Like Brooke, a victim of the Hun, so Seeger, also a victim of the barbarian, seemed to feel the constant presence of Death, an unseen guest at the Feast of Youth and Joy and Fame and Love. Perhaps the war made these two imaginative poets think of Death sooner than Youth usually gives him heed. But most men will think of Death when they are face to face with the shadow day and night as were these soldier-crusading poets; when they see him stalking in every trench, in every wood, on every hill and road, and in every field and village. But how bravely he spoke of Death!—
"Learn to drive fear, then, from your heart.If you must perish, know, O man,'Tis an inevitable partOf the predestined plan."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
And again in this same poem, "Makatooh," he sings of Death:
"Guard that, not bowed nor blanched with fearYou enter, but serene, erect,As you would wish most to appearTo those you most respect.
"So die, as though your funeralUshered you through the doors that ledInto a stately banquet hallWhere heroes banqueted;
"And it shall all depend thereinWhether you come as slave or lord,If they acclaim you as their kinOr spurn you from their board."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
What a challenge this is to all who must die in this war, to all lads who are giving their lives heroically in God's great cause of liberty in his world—this challenge to die so that you may be welcomed into the fraternity of heroes!
Without doubt Seeger's best-known poem, and one which illustrates also most strongly his attitude toward Death, is that poem entitled "I Have a Rendezvous With Death," from which we quote:
"I have a rendezvous with DeathAt some disputed barricade;When Spring comes back with rustling shadeAnd apple blossoms fill the air—I have a rendezvous with DeathWhen Spring brings back blue days and fair.
* * * * *
"God knows, 'twere better to be deepPillowed in silk and scented down,Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,Where hushed awakenings are dear,…But I've a rendezvous with DeathAt midnight in some flaming town;When Spring trips north again this year,And I to my pledged word am true,I shall not fail that rendezvous."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
From the lighter thoughts of Youth, Joy, Fame, Beauty, through the "long, long thoughts of Youth"; through Love and Death it is not a long way to climb to God. We would not expect this young poet to be thinking much in this direction, but he does just the same. I have even found those who say that he was not a God-man, but these poems refute that slander on a dead man and poet. I find him singing in "The Nympholept":
"I think it was the same: some piercing senseOf Deity's pervasive immanence,The life that visible Nature doth indwellGrown great and near and all but palpableHe might not linger but with winged stridesLike one pursued, fled down the mountainsides."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
This reminds one instantly of the haunting Christ of Thompson's "The Hound of Heaven." And again in the presence of War's death the poet felt that other and greater presence without doubt, as these words prove:
"When to the last assault our bugles blow:Reckless of pain and peril we shall go,Heads high and hearts aflame and bayonets bare,And we shall brave eternity as thoughEyes looked on us in which we would see fair—One waited in whose presence we would wear,Even as a lover who would be well-seen,Our manhood faultless and our honor clean."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
And with magnificent acknowledgment of the divine plan of it all, of life and war and all, he sweeps that truly great poem, "The Hosts," to a swinging climax in its last tremendous stanza; which, fitting too, shall be the closing lines of this chapter on our dead American, martyred poet.
He first speaks of the marching columns of soldiers as "Big with the beauty of cosmic things. Mark how their columns surge!"
"With bayonets bare and flags unfurled,They scale the summits of the world—"
Poems by Alan Seeger.
And then:
"There was a stately drama writBy the hand that peopled the earth and airAnd set the stars in the infiniteAnd made night gorgeous and morning fair,And all that had sense to reason knewThat bloody drama must be gone through."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
[Illustration: JOHN OXENHAM.]
JOHN OXENHAM[Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are usedby permission, and are taken from the following works The VisionSplendid, All's Well, and The Fiery Cross Published by George H. DoranCompany, New York.]
In the first volume of The Student in Arms, that widely read book of the war, Donald Hankey has a chapter on "The Religion of the Inarticulate," in which he shows that the "Tommy" who for so long has been accused of having no religion, really has a very definite one. He has a religion that embraces all the Christian virtues, such as love, sacrifice, brotherhood, and comradeship, but he has never connected these with either Christ or the church. His religion is the "Religion of the Inarticulate." Hankey then shows that this war is articulating religion as never before.
John Oxenham, Poet-Preacher, is giving articulation to the voice of Christianity—a voice ringing out from over and above the thunder of the guns, the blare, the flare, the outcry, the hurt, the pain and anguish of the most awful war that earth has ever suffered. Some of us have been thinking of this war in terms of Christian hope. We have thought that we see in it a new Calvary out of which shall come a new resurrection to the spiritual world. We have dreamed that men are being redeemed through the sacrifice, through the spirit of service and brotherhood thrust upon the world by war's supreme demands. We have thought all of this, but we have not been able to make it articulate. Now comes a poet to do it for us.
