BY PRINCIPAL P. SESHADRI, M.A.

In a well-known passage of the Biographia Literaria, Coleridge writes: "The great works of past ages seem to a young man, things of another race in respect of which his faculties must remain passive and submissive even as to the stars and mountains. But the writings of a contemporary, perhaps not many years older than himself, surrounded by the same circumstances and disciplined by the same manners, possess a reality for him and inspire an actual friendship as of a man for a man. His very admiration is the wind which feeds and fans his hope. The poems themselves assume the properties of flesh and blood. To recite, to extol, to contend for them is but the payment of a debt due to one who exists to receive it."

But these do not exhaust the considerations which invest contemporary poetry with special interest to the student of literature. It is obvious that if his knowledge and appreciation of a literature are to be adequate and comprehensive, he must get into touch with its latest developments and enter into an energetic realisation of the best of contemporary writers. His intimate and living knowledge of the environment in which their work is produced adds considerably to his capacity for sympathetic understanding, and the confidence born of its qualities of excellence is also an inspiration for the future.

Facilities for such an appreciation of contemporary poetry have unfortunately not existed in our Universities, and judged by the syllabuses and curricula of studies even in the advanced courses, it would appear, they proceeded on the assumption, as Sir Quiller Couch puts it, "that English literature took to its bed and expired and was beatified" on a certain date, for instance, with the deaths of Tennyson and Browning. It is often taken for granted, without even the faintest acquaintance with recent and contemporary poetry, that the Muse has been silent in English or that her utterances, if any, are devoid of the true inspiration of song. Where this wrong belief is not due to actual ignorance, it is probably due to the widespread and perennial failing of man to be a blind laudator temporis acti. The best refutation of this pessimistic and essentially incorrect outlook is in a lively appreciation of the achievements of English poetry in our own times. They lend support to Matthew Arnold's fervent hope, expressed years ago: "In poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay."

Writing on the subject of Contemporary English Poetry today, it is impossible to begin without an expression of regret for the recent passing away of two great veterans of English song, Thomas Hardy and Robert Bridges. Both of them perhaps are more correctly described as eminent Victorians who survived into the opening decades of the twentieth century than as our contemporaries, but much of their work in poetry was in our own times and it will take a long time indeed before the void caused by their deaths can be filled in the world of English letters. By his profound insight into the pathos and tragedy of human life and delicate scrupulousness of artistic workmanship, Thomas Hardy has left an imperishable name behind him, while Robert Bridges will also be long remembered for his admirable treatment of nature, choice poetic expression and unerring ear for subtle music. Students of literature have had hardly any time for an adequate appreciation of the latter's Testament of Beauty, when he has suddenly departed from their midst, leaving a wondering world still haunted by the charms of his swan-song.

It is not by virtue of mere official precedence as Poet Laureate that one has to begin this study with a treatment John Masefield. He also happens to be, as has not always been the case in the history of the English laureateship, one of the ablest and most popular of our living English poets. The great vogue of his brilliant tales in verse, The Everlasting Mercy, The Widow of the Bye-Street, Dauber, Daffodil Fields and Reynard the Fox is recalling the halcyon days of Byron's popularity, though it is not necessarily in itself an index of high poetic excellence.

In the case of no other contemporary, it may be observed, is the impress of autobiographical vicissitudes so deeply marked as in that of Masefield. He has passed through strange experiences, tramped his way across continents, lived by manual labour of various kinds, served as a waiter in American hotels, and been on the sea as a cabin-boy and sailor, and it is surprising that his capacity for poetry should have survived all these phases of life; it is in itself a tribute to the reality of his poetic inspiration. The whole story may be read in his own words, in the stirring lines of his Biography, and every reader of his poetry will recognise the strenuous background of toil and suffering to all his work. He is no poet for the drawing-room, entertaining some fair listener with stories of knights and fairies and long-spun romances of love, but one who sings of the grim tragedies of life, of domestic happiness marred by vice, of legitimate ambitions frustrated by the perversities of fate, of boisterous passions awakened by strange happenings and of terrible conflicts of mind and soul.

