Part 11 (1/2)

So, she was gone, she who had been so near, So breathing-warm--soft mouth and hands and hair-- A moment since. Had she been really there, Close at his side and had he kissed her? It seemed Unlikely as something somebody else had dreamed And talked about at breakfast, being a bore.”

The first thing we feel tempted to say about this poem is that we should vastly prefer to be possessed of an Olympian libido for Leda than to be burdened with John Ridley's ”feebly sceptical, inefficient, profoundly unhappy” emotion for Jenny. Jove was, at any rate, healthy in his l.u.s.ts: there is something terribly anaemic about our modern love-making, with our one eye on the intellect lest we should do anything without a reason. I am fully aware that this is not criticism: it is merely making a note of the feeling that is uppermost in our minds on finis.h.i.+ng the poem. But that is one of the reasons why we should read Aldous Huxley: he is not lacking in daring: what he sees and feels he shows: he is very boyish in his desire to shock: in these days one would have thought that there was no one left to shock except the undergraduate, and those who preserve the callowness of the undergraduate through life. He exaggerates the importance of material joys and miseries: he is easily disgusted: his fastidious intellect rebels at many things that most of us accept complacently ... but it is to his credit that he makes us feel that we ought to be more fastidious, that we ought to think more, that we ought to accept less. At present he is engaged in the process of destruction, a joyous, youthful pastime: when he grows up he will give us something constructive. At present we rejoice in his vitality, energy and alertness. The rest will come. Above all, he is generously endowed with the comic spirit: that alone would make him readable in such an age of dullness.

V

THE POEMS OF ROBERT GRAVES

There are not many reasons why we should read Robert Graves, but one reason is of such outstanding importance that it overshadows the want of many. While Siegfried Sa.s.soon and Osbert Sitwell have vented their vitriol on the old, Mr Graves in _Country Sentiment_ has run away into the land of nursery rhymes as an escape from the haunting horrors of our post-war era. There are strong men of little imagination who have wiped off the memory of the war from their minds like chalk-marks off a slate: there are others who will be haunted by it for the rest of their lives.

Robert Graves is one of the latter:

”Gulp down your wine, old friends of mine, Roar through the darkness, stamp and sing And lay ghost hands on everything, But leave the noonday's warm suns.h.i.+ne To living lads for mirth and wine.

I met you suddenly down the street, Strangers a.s.sume your phantom faces, You grin at me from daylight places, Dead, long dead, I'm ashamed to greet Dead men down the morning street.”

That is why he prays that

”[But may] the gift of heavenly peace And glory for all time Keep the boy Tom who tending geese First made the nursery rhyme.”

Only in the contemplation of childish toys can he regain repose. But nursery rhymes and childish toys are as flimsy as gossamer, the latter too easily get broken, the former are too often patently absurd.

There is a gnat-like thinness even in this delicious little song:

”Small gnats that fly In hot July And lodge in sleeping ears, Can rouse therein A trumpet's din With Day-of-Judgment fears.

Small mice at night Can wake more fright Than lions at midday.

An urchin small Torments us all Who tread his p.r.i.c.kly way.

A straw will crack The camel's back, To die we need but sip, So little sand As fills the hand Can stop a steaming s.h.i.+p.

One smile relieves A heart that grieves Though deadly sad it be, And one hard look Can close the book That lovers love to see.”

He listens to the pale-bearded Ja.n.u.s, who urges him to

”Sing and laugh and easily run Through the wide waters of my plain, Bathe in my waters, drink my sun, And draw my creatures with soft song; They shall follow you along Graciously with no doubt or pain.”

So he extols the simple rhymes that we learnt in childhood's days and seeks to add to them.

”So these same rhymes shall still be told To children yet unborn, While false philosophy growing old Fades and is killed by scorn.”

Unfortunately it is not given to any modern to imitate with any degree of success either the ballads our ancestors loved or the nursery rhymes which all children have learnt: this age is too sophisticated and this avenue of escape is denied to Mr Graves: one of the lessons that we find most painful in the learning is that we are the product of our own age and cannot get away from it. Mr Graves antic.i.p.ates his reviewers in his _L'Envoi_ when he says:

”Everything they took from my new poem book But the fly-leaf and the covers.”

But there are one or two other things I should leave inside the singularly attractive covers, and one of them is this:

”Restless and hot two children lay Plagued with uneasy dreams, Each wandered lonely through false day A twilight torn with screams.