JOAQUIN MILLER [Footnote: The quotations from the poems of Joaquin Miller appearing in this chapter are used by permission of the Harr Wagner Publishing Company, owners of copyright.]
A STUDY OF HOME, FATHER LOVE, GREAT MOMENTS WITH JESUS CHRIST, HEAVEN, AND GOD
It was a warm, sunny May California day; and the day stands out, even above California days. A climb up the Piedmont hills back of Oakland, California, brought us to "The Heights," the unique home of Joaquin Miller, poet of the West and poet of the world.
A visit to the homes of the New England poets is always interesting because of historic and literary associations, but none of them has the touch of the unique personality of Miller.
Most people interested in things literary know that Miller, with a great desire to emphasize the freedom of the individual, built a half dozen separate houses, one for himself, one for his wife, one for his daughter Juanita, several for guests from all over the world who were always visiting him, and a little chapel. Literary men from every nation on the planet visited Miller at "The Heights." Most people interested knew also that Miller, with his own hands, had built monuments of stone to Fremont, the explorer, to Moses, and to Browning. There was also a granite funeral pyre for himself, within sight of the little "God's Acre," in which he had buried some eighteen or twenty outcasts and derelicts of earth who had no other plot to call their own in which to take their last long sleep.
We expected to find this strange group of buildings deserted, but after inspecting the chapel, which was modeled after Newstead Abbey, and after rambling through the old-fashioned garden that Miller himself had planted—a garden with a perfect riot of colors—suddenly a little woman with a sweet face walked up to us out of the bushes and said, "Are you lovers of the poet?"
I humbly replied that we were. Then she said: "I am Mrs. Miller, and you are welcome. When you have looked around, come into Mr. Miller's own room and be refreshed. After that I will read to you from his writings."
It sounded stagey at first, but the more we knew of this sweet-faced widow of the poet the less we found about her that was not simple and sweet and natural.
After wandering around, through the fascinating paths, under the great cross of a thousand pine trees, among the roses, and flowers that he had planted with his own hands, we came at last to the little house that Mrs. Miller had called "The poet's own room," and there were we refreshed with cool lemonade and cakes. In the littleness of my soul I wondered when we were to pay for these favors, but the longer we remained the more was I shamed as I saw that this hospitality was just the natural expression of a woman, and a beautiful daughter's desire to extend the hospitality of the dead poet himself, to any who loved his writings.
There was the bed on which Miller lay for months writing many of his greatest poems, including the famous "Columbus." There was his picturesque sombrero, still hanging where he had put it last on the post of the great bed. His pen was at hand; his writing pad, his chair, his great fur coat, his handkerchief of many colors which in life he always wore about his neck; his great heavy, high-topped boots. And it was sunset.
Then Mrs. Miller began to read. As the slanting rays of as crimson a sunset as God ever painted were falling through the great cross of pine trees, Mrs. Miller's dramatic, sweet, sympathetic voice interpreted his poems for us. I sat on the bed from which Miller had, just a few months previous to that, heard the great call. The others sat in his great rockers. Mrs. Miller stood as she read. I am sure that "Columbus" will never be lifted into the sublime as it was when she read it that late May afternoon, with its famous, and thrilling phrase "Sail on! Sail on! And on! And on!"
A STUDY OF HOME
I had thought before hearing Mrs. Miller read "The Greatest Battle that Ever was Fought" that I had caught all the subtle meanings of it, but after her reading that great tribute to womanhood I knew that I had never dreamed the half of its inner meaning:
"The greatest battle that ever was fought—- Shall I tell you where and when? On the maps of the world you will find it not: It was fought by the Mothers of Men.
"Not with cannon or battle shot, With sword or nobler pen; Not with eloquent word or thought From the wonderful minds of men;
"But deep in a walled up woman's heart; A woman that would not yield; But bravely and patiently bore her part; Lo! there is that battlefield.
"No marshaling troops, no bivouac song, No banner to gleam and wave; But Oh these battles they last so long—From babyhood to the grave!
"But faithful still as a bridge of stars She fights in her walled up town; Fights on, and on, in the endless wars; Then silent, unseen goes down I
"Ho! ye with banners and battle shot, With soldiers to shout and praise, I tell you the kingliest victories fought Are fought in these silent ways."
Then, as if to give us another illustration of her great poet husband's home love, she read for us "Juanita":
"You will come, my bird, Bonita? Come, for I by steep and stone, Have built such nest, for you, Juanita, As not eagle bird hath known. . . . . . . . . . All is finished! Roads of flowers Wait your loyal little feet. All completed? Nay, the hours Till you come are incomplete!"
Who that hath the blessing of little children will not understand this waiting, yearning love of Miller for his ten-year-old girl, who was at that time in New York with her mother waiting until "The Heights" should be finished? Who does not understand how incomplete the hours were until she came?
"You will come, my dearest, truest? Come, my sovereign queen of ten: My blue sky will then be bluest; My white rose be whitest then."