It is probably some index of the trend of modern literary taste that tales of this kind should command such wide audience and the discerning student will notice a similar phenomenon in other branches of literature and art. This is the necessary reaction from the easy and graceful sentimentality of some of the productions of Victorian verse, a correction of the decadence in taste characterised by Lord Morley in the words: "The truth is, we have for long been so debilitated by pastorals, by graceful presentations of the Arthurian legend for drawing-rooms, by idyll not robust and Theocritean, by verse directly didactic, that a rude blast of air from the outside welter of human realities is apt to give a shock, that might well show in what simpleton's paradise we have been living. The ethics of the rectory parlour set to music, the respectable aspirations of the sentimental curate married to exquisite verse, the everlasting glorification of domestic sentiment in blameless princes and others, as if that were the poet's single province and the divinely appointed end of all art, as if domestic sentiment included and summed up the whole throng of passions, strife and desire; all this might seem to be making valetudinarians of us all. Our public is beginning to measure the right and possible in art by the superficial probabilities of life and manners within a ten-mile radius of Charing Cross."

Besides vividness of poetic description and intense vigour of diction, the most distinguishing quality of John Masefield is probably his wonderful capacity for rapid narrative which has suggested comparisons with Chaucer, though the parallel should not be pushed too far and must not, of course, be understood as implying equality of powers. Masefield cannot lay claim to the broad humanity, the soul-refreshing buoyancy of humour and wonderful variety of theme of the illustrious Father of English Poetry, but he is undoubtedly of the same descent as William Morris and other followers of Chaucer in the art of narrative song. He could exclaim with Morris:

Would that I

That Masefield has some portion of the mastery of Chaucer will be evident from any random examination of the tales in verse. He plunges into the narration with all the directness and self-confidence of Chaucer:

It is however necessary to enter an, emphatic protest against two features of Masefield's work, which if allowed to develop into widespread literary tendencies, will bode no good to the future of English, or of any other poetry. One is his intense gloom of out-look, having an eye only for the seamy side of life almost unrelieved by aspects of happiness. The representation of the realities of life is proper enough ambition for the poet or dramatist, but life is not all darkness and for those who have eyes to see, "the poetry of earth is never dead", even in realms other than mere beauties of nature, in the very lives of the human souls around us. Another is the extreme unconventionality of poetic diction, running riot to license in places, or lapsing into the mere trivialities of prose. He outdoes even Walt Whitman, in spite of his careful adherence to the principles of metre, and if serious poetry can deteriorate into verse such as this,

it is time to cry "halt" and call upon people to go back to the masters of the past, in spite of any risks that may be involved in the way of propitiating the conventional too much in poetry.

One of his recent critics has rightly complained: "If in an inn or in the street, we hear foul language, there is no necessity–unless as evidence in a police court–to repeat in detail what was said. In literature, even in poetry, to convey an atmosphere of corruption and to indicate moral corruption is possible, without explicitly describing the corrupt act or recording the exact un-clean word. If we cannot do so, our place is with the police court reporters and we have no business in literature, still less in poetry." And again, "in reading poetry one does not wish to be reminded of Billingsgate market or a butcher's shop."

From the standpoint of pure poetic inspiration, as well as of real artistic workmanship, reference must be made next, to the leader of the Irish School of English poets, Mr. W. B. Yeats, who is destined to leave a lasting impression on the world of poetry as well as of drama. It has rightly been said of him by one of his American admirers that "he is the greatest poet in the English language that Ireland has ever produced", a remark whose value will be realised when there is any knowledge and recollection of the work of Moore "the sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong" who dedicated all the chords of his national harp to "light, freedom and song." But Mr. Yeats is the embodiment of the spirit of pure poetry, a denizen of elfland and a singer of mystic vision whose passionate worship of the Muses knows no distraction. It is probably enough to say of his poetry that there are few more peaceful havens in contemporary literature, offering refuge to readers from the feverish excitement of modern civilisation. There will be wide yearning for the poet's ideal:

He will always be of special interest to Indians, as it was his discriminating and enthusiastic praise of the Gitanjali, introduced into the English language, that began Rabindranath Tagore's recognition in the West.

