The Project Gutenberg eBook ofModern British PoetryThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Modern British PoetryEditor: Louis UntermeyerRelease date: October 6, 2008 [eBook #26785]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by David Starner, Suzanne Lybarger and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN BRITISH POETRY ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Modern British PoetryEditor: Louis UntermeyerRelease date: October 6, 2008 [eBook #26785]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by David Starner, Suzanne Lybarger and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: Modern British Poetry
Editor: Louis Untermeyer
Editor: Louis Untermeyer
Release date: October 6, 2008 [eBook #26785]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by David Starner, Suzanne Lybarger and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN BRITISH POETRY ***
Transcriber's Note:Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this text. For a complete list, please seethe bottom of this document.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this text. For a complete list, please seethe bottom of this document.
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BYHARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BYTHE QUINN & BODEN COMPANYRAHWAY, N. J.
For permission to reprint the material in this volume, the editor wishes, first of all, to acknowledge his debt to those poets whose co-operation has been of such assistance not only in finally determining upon the choice of their poems, but in collecting dates, biographical data, etc. Secondly, he wishes to thank the publishers, most of whom are holders of the copyrights. The latter indebtedness is specifically acknowledged to:
Doubleday, Page & CompanyandA. P. Watt & Son—For "The Return" fromThe Five Nationsand for "An Astrologer's Song" fromRewards and Fairiesby Rudyard Kipling. Thanks also are due to Mr. Kipling himself for personal permission to reprint these poems.Doubleday, Page & CompanyandMartin Secker—For the poem fromCollected Poemsby James Elroy Flecker.E. P. Dutton & Company—For the poems fromThe Old Huntsman,Counter-AttackandPicture Showby Siegfried Sassoon.Four Seas Company—For poems fromWar and Loveby Richard Aldington andThe Mountainy Singerby Seosamh MacCathmhaoil (Joseph Campbell).Henry Holt and Company—For poems fromPeacock PieandThe Listenersby Walter de la Mare andPoemsby Edward Thomas.Houghton Mifflin Company—For two poems fromPoems, 1908-1919, by John Drinkwater, both of which are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.B. W. Huebsch—For the selections fromChamber Musicby James Joyce,Songs to Save a SoulandBefore Dawnby Irene Rutherford McLeod,Amores, Look! We Have Come Through!, andNew Poemsby D. H. Lawrence.Alfred A. Knopf—For poems fromThe Collected Poems of William H. Davies,Fairies and Fusiliersby Robert Graves,The Queen of China and Other Poemsby Edward Shanks, andPoems: First Seriesby J. C. Squire.John Lane Company—For the selections fromPoemsby G. K. Chesterton,Ballads and Songsby John Davidson,The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke,Admirals Allby Henry Newbolt,HerodandLyrics and Dramasby Stephen Phillips,The Hope of the World and Other Poemsby William Watson, andIn Cap and Bellsby Owen Seaman.The London Mercury—For "Going and Staying" by Thomas Hardy and "The House That Was" by Laurence Binyon.The Macmillan Company—For the selections fromFiresandBorderlands and Thoroughfaresby Wilfrid Wilson Gibson,Poemsby Ralph Hodgson, the sonnet fromGood Friday and Other Poemsby John Masefield, and the passage (entitled in this volume "Rounding the Horn") from "Dauber" inThe Story of a Round-Houseby John Masefield.G. P. Putnam's Sons—For the title poem fromIn Flanders Fieldsby John McCrae.The Poetry Bookshop(England)—For two excerpts fromStrange Meetingsby Harold Monro and for the poems from the biennial anthologies,Georgian Poetry.Charles Scribner's Sons—For the quotations fromPoemsby William Ernest Henley.Frederick A. Stokes Company—For the poem fromArdours and Endurancesby Robert Nichols.Longmans, Green & Co., as the representatives ofB. H. Blackwell, of Oxford—For a poem by Edith Sitwell fromThe Mother.
Doubleday, Page & CompanyandA. P. Watt & Son—
For "The Return" fromThe Five Nationsand for "An Astrologer's Song" fromRewards and Fairiesby Rudyard Kipling. Thanks also are due to Mr. Kipling himself for personal permission to reprint these poems.
Doubleday, Page & CompanyandMartin Secker—
For the poem fromCollected Poemsby James Elroy Flecker.
E. P. Dutton & Company—
For the poems fromThe Old Huntsman,Counter-AttackandPicture Showby Siegfried Sassoon.
Four Seas Company—
For poems fromWar and Loveby Richard Aldington andThe Mountainy Singerby Seosamh MacCathmhaoil (Joseph Campbell).
Henry Holt and Company—
For poems fromPeacock PieandThe Listenersby Walter de la Mare andPoemsby Edward Thomas.