GREAT MOMENTS WITH CHRIST
Miller had a profound, deep, sincere love for Christ, and more than any poet I know did he express with deep insight and with deeper sweetness the great moments in Christ's life. He made these great moments human. He brings them near to us, so that we see them more clearly. He makes them warm our hearts, and we feel that Christ's words are truly our words in this, our own day. In that great scene where Christ blessed little children, who has ever made it sweeter and nearer and warmer with human touch?
"Then reaching his hands, he said, lowly, 'Of such is my Kingdom,' and then Took the little brown babes in the holy White hands of the Saviour of Men;
"Held them close to his heart and caressed them, Put his face down to theirs as in prayer, Put their hands to his neck and so blessed them With baby-hands hid in his hair."
The scene with the woman taken in adultery he has also made human and near in these lines, called "Charity":
"Who now shall accuse and arraign us? What man shall condemn and disown? Since Christ has said only the stainless Shall cast at his fellows a stone?"
That Jesus Christ died for the world, that Calvary had more meaning for humanity than anything else that has ever happened, Miller put in four lines:
"Look starward! stand far, and unearthy, Free souled as a banner unfurled. Be worthy! O, brother, be worthy! For a God was the price of the world!"
He caught Christ's teaching, and the whole gist of the New Testament expressed in that immortal phrase "Judge not," and he wrote some lines that have been on the lips of man the world over, and shall continue to be as long as men speak poetry. A unique pleasure was mine on this afternoon. I had noticed something that Mrs. Miller had not noticed in this great poem. She quoted it to us:
"In men whom men condemn as ill I find so much of goodness still; In men whom men pronounce Divine I find so much of sin and blot, I hesitate to draw the line Between the two, where God has not!"
Miller wrote it that way when he first wrote it, in his younger days. It was natural for Mrs. Miller to quote it that way. But I had discovered in his revised and complete poems that he had changed a significant phrase in that great verse. He had said, "I do not dare," in the fifth line, instead of "I hesitate." His mature years had made him say, "I do not dare to draw the line!"
GOD AND HEAVEN
He knew that heaven and God were near to humanity and earth. He was not afraid of death. He teaches us all Christian courage in this line of thought. He knew that his "Greek Heights" were very near to heaven because he knew that anywhere is near to heaven to the believer:
"Be this my home till some fair star Stoops earthward and shall beckon me; For surely God-land lies not far From these Greek Heights and this great sea!"
He yearned to teach men to believe in this God and his nearness; this God in whom he believed with all his heart. This cry out of his soul, written just a few days before his death, is like Tennyson's "Crossing The Bar" in that it was his swan song:
"Could I but teach man to believe, Could I but make small men to grow, To break frail spider webs that weave About their thews and bind them low. Could I but sing one song and lay Grim Doubt; I then could go my way In tranquil silence, glad, serene, And satisfied from off the scene. But Ah! this disbelief, this doubt, This doubt of God, this doubt of God The damned spot will not out! Wouldst learn to know one little flower, Its perfume, perfect form, or hue? Yea, wouldst thou have one perfect hour Of all the years that come to you? Then grow as God hath planted, grow A lovely oak, or daisy low, As he hath set his garden; be Just what thou art, or grass or tree. Thy treasures up in heaven laid Await thy sure ascending soul: Life after life—be not afraid I"
Yes, Miller believed in home, in Christ, and God and immortality. He believed that heaven and God were near to man, and in his last days there was no doubt. Thus his own writings confirm what Mrs. Miller, on that memorable afternoon, made certain by her warm, tear-wet, personal testimony. And as she quoted these last lines, and the sun had set behind the Golden Gate, which we could even then see from the room in which we sat, we felt as though Miller himself were near, listening as she read, listening with us. And these are the last verses that she quoted, which seem fit verses with which to close this chapter study of Joaquin Miller:
"I will my ashes to my steeps, I will my steeps, green cross, red rose, To those who love the beautiful, Come, learn to be of those."
And is it any wonder that, as we sat in the twilight listening to that invitation to his home, these words made the red roses and the green cross of Christ against the hill our very own? And is it any wonder that, as she quoted these last verses we felt him near to us?
"Enough to know that I and you Shall breathe together there as here Some clearer, sweeter atmosphere, Shall walk, high, wider ways above Our petty selves, shall learn to lead Man up and up in thought and deed.
and,
"Come here when I am far away, Fond lovers of this lovely land, And sit quite still and do not say, 'Turn right or left and lend a hand,' But sit beneath my kindly trees And gaze far out yon sea of seas. These trees, these very stones could tell How much I loved them and how well, And maybe I shall come and sit Beside you; sit so silently You will not reck of it."
[Illustration: ALAN SEEGER]
IV
ALAN SEEGER [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from poems by Alan Seeger. Published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. ]
POET OF YOUTH, BEAUTY, FAME, JOY, LOVE, DEATH, AND GOD
Rupert Brooke and Alan Seeger—so shall their names be linked together forever by those who love poetry. In the first place, they were much alike: buoyant, young; loving life, living life; and both dying for the great cause of humanity in the world's greatest war. Brooke the Englishman; Seeger the American; so are they linked. Both were but lads in their twenties; both vivid as lightning and as warm as summer sunshine in their personalities; both truly great poets, who had, even in the short time they lived, run a wide gamut of poetic expression.
