ROBERT BRIDGES'S LYRICALPOEMS41

The play's the thingWherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.

Whilst another, equally eminent, would make an equally great impression by almost whispering the words to himself, as if afraid of betraying the secret: "The play's the thing...." Who could say of the one or the other interpretation "This is right," or "This is wrong"? In this case the same result is arrived at by different means. On the other hand, I remember a little story my father told me when I was a boy, of a man who had been made veryangry by a letter from his son at the University asking him for money. In that mood he is met by an old friend who asks him, "What's the matter? Why are you thus out of sorts?" "Well," says the other, "look at this impertinent letter I've just got from my son, 'Father, please send me money!'"—reading out the words in a quick, impatient, commanding voice. "Of course," he adds, "I shan't do anything of the kind."

"Let me see the letter," the benevolent friend asks—he was very fond of the boy—and, reading the words with a gentle, pleading, affectionate inflexion of the voice, he says, "Why, my dear fellow, it's a very charming letter. He writes, 'Father,pleasesend me money.'" "Ah," says the father, "if he writes like that, he shall have it!" Here, without doubt, the different interpretation had a different result. Certainly the son will have thought so.

Varieties such as just quoted are, however, quite impossible in music. Here we are faced by absolute orders given by the composer who says: "This is to beforte, thispiano; here you must increase, there decrease; here hurry, there retard." But this apparent clipping of the interpreter's wings is only a blessing in disguise, for it makes it possible for even a singer of inferior intelligence to render by artistic representation or performance,i.e., to interpret a song; so that, whilst we would not listen to a representation of the character of Hamlet by a stupid or uneducated man, we may thoroughly enjoy the rendering of a song by a singer with a fine voice, even if he be a most uninteresting, commonplace person otherwise,as long as he masters the technique of his art and loyally and conscientiously follows the directions given by the composer.

A loyal, reverent attitude to the author is a thing on which too great stress cannot be laid. A work deemed worth performing should be rendered as the author wrote it. By this I do, of course, not mean that an orchestral work or an organ fugue or a string quartet should not be played on the pianoforte. Quite the contrary. Skilful transcriptions and arrangements are indeed as great a boon as are reproductions of the famous masterpieces of painting or sculpture, without which our knowledge of the art would be lamentably defective. There have also been cases where one great master has thought it desirable to complement the work of another, either by writing accompaniments to originally unaccompanied instrumental works, as Schumann did to Bach, or by strengthening the accompanying orchestra in a choral work, as Mozart did to Handel'sMessiah. As far as I know the original text has in all such cases been allowed to remain intact; and works thus treated being obtainable in the original as well as in the complemented version, the choice is left to the personal taste of the musicians responsible for the performance. What I mean is that thetextof the composer should not be tampered with. There have now and then attempts been made at improving Beethoven's scores on the plea that some instruments employed by the master—like, for instance, the flute—have been developed so as to allow notes to be played on them now which were impossible at the time Beethoven wrote, and that very likely, had these notes been at the master's disposal, hewould have made use of them. This may or may not be so, but it seems to me a dangerous theory to work upon, for once you commence meddling with a master work it would be difficult to know where to draw the line, and there is no saying whither it would lead. Besides, every great period in the history of art has its own characteristics. A so-called full orchestra in Beethoven's time was a very different thing from what we are accustomed to consider one to-day, when woodwind, brass, percussion, harps, and what not often alone outnumber the entire personnel of a grand orchestra a century ago. Moreover, if you leave Beethoven's scores untouched, his mastery of orchestration becomes all the more wonderful. There are instances—just think of that glorious climax in the ThirdLeonoraOverture, or the end of that toEgmont—where, even considering only the mere physical power of sound, he gets results from his orchestration that no modern writer has as yet surpassed.

It is hardly credible that, arrogant enough as such attempts at improving Beethoven's orchestration are, there exist people who go further still and actually alter a great composer's directions as to expression. Most of us know how particularly fond Beethoven was of interrupting a seemingly increasingfortissimoby a suddenpianissimo. You will recall that splendidscherzoin the "Seventh Symphony," where he commences with an exultantfortissimo, evidently meaning to continue in that vein, when all of a sudden thefton the last crotchet of the second bar is followed by appon the first crotchet of the third, the result is simply marvellous.

