Rose Macaulay

I will go with my father a-ploughingTo the green field by the sea,And the rooks and the crows and the seagullsWill come flocking after me.I will sing to the patient horsesWith the lark in the white of the air,And my father will sing the plough-songThat blesses the cleaving share.

One finds, too, a song of reaping, and one of winter, and one of night.

There is a love-song, pretty and tender, andfresh with the suggestion of breezes and blue skies, which begins like this:

My little dark love is a wineberry,As swarth and as sweet, I hold;But as the dew on the wineberryHer heart is a-cold.

There is a piece, inIrishry, which tells of the wonder of childhood, and another in the same book which reverently touches the thought of motherhood and old age:

As a white candleIn a holy place,So is the beautyOf an agèd face.As the spent radianceOf the winter sun,So is a womanWhen her travail done.Her brood gone from her,And her thoughts as stillAs the watersUnder a ruined mill.

As a white candleIn a holy place,So is the beautyOf an agèd face.

As the spent radianceOf the winter sun,So is a womanWhen her travail done.

Her brood gone from her,And her thoughts as stillAs the watersUnder a ruined mill.

So we might turn from one to another of these old and ever-new themes: not alone in this poet's work, but also in that of Mr Padraic Colum, whom he resembles. We shall notice in their music acharacteristic harmony. It is a blending of three diverse elements: the individual, the national, and the universal. One would expect a discord sometimes; but the measure of the success of this verse is that it contrives to be, at one and the same time, specifically lyrical (and therefore a reflection of personality), definitely Irish, and completely human. Most of the poems will illustrate this, but for an obvious example take this one by Mr Campbell:

I met a walking-man;His head was old and grey.I gave him what I hadTo crutch him on his way.The man was Mary's Son, I'll swear;A glory trembled in his hair!And since that blessed dayI've never known the pinch:I plough a broad townland,And dig a river-inch;And on my hearth the fire is brightFor all that walk by day or night.

I met a walking-man;His head was old and grey.I gave him what I hadTo crutch him on his way.The man was Mary's Son, I'll swear;A glory trembled in his hair!

And since that blessed dayI've never known the pinch:I plough a broad townland,And dig a river-inch;And on my hearth the fire is brightFor all that walk by day or night.

If one found that on a bit of torn paper in the wilds of Africa, one would know it for unquestionable Irish. There are half a dozen signs, but the spirit of the last two lines is enough. The element of personality is there, too; clearly visible in tone and choice of words to those who know the poet'swork a little. But stronger than all is the human note, with all that it implies of man's need of religion, his incorrigible habit of making God in his own image, and the half comical, half pathetic materialism of his faith.

There are, of course, some occasions when the blending is unequal: when one or other of the three elements, usually that of national feeling, weighs down the balance. But, on the other hand, there are many pieces in which it is very intimate and subtle. Then it follows that the poet is at his best, for he has forgotten the immediacy of self and country and the world of men and things in the joy of singing. Of such is this "Cradle Song" by Mr Colum:

O, men from the fields!Come softly within.Tread softly, softly,O! men coming in.Mavourneen is goingFrom me and from you,To Mary, the Mother,Whose mantle is blue!From reek of the smokeAnd cold of the floor,And the peering of thingsAcross the half-door.O, men from the fields!Soft, softly come thro'.Mary puts round himHer mantle of blue.

O, men from the fields!Come softly within.Tread softly, softly,O! men coming in.

Mavourneen is goingFrom me and from you,To Mary, the Mother,Whose mantle is blue!

From reek of the smokeAnd cold of the floor,And the peering of thingsAcross the half-door.

O, men from the fields!Soft, softly come thro'.Mary puts round himHer mantle of blue.

Such also is Mr Colum's "Ballad Maker," from which I quote the first and last stanzas:

Once I loved a maiden fair,Over the hills and far away.Lands she had and lovers to spare,Over the hills and far away.And I was stooped and troubled sore,And my face was pale, and the coat I woreWas thin as my supper the night before.Over the hills and far away......To-morrow, Mavourneen a sleeveen weds,Over the hills and far away;With corn in haggard and cattle in shed,Over the hills and far away.And I who have lost her—the dear, the rare,Well, I got me this ballad to sing at the fair,'Twill bring enough money to drown my care,Over the hills and far away.

