Part 9 (1/2)

If this doesn't make you rush out and buy her poems, nothing will. It is the topmost level of her achievement, and it is an achievement that even so musical a poet as Walter de la Mare would not be ashamed of having written. Where, I would know, has the love of little material things been so deliciously, so navely confessed by any other poet? Listen to her in rebellious mood:

”You preach to me of laws, you tie my limbs With rights and wrongs and arguments of good, You choke my song and fill my mouth with hymns, You stop my heart and turn it into wood.

I serve not G.o.d, but make my idol fair From clay of brown earth, painted bright with blood, Dressed in sweet flesh and wonder of wild hair By Beauty's fingers to her changing mood.

The long line of the sea, the straight horizon, The toss of flowers, the prance of milky feet, And moonlight clear as gra.s.s my great religion, And sunrise falling on the quiet street.

The coloured crowd, the unrestrained, the gay, And lovers in the secret sheets of night Trembling like instruments of music, till the day Stands marvelling at their sleeping bodies white.”

Here, surely, is that love of beauty, finely expressed, which is the first thing we look for in any true poet. She invokes the aid of her ”three musketeers of faithful following,” Love, Humour and Rebellion, and these three stalwarts never desert her, and one finds oneself wis.h.i.+ng that some other poets had had the good sense to recruit the services of such helpful henchmen.

Especially pleasant is it to find that she has not yet outgrown her youthful pessimism: once youth has pa.s.sed, time cries for self-expression in other ways than these:

”There are songs enough of love, of joy, of grief: Roads to the sunset, alleys to the moon: Poems of the red rose and the golden leaf, Fantastic faery and gay ballad tune.

The long road unto nothing I will sing, Sing on one note, monotonous and dry, Of sameness, calmness and the years that bring No more emotion than the fear to die.

Grey house, grey house and after that grey house, Another house as grey and steep and still: An old cat tired of playing with a mouse, A sick child tired of chasing down the hill.”

There are nothing like enough songs of love or of joy, and no one knows that better than Iris Tree, but Youth loves to drench itself in hopeless greyness, if only to run through the whole gamut of human emotions, ”just for fun.” It is like a child's dressing up in a myriad different costumes:

”I see myself in many different dresses ...

I see myself the child of many races, Poisoners, martyrs, harlots and princesses; Within my soul a thousand weary traces Of pain and joy and pa.s.sionate excesses....”

Much more significant of maturity is her bizarre _Sonnet for Would-be Suicides_ (that is my t.i.tle for it, not hers):

”How often, when the thought of suicide With ghostly weapon beckons us to die, The ghosts of many foods alluring glide On golden dishes, wine in purple tide To drown our whim. Things danced before the eye Like ta.s.selled grapes to Tantalus: the sly Blue of a curling trout, the battened pride Of ham in frills, complacent quails that lie Resigned to death like heroes--July peas, Expectant bottles foaming at the brink-- White bread, and honey of the golden bees-- A peach with velvet coat, some prawns in pink, A slice of beef carved deftly, Stilton cheese, And cups where berries float and bubbles wink.”

One at least of her faithful musketeers has served her to excellent purpose in this eminently philosophical poem. Uncle Max's eyes must twinkle with sheer merriment every time he reads this: it must be pleasant to have a niece so capable of profiting by his genius. Another friend of the family, Rupert Brooke, must have appreciated the panegyric on Worms. He may have directly inspired it:

”Mouth of the dust I kiss, corruption absolute, Worm, that shall come at last to be my paramour, Envenomed, unseen wanderer who alone is mute, Yet greater than G.o.ds or heroes that have gone before.

For you I sheave the harvest of my hair, For you the whiteness of my flesh, my pa.s.sion's valour, For you I throw upon the grey screen of the air My prism-like conceptions, my gigantic colour.

For you the delicate hands that fas.h.i.+on to make great Clay, and white paper, plant a tongue in silence, For you the battle-frenzy, and the might of hate, Science for giving wounds, and healing science.

For you the heart's wild love, beauty, long care, Virginity, pa.s.sionate womanhood, perfected wholeness, For you the unborn child that I prepare, You, flabby, boneless, brainless, senseless, soulless!”

More childishness, but how delightful, how exactly in the spirit of Donne.

One string on which she continually harps is found most lucidly expressed in this stanza:

”Loneliness I love, And that is why they have called me forth into the streets.

Loneliness I love, But the crowd has clutched at me with fawning hands ...

My spirit speaks In the scented quietness of a divine melancholy Murmuring the tunes For which my dreams are the delicate instruments.

The shadowy silences Have made me beautiful and dressed me in velvet dignities, And that is why The noise of the tambourines has maddened my soul into dancing, And I am clad In the l.u.s.t-lipped whispering of future caresses, Holiness I love, And touching the virginal pierced feet of martyrs, The crucified feet Nestled among lilies and hallowing candles.

Holiness I love And the melodious absolution falling on my sins.

But that is why Blasphemous priests have forced my hands to tear The vesture of secrecy Which hides the human nakedness of G.o.d.”

That is a very definitely true cry from the depths and it is oft-repeated.