Well, some years ago I had to conduct that symphony as a deputy for the regular conductor, who was prevented from being at his post on that occasion. Can you imagine my surprise and disgust when, at the rehearsal, commencing with the Scherzo, and looking forward to that suddenppon the first note of the third bar, thatppappeared already on the last note of the second bar, which should have still beenft. Stopping the orchestra indignantly, I asked, "What on earth are you doing, gentlemen?"

"We have got it so in our parts," was the answer. "Impossible," I said. "Let me see!" The leader handed me the part, and there, to be sure, I was flabbergasted to find the mark ofppon the first note of the third bar actually transferred in blue pencil to the preceding note, thus not only completely spoiling Beethoven's fun, but altering and weakening the subject, which, as anybody might see, commences with the down, not the up beat. I wonder if one should envy a man or pity him for a degree of self-estimation which could render him capable of blue-pencilling Beethoven!

He certainly has arrived at what a witty American friend of mine would call the "Shoehorn stage." To my enquiries about a mutual acquaintance, that gentleman answered, "He? Why, he's that big now he has touse a shoehorn to put on his hat!"

But this is by no means an isolated example of the lamentable lack of reverence in this country toward the works of the great masters of music. However much one might be horrified at the utterly mistakentempione often has to listen to in the rendering of the classics, especially Mozart andBeethoven, that, after all, sad and deplorable as it is, may only be the consequence of ignorance or the result of insufficient musical training on the part of the performer. It is the wanton, deliberate tampering with thetextof a great composer which is unpardonable. No one among the classics was more explicit or exacting as to the way he wished his works to be rendered than Beethoven. Take once more that surpassingly beautifulLeonoraOverture No. III. Who has not been thrilled to the innermost depths of his soul by those distant trumpet-calls, each ending with a long pause on the last note, and followed immediately,i.e.,without any further pause and whilst that last note still lingers in one's ears, by one of the most divinely inspired phrases ever penned by even that great master? After the first call the orchestra plays it, in a mysteriouspianissimo, in the same key as the call itself—B flat; after the second, more impressive still, a third lower, in G flat. Well, at a recent performance of that great work the conductor, according to the papers an "acknowledged authority" on Beethoven, coolly added a "general pause" on to each of those two pauses on the last note of the trumpet-call; that after the second call lasting for fully ten seconds. No words can express my disappointment, my indignation, for, of course, the sublime beauty of that low G flat with which the double-basses and 'celli enterwhilst the high B flat of the trumpet-call is slowly dying awayin the distance was lost completely. Indeed it would have mattered little now inwhatkey the orchestra had come in—the thing was irretrievably spoiled.

Anywhere on the Continent the audience would have given unmistakable signs of their disapproval, and the Press been unanimous in the condemnation of such practices on the part of the conductor. Here that gentleman was vociferously applauded by the audience and—with, I think, one solitary exception—lauded to the skies by the Press, the one or two papers which were bold enough to timidly admit his "occasionally taking liberties with Beethoven" declaring such liberties to be those of "an intimate, an adept."

Intimate indeed! If a hundred years ago an intimate of Beethoven's had dared to do such a thing in Beethoven's presence, the master, as we know him from his letters, would have flung the score at his head, thundering, "Knave, canst thou not read? Dost thou think if I had wanted those two general pauses, I did not know how to put them in my score?"

What are we coming to? Irreverence, contempt of traditions, breaking with a glorious past, disregard of law, of form—are they also in the realm of music a sign of the times, a sort of Bolshevism?

Fancy an actor, tired of that everlasting "To be or not to be," and thinking it too hackneyed, surprising the audience by commencing the great monologue for a change with "To exist or not to exist"; or another, going one better, and considering the absence of rhyme in that monologue rather a mistake of Shakespeare's, hitting on the happy and original idea of correcting it into something like:

To be or not to be—That is what staggers me.

And yet that would not be one whit less of a sacrilege.

And take a song or an aria; how often does one not hear even good singers change a note into a higher one, with the object of showing the voice to better advantage, or of making a phrase, generally the final cadence, more effective, so as to get a few more handfuls of applause, or perhaps even an additional recall at the end?

"That's villainous," says Hamlet, "and shows a most pitiful ambition."