.....

To-morrow, Mavourneen a sleeveen weds,Over the hills and far away;With corn in haggard and cattle in shed,Over the hills and far away.And I who have lost her—the dear, the rare,Well, I got me this ballad to sing at the fair,'Twill bring enough money to drown my care,Over the hills and far away.

It is an arresting fact, however, that the spirit of nationality is strong in the work of these poets. True, one may distinguish between a national sense, keen and directly expressed, and the almostsubconscious influence of race. The first is a theme deliberately chosen by the poet and variously treated by him. It is a conscious and direct expression—of aspiration or regret. Racial influence is something deeper and more constant: something, too, which quite confounds the sceptic on this particular subject. Whether from inheritance or environment, it has 'bred true' in these poets; and it will be found to pervade their work like an atmosphere. It belongs inalienably to themselves: it is of the essence of their genius, and it is revealed everywhere, in little things as in great, in cadency and idiom as well as in an attitude to life and a certain range of ideas.

But though we may make the distinction, it will hardly do to disengage the strands, because they are so closely bound together. We may only note the predominance of one or the other, with an occasional complete and perfect combination. Perhaps the work in which they are least obvious is the slim volume of Miss Ella Young. But, even here, and choosing two poems where the artistic instinct has completely subdued its material, we shall find some of the signs that we are looking for; and not altogetherbecausewe are looking for them. Thus a sonnet, called "The Virgin Mother," suggests its origin in its very title and, moreover,it is occupied with a thought of death and a sense of blissful quietude which are familiar in Irish poetry.

Now Day's worn out, and Dusk has claimed a shareOf earth and sky and all the things that be,I lay my tired head against your knee,And feel your fingers smooth my tangled hair.I loved you once, when I had heart to dare,And sought you over many a land and sea;Yet all the while you waited here for meIn a sweet stillness shut away from care.I have no longing now, no dreams of bliss.But drowsed in peace through the soft gloom I waitUntil the stars be kindled by God's breath;For then you'll bend above me with the kissEarth's children long for when the hour grows late,Mother of Consolation, Sovereign Death.

In the blank-verse piece called "Twilight" it is again the title which conveys the direct sign of affinity, but it will also be found to lurk in every line:

The sky is silver-pale with just one star,One lonely wanderer from the shining hostOf Night's companions. Through the drowsy woodsThe shadows creep and touch with quietnessThe curling fern-heads and the ancient trees.The sea is all a-glimmer with faint lightsThat change and move as if the unseen prowOf Niamh's galley cleft its waveless floor,And Niamh stood there with the magic token,The apple-branch with silver singing leaves.The wind has stolen away as though it fearedTo stir the fringes of her faery mantleDream-woven in the Land of Heart's Desire,And all the world is hushed as though she calledOssian again, and no one answered her.

Now that, in inspiration and imagery, is very clearly derived from native legendary sources. But no one would expect to find in such work a direct expression of national feeling. The backward-looking poet, the one who is drawn instinctively to old themes and times, has not usually the temper for politics, even on the higher plane. Or if he have, he will make a rigid separation in style and treatment between his poetry in the two kinds. Thus Miss Milligan sharply differentiates her lays on heroic subjects from her lyrics. The lays try to catch the spirit of the age out of which the stories came. The lyrics, as lyrics should, reflect no other spirit than the poet's own. The lays are somewhat strict in form: they are in a brisk narrative style, with a swinging rhythm and plenty of vigour. The songs, depending on varying sense impressions and fluctuating emotion, are more irregular as to form and, at the same time, stronger in their appeal to human sympathy. It is in themthat the poet is able to express the passionate love of country which, superimposed on a deep sense of Ireland's melancholy history and an intense longing for freedom, is the birthright of so many Irish poets. One would like to quote entire the lovely "Song of Freedom," in which the poet hears in wind and wave and brook a joyous prophecy. But here is the last stanza:

To Ara of Connacht's isles,As I went sailing o'er the sea,The wind's word, the brook's word,The wave's word, was plain to me——"As we are, though she is notAs we are, shall Banba be——There is no King can rule the windThere is no fetter for the sea."

