There are very few of those who are making genuine poetry, who are content simply to sing. Indeed, it hardly seems to be a matter of choice, but an urgency, secret and compelling as a natural instinct, by means of which life is commanding expression in literary art. This is not to suggest, however, that no lyrics are being composed. Current poetry often reveals a true lyrical gift, especially in early work; and so long as poets continue to be born young, we shall not lack for songs. We may find, too, a rare singer like W. H. Davies, for whom genius, temperament and circumstance have effected a happy isolation from the complexity of modern existence. Owing allegiance chiefly to nature, he is free as the air in body and soul. Unspoilt by books, and saving his spirit humane and merry and sweet from the petty constraints of civilization, he carols as lightly as a robin or a thrush. But he is almost a solitary exception, and may serve to prove the rule that the pure lyric—some intimate emotion bubbling over into music—cannot say all that demands to be said when the poetic spirit is completely in touch with life.
Now, in all the most vital of this modern verse, poetry has come so close to life as to claim its very identity. It has left the twilight of unreality and stepped into clear day. It has broken down the exclusiveness which penned it within a prescribed circle of theme and of language; and it has taken hold upon the world, real and entire. Moreover, the life upon which it seizes in this way is wider, more complex, more meaningful and varied than ever before. Political and social changes have made humanity a larger thing—whether regarded in the actual numbers which democracy thus brings within the poetic ken, or in their manifold significance. Horizons, both mental and material, have been extended. Science presses on in quiet confidence, the dogmatic phase being over; and its methods as well as its data pass readily into the collective mind. Religion, no longer synonymous with a single creed or form of worship, can find room within itself for all the spiritual activity of mankind everywhere; and in the juster proportion thus attained, nobler syntheses are shaping. A constructive social sense replaces the old negative commands with a positive duty of service. Values are changing; new ideals quicken, struggle and fructify; fresh aspects of life, and visions of human destiny, are opened up; while in every sphere the spirit of inquiry and the experimental method generate an energy of conflict which the timid and the sleepy loathe, but which is nevertheless the dynamic of progress.
The poetry of to-day is the very spirit of that multiform life, giving shape and permanence to whatever is finest in it; and for that reason its manner of expression is almost infinitely varied, and often very different from the poetic forms of other ages. That, indeed, is one sign of its vitality: the fact that it is a living organism, capable of adaptation, growth and development. Old forms are modified and new ones created to embody the new ideas. All the resources of prosody are drawn upon—when they will serve—and used with the utmost freedom. And when, as frequently happens, they will not serve; when the established rules of English verse seem inadequate to the present task, they are challenged and thrown aside. Thus there arises, in the technique of poetry itself, a corresponding conflict to that in the world of ideas, indicating a similar vigour and equally prophetic of advance.
In all this variety, however, the dramatic element is a fairly constant feature; and it seems to be growing stronger. It is present in many poems which do not look like drama at all, as for instance in the narratives of Mr Masefield. Here we may find vividly dramatic scenes, astonishingly evolved in the form of an elaborate stanza, or the rhymed couplet; just as the tragedies in Daily Bread by Mr Gibson are wrought out in a quite original unrhymed verse of extreme austerity. Again, much of Mr Abercrombie's work is dramatic in essence, apart from his plays in regular form; and Mrs Woods has completed a third poetical drama, having already published two tragedies in her collected edition.
But there is one fact to be noted in coming from those poets to the drama of "John Presland." With them the dramatic impulse is often subconscious, and it has to fight its way, obscurely sometimes, against a twin impulse towards lyricism. It is strong but not yet dominant; vital, but not yet aware of its own potentiality. It throbs below the surface of alien forms, but it rarely breaks away to an independent existence. And even when it achieves consciousness, as it does most completely perhaps in the work of Mrs Woods, traces of the struggle cling about it still—in a lyrical motif, or a fragment of song embedded in the structure of a play, or in a lyric intensity of feeling. With "John Presland," however, the general tendency is reversed. The dramatic impulse has become a definite and prevailing purpose, with the lyrical element subordinated to it; and, as a consequence, we have here a drama of full stature, a complete, organic, and acutely conscious art-form.