This altering of notes brings me upon a question which has ever been the subject of much controversy among musicians: Are there any rules as to the singing of recitatives or, rather, to the substituting now and then, in the singing of recitatives of notes other than those written by the composer? Should, for instance, the phrase in theMessiah

Music

My answer as regards the first of these two examples is as decided a "No" as my "Yes" is in regard to the second. This may, perhaps, be considered somewhat arbitrary and entirely a matter of taste, but I venture to hope that after what I have to say on the subject it will be found to be only partly a matter of taste, and of arbitrariness not at all. I base my objection to the alteration in the first, and my approval of that in the second example on a theory which seems to me to commend itself by its simplicity, and may be explained in the shape of a rule something like this:

Take the note as to the changing of which into a higher or lower you are in doubt, and look first at the noteprecedingand then at the notefollowingthat doubtful note. Then see if the note you wish to substitute for the printed note lies on the way from the preceding to the following note. If it does, you are justified in making the change; if not, leave it alone. Here is our first example:

Music

The doubtful note is the C on "shep," the preceding one is the G below, the following is the C. Now, does the D you wish to substitute for the C on "shep" lie between that "G" and that "C" on the second syllable of shepherd? No, let the phrase therefore remain as written. In the second example:

Music

The questionable note is the A on "Da" anddoeslie on the way from the C sharp to the A on the second syllable of David; it is, therefore, not only perfectly legitimate, buteven good to make the change, and the phrase should be sung:

Music

The question of taste enters when it comes to the exception to the rule. According to that it would be legitimate, taking yet a third example from theMessiah:

Music

In this case, however, it would be decidedly better to leave the phrase unchanged, for we have had four B flats already in that short sentence, and the A, coming pat on the F major chord, is rather relieving and refreshing. Here, as in many other cases, "let your own discretion be your tutor." Of an exception to the rule as regards the first of these three examples being either justifiable or advisable I know no instance. Of course, all I have said on this subject refers to the slow, deliberate, serious recitative in oratorio and other sacred music only, and not at all to what is called "secco" recitative in opera, which is practically no more than speech somewhat rapidly delivered in specified musical terms. There you should change the doubtful note into one above or below it at every opportunity, for by doing so you impart a certain spontaneity and freedom to the sentences, emphasising their resemblance to the spoken word. Here is an example in the style of Mozart:

Music

But I am reaching the limit of the space allowed for this article and fear my chat has been on "kindred topics" rather than on the alleged main theme of interpretation. But surely none of my readers expected me to answer the question "How to Interpret"? If so, I should be as truly sorry for having disappointed them as I was some years ago to have been obliged to disillusion the organist of the little Parish Church of Alvie. I don't mean myself, for Ionly officiated there in that capacity during the summer months, when I was at home. I mean the regular, appointed, salaried, real organist. She was a young girl of sixteen, a native of the parish, who, fond of music, like all Scots people, could strum two or three tunes on the piano, and to whom I had given a few lessons in the managing of the American organ in the church. At the request of my old friend, the Rev. James Anderson, our late and much lamented minister, I had introduced the playing of a voluntary during collection, always, of course, improvising on the Psalm or hymn tunes of the day's service, or on whatever came into my head. Well, a week after I had left Alvie for London, the first year of that innovation, I received a letter from the young lady, consisting of the following five lines: "Dear Mr. Henschel—Mr. Anderson wishes me to play voluntaries during collection, just as you did. Would you please let me know how you do it?"

I was touched by so much faith and innocence. The playing of an instrument—and singing, as such, is but playing on the vocal instrument in our throats—may be taught and, with patience and perseverance, brought to as near a degree of perfection as humanly possible; that is a matter of craft, of physical, I may say muscular, skill. The mystery of what is best, imperishable in any art, lies in the soul and in the brain. If dormant, it may be awakened and fostered; if absent, it cannot be acquired by teaching. Interpretation, though but recreative, certainly is an art, or at least part of one. And art is long and life is short, and of learning there is no end.

To have a chance of becoming an artist in the true sense of the word, the student, fortunate in the possession of the heavenly gift of talent, should from the outset resolve to strive for none but the highest ideals, refuse to be satisfied, both in taking and giving, with anything but the best and purest, and last, though by no means least, resist the temptations which the prospect of popularity and its worldly advantages, frequently the result of lowering that high standard, may place in his way.

41October and Other Poems. By Robert Bridges. Heinemann. 1920. 5s.net. PoeticalWorks, Excluding the Eight Dramas. By Robert Bridges. 1912. Oxford University Press. For other works see "Bibliography" in current issue.