I am not saying that either Brooke or Seeger may be called a Christian poet; nor am I saying that they may not be called that. This war in which they have given their lives will make a vast difference in the definition of what a Christian is. I can detect no orthodox Christian message in either of their dreamings, but I do find in both poets a clean, high moral message, and therefore give them place in this pulpit of the poets.
The wide range of this young American's writing astonishes the reader. He died very young: while the morning sun was just lifting its head above the eastern horizon of life; while the heavens were still crimson, and gold, and rose, and fire. What he might have written in the steady white heat of noontime and in life's glorious afternoon of experience, and in its subtle charm of "sunset and the evening star," one can only guess. But while he lived he lived; and, living, wrote. He dipped his pen in that same gold and fire of the only part of life he knew, its daybreak, and wrote. No wonder his writing was warm; no wonder he wrote of Youth, Beauty, Fame, Joy, Love, Death, and God.
THE SONG OF YOUTH
Nor Byron, nor Shelley, nor Keats, nor Swinburne, nor Brooke, nor any other poet ever sounded the heights and depths and glory of Youth as did Seeger. He sang it as he breathed it and lived it, and just as naturally. His singing of it was as rhythmic as breathing, and as sweet as the first song of an oriole in springtime. In his fifth sonnet, a form in which he loved to write and of which he was a master, he sings youth in terms "almost divine":
"Phantoms of bliss that beckon and recede—, Thy strange allurements, City that I love, Maze of romance, where I have followed too The dream Youth treasures of its dearest need And stars beyond thy towers bring tidings of."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
He loved New York; he loved Paris; he loved any city because youth and life and romance and love were there. He drank all of these into his soul like a thirsty desert drinks rain; to spring to flowers and life and color again. He drank of life and youth as a flower drinks of dew, or a bird at a city fountain, with fluttering joy, drinks, singing as it drinks. You feel all of that eagerness in "Sonnet VI" where he says:
"Where I drank deep the bliss of being young, The strife and sweet potential flux of things I sought Youth's dream of happiness among!"
Poems by Alan Seeger.
THE SONG OF BEAUTY
And closely akin to Youth always is Beauty. Beauty and Youth walk arm in arm everywhere, and one may even go so far as to say anywhere. Youth cares not where he goes as long as Beauty walks beside him. He will walk to the ends of the earth. Indeed, he prefers the long way home. Anybody who has known both Youth and Beauty knows this, and it need not be argued about much, thank God. And so it is most natural to find this young poet singing the lyric of Beauty even as he sings the lyric of Youth. How understandingly he addresses Beauty, and how reverently in "An Ode to Natural Beauty"!
"Spirit of Beauty, whose sweet impulses, Flung like the rose of dawn across the sea, Alone can flush the exalted consciousness With shafts of sensible divinity, Light of the World, essential loveliness."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
Then, talking about the "Wanderer" as though that character were some far off person no kin to the poet (a way that poets have to hide the pulsing of their own hearts), Seeger writes of Beauty. But we who know him cannot be made to think that this "Wanderer" is a fellow we do not know; "nor Launcelot, nor another." It is he, the poet of whom we write. It bears his imprint. It bears his trade mark. It is stamped "with the image of the king." He cannot hide from us in this:
"His heart the love of Beauty held as hides One gem most pure a casket of pure gold. It was too rich a lesser thing to hold; It was not large enough for aught besides."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
THE SONG OF FAME
Fame always lures Youth. Perhaps later experience proves that it is indeed a hollow thing, hardly worth striving for. But to Youth there is no goal that calls more insistently than Fame. Youth and Beauty and Fame—how closely akin they are! If Beauty and Fame keep him company, Youth is next the stars with delight. And so it is natural that this young poet shall sing the song of Fame with exuberant enthusiasm. He says in "The Need to Love":
"And I have followed Fame with less devotion, And kept no real ambition but to see Rise from the foam of Nature's sunlit ocean My dream of palpable divinity."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
And while we are listening to the music of these human stars, the music of the celestial spheres set down in human words, let us catch again the poetic echo of that third line and let it linger long as we listen, "Rise from the foam of Nature's sunlit ocean," and
"Forget it not till the crowns are crumbled, Till the swords of the kings are rent with rust; Forget it not till the hills lie humbled, And the Springs of the seas run dust,"
that, as Edwin Markham sings, this echo is the echo of the eternal poetic music.
With these wondrous lines he answers the question which he himself asks in "Fragments," "What is Success?"
"Out of the endless ore Of deep desire to coin the utmost gold Of passionate memory: to have lived so well That the fifth moon, when it swims up once more Through orchard boughs where mating orioles build And apple trees unfold, Find not of that dear need that all things tell The heart unburdened nor the arms unfilled."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
Joy comes next in our treatment of the outstanding singings of this singing poet, and he himself has given us the connecting link in the following lines:
"He has drained as well Joy's perfumed bowl and cried as I have cried: Be Fame their mistress whom Love passes by."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
And thus smoothly we pass from Fame to Joy and hear him sing of this fourth high peak of Youth.