In the course of an inspiring essay on The Poet's Place in the Scheme of Life, Sir William Watson defines the function of the poet to be, "to see the world through a kind of ecstasy; to heighten and emphasise its lineaments, though without distorting them; to see vividly, to paint nobly and to feel romantically whatever in this universe is to be seen and felt and painted." He is the next poet deserving of consideration and it may be said, at the outset, that he has lived up admirably in his work to his own high ideal. It is no ordinary compliment to a poet to say that he has realised with great success, and in a very effective manner, all these noble aims and Sir William's work continues to be distinguished by loftiness of purpose and sound inspiration. At a time when the dignity of poetic composition is seriously threatened by over-zealous ideas of freedom from convention and poetry would like to revel in aspects of life which had better not be over-emphasised in art, it is delightful to be entertained by one who is a great believer in the best masters of song and whose constant endeavour is to see that "the ancient ancestral lineaments reappear" in his work and "the noble tradition in which he was nurtured is being nobly perpetuated." He is not one of those who dislike and resent sound and solid workmanship, who think it one of the signs of genius to be careless of finish and scornful of technique; who fail to comprehend that real inspiration can work hand in hand with careful craftsmanship, not extinguished or hampered by it, but informing and ennobling what would otherwise be scarcely better than dull, mechanic toil. He will fashion his verse with the minutest care and the most scrupulous sense of self-criticism, in the wake of the great traditions of singers like Virgil and Tennyson, that he may have, in the end, the very legitimate and proud satisfaction of declaring to the world:

In any case, it is hardly possible to expect anything more of an individual.

Considerations of space prevent detailed reference to the numerous aspects of excellence in his work, the beauty of epigrammatic expression, the delicacy and refinement of poetic feeling, the spotless purity of vocabulary and the general atmosphere of finished workmanship. Special reference must, however, be made to the somewhat novel feature found in his work–for the first time on any effective scale in English poetry–of the poetic treatment of poets themselves, of the vivid description of their work, in verse. Sir William has no hesitation in saying that poets and their works are among the most beautiful objects of the world and he has therefore sung of them with great affection and enthusiasm:

The capacity to render into verse the facts of literary criticism is seen not only in such occasional expressions as the "frugal note of Gray", "the lonely vesper-chime" of Collins, but also in longer passages occurring mainly in the course of his admirable elegiac poems on Burns, Wordsworth, Tennyson and Matthew Arnold and in poems like Shelley's Centenary. Here is a vivid characterization of the poetry of the age of Pope, calculated to make a more lively impression on the mind of the student than all the sombre passages of prose found in the numerous histories of English literature, written by professional experts:

The description of the part played by those who heralded the Romantic Movement, each in his own small measure, even before the appearance of Wordsworth and Coleridge, is not less vivid, in spite of the increased complication of literary ideas involved in the sketch:

The shrill and boisterous imperialism of Rudyard Kipling has raised such a wall of adverse prejudice against him in India, that it seems almost a hopeless task to secure any recognition of his real poetic qualities, at least in this country. But even the most hypercritical judge of his poetic work must pay a tribute of praise to his astonishing poetic energy, freedom of movement, vividness of description, sense of humour though with occasional lapses into violence, and imaginative power ranging from scene to scene with meteoric speed and brilliance. Nor is he entirely bereft of the more delicate touches of lyric song, though he is essentially a poet of action and movement in their more energetic aspects.