By J. C. SQUIRE

MR.Bridges's new volume of poems (the first that he has published since he became Poet Laureate) must be read for what it is, the work of a man seventy-five years of age. This statement is not made as an excuse: there are weak—occasional and patriotic—poems in the book, but some also which are beautiful additions to his canon. But some of his critics, so inadequate is still the recognition of what he has done, have treated the book as though his claim to be a great poet rested partly upon it, failing to read it, as they should, in the light of all that has gone before it. Properly regarded, it awakes not disappointment, but wonder that a poet so old should still sometimes have the genuine impulse, should still keep his spirit fresh, and should still be capable of ingenious and fruitful experiments in technique—experiments moreover in which the content is never subordinated to the form, however exacting and interesting the form may be.October,Noel,Our Lady,Flycatchers,The West Front,Trafalgar Square, andFortunatus Nimiumare all poems that any man might be proud to write in his prime; and beyond these there is the delicious invention ofThe Flowering Tree:

What Fairy fann'd my dreamswhile I slept in the sun?As if a flowering treewere standing over me:Its young stem strong and lithewent branching overhead,And willowy sprays aroundfell tasselling to the groundAll with wild blossom gayas is the cherry in May ...The sunlight was enmesh'din the shifting splendourAnd I saw through on highto soft lakes of blue sky:...So I slept enchantedunder my loving treeTill from his late restingthe sweet songster of night,Rousing, awakened me:Then! this—the birdis note—Was the voice of thy throatwhich thou gav'st me to kiss.

The sunlight was enmesh'din the shifting splendourAnd I saw through on highto soft lakes of blue sky:...

So I slept enchantedunder my loving treeTill from his late restingthe sweet songster of night,Rousing, awakened me:Then! this—the birdis note—Was the voice of thy throatwhich thou gav'st me to kiss.

The occasion may suitably be seized to make a few notes on Mr. Bridges's shorter—never mind the title and the word "lyrical"—poems as a whole.

Mr. Bridges is often written of as though he were primarily a technician. He has always taken a keen interest in prosody; he has written books, and formulated theories, about it; his experiments in classical metres and his notions about English spelling have, to those who have not troubled to discover the intellectual strength and the strong common sense which commonly marks his linguistic writings, given him something of the air of a pedant. But the theoriser and the innovator of the "shorter poems" has nothing to do with pedantry. There are poems in which the scrutinous eye may detect very elaborate pains.April1885 is a fabric of internal rhyme, assonance, and alliteration which it would be hard to parallel in English:

Wanton with long delay the gay Spring leaping cometh;The blackthorn starreth now his bough on the eve of May:All day in the sweet box-tree the bee for pleasure hummeth:The cuckoo sends afloat his note on the air all day.Now dewy nights again and rain in gentle showerAt root of tree and flower have quenched the winter's drouth:On high the hot sun smiles, and banks of cloud uptowerIn bulging heads that crowd for miles the dazzling south.

Now dewy nights again and rain in gentle showerAt root of tree and flower have quenched the winter's drouth:On high the hot sun smiles, and banks of cloud uptowerIn bulging heads that crowd for miles the dazzling south.

That may be called atour-de-force; as a rule, though Mr. Bridges's variety of stanza and rhythm is immense, the craftsman never intrudes. His ingenuities merely serve their purpose; his music cannot be separated from his sense; his rhythms are sought, and found, as the only suitable rhythms for the words and the scenes that are being expressed and described. How otherwise than in the beautiful movement used can we imagine the picture ofA Passer By?—the fresh blue day, the crowded sail, the vision of a queenly progress across the world to a far harbour in the south? It is one of fifty such feats, triumphs of fastidious art, never completely understood until the poems are read aloud. His power of music has developed steadily throughout his career, but scarcely a poem of any period can be quoted without illustrating his surpassing technical gifts. We shall come to many presently; here, when we are thinking primarily of the skill with which he weaves a close-fitting garment of sound for his thought, we may take as a single example,London Snow:

When men were all asleep the snow came flying,In large white flakes falling on the city brown,Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy townDeadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:Silently sifting and veiling road, roof, and railing;Hiding difference, making unevenness even,Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.All night it fell, and when full inches sevenIt lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven....

The accuracy of the description is extraordinary and continues as the town awakes, and boys go snowballing to school, a few carts creak along, and the pale sun rises to awake the noisier day. But the observation, the accuracy, the response of the heart to the beauty of the scene, might have been found elsewhere: the astonishing management of the rhythms, which, even when divorced from the meaning of the words, translate the steady falling, the wayward criss-crossing, the lightness and crispness, and soothing persistence of snow in an almost windless air, is peculiar to Mr. Bridges. Words and music are with him always inseparable: he is at the opposite pole from the man, often not unintelligent in other ways, who forces his material into a strait-jacket of jingle. In this respect his taste is as flawless, his subtlety as unfailing, as any in the records of literature.

