Part 26 (1/2)

His original poetry is intellectual but simple, sometimes metaphysical and always interesting technically in its fluent and variable rhythms.

A collection of his best verse up to 1919 was published under the t.i.tle, _Poems: First Series_.

A HOUSE

Now very quietly, and rather mournfully, In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires, And all the stubble-fields that were so warm to him Keep but in memory their borrowed fires.

And I, the traveller, break, still unsatisfied, From that faint exquisite celestial strand, And turn and see again the only dwelling-place In this wide wilderness of darkening land.

The house, that house, O now what change has come to it.

Its crude red-brick facade, its roof of slate; What imperceptible swift hand has given it A new, a wonderful, a queenly state?

No hand has altered it, that parallelogram, So inharmonious, so ill-arranged; That hard blue roof in shape and colour's what it was; No, it is not that any line has changed.

Only that loneliness is now accentuate And, as the dusk unveils the heaven's deep cave, This small world's feebleness fills me with awe again, And all man's energies seem very brave.

And this mean edifice, which some dull architect Built for an ignorant earth-turning hind, Takes on the quality of that magnificent Unshakable dauntlessness of human kind.

Darkness and stars will come, and long the night will be, Yet imperturbable that house will rest, Avoiding gallantly the stars' chill scrutiny, Ignoring secrets in the midnight's breast.

Thunders may shudder it, and winds demoniac May howl their menaces, and hail descend: Yet it will bear with them, serenely, steadfastly, Not even scornfully, and wait the end.

And all a universe of nameless messengers From unknown distances may whisper fear, And it will imitate immortal permanence, And stare and stare ahead and scarcely hear.

It stood there yesterday; it will to-morrow, too, When there is none to watch, no alien eyes To watch its ugliness a.s.sume a majesty From this great solitude of evening skies.

So lone, so very small, with worlds and worlds around, While life remains to it prepared to outface Whatever awful unconjectured mysteries May hide and wait for it in time and s.p.a.ce.

_Lascelles Abercrombie_

Lascelles Abercrombie was born in 1884. Like Masefield, he gained his reputation rapidly; totally unknown until 1909, upon the publication of _Interludes and Poems_, he was recognized as one of the greatest metaphysical poets of his period. _Emblems of Love_ (1912), the ripest collection of his blank verse dialogues, justified the enthusiasm of his admirers.

Many of Abercrombie's poems, the best of which are too long to quote, are founded on scriptural themes, but his blank verse is not biblical either in mood or manner. It is the undercurrent rather than the surface of his verse which moves with a strong religious conviction.

Abercrombie's images are daring and brilliant; his lines, sometimes too closely packed, glow with a dazzling intensity that is warmly spiritual and fervently human.

FROM ”VASHTI”

What thing shall be held up to woman's beauty?

Where are the bounds of it? Yea, what is all The world, but an awning scaffolded amid The waste perilous Eternity, to lodge This Heaven-wander'd princess, woman's beauty?

The East and West kneel down to thee, the North And South; and all for thee their shoulders bear The load of fourfold s.p.a.ce. As yellow morn Runs on the slippery waves of the spread sea, Thy feet are on the griefs and joys of men That sheen to be thy causey. Out of tears Indeed, and blitheness, murder and l.u.s.t and love, Whatever has been pa.s.sionate in clay, Thy flesh was tempered. Behold in thy body The yearnings of all men measured and told, Insatiate endless agonies of desire Given thy flesh, the meaning of thy shape!

What beauty is there, but thou makest it?

How is earth good to look on, woods and fields, The season's garden, and the courageous hills, All this green raft of earth moored in the seas?

The manner of the sun to ride the air, The stars G.o.d has imagined for the night?

What's this behind them, that we cannot near, Secret still on the point of being blabbed, The ghost in the world that flies from being named?

Where do they get their beauty from, all these?

They do but glaze a lantern lit for man, And woman's beauty is the flame therein.