More beautiful and significant, perhaps, is a fragment from "There Were Trees in Tir-Conal":

Fallen in Erin are all those leafy forests;The oaks lie buried under bogland mould;Only in legends dim are they remembered,Only in ancient books their fame is told.But seers, who dream of times to come, have promisedForests shall rise again where perished these;And of this desolate land it shall be spoken,"In Tir-Conal of the territories there are trees."

The prophetic figure there, of course, is symbolical; but thinking of the basis it has in fact—of the schemeswhich are afoot in the Isle for afforestation—one cannot help wondering whether it was consciously suggested by them. Not that there need be the slightest relation, of course. The poetical soul will often take a leap in the dark and reach a shining summit long before the careful people who travel by daylight along beaten tracks are half way up the hill. Still, there is proof that this group of writers is keenly interested in the question of the land and the organized effort to reclaim it. It is the more practical form of their patriotism, and the sign by which one knows it for something more than a sentiment. It is a deeply rooted and reasoned sense that the well-being of a nation, and therefore its strength and greatness, come ultimately from the soil and depend upon the close and faithful relation of the people to it. That surely is the conviction which underlies the work of a poet like Mr Padraic Colum, and particularly such a piece as his "Plougher":

Sunset and silence! A man: around him earth savage, earth broken;Beside him two horses—a plough!Earth savage, earth broken, the brutes, the dawn-man there in thesunset,And the Plough that is twin to the Sword, that is founder of cities!.....Slowly the darkness falls, the broken lands blend with the savage;The brute-tamer stands by the brutes, a head's breadth only above them.A head's breadth? Ay, but therein is hell's depth, and the height up toheaven,And the thrones of the gods and their halls, their chariots, purplesand splendours.

Sunset and silence! A man: around him earth savage, earth broken;Beside him two horses—a plough!

Earth savage, earth broken, the brutes, the dawn-man there in thesunset,And the Plough that is twin to the Sword, that is founder of cities!

.....

Slowly the darkness falls, the broken lands blend with the savage;The brute-tamer stands by the brutes, a head's breadth only above them.A head's breadth? Ay, but therein is hell's depth, and the height up toheaven,And the thrones of the gods and their halls, their chariots, purplesand splendours.

In closing this study we must take a glance at two recent volumes, one containing the poetry of Mr Seumas O'Sullivan and the other Mr Cousins' latest work. Mr O'Sullivan's book is curiously interesting, inasmuch as it unites certain contrasted qualities which are found separately in the other poets we have been considering. Thus, this poet is 'literary' in the sense of knowing and loving good books, in his familiarity with the old literature of his country, and in the fact that those things have had a palpable influence upon him. Temperamentally he is an artist, with the artistic instinct to subordinate everything to the beauty of his work. But he is also like the more 'popular' poets in his lyrical gift and in the range and depth of his sympathies; so that his collected poems of 1912 may be regarded in some degree as an epitome of modern Irish poetry. There you will find work which indicates that its author might have lived very happily in a visionary world of æsthetic delight.He might have chosen always to sing about gods and heroes and fair ladies with "white hands, foam-frail." But, just as clearly, you will see that he has been aroused from dreams. Vanishing remnants of them are perceptible in such a piece as "The Twilight People"; and when they are gone, in that serene moment before complete awakening, when the light is growing and the birds call and a fresh air blows, you get a piece like "Praise":

Dear, they are praising your beauty,The grass and the sky:The sky in a silence of wonder,The grass in a sigh.I too would sing for your praising,Dearest, had ISpeech as the whispering grass,Or the silent sky.These have an art for the praisingBeauty so high.Sweet, you are praised in a silence,Sung in a sigh.

Dear, they are praising your beauty,The grass and the sky:The sky in a silence of wonder,The grass in a sigh.