What magnificent hope sings out, even in the titles that Oxenham has selected for his books in these days of darkness, anguish and lostness. After his first book, Bees in Amber, comes that warm handclasp of strength: that thrill of hope; that word of a watchman in the night, like a sentinel crying through the very title of his second book, "All's Well." Then came The Vision Splendid, and soon we are to have The Fiery Cross. The publishers were kind enough to let me examine this last book while it was still in the proof sheets. It is the one great hope book of the war. Every mother and father who has a boy in the war, every wife who has a husband, every child who has a father will thrill with a new pride and a new dignity after reading The Fiery Cross.
No poet has voiced America's reasons for being in the war as hasOxenham, and nowhere does he do it better than in "Where Are YouGoing, Great-Heart?" the concluding stanza of which sums up compactlyAmerica's high purposes:
"Where are you going, Great-Heart?'To set all burdened peoples free;To win for all God's liberty;To 'stablish His sweet Sovereignty.'God goeth with you, Great-Heart!"
The Vision Splendid.
To those who go to die in war the poet addresses himself in lines which he titles "On Eagle Wings":
"Higher than most, to you is givenTo live—or in His time, to die;So, bear you as White Knights of Heaven—The very flower of chivalry!Take Him as Pilot by your side,And 'All is well' whate'er betide."
The Vision Splendid.
"If God be with you, who can be against you?" is the echo that we hear going and coming behind these great Christian lines. Indeed, behind every poem that Oxenham writes we can hear the echoes of some great scriptural word of promise, or hope or faith or courage. The Christian, as well as those who never saw the Bible or a church, will feel at home with this poet anywhere. The advantage that the Christian will have in reading him is that he will understand him better.
Turning to those who stay at home and have lost loved ones, with what sympathy and deep, tender understanding does he write in "To You Who Have Lost." You may almost see a great kindly father standing by your side, his warm hand in yours as he sings:
"I know! I know!—The ceaseless ache, the emptiness, the woe—The pang of loss—The strength that sinks beneath so sore a cross.'Heedless and careless, still the world wags on,And leaves me broken,… Oh, my son I my son!'"
"Yea—think of this!—Yea, rather think on this!—He died as few men get the chance to die—Fighting to save a world's morality.He died the noblest death a man may die,Fighting for God, and Right, and Liberty—And such a death is Immortality."
All's Well.
If those who have lost loved ones "Over There" cannot be buoyed by that, I know not what will buoy them, what will comfort.
Oxenham too gives us a picture of a battlefield where birds sing and roses bloom, just as do Service and several other poets who have been in the midst of the conflict. We have become familiar with this picture, but no writer yet has caught its full, eternal meaning and pressed it down into three lines for the world as has this man; in "Here, There, and Everywhere":
"Man proposes—God disposes;Yet our hope in Him reposesWho in war-time still makes roses."
The Fiery Cross.
But this poet in his interpretation of war does not forget peace; does not forget that it is coming; does not forget that the world is hungry for it; does not forget that it is the duty of the poets and the thinking men and women of the world not only to get ready for it, but to lead the way to it.
In a remarkable poem called "Watchman! What of the Night?" we see this great heart standing sentinel on the walls of the world, watching the midnight skies red with the blaze and glow of carnage:
"Watchman! What of the night?No light we see;Our souls are bruised and sickened with the sightOf this foul crime against humanity.The Ways are dark—-'I SEE THE MORNING LIGHT!'
* * * * *
"Beyond the war-clouds and the reddened ways,I see the promise of the Coming Days!I see His sun rise, new charged with grace,Earth's tears to dry and all her woes efface!Christ lives! Christ loves! Christ rules!No more shall Might,Though leagued with all the forces of the Night,Ride over Right. No more shall WrongThe world's gross agonies prolong.Who waits His time shall surely seeThe triumph of His Constancy;When, without let, or bar, or stay,The coming of His Perfect DayShall sweep the Powers of Night away;And Faith replumed for nobler flight,And Hope aglow with radiance bright,And Love in loveliness bedightSHALL GREET THE MORNING LIGHT."
All's Well.
Then, as is most fair and logical, the poet tells us how we are to build again after peace comes. We must needs know that. The newspapers are full of a certain popular move—and success to it—to rebuild the destroyed cities of France and Belgium. But the rebuilding that the poet speaks of in "The Winnowing" is a deeper thing. It is a spiritual rebuilding without which there is no permanent peace in the world and no permanent safety for the material world.
"How shall we start, Lord, to build life again,Fairer and sweeter, and freed from its pain?'Build ye in Me and your building shall beBuilded for Time and Eternity.'"
All's Well.
There is the answer to the world's cry in short, sharp, succinct lines; compact as a biblical phrase; and as meaningful. Hearken it, ye world! Only in Him can the new spiritual world be built for "Time and Eternity." And only to those who so believe and hold shall the world belong henceforth. At least so says our poet:
"To whom shall the world henceforth belongAnd who shall go up and possess it?"
which question he himself answers in the same verse:
"To the Men of Good FameWho everything claim—This world and the next—in their Master's great name—
"To these shall the world henceforth belong,And they shall go up and possess it;Overmuch, overlong, has the world suffered wrong,We are here by God's help to redress it."
