Part 10

Joseph Campbell was born in Belfast in 1881, and is not only a poet but an artist; he made all the illustrations for _The Rushlight_ (1906), a volume of his own poems. Writing under the Gaelic form of his name, he has published half a dozen books of verse, the most striking of which is _The Mountainy Singer_, first published in Dublin in 1909.

I AM THE MOUNTAINY SINGER

I am the mountainy singer-- The voice of the peasant's dream, The cry of the wind on the wooded hill, The leap of the fish in the stream.

Quiet and love I sing-- The carn on the mountain crest, The _cailin_ in her lover's arms, The child at its mother's breast.

Beauty and peace I sing-- The fire on the open hearth, The _cailleach_ spinning at her wheel, The plough in the broken earth.

Travail and pain I sing-- The bride on the childing bed, The dark man laboring at his rhymes, The eye in the lambing shed.

Sorrow and death I sing-- The canker come on the corn, The fisher lost in the mountain loch, The cry at the mouth of morn.

No other life I sing, For I am sprung of the stock That broke the hilly land for bread, And built the nest in the rock!

THE OLD WOMAN

As a white candle In a holy place, So is the beauty Of an aged face.

As the spent radiance Of the winter sun, So is a woman With her travail done,

Her brood gone from her, And her thoughts as still As the waters Under a ruined mill.

_James Stephens_

This unique personality was born in Dublin in February, 1882. Stephens was discovered in an office and saved from clerical slavery by George Russell ("A. E."). Always a poet, Stephens's most poetic moments are in his highly-colored prose. And yet, although the finest of his novels, _The Crock of Gold_ (1912), contains more wild phantasy and quaint imagery than all his volumes of verse, his _Insurrections_ (1909) and _The Hill of Vision_ (1912) reveal a rebellious spirit that is at once hotly ironic and coolly whimsical.

Stephens's outstanding characteristic is his delightful blend of incongruities--he combines in his verse the grotesque, the buoyant and the profound. No fresher or more brightly vigorous imagination has come out of Ireland since J. M. Synge.

THE SHELL

And then I pressed the shell Close to my ear And listened well, And straightway like a bell Came low and clear The slow, sad murmur of the distant seas, Whipped by an icy breeze Upon a shore Wind-swept and desolate. It was a sunless strand that never bore The footprint of a man, Nor felt the weight Since time began Of any human quality or stir Save what the dreary winds and waves incur. And in the hush of waters was the sound Of pebbles rolling round, For ever rolling with a hollow sound. And bubbling sea-weeds as the waters go Swish to and fro Their long, cold tentacles of slimy grey. There was no day, Nor ever came a night Setting the stars alight To wonder at the moon: Was twilight only and the frightened croon, Smitten to whimpers, of the dreary wind And waves that journeyed blind-- And then I loosed my ear ... O, it was sweet To hear a cart go jolting down the street.

WHAT TOMAS AN BUILE SAID IN A PUB

I saw God. Do you doubt it? Do you dare to doubt it? I saw the Almighty Man. His hand Was resting on a mountain, and He looked upon the World and all about it: I saw him plainer than you see me now, You mustn't doubt it.

He was not satisfied; His look was all dissatisfied. His beard swung on a wind far out of sight Behind the world's curve, and there was light Most fearful from His forehead, and He sighed, "That star went always wrong, and from the start I was dissatisfied."

He lifted up His hand-- I say He heaved a dreadful hand Over the spinning Earth. Then I said, "Stay, You must not strike it, God; I'm in the way; And I will never move from where I stand." He said, "Dear child, I feared that you were dead," And stayed His hand.

TO THE FOUR COURTS, PLEASE

The driver rubbed at his nettly chin With a huge, loose forefinger, crooked and black, And his wobbly, violet lips sucked in, And puffed out again and hung down slack: One fang shone through his lop-sided smile, In his little pouched eye flickered years of guile.

And the horse, poor beast, it was ribbed and forked, And its ears hung down, and its eyes were old, And its knees were knuckly, and as we talked It swung the stiff neck that could scarcely hold Its big, skinny head up--then I stepped in, And the driver climbed to his seat with a grin.

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. And nobody knows how their days will cease, And the poor, when they're old, have little of peace.

_John Drinkwater_

Primarily a poetic dramatist, John Drinkwater, born in 1882, is best known as the author of _Abraham Lincoln--A Play_ (1919) founded on Lord Charnwood's masterly and analytical biography. He has published several volumes of poems, most of them meditative and elegiac in mood.

The best of his verses have been collected in _Poems, 1908-19_, and the two here reprinted are used by permission, and by special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.

