Of the divers-hued trees of late summer;
But though I greatly delight
In these and the water lilies,
That which sets me nighest to weeping
Is the rose and white colour of the smooth flag-stones,
And the pale yellow grasses
Among them.
I think that is one of the best poems which Mr. Aldington has done. “The rose and white colour of the smooth flag-stones” almost sets me weeping too, so desolate are they, with the yellow grasses growing up between them.
I suppose the thing which is so satisfying in Mr. Aldington’s work is the intense feeling which underlies the astringent utterance. With all his stern, uncompromising technique (for Mr. Aldington is a remarkable technician) goes a passionate violence of feeling. The Imagists are constantly accused of being inhuman, mere intellectuals. How strange it is that the feeling which merely turns white and makes no movement should go unperceived, while hysterical screams and lamentations, over in a moment, pass for the outpourings of true passion! What we have outgrown on the stage still holds in poetry, it seems.
Feeling there surely is in Childhood, printed in Some Imagist Poets. Yet, somehow, the poem is not as good as it ought to be. I suspect that Mr. Aldington has not yet quite mastered the technique of the long poem. Feeling is there, and we get the dullness of the little town perfectly, and the stale, salt smell of the harbour; and there are excellent descriptions—the public park, and the wonderful box in the attic—but the poem as a whole does not “get over.” Necessarily more discursive than the shorter poems, it has not enough command of the dramatic to succeed. Having taught himself for years to say things in the fewest possible words, the length of this poem has weakened the poet’s method. He must study the requirements of the longer poem a little more before he will be quite at home in it. Such as it is, Childhood is interesting as showing the broadening of its author’s mind and interests. He no longer sees with the eyes of other centuries; he sees things about him, and as they are.