The men of the tattered battalion which fights till it dies,
Dazed with the dust of the battle, the din and the cries,

.....

The sailor, the stoker of steamers, the man with the clout,
The chantyman bent at the halliards putting a tune to the shout,

.....

Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold—
Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tales be told.

There the poet is responding consciously to the time-spirit: the awakening social sense which, moving pitifully amongst bitter and ugly experience, was to evoke the outer realism of his art. That, of course, being passionately sincere, is a powerful influence. But stronger still is the unconscious force of personality, this completeness of nature which in "Biography" is seen as a rare union of powers that are nevertheless the common heritage of humanity; and which is implicit everywhere in his work, imbuing it with the compelling attraction of large human sympathy.

Out of this arise the curiously contrasted elements of Mr Masefield's poetry. For, as in life itself, and particularly in life that is full and sound, there is here a perpetual conflict between opposing forces. It is, perhaps, the most prominent characteristic of this work. It pervades it throughout, belongs to its very essence and has moulded its form. It is, of course, most readily apparent in the poet's art. Here the battling forces of his genius, transferred to the creatures whom he has created, have made these narrative poems largely dramatic in form. Here, too, we come upon a clash of realism with romance and idyllic sweetness. That bald external realism has found much disfavour with those who do not or will not see its relation to the underlying reality. And one observes that the critic who professes most to dislike it hastens to quote the gaudiest example, practically ignoring the many serene and gracious passages.

But, putting aside the prejudice which has been fostered by a conventional poetic language, this realistic method does seem to conflict with certain other characteristics of the work—with the essential romance of the spirit of adventure, for instance. There does at first glance appear to be a disturbing lack of unity between that ardent, wistful and elusive spirit, and the grim actuality here, of incident and diction; or, on the other hand, between the raw material of this verse and its elaborate metrical form, or its frequent passages of rare and delicate beauty. But is it more than an appearance? I think not. I believe that the incongruity exists only in a canon of poetical taste which is false to the extent that it is based too narrowly. That canon has appropriated romance to a certain order of themes and, almost as exclusively, to a certain manner of expression. Most of our contemporary poets have cheerfully repudiated the convention so far as it governed language; building up, each for himself, a fresh, rich, expressive idiom in which the magic of romance is often vividly recreated. Some of them, and Mr Masefield pre-eminently, have gone further. They have perceived the potential romance of all life, and have broken down the old limit which prescribed to the poet only graceful figures and pseudo-heroic themes. They have set themselves to express the wonder and mystery, the ecstasy and exaltation which inhere, however obscurely, in the lowliest human existence.

Thus we have Saul Kane, the village wastrel of "The Everlasting Mercy," glimpsing his heritage, for a moment, in a lucid interval of a drunken orgy. Suddenly, for a marvellous instant, he is made aware of beauty, smitten into consciousness of himself and a fugitive apprehension of reality.

I opened window wide and leaned
Out of that pigstye of the fiend
And felt a cool wind go like grace
About the sleeping market-place.
The clock struck three, and sweetly, slowly,
The bells chimed Holy, Holy, Holy;