The Fiery Cross.
And finally in this fight for peace he does not forget prayer, and in "The Prayer Immortal," which is introduced, as are so many of Oxenham's poems, by a phrase from the Bible, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done," he admonishes those who seek peace:
"So—to your knees—And,with your heart and soul, pray GodThat wars may cease,And earth, by His good will,Through these rough ways, find peace!"
The Fiery Cross.
The voice of the cross of Calvary is being heard this day of war as it has never been heard before. The world is resonant with its message. Every soldier, every nation, every home, every mother and father and child and wife who has suffered because of this war, shall henceforth understand the Christ and his cross the better. All through this writer's interpretations of the war we find the cross to the fore. To him the cross symbolizes the war. This war is the cross in a deep and abiding sense. In "Through the Valley" he says:
"And there of His radiant company,Full many a one I see,Who has won through the Valley of ShadowsTo the larger liberty.Even there in the grace of the heavenly place,It is joy to meet mine own,And to know that not one but has valiantly won,By the way of the Cross, his crown."
The Vision Splendid.
Thank God for that hope! Thank God for that word!
In "The Ballad of Jim Baxter" this same thought is more vividly and strongly set forth. It is the story of one type of German cruelty of which we have heard in the war dispatches several times and that have been confirmed on the spot; the story of the Germans nailing men to crosses. Jim Baxter suffered this experience:
"When Jim came to, he found himselfNailed to a cross of wood,Just like the Christs you find out thereOn every country road.
"He wondered dully if he'd died,And so, become a Christ;'Perhaps,' he thought, 'all men are ChristsWhen they are crucified.'"
The Vision Splendid.
And in this homely lad's homely way of putting his cruel experience who knows but that there may be such truth as yet we cannot see in the dark chaos of war?
It isn't a far step from the cross to the Christ of the cross, and in this man's poetry the two mingle and commingle so closely that one overlaps the other. But always these two things stand out—the cross and the Christ. And in the new volume, The Fiery Cross, one finds many pages devoted to this great thought alone.
Of the tenderness of the Christ he speaks most sympathetically, having in mind again the lads that war has taken. In "The Master's Garden" hear him:
"And some, with wondrous tenderness,To His lips He gently pressed,And fervent blessings breathed on them,And laid them in His breast."
The Vision Splendid.
And then of his sweetness, referring again to the "Jim Baxter," we have a wonderful picture of the oft mentioned Comrade in White, who is so real to the wounded soldiers:
"His face was wondrous pitiful,But still more wondrous sweet;And Jim saw holes just like his ownIn His white hands and feet;But His look it was that won Jim's heart,It was so wondrous sweet.
"'Christ!'—said the dying man once more,With accent reverent,He had never said it so before,But he knew now what Christ meant—"
The Vision Splendid.
Oxenham has great faith in humanity. From time to time we find him expressing man's kinship with the stars and with God and Christ. "Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels" this poet takes seriously, thank God. This word from the Book means something to him. And so it is in a poem called "In Every Man" we see him finding Christ in every man:
"In every soul of all mankindSomewhat of Christ I find,Somewhat of Christ—and Thee;For in each one there surely dwellsThat something which most surely spellsLife's immortality.
* * * * *
"And so, for love of Christ—and Thee,I will not cease to seek and find,In all mankind,That hope of immortalityWhich dwells so sacramentallyIn Christ—and Thee."
The Fiery Cross.
He feels Christ's eternity so much that he cries out for him continually and will not be satisfied without him. He knows that he must have the Christ if he wants to grow great enough to meet life's demands. In a poem, "A Prayer for Enlargement," which I quote in full because of its brevity, one feels this dependence:
"Shrive me of all my littleness and sin!Open your great heart wide!Open it wide and take me in,For the sake of Christ who died!
"Was I grown small and strait?—Then shalt Thou make me wide.Through the love of Christ who died,Thou—thou shalt make me great."
The Fiery Cross.
To the Christian the following quotation will mean much. In it we hear the echo of Masefield's The Everlasting Mercy; or of that marvelous story of the regeneration of a human soul in Tolstoy's The Resurrection; an old-fashioned conversion of a human being; a Paul's on the road to Damascus experience. And the tragedy is that just about the time that the world of literature is being fascinated with this story of "Rebirth" the church seems to be forgetting it. It is told in the first verse of Ex Tenebris—"The Lay of the King Who Rose Again":
"Take away my rage!Take away my sin!Strip me all bareOf that I did wear—The foul rags, the base rags,The rude and the mean!Strip me, yea strip meRight down to my skin!Strip me all bareOf that I have been!Then wash me in water,In fair running water,Wash me without,And wash me within,In fair running water,In fresh running water,Wash me, ah wash me,And make me all clean!—Clean of the soilureAnd clean of the sin,—Clean of the soul-crushingSense of defilure,—Clean of the old self,And clean of the sin!In fair running water,In fresh running water,In sun-running water,All sweet and all pure,Wash me, ah wash me,And I shall be clean."