It is possible, and it has often been stated, that Mr. Bridges will chiefly live as a poet of the English landscape. Certainly he would live if only his landscape poetry were preserved. It may seem a large assertion, but no Englishman has written so large a body of good landscape poetry. There are two obvious things to be said about it.

The first is that his landscape is the landscape of the South of England, more particularly of the Thames Valley and the downs by the sea—two regions which he significantly chooses as typical, when, inThe Voice of Nature, he wishes to point an argument. He never describes foreign or remote scenes; and—it may be regarded as symbolic of his attitude to the more violent things of life—he never leaves the land for the sea. Even British territorial waters he never sails; there is much of the sea in his work, but it is the sea as seen from the shore, blue and smiling and dancing, or whipped by the wind, caught in a narrow peep between shoulders of the downs or watched from a hill through a telescope:

There many an hour I have sat to watch; nay, nowThe brazen disk is cold against my brow,And in my sight a circle of the seaEnlarged to swiftness, where the salt waves flee,And ships in stately motion pass so nearThat what I see is speaking to my ear.

Mr. Bridges's landscape is bounded by the English Channel; his hills are the Downs; his rivers are clear and gentle streams; his trees oak and beech, elm and larch; he is as surely of the South of England as Wordsworth isof the North. And the second obvious thing is that, being a true landscape poet and not a romantic who exploits nature to find backgrounds for his passions, it is of ordinary landscapes that he writes. Tennyson, too, was an observer, but many of his best-known landscapes are of the selected kind. It is one thing to write of the sort of natural scene traditionally approved as remarkable: sunset on a marsh, sunrise on the Alps, stupendous cliffs, high cataracts, and breakers in the moon. It is another to describe, giving the breath of life to your description, what any man, going out on any day in any season, will see when he looks over a five-barred gate or takes a footpath through the woods. Mr. Bridges writes of nature like a countryman. His abnormal scenes are rare; he sees the beauty in the normal. He sings of nightingales when he hears them, but rooks are far more frequent in his verse; his suns seldom go down in flaming splendour, but drop red into the grey or die invisibly. One by one scenes from his familiar landscape have moved him to verse, until his books contain a complete catalogue of the English rural year, all its ordinary recurrent colours, and scents and sounds, trees, flowers, birds, skies and waters.

Spring. A village in the downs, and men winnowing in a barn. The palm-willows and hazels. The first flowers, primroses and green hyacinth spikes, shooting up amid moss and withered undergrowth. Brisk ploughmen. Birds happily courting in the jocund sun.

Summer. The garden, with bees on the flowers and in the overhanging limes, and rooks cawing in the elms. The hayfields in the sun; fields green with waves of rustling wheat; the hum of insects and the song of larks in a sky pure blue, or heaped with "slow pavilions of caverned snow," "sunshot palaces of cloud"; the downs, starred with small flowers, where rabbits nibble the grass; the noise of scythes. The river: still water, the dip of oars, a boat that glides with its reflection past flowering islets and dipping branches and meadows, where "the lazy cows wrench many a scented flower"; bathers; fish leaping in the pools; the peace of evening as it falls over water and trees; moonlight on the flashing weir. There are storms that blacken the sea and beat down the corn, but they pass and the sun comes out again, gathering strength.

Autumn. The garden in September, with late flowers. The ripe orchards and fields where "the sun spots the deserted gleanings with decay." The winds of October that come and fill ruts and pools with golden leaves. The later storms that mingle the leaves with snow.

Winter. The short days and the infrequent sun on lonely songless lands. Rooks after the plough, the team against the skyline. A rough sea and snow on the beach. Robin on the leafless bough. Dark afternoons and evenings by the fire, companioned or alone.

All those signs of the seasons and hundreds more could be illustrated from Mr. Bridges. One cannot do more here than huddle together a few characteristic fragments from which the whole may be deduced. If the first three are records of the shape, colour and movement of clouds,it is fitting: all Mr. Bridges's landscapes have skies, and most of his skies (being English) have clouds:

From distant hills their shadows creep,Arrive in turn and mount the lea,And flit across the downs and leapSheer off the cliff upon the sea;And sail and sail far out of sight.But still I watch their fleecy trains,That piling all the south with light,Dapple in France the fertile plains.And o'er the treetops, scattered in mid-air,The exhausted clouds laden with crimson lightFloated, or seemed to sleep; and, highest there,One planet broke the lingering ranks of night.The upper skies are palest blueMottled with pearl and fretted snow:With tattered fleece of inky hueClose overhead the storm-clouds go.Their shadows fly along the hillAnd o'er the crest mount one by one:The whitened planking of the millIs now in shade and now in sun.With gentle flaws the western breezeInto the garden saileth,Scarce here and there stirring the single trees,For his sharpness he vaileth:So long a comrade of the bearded cornNow from the stubbles whence the shocks are borne,O'er dewy lawns he turns to stray,As mindful of the kisses and soft playWherewith he enamoured the light-hearted May,Ere he deserted her;Lover of fragrance, and too late repents;Nor more of heavy hyacinth now may drink,Nor spicy pink,Nor summer's rose, nor garnered lavender,But the few lingering scentsOf streakèd pea, and gillyflower and stocksOf courtly purple and aromatic phlox.And at all times to hear are drowsy tonesOf dizzy flies, and humming drones,With sudden flap of pigeon wings in the sky,Or the wild cryOf thirsty rooks, that scour ascareThe distant blue, to watering as they fareWith creaking pinions, or—on business bent,If aught their ancient polity displease—Come gathering to their colony, and thereSettling in ragged parliament,Some stormy council hold in the high trees.In the golden glade the chestnuts are falling all;From the sered boughs of the oak the acorns fall;The beech scatters her ruddy fire;The lime has stripped to the cold,And standeth naked above her yellow attire;The larch thinneth her spireTo lay the ways of the wood with cloth of gold.Out of the golden-green and whiteOf the brake the fir-trees stand uprightIn the forest of flame, and wave aloftTo the blue of heaven their blue-green tuftings soft.Out by the ricks the mantled engine standsCrestfallen, deserted—for now all handsAre told to the plough—and ere it is dawn appearThe teams following and crossing far and near,As hour by hour they broaden the brown bandsOf the striped fields; and behind them firk and pranceThe heavy rooks, and daws grey-pated dance:As awhile, surmounting a crest, in sharp outline(A miniature of toil, a gem's design)They are pictured, horses and men, or now near byAbove the lane they shout lifting the share,By the trim hedgerow bloom'd with purple air;The long dark night, that lengthens slow,Deepening with Winter to starve grass and tree,And soon to bury in snowThe Earth, that, sleeping 'neath her frozen stole,Shall dream a dream crept from the sunless poleOf how her end shall be.

From distant hills their shadows creep,Arrive in turn and mount the lea,And flit across the downs and leapSheer off the cliff upon the sea;

And sail and sail far out of sight.But still I watch their fleecy trains,That piling all the south with light,Dapple in France the fertile plains.

And o'er the treetops, scattered in mid-air,The exhausted clouds laden with crimson lightFloated, or seemed to sleep; and, highest there,One planet broke the lingering ranks of night.

The upper skies are palest blueMottled with pearl and fretted snow:With tattered fleece of inky hueClose overhead the storm-clouds go.

Their shadows fly along the hillAnd o'er the crest mount one by one:The whitened planking of the millIs now in shade and now in sun.

With gentle flaws the western breezeInto the garden saileth,Scarce here and there stirring the single trees,For his sharpness he vaileth:So long a comrade of the bearded cornNow from the stubbles whence the shocks are borne,O'er dewy lawns he turns to stray,As mindful of the kisses and soft playWherewith he enamoured the light-hearted May,Ere he deserted her;Lover of fragrance, and too late repents;Nor more of heavy hyacinth now may drink,Nor spicy pink,Nor summer's rose, nor garnered lavender,But the few lingering scentsOf streakèd pea, and gillyflower and stocksOf courtly purple and aromatic phlox.

And at all times to hear are drowsy tonesOf dizzy flies, and humming drones,With sudden flap of pigeon wings in the sky,Or the wild cryOf thirsty rooks, that scour ascareThe distant blue, to watering as they fareWith creaking pinions, or—on business bent,If aught their ancient polity displease—Come gathering to their colony, and thereSettling in ragged parliament,Some stormy council hold in the high trees.

In the golden glade the chestnuts are falling all;From the sered boughs of the oak the acorns fall;The beech scatters her ruddy fire;The lime has stripped to the cold,And standeth naked above her yellow attire;The larch thinneth her spireTo lay the ways of the wood with cloth of gold.

Out of the golden-green and whiteOf the brake the fir-trees stand uprightIn the forest of flame, and wave aloftTo the blue of heaven their blue-green tuftings soft.