When allowance is made for the fact that Kipling is a satirist and his verse must sometimes necessarily offend the susceptibilities of his readers–he has not spared his own countrymen in India–it should be possible for the Indian student to look upon his work with less than the usual prejudice. It is necessary to draw attention to the fact that there are numerous poems in his work in which he has expressed his warm and intimate sympathy with aspects of Indian life and civilization. This element may appear somewhat inconsistent with his unqualified approval of the Englishman's work in India, but it exists in him, as one can see from his successful attempts at dealing with the emotional workings of the Indian mind, or describing with enthusiasm the Indian background of his poems. There is truth in Chesterton's paradoxical remark that "he has an Indian element which makes him exquisitely sympathetic with the Indian; a vague Jingo influence which makes him sympathetic with the man that crushes the Indian; a vague journalistic sympathy with the man that misrepresents everything that has happened to the Indian."

Rudyard Kipling was born in India and it is due to the poet to remember the real affection for the land of his birth which he has expressed on more than one occasion, in verse as well as in prose. In his dedicatory lines to his Seven Seas, he is proud of claiming Bombay as his mother:

The injustice has also been done to him of representing him as a prophet of disunion, anxious to emphasise the difference of the two races which have met in India. His oft-quoted couplet, "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet" occurs, as is unfortunately not generally known, in a passage intended to emphasise the common nature of humanity, for the next lines run:

Sir Henry Newbolt is another poet, almost of similar type, whose work makes a wide appeal allover the Empire by his fine sense of patriotism and his energetic rendering of heroic episodes in British history. It is difficult to say if occasionally there are not lapses into moods which are dangerously near national insolence, but he celebrates the great events of history with an eloquence and energetic realisation of vivid detail which more than compensate for such failings. We can still hear in his verse the drum of Drake sounding in the Channel, or join in his greeting to Admirals All:

Sir Henry Newbolt has exhibited strong Indian interest in his poems and there are several of them dealing with themes relating to this country, furnishing a vivid verse-comment on some events which have made a difference to the course of Indian history: Gillespie, Seringapatam, the Ballad of John Nicholson and the Guides at Kabul. The Indian interest continues to be sustained in his work, as in the fine Ballad of Sir Pratap Singh he wrote the other day, on the kinship of all the bold soldiers of the earth, whatever their caste or creed:

It is, however, when we come to the work of Alfred Noyes that we are filled with the greatest confidence with regard to the work of the younger generation of poets. Mr. Noyes has already to his credit a considerable volume of verse of great merit and of even greater promise, and English readers are not likely to let die the numerous lyrics and narrative poems with which he has enriched the language. His kinship is really with the Elizabethans of the past and he has in him noble longings for which the only parallel is probably in the lives of some of the early singers. His verse is enriched with the spirit of adventure and awakened to the noble enthusiasm of high endeavour; but it is at the same time deeply rooted in the primary emotions of man and he is also conversant in his imagination with numerous worlds of imperishable beauty. He will continue to live in the fairy world of his boyhood, in spite of the busy environments of modern life:

If the element of the pure imaginative poet has found expression in The Loom of Years, The Flower of Old Japan, The Forest of Wild Thyme and The Enchanted Island, the sturdy patriotism of the poet and his glowing enthusiasm for the achievements of the Anglo-Saxon race to which he is proud to belong, are embodied in the epic poem, Drake. It was the deep conviction of the historian, Froude, that the great heroes of the Elizabethan period deserved commemoration in epic song, and it is interesting to see that it has been done by Alfred Noyes, at least with regard to the greatest of them, Francis Drake. The epic is marred in places by diffusion of treatment and the narrative has not the fire and energy associated with epics of the Homeric type, but it will probably not be grudged in the long run a place of permanent interest in English literature.