I too would sing for your praising,Dearest, had ISpeech as the whispering grass,Or the silent sky.

These have an art for the praisingBeauty so high.Sweet, you are praised in a silence,Sung in a sigh.

Then comes the awakening, sudden and sharp, with an impulse to spring out and away from those old dreams of myth and romance:

Bundle the gods away:Richer than Danaan gold,The whisper of leaves in the rain,The secrets the wet hills hold.

A spiritual adventure seems to be implied in the poem from which this fragment is taken, similar to that which Mr Cousins has recorded in "Straight and Crooked." It is the call of reality: the impulse which is drawing the poetic spirit closer and closer to life, and bidding it seek inspiration in common human experience. Thus when we find Mr O'Sullivan invoking the vision of earth we soon discover that 'earth' means something more to him than 'countryside'—the beauty of Nature and of pastoral existence. It comprises also towns and crowded streets and busy people; and it seems to mean ultimately any aspect of human existence which has the power to induce poetic ecstasy. An infinitely wider range is thus open to the poet, and though this little volume does not pretend to cover any large part of it, there are pieces which suggest its almost boundless possibility. Let us put two of them together. The first, "A Piper," describes a little street scene:

A Piper in the streets to-daySet up, and tuned, and started to play,And away, away, away on the tideOf his music we started; on every sideDoors and windows were opened wide,And men left down their work and came,And women with petticoats coloured like flameAnd little bare feet that were blue with cold,Went dancing back to the age of gold,And all the world went gay, went gay,For half an hour in the street to-day.

That expresses the rapture which is evoked directly by the touch of the actual. The next piece, a fragment from "A Madonna," is equally characteristic; but its inspiration came through another art, a picture by Beatrice Elvery:

Draw nigh, O foolish worshippers who mockWith pious woe of sainted imageryThe kingly-human presence of your God.Draw near, and with new reverence gaze on her.See you, these hands have toiled, these feet have trodIn all a woman's business; bend the knee.For this of very certainty is sheOrdained of heavenly hierarchies to rockThe cradle of the infant carpenter.

Under the diverse sources from which such poems immediately spring, there flows the current which is fertilizing, in greater or less degree, all modern poetry. It has been running strongly in England for some years, but hitherto the Irish poet has hardly seemed conscious of it, though it was visibly moving him. Its presence has been mainly felt in the silence of Mr Yeats, whose lovely romanticism fell dumb at its touch. But, significantly, thelatest poetic utterance of Ireland is a cry of complete realization. It has remained for Mr Cousins, more sensitive and complex than his compatriots, to hear the call of his age more consciously than they; and it is left to him, in grace and courage, to declare it:

... From a sleep I emerge. I am clothed again with this woven vestureof laws;But I am not, and never again shall be the man that I was.At the zenith of life I am born again, I begin.Know ye, I am awake, outside and within.I have heard, I have seen, I have known; I feel the bite of thisshackle of place and name,And nothing can be the same......I have sent three shouts of freedom along the wind.I have struck one hand of kinship in the hands of Gods, and one in thehands of women and men.I am awake. I shall never sleep again.

.....

I have sent three shouts of freedom along the wind.I have struck one hand of kinship in the hands of Gods, and one in thehands of women and men.I am awake. I shall never sleep again.

There is one small volume of poems by Miss Macaulay, calledThe Two Blind Countries. It is curiously interesting, since it may be regarded as the testament of mysticism for the year of its appearance, nineteen hundred and fourteen. That is, indeed, the most important fact about it; though no one need begin to fear that he is to be fobbed off with inferior poetry on that account. For the truth is that the artistic value of this work is almost, if not quite, equal to the exceptional power of abstraction that it evinces. Poetry has really been achieved here, extremely individual in manner and in matter, and of a high order of beauty.