RECIPROCITY

I do not think that skies and meadows are Moral, or that the fixture of a star Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees Have wisdom in their windless silences. Yet these are things invested in my mood With constancy, and peace, and fortitude; That in my troubled season I can cry Upon the wide composure of the sky, And envy fields, and wish that I might be As little daunted as a star or tree.

A TOWN WINDOW

Beyond my window in the night Is but a drab inglorious street, Yet there the frost and clean starlight As over Warwick woods are sweet.

Under the grey drift of the town The crocus works among the mould As eagerly as those that crown The Warwick spring in flame and gold.

And when the tramway down the hill Across the cobbles moans and rings, There is about my window-sill The tumult of a thousand wings.

_James Joyce_

James Joyce was born at Dublin, February 2, 1882, and educated in Ireland. He is best known as a highly sensitive and strikingly original writer of prose, his most celebrated works being _Dubliners_ (1914) and the novel, _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ (1916). His one volume of verse, _Chamber Music_, was published in this country in 1918.

I HEAR AN ARMY

I hear an army charging upon the land, And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees: Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand, Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.

They cry unto the night their battle-name: I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter. They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame, Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair: They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore. My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair? My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?

_J. C. Squire_

Jack Collings Squire was born April 2, 1884, at Plymouth, of Devonian ancestry. He was educated at Blundell's and Cambridge University, and became known first as a remarkably adroit parodist. His _Imaginary Speeches_ (1912) and _Tricks of the Trade_ (1917) are amusing parodies and, what is more, excellent criticism. He edited _The New Statesman_ for a while and founded _The London Mercury_ (a monthly of which he is editor) in November, 1919. Under the pseudonym "Solomon Eagle" he wrote a page of literary criticism every week for six years, many of these papers being collected in his volume, _Books in General_ (1919).

His original poetry is intellectual but simple, sometimes metaphysical and always interesting technically in its fluent and variable rhythms. A collection of his best verse up to 1919 was published under the title, _Poems: First Series_.

A HOUSE

Now very quietly, and rather mournfully, In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires, And all the stubble-fields that were so warm to him Keep but in memory their borrowed fires.

And I, the traveller, break, still unsatisfied, From that faint exquisite celestial strand, And turn and see again the only dwelling-place In this wide wilderness of darkening land.

The house, that house, O now what change has come to it. Its crude red-brick facade, its roof of slate; What imperceptible swift hand has given it A new, a wonderful, a queenly state?

No hand has altered it, that parallelogram, So inharmonious, so ill-arranged; That hard blue roof in shape and colour's what it was; No, it is not that any line has changed.

Only that loneliness is now accentuate And, as the dusk unveils the heaven's deep cave, This small world's feebleness fills me with awe again, And all man's energies seem very brave.

And this mean edifice, which some dull architect Built for an ignorant earth-turning hind, Takes on the quality of that magnificent Unshakable dauntlessness of human kind.

Darkness and stars will come, and long the night will be, Yet imperturbable that house will rest, Avoiding gallantly the stars' chill scrutiny, Ignoring secrets in the midnight's breast.

Thunders may shudder it, and winds demoniac May howl their menaces, and hail descend: Yet it will bear with them, serenely, steadfastly, Not even scornfully, and wait the end.

And all a universe of nameless messengers From unknown distances may whisper fear, And it will imitate immortal permanence, And stare and stare ahead and scarcely hear.

It stood there yesterday; it will to-morrow, too, When there is none to watch, no alien eyes To watch its ugliness assume a majesty From this great solitude of evening skies.

So lone, so very small, with worlds and worlds around, While life remains to it prepared to outface Whatever awful unconjectured mysteries May hide and wait for it in time and space.

_Lascelles Abercrombie_

Lascelles Abercrombie was born in 1884. Like Masefield, he gained his reputation rapidly; totally unknown until 1909, upon the publication of _Interludes and Poems_, he was recognized as one of the greatest metaphysical poets of his period. _Emblems of Love_ (1912), the ripest collection of his blank verse dialogues, justified the enthusiasm of his admirers.

Many of Abercrombie's poems, the best of which are too long to quote, are founded on scriptural themes, but his blank verse is not biblical either in mood or manner. It is the undercurrent rather than the surface of his verse which moves with a strong religious conviction. Abercrombie's images are daring and brilliant; his lines, sometimes too closely packed, glow with a dazzling intensity that is warmly spiritual and fervently human.