The Fiery Cross
From the voice of Christ and the voice of the cross it is not far to hear the voice of God either in life or in John Oxenham's books. Behind the cross and behind the Christ stands the Father, and a treatment of this great poet's writings would not be complete if one did not quote a few excerpts from his writings to show that God was ever present "keeping watch above his own."
The first note we catch of the Father's voice is in "The Call of theDead":
"One way there is—one only—Whereby ye may stand sure;One way by which ye may understandAll foes, and Life's High Ways command,And make your building sure.—-Take God once more as Counselor,Work with Him, hand in hand,Build surely, in His Grace and Power,The nobler things that shall endure,And, having done all—STAND!"
The Vision Splendid.
And as the poet has walked the streets of America and elsewhere and has seen the service flag, which in "Each window shrines a name," he has felt God everywhere. In "The Leaves of the Golden Book" he comforts those who mourn:
"God will gather all these scatteredLeaves into His Golden Book,Torn and crumpled, soiled and battered,He will heal them with a look.Not one soul of them has perished;No man ever yet forsookWife and home, and all he cherished,And God's purpose undertook,But he met his full rewardIn the 'Well Done' of his Lord!"
The Vision Splendid.
So it is that over and over we hear this note, wrung from the experiences of war, that those who give up all, to die for God's plan, to take the cross in suffering that the world may be better; these shall have life eternal. And who dares to dispute it?
In "Our Share" we are admonished that we must find God anew:
"Heads of sham gold and feet of crumbling clay,If we would build anew and build to stay,We must find God again,And go His way."
All's Well.
Oxenham does not claim to fully understand the world cataclysm any more than some of the rest of us. If we all had to understand, we might find ourselves ineligible for the Kingdom, but the Book says everywhere, "He that believeth on me shall have everlasting life." And we can believe whether we understand or no. So voices the poet in "God's Handwriting":
"He writes in characters too grandFor our short sight to understand;We catch but broken strokes, and tryTo fathom all the mysteryOf withered hopes, of deaths, of life,The endless war, the useless strife,—But there, with larger, clearer sight,We shall see this—HIS WAY WAS RIGHT."
All's Well,
What better way to close this brief interpretation of our poet in this day of darkness and hate and hurt and war and woe and want, of seeing hopelessness and helplessness, than with these heartening lines from "God Is":
"God is;God sees;God loves;God knows.And Right is Right;And Right is Might.In the full ripeness of His Time,All these His vast prepotenciesShall round their grace-work to the primeOf full accomplishment,And we shall see the plan sublimeOf His beneficent intent.Live on in hope!Press on in faith!Love conquers all things,Even Death."
All's Well.
[Illustration: ALFRED NOYES.]
ALFRED NOYES [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes, two volumes, copyright, 1913, by the Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York.]
If one wants to find the tenderest, most completely sympathetic study of childhood, one that finds echo not only in the heart of the grown-up, but in the heart of children the world over, he must this day go to Alfred Noyes. If you want proof of this, read "The Forest of Wild Thyme" or "The Flower of Old Japan" to your children and watch them sit with open mouths and open hearts to hear these wonder fairy tales. And, further, if you are too grown-up to want to read Noyes for his complete sympathy with childhood, more universal even than our beloved Riley; and you want a poet that challenges you to a more vigorous manhood, a poet who calls man to his highest and deepest virility, read Noyes. Or, if you happen to need a clearer, firmer insight into the man of Galilee and Calvary, read Noyes; and, finally, if you want firmer, more rocklike foundations to plant your faith in God upon, read Noyes, for herein one finds all of these. From childhood to Godhood is, indeed, a wide range for a poet to take, and yet they are akin.
As another poet has said, none less than Edwin Markham, "Know man and you will know the deep of God." And as Noyes himself says in the introduction to "The Forest of Wild Thyme":
"Husband, there was a happy day,Long ago in love's young May,When, with a wild-flower in your handYou echoed that dead poet's cry—'Little flower, but if I could understand!'And you saw it had roots in the depth of the sky,And there in that smallest bud lay furledThe secret and meaning of all the world."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And when we know that the mother was talking about "Little Peterkin," their lost baby, we know that she meant that in a little child there lay furled "The secret and meaning of all the world."
And so, beginning with childhood, through those intermediate steps of manhood and Christhood, with Noyes leading us, as he literally leads the little tots through the mysteries of Old Japan and the Wild Thyme, let us go from tree to tree, and flower to flower, and hope to hope, and pain to pain, up to God, from whence we came. It is a clear sweet pathway that he leads us.
Noyes assumes something that we all know for truth: that "Grown-ups do not understand" childhood. But after reading this sweet poet we know that he does understand; and we thank God for him. In Part II of "The Forest of Wild Thyme" one sees this clearly.
"O, grown-ups cannot understand,And grown-ups never will,How short's the way to fairylandAcross the purple hill:They smile: their smile is very bland,Their eyes are wise and chill;And yet—at just a child's command—The world's an Eden still."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
Thank the stars that watch over us in love that the great-hearted poets, and the children of the world—at least those little ones that a half-way Christian civilization has not robbed of childhood—know that "The world's an Eden still."