Houghton Mifflin Company—
For two poems fromPoems, 1908-1919, by John Drinkwater, both of which are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.
B. W. Huebsch—
For the selections fromChamber Musicby James Joyce,Songs to Save a SoulandBefore Dawnby Irene Rutherford McLeod,Amores, Look! We Have Come Through!, andNew Poemsby D. H. Lawrence.
Alfred A. Knopf—
For poems fromThe Collected Poems of William H. Davies,Fairies and Fusiliersby Robert Graves,The Queen of China and Other Poemsby Edward Shanks, andPoems: First Seriesby J. C. Squire.
John Lane Company—
For the selections fromPoemsby G. K. Chesterton,Ballads and Songsby John Davidson,The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke,Admirals Allby Henry Newbolt,HerodandLyrics and Dramasby Stephen Phillips,The Hope of the World and Other Poemsby William Watson, andIn Cap and Bellsby Owen Seaman.
The London Mercury—
For "Going and Staying" by Thomas Hardy and "The House That Was" by Laurence Binyon.
The Macmillan Company—
For the selections fromFiresandBorderlands and Thoroughfaresby Wilfrid Wilson Gibson,Poemsby Ralph Hodgson, the sonnet fromGood Friday and Other Poemsby John Masefield, and the passage (entitled in this volume "Rounding the Horn") from "Dauber" inThe Story of a Round-Houseby John Masefield.
G. P. Putnam's Sons—
For the title poem fromIn Flanders Fieldsby John McCrae.
The Poetry Bookshop(England)—
For two excerpts fromStrange Meetingsby Harold Monro and for the poems from the biennial anthologies,Georgian Poetry.
Charles Scribner's Sons—
For the quotations fromPoemsby William Ernest Henley.
Frederick A. Stokes Company—
For the poem fromArdours and Endurancesby Robert Nichols.
Longmans, Green & Co., as the representatives ofB. H. Blackwell, of Oxford—
For a poem by Edith Sitwell fromThe Mother.
pageIntroductoryxiThomas Hardy(1840- )In Time of "The Breaking of Nations"3Going and Staying4The Man He Killed4Robert Bridges(1844- )Winter Nightfall5Nightingales7Arthur O'Shaughnessy(1844-1881)Ode8William Ernest Henley(1849-1903)Invictus10The Blackbird10A Bowl of Roses11Before11Margaritæ Sorori12Robert Louis Stevenson(1850-1894)Summer Sun13Winter-Time14Romance15Requiem16Alice Meynell(1850- )A Thrush Before Dawn16Fiona MacLeod(William Sharp) (1855-1905)The Valley of Silence18The Vision19Oscar Wilde(1856-1900)Requiescat20Impression du Matin21John Davidson(1857-1909)A Ballad of Hell22Imagination26William Watson(1858- )Ode in May28Estrangement30Song31Francis Thompson(1859-1907)Daisy32To Olivia34An Arab Love-Song35A. E. Housman(1859- )Reveillé36When I Was One-and-Twenty37With Rue My Heart is Laden38To An Athlete Dying Young38"Loveliest of Trees"39Douglas Hyde(1860- )I Shall Not Die for Thee40Amy Levy(1861-1889)Epitaph42In the Mile End Road42Katharine Tynan Hinkson(1861- )Sheep and Lambs43All-Souls44Owen Seaman(1861- )To An Old Fogey45Thomas of the Light Heart47Henry Newbolt(1862- )Drake's Drum49Arthur Symons(1865- )In the Wood of Finvara50Modern Beauty51William Butler Yeats(1865- )The Lake Isle of Innisfree53The Song of the Old Mother53The Cap and Bells54An Old Song Resung55Rudyard Kipling(1865- )Gunga Din57The Return61The Conundrum of the Workshops63An Astrologer's Song66Richard Le Gallienne(1866- )A Ballad of London69Regret70Lionel Johnson(1867-1902)Mystic and Cavalier71To a Traveller73Ernest Dowson(1867-1900)To One in Bedlam74You Would Have Understood Me75"A. E." (George William Russell) (1867- )The Great Breath76The Unknown God77Stephen Phillips(1868-1915)Fragment from "Herod"78Beautiful Lie the Dead78A Dream79Laurence Binyon(1869- )A Song79The House That Was80Alfred Douglas(1870- )The Green River81T. Sturge Moore(1870- )The Dying Swan82Silence Sings82William H. Davies(1870- )Days Too Short84The Moon85The Villain85The Example86Hilaire Belloc(1870- )The South Country87Anthony C. Deane(1870- )The Ballad of theBillycock90A Rustic Song92J. M. Synge(1871-1909)Beg-Innish95A Translation from Petrarch96To the Oaks of Glencree96Nora Hopper Chesson(1871-1906)A Connaught Lament97Eva Gore-Booth(1872- )The Waves of Breffny98Walls99Moira O'NeillA Broken Song99Beauty's a Flower100John McCrae(1872-1918)In Flanders