Out by the ricks the mantled engine standsCrestfallen, deserted—for now all handsAre told to the plough—and ere it is dawn appearThe teams following and crossing far and near,As hour by hour they broaden the brown bandsOf the striped fields; and behind them firk and pranceThe heavy rooks, and daws grey-pated dance:As awhile, surmounting a crest, in sharp outline(A miniature of toil, a gem's design)They are pictured, horses and men, or now near byAbove the lane they shout lifting the share,By the trim hedgerow bloom'd with purple air;

The long dark night, that lengthens slow,Deepening with Winter to starve grass and tree,And soon to bury in snowThe Earth, that, sleeping 'neath her frozen stole,Shall dream a dream crept from the sunless poleOf how her end shall be.

The best of all (such asThe DownsandThe Storm is Over) cannot be quoted except entirely; they are landscapes complete, earth and sky. But let it not be supposed that Mr. Bridges is ever a mere describer who sits down mechanically in front of any scene with his little box of water-colours. We have known such, and sometimes they have been learned in botany; their exactitude of detail is dull, their serried statements useless; only the man who is touched by the beauty in a scene, or aroused by a scene to an awareness of beauty behind it, will fuse the several things he sees into a whole. The writer who has felt no emotion communicates none, and the greatness of Mr. Bridges's poems of landscape is derived not solely from his knowledge of landscape, the wary eye, but from his feeling for it, the eye of love. His scenes are precise, but they are never photographs; there is no doubt about the sentiment that he felt when he saw them.

And Mr. Bridges, even when at his best, is not only a landscape poet, but a poet cunning in the experiences of the heart. Very many of his poems are love poems and many of them are beautiful: if the fact has not been widely observed it must be because they are happy love poems, or at least because they are not excessive in expression. The proclivity that makes him, in another sphere, write not about storms but about calms after storms, is seen always: he has no violence, no vehement abandonment. But there is little of that in Wordsworth and other poets the depth of whose affections, the reality of whose suffering, cannot be doubted. Mr. Bridges's love-poetry makes no brutal assault on us. His constant reference to Virgil, Mozart and the old composers is significant. He never declaims, never raves, despairs, or burns in print: but he knows the ways of lovers' hearts, and his quiet stanzas, whether their subject be the pain of doubt, or separation, or the joy of union, or calm affection by the warm domestic hearth, have a truth and strength which outwear the ardours of many poets. InWhen My Love was Away,My Spirit sang all day,I will not let thee go, and twenty more he lover's calendar is written as that of the seasons elsewhere, and if his praise is soft and measured like the old music in which he so constantly delights, love's fine extravagance is, for all the tempered sound, nevertheless there:

Her beauty would surpriseGazers on Autumn eves,Who watched the broad moon riseUpon the scattered sheaves.

He is self-controlled and never shouts; he does not hunt the universe for new and strange sorrows nor harrow himself overmuch with the problems of existence; but those griefs that fall to the common lot of mankind have come to him and drawn beautiful poetry from him. Many poets have written habitually of Death; few have said as little about Death as Mr. Bridges; but he has said all he has to say and need say about death, loss, and sorrow in two poems, the poem which begins:

I never shall love the snow againSince Maurice died,

and the otherOn a Dead Child: "Perfect little body, without fault or stain on thee...."

So I lay thee there, thy sunken eyelids closing—Go lie thou there in thy coffin, thy last little bed—Propping thy wise, sad head,Thy firm, pale hands across thy chest disposing.So quiet! doth the change content thee?—Death, whither hath he taken thee?To a world, do I think, that rights the disaster of this?The vision of which I miss,Who weep for the body, and wish but to warm thee and awaken thee?Ah! little at best can all our hopes avail usTo lift this sorrow, or cheer us, when in the dark,Unwilling, alone we embark,And the things we have seen and have known and have heard of, fail us.

So I lay thee there, thy sunken eyelids closing—Go lie thou there in thy coffin, thy last little bed—Propping thy wise, sad head,Thy firm, pale hands across thy chest disposing.

So quiet! doth the change content thee?—Death, whither hath he taken thee?To a world, do I think, that rights the disaster of this?The vision of which I miss,Who weep for the body, and wish but to warm thee and awaken thee?Ah! little at best can all our hopes avail usTo lift this sorrow, or cheer us, when in the dark,Unwilling, alone we embark,And the things we have seen and have known and have heard of, fail us.