THE SONG OF JOY
Whatever he did, whatever he sang, whatever he lived, this man swept all things else aside and plunged in over head. He loved to swim and he loved to dive. Perhaps into his living and his writing he carried this athletic joy also, and as he lived he lived to the full. It seems so as one reads in "I Loved" these impassioned lines:
"From a boy I gloated on existence. Earth to me Seemed all sufficient and my sojourn there One trembling opportunity for joy."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
And then one pauses to weep awhile, and the lines grow dim as he reads them again to know that this man, who so loved to live, who gloated on existence, who saw life as a trembling opportunity for Joy, must leave it so soon. And yet he left it nobly. Again in "An Ode to Antares" he sings of Joy:
"What clamor importuning from every booth! At Earth's great market where Joy is trafficked in Buy while thy purse yet swells with golden Youth!"
Poems by Alan Seeger.
Kindly Age, Age who had not lost his love, always sings like that to Youth; always tells Youth to live while he may, play while the playworld is his. Every poet who has older grown, from Shakespeare to Lowell, and yet retained his love, has told us this. We expect it of older poets, but here a young poet sees it all clearly; that Youth must buy Joy while his purse is full with Youth. And ye who rob Youth of playtime, of Joy, ye capitalists, ye money makers and life destroyers, listen to this dead poet who yet lives in these words. Fathers, mothers, let childhood spend its all for Joy while the purse of Youth is full. It will be empty after while and it shall never be filled again with Youth. So says the Poet.
THE SONG OF LOVE
The discriminating reader of Seeger soon sees, however, that, while he sings as needs he must, because of the springs that are within him bubbling over, sings of Youth, and Beauty, and Fame, and Joy, yet he knows that these are not all of life. He knows that there are higher things than these. These higher things are Love, Death, God—what a trilogy!
Love is all. He is sure of this. He is true to this. Romantic love he knows—love of comrade, love of God. In this same "An Ode to Natural Beauty" his final conclusion is that Love is best after all:
"On any venture set, but 'twas the first For Beauty willed them, yea whatever be The faults I wanted wings to rise above; I am cheered yet to think how steadfastly I have been loyal to the love of Love!"
Poems by Alan Seeger.
This is more than romantic love; it is the "love of Love."
And lest this be not strong enough, he sings in "The Need to Love" as great a song as man ever heard on this great theme:
"The need to love that all the stars obey Entered my heart and banished all beside. Bare were the gardens where I used to stray; Faded the flowers that one time satisfied."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
Then, not content, he sets up an altar of poetry and dedicates it to Love and lights a fire of worship there, and leaves it not, nor night nor day:
"All that's not love is the dearth of my days, The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit, The temple in times without prayer, without praise, The altar unset and the candle unlit."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
If Love be not queen to him, the palace is cold and barren; the "altar unset and the candle unlit"
THE SONG OF DEATH
Like Brooke, a victim of the Hun, so Seeger, also a victim of the barbarian, seemed to feel the constant presence of Death, an unseen guest at the Feast of Youth and Joy and Fame and Love. Perhaps the war made these two imaginative poets think of Death sooner than Youth usually gives him heed. But most men will think of Death when they are face to face with the shadow day and night as were these soldier-crusading poets; when they see him stalking in every trench, in every wood, on every hill and road, and in every field and village. But how bravely he spoke of Death!—
"Learn to drive fear, then, from your heart. If you must perish, know, O man, 'Tis an inevitable part Of the predestined plan."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
And again in this same poem, "Makatooh," he sings of Death:
"Guard that, not bowed nor blanched with fear You enter, but serene, erect, As you would wish most to appear To those you most respect.
"So die, as though your funeral Ushered you through the doors that led Into a stately banquet hall Where heroes banqueted;
"And it shall all depend therein Whether you come as slave or lord, If they acclaim you as their kin Or spurn you from their board."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
What a challenge this is to all who must die in this war, to all lads who are giving their lives heroically in God's great cause of liberty in his world—this challenge to die so that you may be welcomed into the fraternity of heroes!
Without doubt Seeger's best-known poem, and one which illustrates also most strongly his attitude toward Death, is that poem entitled "I Have a Rendezvous With Death," from which we quote:
"I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade; When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple blossoms fill the air— I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
* * * * *
"God knows, 'twere better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear,… But I've a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town; When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
THE SONG OF GOD
From the lighter thoughts of Youth, Joy, Fame, Beauty, through the "long, long thoughts of Youth"; through Love and Death it is not a long way to climb to God. We would not expect this young poet to be thinking much in this direction, but he does just the same. I have even found those who say that he was not a God-man, but these poems refute that slander on a dead man and poet. I find him singing in "The Nympholept":
"I think it was the same: some piercing sense Of Deity's pervasive immanence, The life that visible Nature doth indwell Grown great and near and all but palpable He might not linger but with winged strides Like one pursued, fled down the mountainsides."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
This reminds one instantly of the haunting Christ of Thompson's "The Hound of Heaven." And again in the presence of War's death the poet felt that other and greater presence without doubt, as these words prove:
"When to the last assault our bugles blow: Reckless of pain and peril we shall go, Heads high and hearts aflame and bayonets bare, And we shall brave eternity as though Eyes looked on us in which we would see fair— One waited in whose presence we would wear, Even as a lover who would be well-seen, Our manhood faultless and our honor clean."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
And with magnificent acknowledgment of the divine plan of it all, of life and war and all, he sweeps that truly great poem, "The Hosts," to a swinging climax in its last tremendous stanza; which, fitting too, shall be the closing lines of this chapter on our dead American, martyred poet.