From the prelude to "The Flower of Old Japan" comes that same note, like a bluebird in springtime, that note of belief, of trust, of hope:
"Do you remember the blue stream;The bridge of pale bamboo;The path that seemed a twisted dreamWhere everything came true;The purple cheery-trees; the houseWith jutting eaves below the boughs;The mandarins in blue,With tiny tapping, tilted toes,With curious curved mustachios?
* * * * *
"Ah, let us follow, follow farBeyond the purple seas;Beyond the rosy foaming bar,The coral reef, the trees,The land of parrots and the wildThat rolls before the fearless childIn ancient mysteries:Onward, and onward if we can,To Old Japan, to Old Japan."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And "The Forest of Wild Thyme" is full of the echos of fairy tales and childhood rhymes heard the world over. Little Peterkin, who went with the children to "Old Japan," is dead now:
"Come, my brother pirates, I am tired of play;Come and look for Peterkin, little brother Peterkin,Our merry little comrade that the fairies took away."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And so, they go to the last place they saw him, the old God's Acre, and fall asleep amid the wild thyme blooming there. As they dream the thyme grows to the size of trees, and they wander about in the forest hunting for Peterkin.
As they hunted they found out who killed Cock Robin. They appeal toLittle Boy Blue to help them hunt for Peterkin:
"Little Boy Blue, you are gallant and brave,There was never a doubt in those clear, bright eyes.Come, challenge the grim, dark Gates of the GraveAs the skylark sings to those infinite skies!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
The King of Fairyland gives command to Pease-Blossom:
"And cried, Pease-blossom, Mustard-Seed! You know the old command;Well; these are little children; you must lead them on to Peterkin!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
They even discovered, as they were led on by Pease-Blossom and Mustard-Seed, how fairies were born:
"Men upon earthBring us to birthGently at even and morn!When as brother and brotherThey greet one anotherAnd smile—then a fairy is born!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And, too, they found why fairies die:
"But at each cruel wordUpon earth that is heard,Each deed of unkindness or hate,Some fairy must passFrom the games in the grassAnd steal through the terrible Gate."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And they learned what it took to make a rose:
"'What is there hid in the heart of a rose,Mother-mine?''Ah, who knows, who knows, who knows?A man that died on a lonely hillMay tell you perhaps, but none other will,Little child.'
"'What does it take to make a rose,Mother-mine?''The God that died to make it knows.It takes the world's eternal wars,It takes the moon and all the stars,It takes the might of heaven and hellAnd the everlasting Love as well,Little child.'"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And they heard the old tales over:
"And 'See-Saw; Margery Daw,' we heard a rollicking shout,As the swing boats hurtled over our heads to the tune of theroundabout;And 'Little Boy Blue, come blow up your horn,' we heard the showmencry,And 'Dickery Dock, I'm as good as a clock,' we heard the swingsreply."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
Then at last they found their little brother Peterkin in "The Babe ofBethlehem."
And if this were not enough to make the reader see how completely and wholly and sympathetically Noyes understood the child heart, hear this word from his great soul:
"Kind little eyes that I love,Eyes forgetful of mine,In a dream I am bending aboveYour sleep and you open and shine;And I know as my own grow blindWith a lonely prayer for your sake,He will hear—even me—little eyes that were kind,God bless you, asleep or awake!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
Virility like unto steel is the very mark of Noyes. But as this study of Childhood has shown, it is a virility touched with tenderness. As Bayard Taylor sings:
"The bravest are the tenderest,The loving are the daring!"
And this is Noyes. Noyes knew Manhood, he sang it, he challenged it too, he crowned it in "Drake"; he placed it a little lower than the gods. Hear this supreme word, enough to lift man to the skies:
"Where, what a dreamer yet, in spite of all,Is man, that splendid visionary childWho sent his fairy beacon through the dusk!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
This tribute to Marlow—how eaglelike it is! How suggestive of heights, and mountain peaks and blue skies and far-flung stars!
"But he who dared the thunder-roll,Whose eagle-wings could soar,Buffeting down the clouds of night,To beat against the Light of Light,That great God-blinded eagle-soul,We shall not see him more!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
Then he makes us one with all that is granite and flower and high and holy in "The Loom of the Years":
"One with the flower of a day, one with the withered moon,One with the granite mountains that melt into the noon,One with the dream that triumphs beyond the light of the spheres,We come from the Loom of the Weaver, that weaves the Web of theyears."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
From "Drake" again this ringing word:
"His face was like a king's face as he spake,For sorrows that strike deep reveal the deep;And through the gateways of a ragged woundSometimes a God will drive his chariot wheelsFrom some deep heaven within the hearts of men!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
From childhood to manhood through Christhood to Godhood is a progression that Noyes sees clearly and makes us see as clearly. Somehow Christ is very real to Noyes. He is not a historical character far off. He is the Christ of here and now; the Christ that meets our every need; as real as a dearly beloved friend next door to us. No poet sees the Christ more clearly.
