Modern British Poetry Part 13

Like s.h.i.+ps, the anchor dropped, Furled every sail is; Mirrored with all their masts In a deep water.

A DREAM

My dead love came to me, and said: 'G.o.d gives me one hour's rest, To spend with thee on earth again: How shall we spend it best?'

'Why, as of old,' I said; and so We quarrelled, as of old: But, when I turned to make my peace, That one short hour was told.

_Laurence Binyon_

Laurence Binyon was born at Lancaster, August 10, 1869, a cousin of Stephen Phillips; in _Primavera_ (1890) their early poems appeared together. Binyon's subsequent volumes showed little distinction until he published _London Visions_, which, in an enlarged edition in 1908, revealed a gift of characterization and a turn of speech in surprising contrast to his previous academic _Lyrical Poems_ (1894). His _Odes_ (1901) contains his ripest work; two poems in particular, "The Threshold" and "The Baccha.n.a.l of Alexander," are glowing and unusually spontaneous.

Binyon's power has continued to grow; age has given his verse a new sharpness. "The House That Was," one of his most recent poems, appeared in _The London Mercury_, November, 1919.

A SONG

For Mercy, Courage, Kindness, Mirth, There is no measure upon earth.

Nay, they wither, root and stem, If an end be set to them.

Overbrim and overflow, If your own heart you would know; For the spirit born to bless Lives but in its own excess.

THE HOUSE THAT WAS

Of the old house, only a few crumbled Courses of brick, smothered in nettle and dock, Or a squared stone, lying mossy where it tumbled!

Sprawling bramble and saucy thistle mock What once was firelit floor and private charm Where, seen in a windowed picture, hills were fading At dusk, and all was memory-coloured and warm, And voices talked, secure from the wind's invading.

Of the old garden, only a stray s.h.i.+ning Of daffodil flames amid April's cuckoo-flowers, Or a cl.u.s.ter of aconite mixt with weeds entwining!

But, dark and lofty, a royal cedar towers By homely thorns: whether the white rain drifts Or sun scorches, he holds the downs in ken, The western vale; his branchy tiers he lifts, Older than many a generation of men.

_Alfred Douglas_

Lord Alfred Douglas was born in 1870 and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was the editor of _The Academy_ from 1907 to 1910 and was at one time the intimate friend of Oscar Wilde. One of the minor poets of "the eighteen-nineties," several of his poems rise above his own affectations and the end-of-the-century decadence. _The City of the Soul_ (1899) and _Sonnets_ (1900) contain his most graceful writing.

THE GREEN RIVER

I know a green gra.s.s path that leaves the field And, like a running river, winds along Into a leafy wood, where is no throng Of birds at noon-day; and no soft throats yield Their music to the moon. The place is sealed, An unclaimed sovereignty of voiceless song, And all the unravished silences belong To some sweet singer lost, or unrevealed.

So is my soul become a silent place....

Oh, may I wake from this uneasy night To find some voice of music manifold.

Let it be shape of sorrow with wan face, Or love that swoons on sleep, or else delight That is as wide-eyed as a marigold.

_T. Sturge Moore_

Thomas Sturge Moore was born March 4, 1870. He is well known not only as an author, but as a critic and wood-engraver. As an artist, he has achieved no little distinction and has designed the covers for the poetry of W. B. Yeats and others. As a poet, the greater portion of his verse is severely cla.s.sical in tone, academic in expression but, of its kind, distinctive and intimate. Among his many volumes, the most outstanding are _The Vinedresser and Other Poems_ (1899), _A Sicilian Idyll_ (1911) and _The Sea Is Kind_ (1914).

THE DYING SWAN

O silver-throated Swan Struck, struck! A golden dart Clean through thy breast has gone Home to thy heart.

Thrill, thrill, O silver throat!

O silver trumpet, pour Love for defiance back On him who smote!

And brim, brim o'er With love; and ruby-dye thy track Down thy last living reach Of river, sail the golden light-- Enter the sun's heart--even teach O wondrous-gifted Pain, teach Thou The G.o.d of love, let him learn how!

SILENCE SINGS

So faint, no ear is sure it hears, So faint and far; So vast that very near appears My voice, both here and in each star Unmeasured leagues do bridge between; Like that which on a face is seen Where secrets are; Sweeping, like veils of lofty balm, Tresses unbound O'er desert sand, o'er ocean calm, I am wherever is not sound; And, G.o.ddess of the truthful face, My beauty doth instil its grace That joy abound.

_William H. Davies_

According to his own biography, William H. Davies was born in a public-house called Church House at Newport, in the County of Monmouths.h.i.+re, April 20, 1870, of Welsh parents. He was, until Bernard Shaw "discovered" him, a cattleman, a berry-picker, a panhandler--in short, a vagabond. In a preface to Davies' second book, _The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp_ (1906), Shaw describes how the ma.n.u.script came into his hands:

"In the year 1905 I received by post a volume of poems by one William H. Davies, whose address was The Farm House, Kensington, S. E. I was surprised to learn that there was still a farmhouse left in Kensington; for I did not then suspect that the Farm House, like the Shepherdess Walks and Nightingale Lane and Whetstone Parks of Bethnal Green and Holborn, is so called nowadays in irony, and is, in fact, a doss-house, or hostelry, where single men can have a night's lodging, for, at most, sixpence.... The author, as far as I could guess, had walked into a printer's or stationer's shop; handed in his ma.n.u.script; and ordered his book as he might have ordered a pair of boots. It was marked 'price, half a crown.' An accompanying letter asked me very civilly if I required a half-crown book of verses; and if so, would I please send the author the half crown: if not, would I return the book. This was attractively simple and sensible. I opened the book, and was more puzzled than ever; for before I had read three lines I perceived that the author was a real poet. His work was not in the least strenuous or modern; there was indeed no sign of his ever having read anything otherwise than as a child reads.... Here, I saw, was a genuine innocent, writing odds and ends of verse about odds and ends of things; living quite out of the world in which such things are usually done, and knowing no better (or rather no worse) than to get his book made by the appropriate craftsman and hawk it round like any other ware."

It is more than likely that Davies' first notoriety as a tramp-poet who had ridden the rails in the United States and had had his right foot cut off by a train in Canada, obscured his merits as a genuine singer. Even his early _The Soul's Destroyer_ (1907) revealed that simplicity which is as _naf_ as it is strange. The volumes that followed are more clearly melodious, more like the visionary wonder of Blake, more artistically artless.

With the exception of "The Villain," which has not yet appeared in book form, the following poems are taken from _The Collected Poems of W. H. Davies_ (1916) with the permission of the publisher, Alfred A.

Knopf.

DAYS TOO SHORT

When primroses are out in Spring, And small, blue violets come between; When merry birds sing on boughs green, And rills, as soon as born, must sing;

When b.u.t.terflies will make side-leaps, As though escaped from Nature's hand Ere perfect quite; and bees will stand Upon their heads in fragrant deeps;

When small clouds are so silvery white Each seems a broken rimmed moon-- When such things are, this world too soon, For me, doth wear the veil of Night.