Fields101Ford Madox Hueffer(1873- )Clair de Lune102There Shall Be More Joy104Walter De la Mare(1873- )The Listeners106An Epitaph107Tired Tim108Old Susan108Nod109G. K. Chesterton(1874- )Lepanto111A Prayer in Darkness118The Donkey119Wilfrid Wilson Gibson(1878- )Prelude120The Stone121Sight124John Masefield(1878- )A Consecration126Sea-Fever127Rounding the Horn128The Choice131Sonnet132Lord Dunsany(1878- )Songs from an Evil Wood133Edward Thomas(1878-1917)If I Should Ever By Chance136Tall Nettles137Fifty Faggots137Cock-Crow138Seumas O'Sullivan(1879- )Praise139Ralph HodgsonEve140Time, You Old Gipsy Man142The Birdcatcher144The Mystery144Harold Monro(1879- )The Nightingale Near the House145Every Thing146Strange Meetings149T. M. Kettle(1880-1916)To My Daughter Betty, The Gift of God150Alfred Noyes(1880- )Sherwood151The Barrel-Organ154Epilogue161Padraic Colum(1881- )The Plougher162An Old Woman of the Roads164Joseph Campbell(Seosamh MacCathmhaoil) (1881- )I Am the Mountainy Singer165The Old Woman166James Stephens(1882- )The Shell167What Tomas An Buile Said In a Pub168To the Four Courts, Please169John Drinkwater(1882- )Reciprocity170A Town Window170James Joyce(1882- )I Hear an Army171J. C. Squire(1884- )A House172Lascelles Abercrombie(1884- )From "Vashti"175Song176James Elroy Flecker(1884-1915)The Old Ships178D. H. Lawrence(1885- )People180Piano180John Freeman(1885- )Stone Trees181Shane Leslie(1886- )Fleet Street183The Pater of the Cannon183Frances Cornford(1886- )Preëxistence184Anna WickhamThe Singer186Reality186Song187Siegfried Sassoon(1886- )To Victory189Dreamers190The Rear-Guard190Thrushes191Aftermath192Rupert Brooke(1887-1915)The Great Lover195Dust198The Soldier200W. M. Letts(1887- )Grandeur201The Spires of Oxford203Francis Brett YoungLochanilaun204F. S. FlintLondon205Edith SitwellThe Web of Eros206Interlude207F. W. Harvey(1888- )The Bugler208T. P. Cameron Wilson(1889-1918)Sportsmen in Paradise209W. J. Turner(1889- )Romance210Patrick MacGill(1890)By-the-Way211Death and the Fairies212Francis Ledwidge(1891-1917)An Evening in England213Evening Clouds214Irene Rutherford McLeod(1891- )"Is Love, then, so Simple"215Lone Dog215Richard Aldington(1892- )Prelude216Images217At the British Museum218Edward Shanks(1892- )Complaint219Osbert Sitwell(1892- )The Blind Pedlar220Progress221Robert Nichols(1893- )Nearer222Charles H. Sorley(1895-1915)Two Sonnets223To Germany225Robert Graves(1895- )It's a Queer Time226A Pinch of Salt227I Wonder What It Feels Like to be Drowned?228The Last Post229Index of Authors and Poems231
Mere statistics are untrustworthy; dates are even less dependable. But, to avoid hairsplitting, what we call "modern" English literature may be said to date from about 1885. A few writers who are decidedly "of the period" are, as a matter of strict chronology, somewhat earlier. But the chief tendencies may be divided into seven periods. They are (1) The decay of Victorianism and the growth of a purely decorative art, (2) The rise and decline of the Æsthetic Philosophy, (3) The muscular influence of Henley, (4) The Celtic revival in Ireland, (5) Rudyard Kipling and the ascendency of mechanism in art, (6) John Masefield and the return of the rhymed narrative, (7) The war and the appearance of "The Georgians." It may be interesting to trace these developments in somewhat greater detail.
The age commonly called Victorian came to an end about 1885. It was an age distinguished by many true idealists and many false ideals. It was, in spite of its notable artists, on an entirely different level from the epoch which had preceded it. Its poetry was, in the main, not universal but parochial; its romanticism was gilt and tinsel; its realism was as cheap as its showy glasspendants, red plush, parlor chromos and antimacassars. The period was full of a pessimistic resignation (the note popularized by Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyám) and a kind of cowardice or at least a negation which, refusing to see any glamour in the actual world, turned to the Middle Ages, King Arthur, the legend of Troy—to the suave surroundings of a dream-world instead of the hard contours of actual experience.