First he caught the meanings of Christ's gospel of new birth. He was not confused on that. He knows:
"The task is hard to learnWhile all the songs of Spring returnAlong the blood and sing.
"Yet hear—from her deep skies,How Art, for all your pain, still cries,Ye must be born again!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And who could put his worship more beautifully than the poet does in"The Symbolist"?
"Help me to seek that unknown land!I kneel before the shrine.Help me to feel the hidden handThat ever holdeth mine.
"I kneel before the Word, I kneelBefore the Cross of flame.I cry, as through the gloom I steal,The glory of the Name."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
Christ's face, and his life experiences, here and there slip out of the lines of this English poet with an insistence that cannot but win the heart of the world, especially the heart of the Christian. Here and there in the most unexpected places his living presence stands before you, with, to use another of the poet's own lines, "Words that would make the dead arise," as in "Vicisti, Galilee":
"Poor, scornful Lilliputian souls,And are ye still too proudTo risk your little aureolesBy kneeling with the crowd?
* * * * *
"And while ye scoff, on every sideGreat hints of Him go by,—Soulsthat are hourly crucifiedOn some new Calvary!"
* * * * *
"In flower and dust, in chaff and grain,He binds Himself and dies!We live by His eternal pain,His hourly sacrifice."
* * * * *
"And while ye scoff from shore to shoreFrom sea to moaning sea,'Eloi, eloi,' goes up once more,'Lama sabachthani!'The heavens are like a scroll unfurled,The writing flames above—This is the King of all the WorldUpon His Cross of Love!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And there in the very midst of "Drake," that poem of a great sea fighter, comes this quatrain unexpectedly, showing the Christ always in the background of the poet's mind. He uses the Christ eagerly as a figure, as a help to his thought. He always puts the Christ and his cross to the fore:
"Whence came the prentice carpenter whose voiceHath shaken kingdoms down, whose menial gibbetRises triumphant o'er the wreck of EmpiresAnd stretches out its arms amongst the Stars?"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
Then in "The Old Skeptic" we hear these of the Christ in the concluding lines:
"I will go back to my home and look at the wayside flowers,And hear from the wayside cabin the kind old hymns again,Where Christ holds out His arms in the quiet evening hours,And the light of the chapel porches broods on the peaceful lane.
"And there I shall hear men praying the deep old foolish prayers,And there I shall see once more, the fond old faith confessed,And the strange old light on their faces who hear as a blindman hears—'Come unto me, ye weary, and I will give you rest.'
"I will go back and believe in the deep old foolish tales,And pray the simple prayers that I learned at my mother's knee,Where the Sabbath tolls its peace, through the breathlessmountain-vales,And the sunset's evening hymn hallows the listening sea."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
He finds God. There is no uncertainty about it. From childhood to Godhood has the poet come, and we have come with him. It has been a triumphant journey upward. But we have not been afraid. Even the blinding light of God's face has not made us tremble. We have learned to know him through this climb upward and upward to his throne.
At first it was uncertain. The poet had to challenge us to one great end in "The Paradox":
"But one thing is needful; and ye shall be trueTo yourself and the goal and the God that ye seek;Yea, the day and the night shall requite it to youIf ye love one another, if your love be not weak!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
For he knew the heart hunger for God that was in every human breast:
"I am full-fed, and yetI hunger!Who set this fiercer famine in my maw?Who set this fiercer hunger in my heart?"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
From "Drake" comes that scintillating line: "A scribble of God's finger in the sky"; and an admonition to the preacher: "Thou art God's minister, not God's oracle!"
Nor did he forget that man, in his search for God, is, after all, but man, and weak! So from "Tales of a Mermaid Tavern":
"… and of that other OceanWhere all men sail so blindly, and misjudgeTheir friends, their charts, their storms, their stars, theirGod!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
Even like unto "Bo'sin Bill," who was and is a prevalent type, but not a serious type—that man who claims to be an atheist, but in times of stress, like unto us all, turns to God. And what humorous creatures we are! Enough to make God smile, if he did not love us so much:
"But our bo'sin Bill was an atheist stillEx-cept—sometimes—in the dark!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And again from "The Paradox":
"Flashing forth as a flame,The unnameable Name,The ineffable Word,I am the Lord!"
"I am the End to which the whole world strives:Therefore are ye girdled with a wild desire and shodWith sorrow; for among you all no soulShall ever cease, or sleep, or reach its goalOf union and communion with the WholeOr rest content with less than being God."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And thus we find God, with Noyes. And I have saved for the last quotation one from "The Origin of Life," which the poet says is "Written in answer to certain scientific theories." I save it for the last because, strangely, it sums up all the journey that we have passed through, from childhood to God-hood:
"Watched the great hills like clouds arise and set,And one—named Olivet;When you have seen as a shadow passing away,One child clasp hands and pray;When you have seen emerge from that dark mireOne martyr ringed with fire;Or, from that Nothingness, by special graceOne woman's love-lit face…."
