We must refer also to Mr. W. J. Turner's noble and largely conceived, if a little chaotic, poem Death; and to Mr. Sassoon's extraordinarily economical and finished pictures of impressions at the front and in England. There is moreover Mr. Brett Young's graceful and delicate talent.
If we say that in all these it is possible to perceive reality imaginatively seized and transfigured by passion, even if we add a general curiosity to penetrate behind the appearances of things to their substance, we say no more than we ought to say of any poetry which we are disposed to praise. Perhaps if we could say much more we should distinguish the literature with which we are dealing as one which has forsaken the proper traditions of the art for qualities of a merely temporary interest. It is not necessarily the business of new poets to discover new objects for poetry; it is their business to bring to bear on the old objects their own new personalities and whatever has accrued both to the language and to general human experience. We are of opinion that the "Georgian" poets are doing this; and though to give them that title still requires something of an act of faith, it is one much easier to make than it was seven years ago.
The survival of the word as the name of a period is, of course, not yet assured. Many of these writers are still extremely young. Some of them will develop in ways which cannot yet be foreseen. Mr. Nichols and Mr. Turner, both of them capable of grandiose conceptions and engaged in making a style to sustain them, will very likely attempt the drama, where an empty throne is waiting. Mr. de la Mare, who is probably the oldest of the distinctively Georgian writers, grows every year deeper and solider, and it is impossible to say what will become of him. Mr. Robert Graves is producing a body of work almost every line of which is as sweet and sound as a nut, and is an influence against the obscurity from which a good many of his contemporaries suffer. The author of A Ballad of Nursery Rhyme, which begins:
Strawberries that in gardens grow
Are plump and juicy fine
But sweeter far as wise men know
Spring from the woodland vine.
No need for bowl or silver spoon,
Sugar or spice or cream,
Has the wild berry plucked in June,
Beside the trickling stream,
may perhaps have done a service by writing these lines at the same time as Mr. Turner was writing such a fine but involved stanza as this from Death:
That sound rings down the years—I hear it yet—
All earthly life's a winding funeral—
And though I never wept,
But into the dark coach stept,
Dreaming by night to answer the blood's sweet call,
She who stood there, high-breasted, with small, wise lips,
And gave me wine to drink and bread to eat,
Has not more steadfast feet,
But fades from my arms as fade from mariners' eyes
The sea's most beauteous ships.
And others no doubt will appear who are now no more thought of than were Mr. Nichols or Mr. Graves or Mr. Turner in 1912.
At least this movement—we do not use the word in the sense of "organised movement" or "school"—has had the luck of early recognition and careful fostering. There are faults to be found with this as with the three earlier volumes of the series, but, in a world which has produced no faultless anthology, we ought not to expect the first to be a collection of contemporary verse. No one will be able to look through the book without objections rising to his lips. Every reader will want this or that poet omitted, this or that included. There are few readers of anthologies who do not find, on mature consideration, that they could have done the work better themselves, and this would be just if, in fact, anthologists worked only for themselves. But to E. M. we must assign the credit of having carried through an exceedingly difficult task with as few mistakes as could be thought possible. He has the extra distinction of having foreseen seven years ago the beginning of a "liveliness" which has justified him by enduring until at this moment it shows no signs of recession. He would be no doubt the last person to claim the invention, or even the discovery, of the "Georgian" movement. But he might reasonably claim, and, if he does not, the honour must be thrust upon him, to have provided it with a means of growing naturally and without undue extravagance.