So Eden was deserted, and at eve
Into the quiet place God came to grieve.
His face was sad, His hands hung slackly down
Along his robe ...
... All the birds had gone
Out to the world, and singing was not one
To cheer the lonely God out of His grief—
There follow several stanzas of exquisite reverie as the majestic figure paces sadly in Adam's silent garden and pauses before the little hut
Chaste and remote, so tiny and so shy,
So new withal, so lost to any eye,
So pac't of memories all innocent....
Then, reminiscent of the dear friendliness of those banished human souls, desolation comes upon the solitary Being. He remembers that he is eternal and ringed round with Infinity. He sends thought flying back through endless centuries, but cannot find the beginning of Time. He ranges North and South, but cannot find the bounds of Space. He is most utterly alone—save for his silly singing angels—in the monotonous glory of his heaven.
... Many days I sped
Hard to the west, a thousand years I fled
Eastwards in fury, but I could not find
The fringes of the Infinite....
—till at last
Dizzied with distance, thrilling to a pain
Unnameable, I turned to Heaven again.
And there My angels were prepared to fling
The cloudy incense, there prepared to sing
My praise and glory—O, in fury I
Then roared them senseless, then threw down the sky
And stamped upon it, buffeted a star
With My great fist, and flung the sun afar:
Shouted My anger till the mighty sound
Rung to the width, frighting the furthest bound
And scope of hearing: tumult vaster still,
Thronging the echo, dinned my ears, until
I fled in silence, seeking out a place
To hide Me from the very thought of Space.
There was once a reviewer who compared the genius of this poet to that of Homer and Æschylus. Now comparisons like that are apt to tease the mind of the discriminating, to whom there instantly appear all the gulfs of difference. But, indeed, this poet does share in some measure, with Æschylus and our own Milton and the unknown author of the Book of Job, a sublimity of vision. His conceptions have a grandeur of simplicity; and he makes us realize immensities—Eternity and Space and Force—by images which are almost primitive. Like those other poets too, whose philosophical conceptions were as different from his as their ages are remote, he also has made God in the image of man. But the comparison does not touch what we may call the human side of this newer genius; and it only serves to throw into bolder relief its perception of life's comedy, its waywardness, and its mischievous humour. This aspect, strongly contrasted as it is with the poet's imaginative power, is at least equally interesting. It is apparent, in the earlier work, in the realism of such pieces as "The Dancer" or "The Street." There is a touch of harshness in these poems which would amount to crudity if their realism were an outward thing only. But it is not a mere trick of style: it proceeds from indignation, from an outraged æsthetic sense, and from a mental courage which attains its height, rash but splendid, in "Optimist"—
Let ye be still, ye tortured ones, nor strive
Where striving's futile. Ye can ne'er attain
To lay your burdens down.
This poet is not a realist at all, of course—far from it. But he loves life and earth and homely words, he is very candid and revealing, and he has a sense of real values. His humanity, too, is deep and strong, and often supplies his verse with the material of actual existence, totally lacking factitious glamour. Thus we have "To the Four Courts, Please," in which the first stanza describes the deplorable state of an ancient cab-horse and his driver. Then—
God help the horse and the driver too,
And the people and beasts who have never a friend,
For the driver easily might have been you,
And the horse be me by a different end.
This humane temper is the more remarkable from being braced by a shrewd faculty of insight. There is no sentimentality in it; and that the poet has no illusions about human frailty may be seen in such a poem as "Said The Old-Old Man." It is ballasted with humour, too; and has a charming whimsicality. Hence the lightness of touch in "Windy Corner"—