* * * * *
"Dare you re-kindle then,One faith for faithless men,And say you found, on that dark road you trod,In the beginning,God?"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
[Illustration: JOHN MASEFIELD.]
JOHN MASEFIELD, POET FOR THE PULPIT [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from the following works: The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street, Salt Water Poems and Ballads, and Good Friday, published by The Macmillan Company, New York.]
To climb is to achieve. We like to see men achieve; and the harder that achievement is, the more we thrill to it. For that reason we all have a hope to climb a Shasta, or a Whitney, or a Hood to its whitest peak, and glory in the achievement. And because of this human delight in the climb we thrill to see a man climb out of sin, or out of difficulty, or out of defeat to triumph.
From "bar-boy" to poet is a great achievement, a great climb, or leap, or lift, whichever figure you may prefer, but that is exactly what John Masefield did.
Perhaps Hutton's figure may describe it better—"The Leap to God." At least ten years ago John Masefield, a wanderer on the face of the earth, found himself in New York city without friends and without means, and it was not to him an unusual thing to accept the position of "bar-boy" in a New York saloon. This particular profession has within its scope the duties of wiping the beer bottles, sweeping the floor, and other menial tasks.
And now John Masefield has within recent months come to New York city to be the lauded and feted. Newspaper reporters met him as his boat landed, eager for his every word; Carnegie Hall was crowded to hear him read from his own poetry; and his journey across the country was just a great triumph from New York to San Francisco.
Something had happened in those ten years. This man had achieved. This poet had climbed to God. This man had experienced the "Soul's Leap to God." He had found that Man of all men who once said, "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me." He always lifts men out of nothing into the glory of the greatest achievement. Yes, something had happened in those ten years.
And the things that had happened in those ten years are perfectly apparent in his writings if one follow them from the beginning to the end. And the things that had happened I shall trace through this poet's writings from the first, boyhood verses of "Salt Water Ballads" to "Good Friday"; and therein lies the secret; and incidentally therein lies some of the most thrilling human touches, vivid illustrations for the preacher; some of the most intensely interesting religious experiences that any biography ever revealed consciously or unconsciously.
One may search these "Salt Water Ballads" through from the opening line of "Consecration" to "The Song At Parting" and find no faint suggestion of that deep religious glory of "The Everlasting Mercy." This book was written, even as Masefield says, "in my boyhood; all of it in my youth." He has not caught the deeper meaning of life yet—the spiritual meaning—although he has caught the social meaning, just as Markham has caught it.
1.Social Consciousness
Even in "Consecration" we hear the challenging ring of a young voice who has wandered over the face of the earth and has taken his place with the "Outcast," has cast his lot with the sailor, the stoker, the tramp.
"Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road,The slave with the sack on his shoulders pricked on with the goad,The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load."Others may sing of the wine and the wealth, and the mirth,The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth;Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust, and the scum of the earth!
* * * * *
"Mine be a handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould.Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold—Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tales be told. Amen."
Salt Water Poems and Ballads.
And it is a most fascinating story to see him climb from his boyhood, purely social, sympathetic interest in the outcast to that higher, that highest social consciousness, vitalized with religion. Here, seems it to me, that those who possess true social consciousness must come at last if they do their most effective work for the social regeneration of the world. Many have tremendous social consciousness, but no Christ. Christ himself is the very pulse beat of the social regeneration. Without him it must fail.
One feels, even here in his youth poems, however, a promise of that deeper Masefield that later finds his soul in "The Everlasting Mercy."
2.Faith in Immortality
In "Rest Her Soul," these haunting lines with that expression of a deep faith found in "All that dies of her," we find a ray of light, which slants through a small window of the man that is to be:
"On the black velvet covering her eyesLet the dull earth be thrown;Her's is the mightier silence of the skies,And long, quiet rest alone.Over the pure, dark, wistful eyes of her,O'er all the human, all that dies of her,Gently let flowers be strown."
Salt Water Poems and Ballads.
But most of these ballads, as their title suggests, are nothing more than the very sea foam of which they speak, and whose tale they tell; as compared with that later, deeper verse of Christian hope and regeneration.
And then pass those ten years; ten years following the period of "The Salt Water Ballads"; and ten years following the time when he was a "bar-boy" in New York; ten years in which he climbs from a simple "social consciousness" to a social consciousness that has the heart beat of Christ in its every line. The poems he writes in this period are all of the Christ. "Good Friday," perhaps the strongest poem dealing with this great day in Christ's life, is full of a close knowledge of the spirit of the Man of Galilee. But it is in "The Everlasting Mercy" and not "The Story of a Round House" that we find Masefield at his big best, battering at the very doors of eternity with the fist of a giant and the tender love of a woman, and the plea of a penitent sinner.
Something had happened to Masefield in those ten years. A man's entire life had been revolutionized; and his poetry with it. He still feels the want and need of the world, and the social injustice; but he has found the cure. In a word, he has been converted. I do not care whether or no Masefield means to tell his own story in "The Everlasting Mercy," but I do know that he tells, in spite of himself, a story that fits curiously into, and marvelously explains, the strange revolution and change in his own life from "Salt Water Ballads" to "Good Friday."
