THE EXCELLENT VERSATILITY
OF THE MINOR POET
Petals of wild cherry blossom were flying on a soft rush of wind that swept through the beech wood. Little bright sheathlets lay, brown and shining, at the feet of the smooth silver-green boles of the trees. The leaves, not yet rid of the silky soft fringes of their babyhood, fluttered like little flags, and glowed like green flame; they were not yet thick enough to hide the misty blue sky, laced with feathery cloudlets. Light seemed to flow from the little leaves—the light of life, the life of spring-time. The “Fire of God” was aflame in the wood world; a green mist of colour was aglow in the very air that pulsed between the beech-tree boles. In every dell the bracken sprang up straightly, uncurling its brown heads to spread abroad the branches of its later summer greenery. The first blue-bells were there too, covering the ground with tender blue mist, and filling the air with an ecstasy of perfume that smote the senses with the pain that attends the inexpressible and almost intangible; for the soul of all joy, of all sweetness, whether of perfume, sight, or sound, is ever hidden away in the heart of things, whereof all that can be smelt, or seen, or heard, does but torment us with a deeper, eternally elusive longing.
On a bough a blue tit hung head downwards, and beneath the bough, half hidden in a crisp bed of last year’s leaves, lay a child who watched the tit with half-shut eyes, and shook with a delight he did not understand, which was akin to pain. A queer, lonely, shy child, lying in a wood, trembling with a force which was trying to express itself through him. He was the motherless son of an old country vicar, who took scarcely any notice of him until the boy was old enough to read the books his father loved, who let the child “run wild” from sunrise to sunset, and after.
Those who commented on the matter said it was very bad for a boy to have no young companions, and to dream alone in a wood all day. This was true, but circumstances alter cases. The training, or rather the lack of any training from the world of men, happened to be just what this particular child needed; this was probably the reason he was placed where he was, to struggle through a short life alone. People were as shadows to the boy—shadows whom he greeted kindly, to whom he meekly submitted himself in much, for he was docile in most matters, partly because there were so few things of the outer world for which this queer child really cared. When the outer things were forced upon his notice, he observed all manner of traits in people which others did not see. But for the most part he did not live in the world of men at all, but in the life of the beech wood, and in the life of that which the wood partly expressed—a life after which he reached continually without knowing or finding it.
He lay in the withered leaves and quivered with the thoughts and dim sensations that came about him like living presences; a power, not his own, seemed to press upon the child, till the wood vanished from his eyes; it was as though the wide sky had suddenly stooped to the boy and engulfed him in a flood of quivering, living light.
Vague longings, longings to express somewhat that lurked within and ever eluded him, compassed the child about; until at last the knowledge stole upon him that he could put a shadow of his thought into rhythmic words; words with a cadence that should tell of brooks and whispering leaves, and the songs and rustling of the birds in the beech wood.
It was about this time that the father saw that his child was not as other children; when he saw it he gave the boy no less liberty, but he bestowed upon him freely such knowledge as was his, and let him learn from the poets of past and present the power that lies in deftly wielded words.
So this boy, Fletewode Garth, lived in the quiet old vicarage house, surrounded by the beech woods and the meadows, and dreamed, and wrote, and read such books as his father possessed, which were less numerous than well chosen. His father, the gentlest, simplest, most unworldly of men, never speculated as to his boy’s future. Nor did the lad himself dream, as yet, of giving his thoughts to the world; of fame to be or money making he never thought at all.
The day came (it was when Fletewode was twenty years old) that the mild old vicar, having finished his appointed course as pastor of Beechenfield, sat down peacefully to smoke and doze under the shade of a trellised Crimson Rambler in the vicarage garden, and there he fell asleep and never woke up again. Then it was found that save for the sum of £100 in the Bank, his son was left penniless; very well read in English literature, with much delicacy of taste in art and poetry, with such classical attainments as the old vicar had himself possessed, and with no other qualifications for making his way in the world—save genius. So that it is obvious he ran a very good chance of starving.