mind and body against the goads of modern existence. Thus, in the "Canzone à la Sonata" as in "The Portrait" a single serious thought is rendered in grave unrhymed stanzas which have all the dignity of blank verse with something more than its usual vivacity; and thus, too, in "From Inland," one of the exquisite pieces of the volume, the whole of a tragedy is suggested by the rapid sketching of two or three brief scenes. Again the verse is perfectly fitted to the theme; the sober rhythm matching the quietness of retrospect; memory tenderly grieving in simple rhymes which vary their occurrence as emotion rises and falls.
"... We two," I said,
"Have still the best to come." But you
Bowed down your brooding, silent head,
Patient and sad and still....
... Dear!
What would I give to climb our down,
Where the wind hisses in each stalk
And, from the high brown crest to see,
Beyond the ancient, sea-grey town,
The sky-line of our foam-flecked sea;
And, looking out to sea, to hear,
Ah! Dear, once more your pleasant talk;
And to go home as twilight falls
Along the old sea-walls!
The best to come! The best! The best!
One says the wildest things at times,
Merely for comfort. But—The best!
Again, in "Grey Matter" and "Thanks Whilst Unharnessing," the colloquial touch is right and sure. In the latter poem, the almost halting time of the opening lines clearly suggests the tired horse as he draws to a standstill in the early darkness of a winter evening: there is a quicker movement as the robin's note rings out; the farmer's song is broken at intervals as he moves about the business of unharnessing, and when he stands at the open stable door, peering through the darkness at the robin on the thorn, the impression of relief from toil, of gratitude for home and rest, of simple kindliness and humanity, is complete—
Small brother, flit in here, since all around
The frost hath gripped the ground;
And oh! I would not like to have you die.
We's help each other,
Little Brother Beady-eye.
One might continue to cite examples: the rapid unrhymed dialogue of "Grey Matter," which continues so long as there is a touch of controversy in the talk of husband and wife, and changes to a lyric measure as emotion rises; the real childlikeness of the "Children's Song"; or the mingled pain and sweetness of "To Christina at Nightfall," epitomising life in its philosophy and reflecting it in its art. But it is unnecessary to go further; and this last little poem (I will not do it violence by extracting any part of it) is perhaps the most complete vindication of our poet's theories. Never surely were impressions so vivid conveyed with a touch at once so firm and tender; never were thought and feeling so intense rendered with such gracious homeliness.