This work reveals in its author an endowment of those qualities which most insistently urge towards the dramatic form: imagination, both creative and constructive, and a gift of almost absolute objectivity. In all the five plays these qualities are conspicuous. Indeed, they are so strong that they effectually screen the poet's personality; and, if he had written nothing but the plays, it is little that one might hope to discover of the individual mind behind them. That is naturally a very desirable result from the dramatist's point of view, and one test of his art. But it pricks mere human curiosity, and provokes unregenerate glee in the fact that the poet has published lyrics too, three volumes of them; and that they, from their more subjective nature, yield up the outlines of a definite individuality.
But, indeed, one's delight is not pure mischief. It is partly at least in seeing the artistic virtue of this largesse in the lyric—the spontaneity which is equally a merit with the reticence of drama. One is glad, too, of the light thus thrown upon the poet's own philosophy, his affiliations, his outlook, his attitude to life. Judging by the plays alone, we might be cheated into a belief in the complete detachment of our author. The use of historical themes and the rigour of his art create an effect of isolation. He would seem to stand outside the stress of his own time and aloof from the influences which commonly shape the artist. The lyrics show that impression to be false and help to correct it. For while they do not relate the poet, in any narrow sense, to what are specifically called 'modern movements,' they prove that he has an eager interest in his world, and that, being in that world and of it, he is yet 'on the side of the angels.' There is, for example, a splendid fire of reproach in the poem "To Italy," proving a capacity for noble indignation at the same time as a close hold upon current affairs. The poem is dated September 29, 1911, and is a protest at the action of Italy against Tripoli:
Hearken to your dead heroes, Italy;
Hearken to those who made your history
A bright and splendid thing ...
... What Mazzini said
Have you so soon forgotten? You, who bled
With Garibaldi, and the thousand more?
He spoke, and your young men to battle bore
His gospel with them, of men's brotherhood,
Of Justice, that before the tyrant, stood
Accusing, and of truth and charity.
His dust to-day lies with you, Italy;
Where lie his words? That sword is in your hand
To seize unrighteously another's land—
Your fleet in foreign waters. By what right
Dare you act so, save arrogance of might,
Such cruel force as ground the Austrian heel
Upon your Lombard cities, ringed with steel
Unhappy Naples and despairing Rome,
That exiled Garibaldi from his home,
That served itself with sycophants and knaves,
That filled the prisons and the nameless graves,
Till, like a sunrise o'er a stormy sea,
Flashed out the spirit of free Italy?
Like all Mr Presland's work, this poem is closely woven: quotation does not serve it well, but this passage will at least indicate its theme and temper, and thus light up personality. There is, in the same volume, Songs of Changing Skies, a bit of spiritual autobiography called "To Robert Browning." It destroys at once any fiction of literary isolation; although to be sure there are cute critics who will declare that the resemblance to Browning in some of these lyrics is too obvious to need the discipular confession. It may be that these clever people are right. Yes, perhaps one would recognize certain signs in poems like "A Present from Luther" and "An Error of Luther's." But the whole question of influence is nearly always made too much of, especially in its mere outward marks. Granting the love of Browning and the debt to his teaching, which are honourably admitted here, some effect upon thought and style would be inevitable. But a deeper and more potent cause of the resemblance lies in a real affinity of mind, in buoyancy and breadth and tenacious belief in good; and in a similar poetic equipment. One must not launch upon a comparison, but it may be observed that he has profited by his master's faults, artistic and philosophical, at least as much as by his merits. For, probably warned by example, this poet works with patient care to express his thought simply; and he has attained a style of perfect clearness. While his philosophy, though full of brave hope, has escaped the unreason of that optimism which declares that 'All's well.' True, he makes Joan say, in the last words of his "Joan of Arc":