It is an old-fashioned Methodist conversion of which he tells, which links itself up with the New Testament gospel of the regeneration of a human soul in such a fascinating way that it gives those of us who preach this gospel an impelling, modern, dramatic putting of the old, old story, that will thrill our congregations and grip the hearts of men who know not the Christ.
1.Conviction of Sin
Saul Kane was an amateur prizefighter. He and his friend Bill have a fight in the opening lines of the tale, and Saul wins. This victory is followed by the usual debauch, which lasts until all the drunken crowd are asleep on the floor of the "Lion." No Russian novelist, nor a Dostoievesky, nor another, ever dared such realism as Masefield has given us in his picture of this night's sin. He makes sin all that it is—black and hideous:
"From three long hours of gin and smokes,And two girls' breath and fifteen blokes,A warmish night and windows shutThe room stank like a fox's gut.The heat, and smell, and drinking deepBegan to stun the gang to sleep."
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
But this was too much for Saul Kane. He had still enough decency left to be ashamed. He wanted air. He went to a window and threw it open:
"I opened window wide and leanedOut of that pigsty of the fiend,And felt a cool wind go like graceAbout the sleeping market-place.The clock struck three, and sweetly, slowly,The bells chimed, Holy, Holy, Holy;And in a second's pause there fellThe cold note of the chapel bell,And then a cock crew flapping wings,And summat made me think of things!"
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
There it is: sin, and conviction of sin. Perhaps he thought of another man who had virtually betrayed the Christ, and the cock crew and made that other "think o' things."
Then came the reaction from that conviction; the battle against that same conviction that he must give up sin and surrender to the Christ; and a terrific battle it is, and a terrific description of that battle Masefield gives us, lightninglike in its vividness until there comes the little woman of God, Miss Bourne (a deaconess, if you please), who has always known the better man in Saul, who has followed him with her Christly love like "The Hound of Heaven." And how tenderly, yet how insistently, how pleadingly she speaks:
"'Saul Kane,' she said, 'when next you drink,Do me the gentleness to thinkThat every drop of drink accursedMakes Christ within you die of thirst;That every dirty word you sayIs one more flint upon His way,Another thorn about His head,Another mock by where He tread;Another nail another cross;All that you are is that Christ's loss.'"
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
These searching words were beyond defeat. They went home to his already convicted heart and mind like arrows. They hurt. They cut. They awakened. They called. They pierced. They pounded with giant fists. They lashed like spiked whips. They burned like a soul on fire. They clamored, and they whispered like a mother's love, and at last his heart opened:
2.Forgiveness
"I know the very words I said,They bayed like bloodhounds in my head.'The water's going out to seaAnd there's a great moon calling me;But there's a great sun calls the moon,And all God's bells will carol soonFor joy and glory, and delightOf some one coming home to-night.'"
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
And then came the consciousness that he was "done with sin" forever:
"I knew that I had done with sin,I knew that Christ had given me birthTo brother all the souls on earth,"
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
which was followed by two "glories"—the "Glory of the Lighted Mind" and the "Glory of the Lighted Soul." I think that perhaps in our preaching on conversion we make too little of the regeneration of the "mind." Masefield does not miss one whit of a complete regeneration.
3.The Joy of Conversion
"O glory of the lighted mind.How dead I'd been, how dumb, how blind!The station brook to my new eyesWas babbling out of Paradise,The waters rushing from the rainWere singing, 'Christ has risen again!'"
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
And then the soul glory:
"O glory of the lighted Soul.The dawn came up on Bradlow Knoll,The dawn with glittering on the grasses,The dawn which pass and never passes."
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
But that wasn't all. Masefield knows that the other self must be completely eradicated, so he makes Saul Kane change his environment entirely. He goes to the country. He plows, and as he plows he learns the lesson of the soil and cries:
"O Jesus, drive the coulter deepTo plow my living man from sleep."
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
And more word from Christ as he plowed:
"I knew that Christ was there with Callow,That Christ was standing there with me,That Christ had taught me what to be,That I should plow and as I plowedMy Saviour Christ would sing aloud,And as I drove the clods apartChrist would be plowing in my heart,Through rest-harrow and bitter roots,Through all my bad life's rotten fruits."
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
And so it is, that beginning with his poems of youth, John Masefield starts out with a sympathetic social consciousness, but nothing more apparently. He brothers with the outcast and frankly prefers it. Then comes the great regenerating influence in his life, which we surely find in his expression of faith that the soul is immortal, and finally that upheaval which we call conversion with all of its incident steps from conviction of sin to repentance; and then to the consciousness of forgiveness; to the lighted mind and the lighted soul; and then to the uprooting of evil and the planting of good in the soil of his life. And so through Saul Kane we see John Masefield and have an explanation of that subtle yet revolutionary change in his life and his poetry, pregnant with illustrations that, to quote another English poet, Noyes, "Would make the dead arise!"