FROM "VASHTI"

What thing shall be held up to woman's beauty? Where are the bounds of it? Yea, what is all The world, but an awning scaffolded amid The waste perilous Eternity, to lodge This Heaven-wander'd princess, woman's beauty? The East and West kneel down to thee, the North And South; and all for thee their shoulders bear The load of fourfold space. As yellow morn Runs on the slippery waves of the spread sea, Thy feet are on the griefs and joys of men That sheen to be thy causey. Out of tears Indeed, and blitheness, murder and lust and love, Whatever has been passionate in clay, Thy flesh was tempered. Behold in thy body The yearnings of all men measured and told, Insatiate endless agonies of desire Given thy flesh, the meaning of thy shape! What beauty is there, but thou makest it? How is earth good to look on, woods and fields, The season's garden, and the courageous hills, All this green raft of earth moored in the seas? The manner of the sun to ride the air, The stars God has imagined for the night? What's this behind them, that we cannot near, Secret still on the point of being blabbed, The ghost in the world that flies from being named? Where do they get their beauty from, all these? They do but glaze a lantern lit for man, And woman's beauty is the flame therein.

SONG

(_From "Judith"_)

Balkis was in her marble town, And shadow over the world came down. Whiteness of walls, towers and piers, That all day dazzled eyes to tears, Turned from being white-golden flame, And like the deep-sea blue became. Balkis into her garden went; Her spirit was in discontent Like a torch in restless air. Joylessly she wandered there, And saw her city's azure white Lying under the great night, Beautiful as the memory Of a worshipping world would be In the mind of a god, in the hour When he must kill his outward power; And, coming to a pool where trees Grew in double greeneries, Saw herself, as she went by The water, walking beautifully, And saw the stars shine in the glance Of her eyes, and her own fair countenance Passing, pale and wonderful, Across the night that filled the pool. And cruel was the grief that played With the queen's spirit; and she said: "What do I here, reigning alone? For to be unloved is to be alone. There is no man in all my land Dare my longing understand; The whole folk like a peasant bows Lest its look should meet my brows And be harmed by this beauty of mine. I burn their brains as I were sign Of God's beautiful anger sent To master them with punishment Of beauty that must pour distress On hearts grown dark with ugliness. But it is I am the punisht one. Is there no man, is there none, In whom my beauty will but move The lust of a delighted love; In whom some spirit of God so thrives That we may wed our lonely lives. Is there no man, is there none?"-- She said, "I will go to Solomon."

_James Elroy Flecker_

Another remarkable poet whose early death was a blow to English literature, James Elroy Flecker, was born in London, November 5, 1884. Possibly due to his low vitality, Flecker found little to interest him but a classical reaction against realism in verse, a delight in verbal craftsmanship, and a passion for technical perfection--especially the deliberate technique of the French Parnassians whom he worshipped. Flecker was opposed to any art that was emotional or that "taught" anything. "The poet's business," he declared, "is not to save the soul of man, but to make it worth saving."

The advent of the war began to make Flecker's verse more personal and romantic. The tuberculosis that finally killed him at Davos Platz, Switzerland, January 3, 1915, forced him from an Olympian disinterest to a deep concern with life and death. He passionately denied that he was weary of living "as the pallid poets are," and he was attempting higher flights of song when his singing ceased altogether.

His two colorful volumes are _The Golden Journey to Samarkand_ (1913) and _The Old Ships_ (1915).

THE OLD SHIPS

I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep Beyond the village which men still call Tyre, With leaden age o'ercargoed, dipping deep For Famagusta and the hidden sun That rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire; And all those ships were certainly so old-- Who knows how oft with squat and noisy gun, Questing brown slaves or Syrian oranges, The pirate Genoese Hell-raked them till they rolled Blood, water, fruit and corpses up the hold. But now through friendly seas they softly run, Painted the mid-sea blue or shore-sea green, Still patterned with the vine and grapes in gold.

But I have seen, Pointing her shapely shadows from the dawn And image tumbled on a rose-swept bay, A drowsy ship of some yet older day; And, wonder's breath indrawn, Thought I--who knows--who knows--but in that same (Fished up beyond Aeaea, patched up new --Stern painted brighter blue--) That talkative, bald-headed seaman came (Twelve patient comrades sweating at the oar) From Troy's doom-crimson shore, And with great lies about his wooden horse Set the crew laughing, and forgot his course.

It was so old a ship--who knows, who knows? --And yet so beautiful, I watched in vain To see the mast burst open with a rose, And the whole deck put on its leaves again.

_D. H. Lawrence_

David Herbert Lawrence, born in 1885, is one of the most psychologically intense of the modern poets. This intensity, ranging from a febrile morbidity to an exalted and almost frenzied mysticism, is seen even in his prose works--particularly in his short stories, _The Prussian Officer_ (1917), his analytical _Sons and Lovers_ (1913), and the rhapsodic novel, _The Rainbow_ (1915).