He first speaks of the marching columns of soldiers as "Big with the beauty of cosmic things. Mark how their columns surge!"
"With bayonets bare and flags unfurled, They scale the summits of the world—"
Poems by Alan Seeger.
And then:
"There was a stately drama writ By the hand that peopled the earth and air And set the stars in the infinite And made night gorgeous and morning fair, And all that had sense to reason knew That bloody drama must be gone through."
Poems by Alan Seeger.
ENGLISH POETS
JOHN OXENHAM
ALFRED NOYES
JOHN MASEFIELD
ROBERT SERVICE
RUPERT BROOKE
[Illustration: JOHN OXENHAM.]
V
JOHN OXENHAM [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from the following works The Vision Splendid, All's Well, and The Fiery Cross Published by George H. Doran Company, New York.]
WHO MAKES ARTICULATE THE VOICE OF WAR, PEACE, THE CROSS, THE CHRIST.
In the first volume of The Student in Arms, that widely read book of the war, Donald Hankey has a chapter on "The Religion of the Inarticulate," in which he shows that the "Tommy" who for so long has been accused of having no religion, really has a very definite one. He has a religion that embraces all the Christian virtues, such as love, sacrifice, brotherhood, and comradeship, but he has never connected these with either Christ or the church. His religion is the "Religion of the Inarticulate." Hankey then shows that this war is articulating religion as never before.
John Oxenham, Poet-Preacher, is giving articulation to the voice of Christianity—a voice ringing out from over and above the thunder of the guns, the blare, the flare, the outcry, the hurt, the pain and anguish of the most awful war that earth has ever suffered. Some of us have been thinking of this war in terms of Christian hope. We have thought that we see in it a new Calvary out of which shall come a new resurrection to the spiritual world. We have dreamed that men are being redeemed through the sacrifice, through the spirit of service and brotherhood thrust upon the world by war's supreme demands. We have thought all of this, but we have not been able to make it articulate. Now comes a poet to do it for us.
What magnificent hope sings out, even in the titles that Oxenham has selected for his books in these days of darkness, anguish and lostness. After his first book, Bees in Amber, comes that warm handclasp of strength: that thrill of hope; that word of a watchman in the night, like a sentinel crying through the very title of his second book, "All's Well." Then came The Vision Splendid, and soon we are to have The Fiery Cross. The publishers were kind enough to let me examine this last book while it was still in the proof sheets. It is the one great hope book of the war. Every mother and father who has a boy in the war, every wife who has a husband, every child who has a father will thrill with a new pride and a new dignity after reading The Fiery Cross.
WAR AND ITS VOICE
No poet has voiced America's reasons for being in the war as has Oxenham, and nowhere does he do it better than in "Where Are You Going, Great-Heart?" the concluding stanza of which sums up compactly America's high purposes:
"Where are you going, Great-Heart? 'To set all burdened peoples free; To win for all God's liberty; To 'stablish His sweet Sovereignty.' God goeth with you, Great-Heart!"
The Vision Splendid.
To those who go to die in war the poet addresses himself in lines which he titles "On Eagle Wings":
"Higher than most, to you is given To live—or in His time, to die; So, bear you as White Knights of Heaven— The very flower of chivalry! Take Him as Pilot by your side, And 'All is well' whate'er betide."
The Vision Splendid.
"If God be with you, who can be against you?" is the echo that we hear going and coming behind these great Christian lines. Indeed, behind every poem that Oxenham writes we can hear the echoes of some great scriptural word of promise, or hope or faith or courage. The Christian, as well as those who never saw the Bible or a church, will feel at home with this poet anywhere. The advantage that the Christian will have in reading him is that he will understand him better.
Turning to those who stay at home and have lost loved ones, with what sympathy and deep, tender understanding does he write in "To You Who Have Lost." You may almost see a great kindly father standing by your side, his warm hand in yours as he sings:
"I know! I know!— The ceaseless ache, the emptiness, the woe— The pang of loss— The strength that sinks beneath so sore a cross. 'Heedless and careless, still the world wags on, And leaves me broken,… Oh, my son I my son!'"
"Yea—think of this!— Yea, rather think on this!— He died as few men get the chance to die— Fighting to save a world's morality. He died the noblest death a man may die, Fighting for God, and Right, and Liberty— And such a death is Immortality."
All's Well.
If those who have lost loved ones "Over There" cannot be buoyed by that, I know not what will buoy them, what will comfort.
Oxenham too gives us a picture of a battlefield where birds sing and roses bloom, just as do Service and several other poets who have been in the midst of the conflict. We have become familiar with this picture, but no writer yet has caught its full, eternal meaning and pressed it down into three lines for the world as has this man; in "Here, There, and Everywhere":
"Man proposes—God disposes; Yet our hope in Him reposes Who in war-time still makes roses."