At its worst, it was a period of smugness, of placid and pious sentimentality—epitomized by the rhymed sermons of Martin Farquhar Tupper, whoseProverbial Philosophywas devoured with all its cloying and indigestible sweetmeats by thousands. The same tendency is apparent, though far less objectionably, in the moralizing lays of Lord Thomas Macaulay, in the theatrically emotionalized verses of Robert Buchanan, Edwin Arnold and Sir Lewis Morris—even in the lesser later work of Alfred Tennyson.
And, without Tupper's emptiness or absurdities, the outworn platitudes again find their constant lover in Alfred Austin, Tennyson's successor as poet laureate. Austin brought the laureateship, which had been held by poets like Ben Jonson, Dryden, Southey and Wordsworth, to an incredibly low level; he took the thinning stream of garrulous poetic conventionality, reduced it to the merest trickle—and diluted it.
The poets of a generation before this time were fired with such ideas as freedom, a deep and burning awe of nature, an insatiable hunger for truth in all its forms and manifestations. The characteristic poets of the VictorianEra, says Max Plowman, "wrote under the dominance of churchliness, of 'sweetness and light,' and a thousand lesser theories that have not truth but comfort for their end."
The revolt against this and the tawdriness of the period had already begun; the best of Victorianism can be found not in men who were typically Victorian, but in pioneers like Browning and writers like Swinburne, Rossetti, William Morris, who were completely out of sympathy with their time.
But it was Oscar Wilde who led the men of the now famous 'nineties toward an æsthetic freedom, to champion a beauty whose existence was its "own excuse for being." Wilde's was, in the most outspoken manner, the first use of æstheticism as a slogan; the battle-cry of the group was actually the now outworn but then revolutionary "Art for Art's sake"! And, so sick were people of the shoddy ornaments and drab ugliness of the immediate past, that the slogan won. At least, temporarily.
The Yellow Book, the organ of a group of young writers and artists, appeared (1894-97), representing a reasoned and intellectual reaction, mainly suggested and influenced by the French. The group of contributors was a peculiarly mixed one with only one thing in common. And that was a conscious effort to repudiate the sugary airs and prim romantics of the Victorian Era.
Almost the first act of the "new" men was to rouse and outrage their immediate predecessors. This end-of-the-century desire to shock, which was so strong and natural an impulse, still has a place of its own—especially as an antidote, a harsh corrective. Mid-Victorian propriety and self-satisfaction crumbled under the swift and energetic audacities of the sensational younger authors and artists; the old walls fell; the public, once so apathetic tobelles lettres, was more than attentive to every phase of literary experimentation. The last decade of the nineteenth century was so tolerant of novelty in art and ideas, that it would seem, says Holbrook Jackson in his penetrative summary,The Eighteen-Nineties, "as though the declining century wished to make amends for several decades of artistic monotony. It may indeed be something more than a coincidence that placed this decade at the close of a century, andfin de sièclemay have been at once a swan song and a death-bed repentance."
But later on, the movement (if such it may be called), surfeited with its own excesses, fell into the mere poses of revolt; it degenerated into a half-hearted defense of artificialities.
It scarcely needed W. S. Gilbert (inPatience) or Robert Hichens (inThe Green Carnation) to satirize its distorted attitudinizing. It strained itself to death; it became its own burlesque of the bizarre, an extravaganza of extravagance. "The period" (I am again quoting Holbrook Jackson) "was as certainly a period of decadence as it was a period of renaissance. The decadence was to be seen in a perverse and finicking glorification of the fine arts and mere artistic virtuosity on the one hand, and a militant commercial movement on theother.... The eroticism which became so prevalent in the verse of many of the younger poets was minor because it was little more than a pose—not because it was erotic.... It was a passing mood which gave the poetry of the hour a hothouse fragrance; a perfume faint yet unmistakable and strange."
But most of the elegant and disillusioned young men overshot their mark. Mere health reasserted itself; an inherent repressed vitality sought new channels. Arthur Symons deserted his hectic Muse, Richard Le Gallienne abandoned his preciosity, and the group began to disintegrate. The æsthetic philosophy was wearing thin; it had already begun to fray and reveal its essential shabbiness. Wilde himself possessed the three things which he said the English would never forgive—youth, power and enthusiasm. But in trying to make an exclusive cult of beauty, Wilde had also tried to make it evade actuality; he urged that art should not, in any sense, be a part of life but an escape from it. "The proper school to learn art in is not Life—but Art." And in the same essay ("The Decay of Lying") he wrote, "All bad Art comes from returning to Life and Nature, and elevating them into ideals." Elsewhere he said, "The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has discovered."
Such a cynical and decadent philosophy could not go unchallenged. Its aristocratic blue-bloodedness was bound to arouse the red blood of common reality. This negative attitude received its answer in the work of that yea-sayer, W. E. Henley.