As a poet he is often caught in the net of his own emotions; his passion thickens his utterance and distorts his rhythms, which sometimes seem purposely harsh and bitter-flavored. But within his range he is as powerful as he is poignant. His most notable volumes of poetry are _Amores_ (1916), _Look! We Have Come Through!_ (1918), and _New Poems_ (1920).

PEOPLE

The great gold apples of light Hang from the street's long bough Dripping their light On the faces that drift below, On the faces that drift and blow Down the night-time, out of sight In the wind's sad sough.

The ripeness of these apples of night Distilling over me Makes sickening the white Ghost-flux of faces that hie Them endlessly, endlessly by Without meaning or reason why They ever should be.

PIANO

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

_John Freeman_

John Freeman, born in 1885, has published several volumes of pleasantly descriptive verse. The two most distinctive are _Stone Trees_ (1916) and _Memories of Childhood_ (1919).

STONE TREES

Last night a sword-light in the sky Flashed a swift terror on the dark. In that sharp light the fields did lie Naked and stone-like; each tree stood Like a tranced woman, bound and stark. Far off the wood With darkness ridged the riven dark.

And cows astonished stared with fear, And sheep crept to the knees of cows, And conies to their burrows slid, And rooks were still in rigid boughs, And all things else were still or hid. From all the wood Came but the owl's hoot, ghostly, clear.

In that cold trance the earth was held It seemed an age, or time was nought. Sure never from that stone-like field Sprang golden corn, nor from those chill Grey granite trees was music wrought. In all the wood Even the tall poplar hung stone still.

It seemed an age, or time was none ... Slowly the earth heaved out of sleep And shivered, and the trees of stone Bent and sighed in the gusty wind, And rain swept as birds flocking sweep. Far off the wood Rolled the slow thunders on the wind.

From all the wood came no brave bird, No song broke through the close-fall'n night, Nor any sound from cowering herd: Only a dog's long lonely howl When from the window poured pale light. And from the wood The hoot came ghostly of the owl.

_Shane Leslie_

Shane Leslie, the only surviving son of Sir John Leslie, was born at Swan Park, Monaghan, Ireland, in 1886 and was educated at Eton and the University of Paris. He worked for a time among the Irish poor and was deeply interested in the Celtic revival. During the greater part of a year he lectured in the United States, marrying an American, Marjorie Ide.

Leslie has been editor of _The Dublin Review_ since 1916. He is the author of several volumes on Irish political matters as well as _The End of a Chapter_ and _Verses in Peace and War_.

FLEET STREET

I never see the newsboys run Amid the whirling street, With swift untiring feet, To cry the latest venture done, But I expect one day to hear Them cry the crack of doom And risings from the tomb, With great Archangel Michael near; And see them running from the Fleet As messengers of God, With Heaven's tidings shod About their brave unwearied feet.

THE PATER OF THE CANNON

Father of the thunder, Flinger of the flame, Searing stars asunder, _Hallowed be Thy Name!_

By the sweet-sung quiring Sister bullets hum, By our fiercest firing, _May Thy Kingdom come!_

By Thy strong apostle Of the Maxim gun, By his pentecostal Flame, _Thy Will be done!_

Give us, Lord, good feeding To Thy battles sped-- Flesh, white grained and bleeding, _Give for daily bread!_

_Frances Cornford_

The daughter of Francis Darwin, third son of Charles Darwin, Mrs. Frances Macdonald Cornford, whose husband is a Fellow and Lecturer of Trinity College, was born in 1886. She has published three volumes of unaffected lyrical verse, the most recent of which, _Spring Morning_, was brought out by The Poetry Bookshop in 1915.

PREEXISTENCE

I laid me down upon the shore And dreamed a little space; I heard the great waves break and roar; The sun was on my face.

My idle hands and fingers brown Played with the pebbles grey; The waves came up, the waves went down, Most thundering and gay.

The pebbles, they were smooth and round And warm upon my hands, Like little people I had found Sitting among the sands.

The grains of sand so shining-small Soft through my fingers ran; The sun shone down upon it all, And so my dream began:

How all of this had been before, How ages far away I lay on some forgotten shore As here I lie to-day.

The waves came shining up the sands, As here to-day they shine; And in my pre-pelasgian hands The sand was warm and fine.

I have forgotten whence I came, Or what my home might be, Or by what strange and savage name I called that thundering sea.

I only know the sun shone down As still it shines to-day, And in my fingers long and brown The little pebbles lay.

_Anna Wickham_

Anna Wickham, one of the most individual of the younger women-poets, has published two distinctive volumes, _The Contemplative Quarry_ (1915) and _The Man with a Hammer_ (1916).

THE SINGER

If I had peace to sit and sing, Then I could make a lovely thing; But I am stung with goads and whips, So I build songs like iron ships.

Let it be something for my song, If it is sometimes swift and strong.

REALITY