One is compelled, however, though one may a little regret the compulsion, to start from the fact of the poet's mystical tendency. Not that she would mind, presumably; the title of her book is an avowal, clear enough at a second glance, of its point of view. But the reader has an instinct, in which the mere interpreter but follows him, to accept a poem first as art rather than thought; and if he examine it at all, to begin with what may be called its concrete beauty. I will not say that the order is reversed in the case of MissMacaulay's poetry, since that would be to accuse her of an artistic crime of which she is emphatically not guilty. But it is significant that the greater number of pieces in this book impress the mind with the idea they convey, simultaneously with the sounds in which it is expressed. And as the idea is generally adventurous, and sometimes fantastic, it is that which arrests the reader and on which he lingers, at any rate long enough to discover its originality.

But though the mystical element of the work is suggested in its very title, one discovers almost as early that it is mysticism of a new kind. It belongs inalienably to this poet and is unmistakably of this age. The world of matter, this jolly place of light and air and colour and human faces, is vividly apprehended; but it is seen by the poet to be ringed round by another realm which, though unsubstantial, is no less real. Indeed, so strong is her consciousness of that other realm, and its presence so insistently felt, that sometimes she is not sure to which of the two she really belongs. In the first poem of the book, using the fictive 'he' as its subject, she indicates her attitude to that region beyond sense. In the physical world, this 'blind land' of 'shadows and droll shapes,' the soul is an alien wanderer. Constantly it hears a 'clamorouswhisper' from the other side of the door of sense, coming from the

... muffled speechOf a world of folk.

But no cry can reach those others: no clear sight can be had of them, and no intelligible word of theirs can come back.

Only through a crack in the door's blind faceHe would reach a thieving hand,To draw some clue to his own strange placeFrom the other land.But his closed hand came back emptily,As a dream drops from him who wakes;And naught might he know but how a muffled seaIn whispers breaks......On either side of a gray barrierThe two blind countries lie;But he knew not which held him prisoner,Nor yet know I.

Only through a crack in the door's blind faceHe would reach a thieving hand,To draw some clue to his own strange placeFrom the other land.

But his closed hand came back emptily,As a dream drops from him who wakes;And naught might he know but how a muffled seaIn whispers breaks.

.....

On either side of a gray barrierThe two blind countries lie;But he knew not which held him prisoner,Nor yet know I.

This poem may be said to state the theme of the whole book. It would appear, however, that in the difficult feat of giving form to thought so intangible, the poet has attained here a detachment which is almost cold. But it would be unfair to judge her manner of expression from one poem; and it happens that there is another piece, builtupon a similar theme, which is much more characteristic. It is called "Foregrounds," and here again the two countries are conceived as bordering upon each other, inter-penetrating, but sharply contrasted as night from day. The contrast favours a more vivid setting, and the subjective treatment, admitting deeper emotion, infuses a warmth that "The Alien" lacked. Moreover, the psychic region is here called simply thedream-country; and, presented in the delicate suggestion of a moonlit night, it hints only at the lure of the mystery, and nothing of its terror. Throughout the poem, too, runs exuberant joy in common earthly things, in the beauty of nature and in human feeling; and this is followed, in the closing lines of each stanza, by an afterthought and a touch of melancholy: reflection coming, in the most natural way, close upon the heels of emotion. Thus the first lines revel in the glory of spring; and then, almost audibly, the tone drops to the lower level of one who perceives that glory as the veil of something beyond it.

The pleasant ditch is a milky way,So alight with stars it is,And over it breaks, like pale sea-spray,The laughing cataract of the mayIn luminous harmonies.(Cloak with a flower-wrought veilThe face of the dream-country.The fields of the moon are kind, are pale,And quiet is she.)

Thus, too, in the third stanza, the recurrent idea of an alien spirit is caught into imagery which glows with light and colour: imagery so simple and sensuous as almost to mock abstraction and quite to disguise it; but bearing at its heart the essence of a philosophy. Again the soul is imagined as standing at the barrier of the two countries, when reality has melted to an apparition and the sense of that other realm has grown acute. Bereft of the comfortable earth, but powerless still to enter the dream-country: standing lonely and fearful at the cold verge of the mystic region, the spirit will seek to draw about it the garment of appearance:

I will weave, of the clear clean shapes of things,A curtain to shelter me;I will paint it with kingcups and sunrisings,And glints of blue for the swallow's wings,And green for the apple-tree.(Oh, a whisper has pierced the veilOut of the dream-country,As a wind moans in the straining sailOf a ship lost at sea.)