The Fiery Cross.
But this poet in his interpretation of war does not forget peace; does not forget that it is coming; does not forget that the world is hungry for it; does not forget that it is the duty of the poets and the thinking men and women of the world not only to get ready for it, but to lead the way to it.
PEACE AND ITS VOICE
In a remarkable poem called "Watchman! What of the Night?" we see this great heart standing sentinel on the walls of the world, watching the midnight skies red with the blaze and glow of carnage:
"Watchman! What of the night? No light we see; Our souls are bruised and sickened with the sight Of this foul crime against humanity. The Ways are dark—- 'I SEE THE MORNING LIGHT!'
* * * * *
"Beyond the war-clouds and the reddened ways, I see the promise of the Coming Days! I see His sun rise, new charged with grace, Earth's tears to dry and all her woes efface! Christ lives! Christ loves! Christ rules! No more shall Might, Though leagued with all the forces of the Night, Ride over Right. No more shall Wrong The world's gross agonies prolong. Who waits His time shall surely see The triumph of His Constancy; When, without let, or bar, or stay, The coming of His Perfect Day Shall sweep the Powers of Night away; And Faith replumed for nobler flight, And Hope aglow with radiance bright, And Love in loveliness bedight SHALL GREET THE MORNING LIGHT."
All's Well.
Then, as is most fair and logical, the poet tells us how we are to build again after peace comes. We must needs know that. The newspapers are full of a certain popular move—and success to it—to rebuild the destroyed cities of France and Belgium. But the rebuilding that the poet speaks of in "The Winnowing" is a deeper thing. It is a spiritual rebuilding without which there is no permanent peace in the world and no permanent safety for the material world.
"How shall we start, Lord, to build life again, Fairer and sweeter, and freed from its pain? 'Build ye in Me and your building shall be Builded for Time and Eternity.'"
All's Well.
There is the answer to the world's cry in short, sharp, succinct lines; compact as a biblical phrase; and as meaningful. Hearken it, ye world! Only in Him can the new spiritual world be built for "Time and Eternity." And only to those who so believe and hold shall the world belong henceforth. At least so says our poet:
"To whom shall the world henceforth belong And who shall go up and possess it?"
which question he himself answers in the same verse:
"To the Men of Good Fame Who everything claim— This world and the next—in their Master's great name—
"To these shall the world henceforth belong, And they shall go up and possess it; Overmuch, overlong, has the world suffered wrong, We are here by God's help to redress it."
The Fiery Cross.
And finally in this fight for peace he does not forget prayer, and in "The Prayer Immortal," which is introduced, as are so many of Oxenham's poems, by a phrase from the Bible, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done," he admonishes those who seek peace:
"So—to your knees—And, with your heart and soul, pray God That wars may cease, And earth, by His good will, Through these rough ways, find peace!"
The Fiery Cross.
THE CROSS AND ITS VOICE
The voice of the cross of Calvary is being heard this day of war as it has never been heard before. The world is resonant with its message. Every soldier, every nation, every home, every mother and father and child and wife who has suffered because of this war, shall henceforth understand the Christ and his cross the better. All through this writer's interpretations of the war we find the cross to the fore. To him the cross symbolizes the war. This war is the cross in a deep and abiding sense. In "Through the Valley" he says:
"And there of His radiant company, Full many a one I see, Who has won through the Valley of Shadows To the larger liberty. Even there in the grace of the heavenly place, It is joy to meet mine own, And to know that not one but has valiantly won, By the way of the Cross, his crown."
The Vision Splendid.
Thank God for that hope! Thank God for that word!
In "The Ballad of Jim Baxter" this same thought is more vividly and strongly set forth. It is the story of one type of German cruelty of which we have heard in the war dispatches several times and that have been confirmed on the spot; the story of the Germans nailing men to crosses. Jim Baxter suffered this experience:
"When Jim came to, he found himself Nailed to a cross of wood, Just like the Christs you find out there On every country road.
"He wondered dully if he'd died, And so, become a Christ; 'Perhaps,' he thought, 'all men are Christs When they are crucified.'"
The Vision Splendid.
And in this homely lad's homely way of putting his cruel experience who knows but that there may be such truth as yet we cannot see in the dark chaos of war?
THE CHRIST AND HIS VOICE
It isn't a far step from the cross to the Christ of the cross, and in this man's poetry the two mingle and commingle so closely that one overlaps the other. But always these two things stand out—the cross and the Christ. And in the new volume, The Fiery Cross, one finds many pages devoted to this great thought alone.
Of the tenderness of the Christ he speaks most sympathetically, having in mind again the lads that war has taken. In "The Master's Garden" hear him:
"And some, with wondrous tenderness, To His lips He gently pressed, And fervent blessings breathed on them, And laid them in His breast."
The Vision Splendid.
And then of his sweetness, referring again to the "Jim Baxter," we have a wonderful picture of the oft mentioned Comrade in White, who is so real to the wounded soldiers:
"His face was wondrous pitiful, But still more wondrous sweet; And Jim saw holes just like his own In His white hands and feet; But His look it was that won Jim's heart, It was so wondrous sweet.