InWinter Nightfallthere is all the complaint of ailing old age, inPater Filiothe passionate anxiety of parent for child; the normal, inevitable griefs and dejections are all here, expressed with gravity, yet always with poignancy. But normal and inevitable they are. One gets the impression that, beyond the "common lot," the poet has had few distresses. Intense joy—nobody has given it better definition than he—is as rare as intense sadness, but ordinarily he is happy, or at worst not uncomfortably melancholy, and the happiness has become more pervasive as he has grown older. He is the poet of a leisured country life, led by a sensitive physically healthy man, with whom the major things of life have gone well and who, in those circumstances, is temperamentally inclined to a grateful contentment.

Mr. Bridges has not made the easy appeal by violence of expression; and he has not made the easy appeal by violence of doctrine. If he has been less discussed than many inferior writers, it is not so much that he is without doctrine as that he is without novel doctrine and has never been a doctrinaire. Any noisy demonstrator with a new lie may attract attention, if it is only the attention of those who wish to dispute with him; and it is easier to dispute (or agree) with the man whose "views" are explicit than with him who leaves them implicit. The mere fact that Mr. Bridges's practical philosophy has been held by hundreds of millions of ordinary people in many ages does not prove that he has no philosophy. He is a Christian, but he says little about that. He is politically sceptical of systems, but he says little about that. He accepts life, with its pains and pleasures, and he is happy that his life has been cast in an ordered traditional civilisation. He sees life in proportion, with the greater goods clear: childhood, the love of a woman and of children, the beauty of the earth, days of peace, joyful work, friendship. He does not proclaim a way of life, but it will be easy for his critics to deduce one from his poetry: if he does not tell people how to enjoy life it is because he is too busy enjoying it himself, and if he does not expound his religion, it is because he probably holds it to be "the religion of all sensible men." He never loses hold of his settled philosophy. In depression he does not imaginatively revel in the gloom of a Universe gone black, but consoles himself out of his knowledge:

O soul, be patient: thou shalt findA little matter mend all this,Some strain of music to thy mind,Some praise for skill not spent amiss.

In the peace of a churchyard he can write:

Nay, were my last hope quenched, I here would sitAnd praise the annihilation of the pit.

He lives through the moments of dejection and awaits, with sure hope, those moments when

Life and joy are one—we know not why—As though our very blood long breathless lainHad tasted of the breath of God again.

There are times when he is at almost that pitch of bliss for days together, and he says with each evening:

That I have known no dayIn all my life like this.

And with any dawn may come the exhilaration and the resolve

I too will something makeAnd joy in the making.

Very rarely some slight dogmatic statement is actually present, the affirmation of something which is not necessarily false because it is as old as man, and modestly put. "For howso'er man hug his care, The best of his art is gay." He sees Spring in Winter more often than Winter in Spring:

And God the Maker doth my heart make boldTo praise for writing works not understood,Who all the worlds and ages doth behold,Evil and good as one, and all as good.

It may by some be called an easy acceptance; by others the answer will be made that the refusal to accept does not get us much further. Mr. Bridges's own answer would perhaps be Lycomedes':

men who would live wellWeigh not these riddles, but unfold their lifeFrom day to day.

No attempt has been made in these brief notes to do more than indicate the artistic virtues and the outlook of Mr. Bridges: the elucidation is scant enough, and there was no space for reasoned criticism or for discussion of the qualities which he lacks and which other poets have possessed. But it may, in conclusion, be repeated that he is, as an artist, as careful and skilful as any poet who has ever written, and that as a man he has never lied, never posed, never assumed a factitious mood because it might impress or a factitious opinion because it might startle. Heissensible, and he is (in the best sense) commonplace in his outlook and in his affections and admirations; the changing conditions of our times have affected him little; he thinks more of the "man harrowing clods" than of the "breaking of nations"; the river, the cornfields, the village church, the domestic fireside, do obscure for him the mental and physical struggles of our world; he has his ideal of the soundmind in the sound body, and he cannot see why anything should modify it. But his philosophy will not stale when many of our controversialists have gone the way of Godwin and Malthus; and a reader who went to him for knowledge of how to live would certainly not be led on the rocks, little as Mr. Bridges may directly say on the subject. Nobody could be less like an apostle, but serenity, delight, cleanliness, and honesty are in him—and courage. The thought of death does not appal him, it braces him to work and joy. "Man hath his life," says Thetis in one of his dramas, "that it must end condemns it not for naught." The same certainty is in the lyrics:

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