In reading this poem, and in others too, one isstruck by the hold which the real world has upon our poet. It is a surprising fact in one of so speculative a turn, and is the clearest sign by which we recognize her work as of our time and no other. Her thought may be projected very far, but her feet are generally upon solid ground. Perhaps I ought rather to say that they are always there; for it is more than probable that bed-rock may exist in two or three poems where I have been unable to get down to it. It is in any case safe to say that a sense of reality—shown in human sympathy and tenderness for lowly creatures, in love of nature and perception of beauty, in truth to fact, in a touch of shrewd insight and a sense of humour bred of the habit of detachment—is very strong. I do not suggest that these qualities are everywhere apparent. By their nature they are such as could not often enter into the framework of poems so subtly wrought. But they are woven into the texture of the poet's mentality, and have even directed its method. So that, remote as may be the idea upon which she is working, it is generally brought within the range of sight; and, intangible though it may seem, it is given definite and charming shape. And if there were not one obvious proof of this steady anchorage, we might have happy assurance of it in the clarity and precision of herthought. But fortunately thereisobvious proof. There is, for instance, this delicious passage in the poem from which I have just quoted, surely proving a kinship with our own 'blind country' as close as with that other and something dearer:

The jolly donkeys that love me wellNuzzle with thistly lips;The harebell is song made visible,The dandelion's lamp a miracle,When the day's lamp dips and dips.

There are, too, a sonnet called "Cards" and the very beautiful longer poem, "Summons," in which the glow of human love makes of the supernatural a mere shadow. In "Cards" the scene is a 'dim lily-illumined garden,' and four people are playing there by candle light. But out of the darkness which rings the circle of flickering light sinister things creep, menacing the frail life of one of the players.

But, like swords clashing, my love on their hateStruck sharp, and drove, and pushed.... Grimly round youFought we that fight, they pressing passionateInto the lit circle which called and drewShadows and moths of night.... I held the gate.You said, "Our game," more truly than you knew.

Again we perceive this sense of reality in thehumour of a poem like "St Mark's Day" or "Three." It is a quality hearty and cheery in the way of one who knows all the facts, but has reckoned with them and can afford to laugh. It has a depth of tone unexpected in an artist whose natural impulse seems to be towards delicate line and neutral tint; and there is a tang of salt in it which one suspects of having been added of intent—as a quite superfluous preservative against sentimentality. "St Mark's Day" is very illuminating in this respect, and in the bracing sanity under which mere superstition wilts. The village girl, teased by neighbours into believing that her spectre was seen the night before and that therefore she must die within the year, is a genuine bit of rustic humanity. No portrait of her is given; but in two or three strong touches she stands before us, plump, rosy and rather stupid; hale enough to live her fourscore years, but sobbing in foolish fright as her sturdy arms peg the wet linen upon the line.

I laughed at her over the sticky larch fence,And said, "Who's down-hearted, Dolly?"And Dolly sobbed at me, "They saw you, too!"(And so the liars said they had,Though I've not wasted paper nor rhymes telling you),And, "Well," said I, "I'mnot sad.""But since you and me must die within the year,What if we went togetherTo make cowslip balls in the fields, and hearThe blackbirds whistling to the weather?"So in the water-fields till blue mists roseWe loitered, Dolly and I,And pulled wet kingcups where the cold brook goes,And when we've done living, we'll die.

I laughed at her over the sticky larch fence,And said, "Who's down-hearted, Dolly?"

And Dolly sobbed at me, "They saw you, too!"(And so the liars said they had,Though I've not wasted paper nor rhymes telling you),And, "Well," said I, "I'mnot sad.""But since you and me must die within the year,What if we went togetherTo make cowslip balls in the fields, and hearThe blackbirds whistling to the weather?"

So in the water-fields till blue mists roseWe loitered, Dolly and I,And pulled wet kingcups where the cold brook goes,And when we've done living, we'll die.