"'Christ!'—said the dying man once more, With accent reverent, He had never said it so before, But he knew now what Christ meant—"
The Vision Splendid.
Oxenham has great faith in humanity. From time to time we find him expressing man's kinship with the stars and with God and Christ. "Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels" this poet takes seriously, thank God. This word from the Book means something to him. And so it is in a poem called "In Every Man" we see him finding Christ in every man:
"In every soul of all mankind Somewhat of Christ I find, Somewhat of Christ—and Thee; For in each one there surely dwells That something which most surely spells Life's immortality.
* * * * *
"And so, for love of Christ—and Thee, I will not cease to seek and find, In all mankind, That hope of immortality Which dwells so sacramentally In Christ—and Thee."
The Fiery Cross.
He feels Christ's eternity so much that he cries out for him continually and will not be satisfied without him. He knows that he must have the Christ if he wants to grow great enough to meet life's demands. In a poem, "A Prayer for Enlargement," which I quote in full because of its brevity, one feels this dependence:
"Shrive me of all my littleness and sin! Open your great heart wide! Open it wide and take me in, For the sake of Christ who died!
"Was I grown small and strait?— Then shalt Thou make me wide. Through the love of Christ who died, Thou—thou shalt make me great."
The Fiery Cross.
To the Christian the following quotation will mean much. In it we hear the echo of Masefield's The Everlasting Mercy; or of that marvelous story of the regeneration of a human soul in Tolstoy's The Resurrection; an old-fashioned conversion of a human being; a Paul's on the road to Damascus experience. And the tragedy is that just about the time that the world of literature is being fascinated with this story of "Rebirth" the church seems to be forgetting it. It is told in the first verse of Ex Tenebris—"The Lay of the King Who Rose Again":
"Take away my rage! Take away my sin! Strip me all bare Of that I did wear— The foul rags, the base rags, The rude and the mean! Strip me, yea strip me Right down to my skin! Strip me all bare Of that I have been! Then wash me in water, In fair running water, Wash me without, And wash me within, In fair running water, In fresh running water, Wash me, ah wash me, And make me all clean! —Clean of the soilure And clean of the sin, —Clean of the soul-crushing Sense of defilure, —Clean of the old self, And clean of the sin! In fair running water, In fresh running water, In sun-running water, All sweet and all pure, Wash me, ah wash me, And I shall be clean."
The Fiery Cross
GOD AND HIS VOICE
From the voice of Christ and the voice of the cross it is not far to hear the voice of God either in life or in John Oxenham's books. Behind the cross and behind the Christ stands the Father, and a treatment of this great poet's writings would not be complete if one did not quote a few excerpts from his writings to show that God was ever present "keeping watch above his own."
The first note we catch of the Father's voice is in "The Call of the Dead":
"One way there is—one only— Whereby ye may stand sure; One way by which ye may understand All foes, and Life's High Ways command, And make your building sure.—- Take God once more as Counselor, Work with Him, hand in hand, Build surely, in His Grace and Power, The nobler things that shall endure, And, having done all—STAND!"
The Vision Splendid.
And as the poet has walked the streets of America and elsewhere and has seen the service flag, which in "Each window shrines a name," he has felt God everywhere. In "The Leaves of the Golden Book" he comforts those who mourn:
"God will gather all these scattered Leaves into His Golden Book, Torn and crumpled, soiled and battered, He will heal them with a look. Not one soul of them has perished; No man ever yet forsook Wife and home, and all he cherished, And God's purpose undertook, But he met his full reward In the 'Well Done' of his Lord!"
The Vision Splendid.
So it is that over and over we hear this note, wrung from the experiences of war, that those who give up all, to die for God's plan, to take the cross in suffering that the world may be better; these shall have life eternal. And who dares to dispute it?
In "Our Share" we are admonished that we must find God anew:
"Heads of sham gold and feet of crumbling clay, If we would build anew and build to stay, We must find God again, And go His way."
All's Well.
Oxenham does not claim to fully understand the world cataclysm any more than some of the rest of us. If we all had to understand, we might find ourselves ineligible for the Kingdom, but the Book says everywhere, "He that believeth on me shall have everlasting life." And we can believe whether we understand or no. So voices the poet in "God's Handwriting":
"He writes in characters too grand For our short sight to understand; We catch but broken strokes, and try To fathom all the mystery Of withered hopes, of deaths, of life, The endless war, the useless strife,— But there, with larger, clearer sight, We shall see this— HIS WAY WAS RIGHT."
All's Well,
What better way to close this brief interpretation of our poet in this day of darkness and hate and hurt and war and woe and want, of seeing hopelessness and helplessness, than with these heartening lines from "God Is":
"God is; God sees; God loves; God knows. And Right is Right; And Right is Might. In the full ripeness of His Time, All these His vast prepotencies Shall round their grace-work to the prime Of full accomplishment, And we shall see the plan sublime Of His beneficent intent. Live on in hope! Press on in faith! Love conquers all things, Even Death."
