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Art. 6.-THE WAR AND THE POETS.

1. The Cliffs. The Clouds.

By Charles M. Doughty.

London: Duckworth, 1909, 1912.

2. Singsongs of the War. By Maurice Hewlett. London: Poetry Bookshop, 1914.

3. War Harvest: 1914. By Arthur K. Sabin. East Sheen : Temple Sheen Press, 1914.

4. Philip the King and other Poems. By John Masefield. London: Heinemann, 1914.

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London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1915.

7. 1914 and other Poems. By Rupert Brooke. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1915.

And other works.

TENNYSON handsomely excused the poet in war-time. But indeed the most harshly practical mind would scarcely need to excuse 'the song that nerves a nation's heart.' It would not be unreasonable, however, before that line of argument was admitted, to ask to be shown such a song. Actually to 'nerve a nation's heart' must always be a quite extraordinary accomplishment for poetry. When the present war began it was expected, among other wonders, that a great outburst of patriotic poetry would accompany it. We certainly had the outburst; but history will scarcely find that the English temper owed much to the verses which the newspapers lavished on us. It was not altogether the fault of the

verses. As the first bewilderment-a state not favourable to poetic influence-passed off, there followed a mood which did not at all require poetic influence; the tragic gravity of the time was sufficient in itself. What Mr Kipling said, with his trenchant symbolism:

"There is nothing left to-day

But steel and fire and stone,'

the nation already knew to be mere truth; and, in its heightened sense of itself, had already felt the thrill of his conclusion:

'Who stands if freedom fall?

Who dies if England live?'

Mr Kipling had once more spoken for his country. The gain was not encouragement, but expression. Thus it turned out that the very state of things which at first seemed likely to realise the ideal of Tennyson's phrase, made that realisation unnecessary. It seems to have been otherwise in Germany. There a nation, in a state not far off mesmerism, found itself profoundly responding, like an hypnotic patient to extravagant and ignoble suggestion, to Herr Lissauer's fiery rhapsody—a hymn which we may easily allow to be perhaps as good as poetry essentially insane can be. But indeed the occurrence in war-time of the electrifying song, the song that nerves a nation's heart, always depends, probably, less on the quality of the poetry than on the momentary psychology of the nation. If the nation needs electrifying, it will certainly find the song to do it; a sort of communal whimsy will decide on it. And it will probably not be a very good song; Lillibullero,' which is said to have been remarkably electrifying, may perhaps stand as typical. Tipperary' is about level with 'Lillibullero,' but is hardly a case in point, as its warlike significance is entirely accidental; it came from the ruck of musichall sentimentality, and had but the vaguest suitability in rhythm and feeling-the irresistible word Tipperary is doubtless the real secret of its success.

In short, this greatest of wars has not revealed to us any really Tyrtæan singer; and even Signor D'Annunzio, who evidently did wonders in Italy, found prose eloquence more to his purpose than poetry. No doubt we have had poems which accomplished something less than wholesale encouragement; and a poem which improves understanding or determination in the smallest fraction of the nation is not to be despised. But there is no reason why war-poetry, any more than other poetry, should be required to perform a specific function like encouragement; it may very well be merely expression. Patriotic poetry is, of course, a form of expression; it is expression polarised, so to speak, by a pre-determined purpose or morality; in fact, it is a kind-the highest kind—of didactic poetry. But it is convenient for criticism, and the intention is sufficiently clear, if we assume a distinction between patriotic poetry and poetry which merely expresses the fact of the war in one of its aspects.

There is something very valuable in the latter sort of poetry. Poetic expression implies not merely intense apprehension of a thing; it implies also an apprehension which is by its very nature measured and firmly outlined. Limit and order and coherence are from the first the essential qualities of the thought which, by flowering into appropriate outward shape, becomes poetry. And precisely here is the value in poetic expression of the events and emotions that fill such a time as this. It is terribly likely that these events and emotions, when we are most conscious of them, are least submissive to mental control. Certainly it is most necessary that they should have power over our thoughts; but it is most necessary, too, that they should not abuse their power, by refusing their proper limits in thought, by throwing thought into disorder and incoherence. And, when poetry expresses them to us, they come to us not only in an intense realisation; it is a realisation that is, by its very nature, orderly and coherent; the essential manner of the realisation is shapely and continent and strictly outlined.