The realism of that goes deeper than its technique, and is a notable weapon in the hands of such an idealist. But in "Three," another humorous poem, something even more surprising has been accomplished. "St Mark's Day" is a bit of pure comedy, and might have been written by a poet for whomone'blind country' was the beginning and end of all experience. That is to say, it is interesting as proof of a healthy grasp on the real world; but the distinctive feature of this poetry hardly appears in it. Abstraction is absent, inevitably, of course; and with it that ideal realm which largely preoccupies the poet's thought. But in "Three," with reality no less strong, with art matching it in bold and vigorous strokes, and touches here and there positively comic; with the scene laid out-of-doors in a sunny noonday of August, there is achieved an almost startling sense of the supernatural. More than that, it is the supernatural under two different aspects, or on twoseparate planes (whichever may be the correct way to state that sort of thing): the consciousness of a ghostly presence, in the accepted sense of the spirit of one dead; and that obscure but disturbing awareness of a hidden life close at hand which most people have experienced at some time or other. But while the poet has sketched these two of her "Three" with an equally light hand, smiling amusedly, as it were, at her own fantasy, she has differentiated them quite clearly. For the true ghost, conjured out of the stuff of memory, association and the influence of locality, is a creature of pure imagination. He is not so much described as suggested, and only dimly felt. There is a stanza devoted to the Cambridge landscape in the hot noon, and then—

In the long grass and tall nettlesI lay abed,With hawthorn and bryonyTangled o'erhead.And I was alone with Hobson,Two centuries dead.Hidden by sprawling bramblesThe Nine Waters were;From a chalky bed they bubbled up,Clean, green, and fair.And I was alone with Hobson,Whose ghost walks there.

In the long grass and tall nettlesI lay abed,With hawthorn and bryonyTangled o'erhead.And I was alone with Hobson,Two centuries dead.

Hidden by sprawling bramblesThe Nine Waters were;From a chalky bed they bubbled up,Clean, green, and fair.And I was alone with Hobson,Whose ghost walks there.

But it seems that the poet is not alone with the pleasant ghost of the old university carrier. There is a third presence near, hidden and silent, but malign; and the stanzas in which this secret presence grows to a realization that is acute and almost terrifying, are remarkably done. They illustrate this poet's ability to create illusion out of mere scraps of material, and those of the most commonplace kind; and they rely for their verbal effect upon the homeliest words. Yet the impression of an intangible something that is evil and uncanny is so strong, that when the very real head of the tramp appears the contrast provokes a sudden laugh at its absurdity.

And something yawned, and from the grassA head upreared;And I was not alone with Hobson,For at me leeredA great, gaunt, greasy trampWith a golden beard.He had a beard like a dandelion,And I had none;He had tea in a beer-bottle,Warm with the sun;He had pie in a paper bag,Not yet begun.

And something yawned, and from the grassA head upreared;And I was not alone with Hobson,For at me leeredA great, gaunt, greasy trampWith a golden beard.

He had a beard like a dandelion,And I had none;He had tea in a beer-bottle,Warm with the sun;He had pie in a paper bag,Not yet begun.

The vigorous handling of that passage, and itscomical actuality, makes an excellent foil to the subtler method of presenting the two spirits, living and dead. And the poem as a whole may be said to reflect the dual elements which are everywhere present in this work. It is true that in a more characteristic piece the ideal will prevail over the real. And consequently, imagination will there be found to weave finer strands, while thought goes much further afield. Thus, in "Crying for the Moon" and in "The Thief," one may follow the idea very far; and in both poems we move in the pale light and dim shadow where mystery is evoked at a hint. Never, I think, was there such an eerie dawn as that in "The Thief"; yet never was orchard-joy more keenly realized—

He stood at the world's secret heartIn the haze-wrapt mystery;And fat pears, mellow on the lip,He supped like a honey-bee;But the apples he crunched with sharp white teethWere pungent, like the sea.

