O Christ who holds the open gate,
O Christ who drives the furrow straight,
O Christ, the plough, O Christ, the laughter
Of holy white birds flying after,
Lo, all my heart's field red and torn,
And Thou wilt bring the young green corn,
The young green corn divinely springing,
The young green corn for ever singing;
And when the field is fresh and fair
Thy blessèd feet shall glitter there.
And we will walk the weeded field,
And tell the golden harvest's yield,
The corn that makes the holy bread
By which the soul of man is fed,
The holy bread, the food unpriced,
Thy everlasting mercy, Christ.
So one might go on to contrast the several characteristics of this poetry, and to trace them back to the combination of qualities in the author's genius. This elemental religious emotion, dramatically fitted as it is to the character, could only have found such expression by a mind which deeply felt the primary human need of religion, and which was relatively untroubled by abstract philosophy. But set over against that is the almost pagan joy in the senses, the vigour and love of action which make so strong a physical basis to this work; whilst, on the other hand, there stands the astonishing contrast between the lyrical intensity of the idyllic passages of these poems; and the dramatic power (at once identified with humanity and detached from it) which has created characters of ardent vitality.
There is, of course, a corresponding technical contrast; but the fact that it does 'correspond' is an answer to the critics who object to the violence of certain scenes or to a literal rendering here and there of thought or word. Granted that this poet is not much concerned to polish or refine his verse, it remains true that the same sense of fitness which closes three of these tragedies in exquisite serenity, governs elsewhere an occasional crudity of expression or a touch of banality. It is largely—though not always—a question of dramatic truth. The medium is related to the material of this poetry and ruled by its moods. Hence its realism is not an external or arbitrary thing. It is something more than a trick of style or the adoption of a literary mode, being indeed a living form evolved by the reality which the poet has designed to express.
The root of the matter lies in a stanza of "Dauber." The young artist-seaman, who is the protagonist here, has for long been patiently toiling at his art at the prompting of instinct—the æsthetic impulse to capture and make permanent the beauty of the material world. But the pressure of reality upon him, the unimaginable hardships of a sailor's existence, have threatened to crush his spirit. A crisis of physical fear and depression has supervened; terror of the storms that the ship must soon encounter, of the frightful peril of his work aloft, and of the brutality of his shipmates, has shaken him to the soul. For a moment, even his art is obscured, shrouded and almost lost in the whirl of these overmastering realities. But when it emerges from the chaos it brings revelation to the painter of its own inviolable relation with those same realities.
... a thought occurred
Within the painter's brain like a bright bird:
That this, and so much like it, of man's toil,
Compassed by naked manhood in strange places,
Was all heroic, but outside the coil
Within which modern art gleams or grimaces;
That if he drew that line of sailors' faces
Sweating the sail, their passionate play and change,
It would be new, and wonderful, and strange.
That that was what his work meant; it would be
A training in new vision....
One might almost accept that as Mr Masefield's own confession of artistic faith; it only needs the substitution of the word 'poet' for the word 'painter' in the second line. But it is not quite complete as it stands; and an important article of it will be discovered by reading this poem through and noting the triumph of the ideal over the real, which is the essential meaning of the work. It is not the most obvious interpretation, perhaps. The idealist broken by the elements, wasted and thrown aside, is hardly a victorious figure on the face of things. But, in spite of that, the poem is a song of victory—of spirit over matter, of the ideal over reality, of art over life.
The fact is all the more remarkable when we turn for a moment to note the poet's grip on facts. We have just seen that profound sense of reality lying at the base of his technical realism; and it has been won, through a comprehensive experience, by virtue of the balance of his equipment. There is no bias here, of mind or spirit, which would have changed the clear humanity of the poet into the philosopher or the mystic. The naïveté and simple concrete imagery in the expression of religious feeling are far removed from mysticism. And, on the other hand, one cannot conceive of Mr Masefield formally ranged with the abstractions of either the materialist or the idealist school. Yet it is true that "Dauber" raises the practical issue between the two; and because the poet has realized life profoundly and dares to tell the truth about it, the triumph of the ideal is the more complete. He shows his hero scourged by the elements until all sense is lost but that of physical torture—