There has been an obvious assumption underlying this preface; namely, that poetry, to be worth discussion at all, must be good poetry. Our brief apologetics for warpoetry would not apply to a very considerable proportion of what has been printed as such. It would, indeed, be a futile industry to review the whole mass of versification for which the war has been responsible. Perhaps some German will do that for us when the war is well over, and deduce from it something wonderful and comprehensive. Here, however, the intention is only to review as much of the English war-poetry as seems likely to survive the tumult of its origin, with some slight mention of a few eminent failures. The review will not pretend to be exhaustive of our poetic successes; in sifting such an accumulation of verses, some successes may have been forgotten, and there may be some concealed. And among the compositions which are here ignored, there are certainly some which are not merely excusable, but laudable, in their spirit; it is only as poetry that they will not do. Mr Harold Begbie's energetic recruiting verses, for instance, very well served their

immediate purpose; and having done that, there they end. Some exceptionally indefatigable historian may read them in the future; but it will hardly be in the cause of literary history. It is on what promises to be the concern of literary history that we are now employed.

It will be for the convenience of this review if we adopt the rough distinction already described. There is, first, the decisively patriotic poetry-poetry which directly stimulates patriotism, or which celebrates, by occasion of the war, the idea of England, its claims and its glories; and secondly there is poetry which is content merely to express the fact of the war in one of its innumerable aspects. Anyone who has had the industry to read at all extensively in our war-poetry must have soon come to the conclusion that a certain measure of success is more easily obtained in the second than in the first of these two classes. A good deal of the merely expressive verse has been on a quite respectable level of accomplishment; though not much has gone beyond this. On the other hand there has been little patriotic poetry that has not been mere mouthing or sentimentality; but, when it has been successful, it has been of far more conspicuous artistic merit than the other kind. After all, when war-poetry is the business in hand, the frankly patriotic poet is only taking the line of least resistance, or at any rate the line along which natural passion flows strongest. He who takes advantage of that current will, with good steering, have a greater course than he who keeps in slack water; but there the steering is easier. It is as risky for a poet as for a boatman, to venture into an especially vehement rush of his element; whether it be passion or water, to yield one's direction to it may always become to abandon oneself to it.

But before reviewing in some detail the English poetry prompted by the war, the odd fact should be mentioned that the most complete and, until Rupert Brooke's sonnets appeared, the most remarkable translation into poetry of the war's horror and splendour, was made some years before the war started. Mr Charles M. Doughty published The Cliffs' in 1909 and The Clouds' in 1912. These poems were not warnings of the probability of war with Germany; they were impassioned prophetic realisations of the war that was, in Mr

Doughty's mind, as certain to come as the seasons themselves. They were laughed at; the present writer gladly takes this opportunity of confessing himself ashamed at having joined in the laughter. But literary history, surely, has nothing stranger than the fulfilment of Mr Doughty's extraordinary prophetic dramas; what should we think if the Pers' turned out to be composed as an anticipation of Salamis? Mr Doughty, to be sure, was out in some of his prophecy. His war, for instance, in. both books is a German invasion of England; but then our war is not yet done; he may prove more right in this matter than we care to think. Certainly he has proved entirely right in another matter, where most of his readers must have thought him entirely wrong. We can see now that a very little knowledge of history, from Waterloo down to the Boxer Expedition and the Herrero rebellion, ought to have prepared us for Prussian frightfulness'; but, when The Cliffs' and 'The Clouds' were first published, Mr Doughty's clear-sighted pictures of German war-policy were mostly considered a decidedly malicious eccentricity. Similarly, few would have agreed with his version of modern German psychology, of which 'frightfulness' is only a very partial expression; but Mr Doughty, in 1909 and 1912, saw through all the genial appearances to the exact formidable truth. In one respect, however, his prophecy was very fortunately wrong. The politicians have not done near so badly as he expected; the populace of London has not found it necessary to hang them on the lamp-posts. But he foresaw the unification into a single purpose of all the jarring elements of English life, which is, at last, beginning to come about; and he made his Germans realise what this would mean :

'Were their sands

Knit by some frost to granite, they in War

Should be invincible.'

The Germans, let us hope, will some time perceive the truth of that.

But the main thing is that, apart from detail, these dramas are, in essential fact and essential feeling, a profoundly truthful rendering of the war as it has actually come to pass. If any one wishes to uphold the poet as

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