Probably it is in work like this, where both blind countries find expression, that Miss Macaulay is most successful. But when she gives imagination licence to wander alone in the ideal region, it occasionally seems to go out of sight and sound of the good earth. That happens in "Completion," apoem which is frankly mystical in theme, symbolism, and terminology. There is not a touch of reality in it; and neither its fine strange music, nor glowing colour, nor certain perfect phrases, nor the language, at once rich and tender and strong, can make it more than the opalescent wraith of a poem. But perhaps that is just what the author intended it to be!

In any case "Completion" does correspond to, and daintily express, the mystical strain which is dominant in this work. It is, however, the extreme example of it. It stands at the opposite pole from "St Mark's Day," and antithetical to that, it might have been written by a mystic for whom the material world was virtually nothing. Moreover, it might belong to almost any time, or not to time at all; whereas the mysticism of the book as a whole is peculiarly that of its own author and its own day. It is individual—a thing of this poet's personality and no other—in the evidence of a finely sensitive spirit, of a gift of vision abnormally acute, imaginative power that ranges far and free, and a fine capacity for abstract thought. But all these qualities, though pervasive and dominant, are sweetly controlled by a humane temper that has been nurtured on realities.

Hence comes a duality in which it is, perhaps,not too fanciful to see a feature of contemporary thought—intensely interested in the region of ideas, but frankly claiming the material world as the basis and starting-point of all its speculation. One might put it colloquially (though without the implied reproach) as making the best of both worlds: humanity recognizing an honourable kinship with matter, but reaching out continually after the larger existence which it confidently believes to be latent in the physical world itself.

A voice may be raised to protest that that is too vaguely generalized; and if so, the protestant may turn for more precise evidence to such poems as "Trinity Sunday" and "The Devourers." There he will perceive, after a moment's reflection, the store of modern knowledge—of actual data—which has been assimilated to the mystical element here. Let him consider, for example, the first two stanzas of "The Devourers," and other similar passages:

Cambridge town is a beleaguered city;For south and north, like a sea,There beat on its gates, without haste or pity,The downs and the fen country.Cambridge towers, so old, so wise,They were builded but yesterday,Watched by sleepy gray secret eyesThat smiled as at children's play.

Cambridge town is a beleaguered city;For south and north, like a sea,There beat on its gates, without haste or pity,The downs and the fen country.

Cambridge towers, so old, so wise,They were builded but yesterday,Watched by sleepy gray secret eyesThat smiled as at children's play.

It is clear that the knowledge really has been assimilated—it is not a fragmentary or external thing. It is absorbed into the essence of the work and will not be found to mar its poetic values. But by a hint, a word, a turn of expression or a mental gesture, one can see that learning both scientific and humane (a significant union) has gone into the poetic crucible. There are signs which point to a whole system of philosophy: there is an historical sense, imaginatively handling the data of cosmic history; and there are traces which lead down to a basis in geology and anthropology. Yet these elements are, as I said, perfectly fused: it would be difficult to disengage them. And inimical as they may seem to the very nature of mysticism, they are constrained by this poet to contribute to her vision of a world beyond sense.

From this point of view "Trinity Sunday" is the most important poem in the book. It records an experience which the mystic of another age would have called a revelation, and which he would have apprehended through the medium of religious emotion. But this poet attains to her ultimate vision through the phenomena of the real world, apprehended in terms of the ideal. The warm breath of Spring, rich with scent and sound of the teeming earth, stirs it to awakening. But thoughshe is walking in familiar Cambridge with, characteristically, the scene and time exactly placed: though friendly faces pass and cordial voices give a greeting, all that suddenly shrivels at the touch of the wild earth spirit. Space and time curl away in fold after fold; and with them pass successive forms of strange life immensely remote. But even while reality thus terribly unfolds, it is perceived to be thestuff of the world's live brain; to have existence only in idea.

And the fens were not. (For fens are dreamsDreamt by a race long dead;And the earth is naught, and the sun but seems:And so those who know have said.)

Thus the facts of science have gone to the making of this poem, as well as the theories of an idealist philosophy. It is through them both that imagination takes the forward leap. But neither the one nor the other can avail to utter the revelation; and even the poet's remarkable gift of expression can only suffice to suggest the awfulness of it.

Back to Index Next