Mr. Noyes has, in addition, deep scholarship and fine culture and his Tales of the Mermaid Tavern bring back the ‘spacious times’ of Elizabeth before us and we are inspired by the presence, in flesh and blood, of the great writers at the altar of whose song the student of literature has learnt to worship from his early youth. We have again the wonderful old pageant before us of wit and song and love presented with great elaborateness of detail:

And here is the Elysium, still in existence for us and welcoming us to share in its revelries. There is also a strong classical element which illumines his work with pleasant reminiscence of all that is bright in the literature of Greece and Rome.

We have had a long and distinguished tradition in English literature of the treatment of the poetry of childhood, starting with Blake and Wordsworth and coming down to Stevenson and Swinburne, but a most remarkable addition to this list of poets is another contemporary of ours, Mr. Walter de la Mare. This is no place to enter into the controversy regarding the allegation that such pictures of the romance of childhood are only imaginary and not true to fact, that they are usually what the grown-up man thinks of childhood rather than what the child feels about its own environment; but Mr. de la Mare has succeeded in producing work of an enduring kind. The full value of his work will be realised when it is remembered that this does not exhaust his achievement and it is possible to claim success for him in descriptive poetry and also in the treatment of love. A tribute must also be paid to his artistic economy of workmanship.

A somewhat novel phenomenon generated by the sordid industrial conditions of today over practically allover the civilised world, is the work of Mr. W. W. Gobson whose stories are full of tragic seriousness and shake the very foundations of a man's faith in a moral Providence guiding the affairs of the world. He has been called "the laureate of modern industrialism" and the "Hogarth of contemporary poetry." It is not merely that he constantly describes characters like

but he also tells pathetic stories which leave an unforgettable impression on the mind. His sympathies are all with the poor and the oppressed, the miner and the factory labourer struggling with adverse material circumstances and the destiny which seems to revel in harshness towards them. He could have said with Masefield,

It is hardly possible to discuss here every poet worthy of mention in connection with this subject, but room must be found for Mr. W. H. Davies who is primarily a Nature poet and who has succeeded in producing enduring work in a department which has been explored repeatedly during centuries of English poetry. It is now more than a hundred years since Wordsworth complained that the world was too much with us and it is not surprising that there is even a more distressful cry raised by Mr. Davies, amidst the feverish excitement of a more complicated civilisation :

This review must now stop, though there are a number of others who deserve treatment;– Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie whose work gives the fullest expression to the spirit of our time; Mr. George Russell more well known as ‘A. E.’ on whom the thought of India and the East has made a profound impression; Mr. John Drinkwater who is perhaps greater as a dramatist than as a poet, but whose rich imagination and wealth of poetic vocabulary has secured for him a permanent place; the members of the Sitwell family who are offering a bold challenge to all accepted traditions of poetic expression; Mr. A. E. Houseman who can produce great emotional power, in spite of a rigid exclusion of ornament and whose Shropshire Lad will always hum in the ears of lovers of genuine poetry–and numerous others.

It may be said, in conclusion, that nothing is more gratifying to the student of literature than the almost exuberant outburst of song in England today. Far from interfering with the progress of poetry, as was feared, the war has intensified the love of poetry, all round, a phenomenon which was perceived by discerning eyes even during the progress of the struggle. The immediate presence of the great problems of life and death, and the mighty questions of right and wrong involved in the war, opened the lips of the gifted with poetic utterance, while even the ordinary soldier in the trenches exhibited striking appreciation of the imperishable elements of true literature. From the sorrow and excitement of the war, people have turned once again to the eternal consolations of song. The tendencies towards increased interest in poetry, visible immediately before the war, have strengthened and there is much that is hopeful in the productions of even the youngest generation of contemporary poets. No fuller treatment is possible here, but it is hoped that the achievement of the present, with its consequent promise of the future, has been amply demonstrated. Is further inducement needed for entry into the world of contemporary poetry, and should not the student who has till now been indifferent to its beauties, begin to "sit in the meadow," in the exquisite words of Euripides, "and pluck with glad heart the spoil of the flowers, gathering them one by one?"

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