Part 8 (1/2)

'If I were king,' says Mr. Henley, in one of his most modest rondeaus,

'Art should aspire, yet ugliness be dear; Beauty, the shaft, should speed with wit for feather; And love, sweet love, should never fall to sere, If I were king.'

And these lines contain, if not the best criticism of his own work, certainly a very complete statement of his aim and motive as a poet. His little _Book of Verses_ reveals to us an artist who is seeking to find new methods of expression and has not merely a delicate sense of beauty and a brilliant, fantastic wit, but a real pa.s.sion also for what is horrible, ugly, or grotesque. No doubt, everything that is worthy of existence is worthy also of art-at least, one would like to think so-but while echo or mirror can repeat for us a beautiful thing, to render artistically a thing that is ugly requires the most exquisite alchemy of form, the most subtle magic of transformation. To me there is more of the cry of Marsyas than of the singing of Apollo in the earlier poems of Mr. Henley's volume, _In Hospital_: _Rhymes and Rhythms_, as he calls them. But it is impossible to deny their power. Some of them are like bright, vivid pastels; others like charcoal drawings, with dull blacks and murky whites; others like etchings with deeply-bitten lines, and abrupt contrasts, and clever colour-suggestions. In fact, they are like anything and everything, except perfected poems-that they certainly are not. They are still in the twilight. They are preludes, experiments, inspired jottings in a note-book, and should be heralded by a design of 'Genius Making Sketches.' Rhyme gives architecture as well as melody to verse; it gives that delightful sense of limitation which in all the arts is so pleasurable, and is, indeed, one of the secrets of perfection; it will whisper, as a French critic has said, 'things unexpected and charming, things with strange and remote relations to each other,' and bind them together in indissoluble bonds of beauty; and in his constant rejection of rhyme, Mr. Henley seems to me to have abdicated half his power. He is a _roi en exil_ who has thrown away some of the strings of his lute; a poet who has forgotten the fairest part of his kingdom.

However, all work criticizes itself. Here is one of Mr. Henley's inspired jottings. According to the temperament of the reader, it will serve either as a model or as the reverse:

As with varnish red and glistening Dripped his hair; his feet were rigid; Raised, he settled stiffly sideways: You could see the hurts were spinal.

He had fallen from an engine, And been dragged along the metals.

It was hopeless, and they knew it; So they covered him, and left him.

As he lay, by fits half sentient, Inarticulately moaning, With his stockinged feet protruded Sharp and awkward from the blankets,

To his bed there came a woman, Stood and looked and sighed a little, And departed without speaking, As himself a few hours after.

I was told she was his sweetheart.

They were on the eve of marriage.

She was quiet as a statue, But her lip was gray and writhen.

In this poem, the rhythm and the music, such as it is, are obvious-perhaps a little too obvious. In the following I see nothing but ingeniously printed prose. It is a description-and a very accurate one-of a scene in a hospital ward. The medical students are supposed to be crowding round the doctor. What I quote is only a fragment, but the poem itself is a fragment:

So shows the ring Seen, from behind, round a conjuror Doing his pitch in the street.

High shoulders, low shoulders, broad shoulders, narrow ones, Round, square, and angular, serry and shove; While from within a voice, Gravely and weightily fluent, Sounds; and then ceases; and suddenly (Look at the stress of the shoulders!) Out of a quiver of silence, Over the hiss of the spray, Comes a low cry, and the sound Of breath quick intaken through teeth Clenched in resolve. And the master Breaks from the crowd, and goes, Wiping his hands, To the next bed, with his pupils Flocking and whispering behind him.

Now one can see.

Case Number One Sits (rather pale) with his bedclothes Stripped up, and showing his foot (Alas, for G.o.d's image!) Swaddled in wet white lint Brilliantly hideous with red.

Theophile Gautier once said that Flaubert's style was meant to be read, and his own style to be looked at. Mr. Henley's unrhymed rhythms form very dainty designs, from a typographical point of view. From the point of view of literature, they are a series of vivid, concentrated impressions, with a keen grip of fact, a terrible actuality, and an almost masterly power of picturesque presentation. But the poetic form-what of that?

Well, let us pa.s.s to the later poems, to the rondels and rondeaus, the sonnets and quatorzains, the echoes and the ballades. How brilliant and fanciful this is! The Toyokuni colour-print that suggested it could not be more delightful. It seems to have kept all the wilful fantastic charm of the original:

Was I a Samurai renowned, Two-sworded, fierce, immense of bow?

A histrion angular and profound?

A priest? a porter?-Child, although I have forgotten clean, I know That in the shade of Fujisan, What time the cherry-orchards blow, I loved you once in old j.a.pan.

As here you loiter, flowing-gowned And hugely sashed, with pins a-row Your quaint head as with flamelets crowned, Demure, inviting-even so, When merry maids in Miyako To feel the sweet o' the year began, And green gardens to overflow, I loved you once in old j.a.pan.

Clear s.h.i.+ne the hills; the rice-fields round Two cranes are circling; sleepy and slow, A blue ca.n.a.l the lake's blue bound Breaks at the bamboo bridge; and lo!

Touched with the sundown's spirit and glow, I see you turn, with flirted fan, Against the plum-tree's bloomy snow . . .

I loved you once in old j.a.pan!

ENVOY.

Dear, 'twas a dozen lives ago But that I was a lucky man The Toyokuni here will show: I loved you-once-in old j.a.pan!