All's Well.
[Illustration: ALFRED NOYES.]
VI
ALFRED NOYES [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes, two volumes, copyright, 1913, by the Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York.]
A STUDY OF CHILDHOOD, OF MANHOOD, CHRISTHOOD, AND GODHOOD
If one wants to find the tenderest, most completely sympathetic study of childhood, one that finds echo not only in the heart of the grown-up, but in the heart of children the world over, he must this day go to Alfred Noyes. If you want proof of this, read "The Forest of Wild Thyme" or "The Flower of Old Japan" to your children and watch them sit with open mouths and open hearts to hear these wonder fairy tales. And, further, if you are too grown-up to want to read Noyes for his complete sympathy with childhood, more universal even than our beloved Riley; and you want a poet that challenges you to a more vigorous manhood, a poet who calls man to his highest and deepest virility, read Noyes. Or, if you happen to need a clearer, firmer insight into the man of Galilee and Calvary, read Noyes; and, finally, if you want firmer, more rocklike foundations to plant your faith in God upon, read Noyes, for herein one finds all of these. From childhood to Godhood is, indeed, a wide range for a poet to take, and yet they are akin.
As another poet has said, none less than Edwin Markham, "Know man and you will know the deep of God." And as Noyes himself says in the introduction to "The Forest of Wild Thyme":
"Husband, there was a happy day, Long ago in love's young May, When, with a wild-flower in your hand You echoed that dead poet's cry— 'Little flower, but if I could understand!' And you saw it had roots in the depth of the sky, And there in that smallest bud lay furled The secret and meaning of all the world."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And when we know that the mother was talking about "Little Peterkin," their lost baby, we know that she meant that in a little child there lay furled "The secret and meaning of all the world."
And so, beginning with childhood, through those intermediate steps of manhood and Christhood, with Noyes leading us, as he literally leads the little tots through the mysteries of Old Japan and the Wild Thyme, let us go from tree to tree, and flower to flower, and hope to hope, and pain to pain, up to God, from whence we came. It is a clear sweet pathway that he leads us.
CHILDHOOD AND ITS GLORY
Noyes assumes something that we all know for truth: that "Grown-ups do not understand" childhood. But after reading this sweet poet we know that he does understand; and we thank God for him. In Part II of "The Forest of Wild Thyme" one sees this clearly.
"O, grown-ups cannot understand, And grown-ups never will, How short's the way to fairyland Across the purple hill: They smile: their smile is very bland, Their eyes are wise and chill; And yet—at just a child's command— The world's an Eden still."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
Thank the stars that watch over us in love that the great-hearted poets, and the children of the world—at least those little ones that a half-way Christian civilization has not robbed of childhood—know that "The world's an Eden still."
From the prelude to "The Flower of Old Japan" comes that same note, like a bluebird in springtime, that note of belief, of trust, of hope:
"Do you remember the blue stream; The bridge of pale bamboo; The path that seemed a twisted dream Where everything came true; The purple cheery-trees; the house With jutting eaves below the boughs; The mandarins in blue, With tiny tapping, tilted toes, With curious curved mustachios?
* * * * *
"Ah, let us follow, follow far Beyond the purple seas; Beyond the rosy foaming bar, The coral reef, the trees, The land of parrots and the wild That rolls before the fearless child In ancient mysteries: Onward, and onward if we can, To Old Japan, to Old Japan."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And "The Forest of Wild Thyme" is full of the echos of fairy tales and childhood rhymes heard the world over. Little Peterkin, who went with the children to "Old Japan," is dead now:
"Come, my brother pirates, I am tired of play; Come and look for Peterkin, little brother Peterkin, Our merry little comrade that the fairies took away."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And so, they go to the last place they saw him, the old God's Acre, and fall asleep amid the wild thyme blooming there. As they dream the thyme grows to the size of trees, and they wander about in the forest hunting for Peterkin.
As they hunted they found out who killed Cock Robin. They appeal to Little Boy Blue to help them hunt for Peterkin:
"Little Boy Blue, you are gallant and brave, There was never a doubt in those clear, bright eyes. Come, challenge the grim, dark Gates of the Grave As the skylark sings to those infinite skies!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
The King of Fairyland gives command to Pease-Blossom:
"And cried, Pease-blossom, Mustard-Seed! You know the old command; Well; these are little children; you must lead them on to Peterkin!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
They even discovered, as they were led on by Pease-Blossom and Mustard- Seed, how fairies were born:
"Men upon earth Bring us to birth Gently at even and morn! When as brother and brother They greet one another And smile—then a fairy is born!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And, too, they found why fairies die:
"But at each cruel word Upon earth that is heard, Each deed of unkindness or hate, Some fairy must pass From the games in the grass And steal through the terrible Gate."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And they learned what it took to make a rose:
"'What is there hid in the heart of a rose, Mother-mine?' 'Ah, who knows, who knows, who knows? A man that died on a lonely hill May tell you perhaps, but none other will, Little child.'
"'What does it take to make a rose, Mother-mine?' 'The God that died to make it knows. It takes the world's eternal wars, It takes the moon and all the stars, It takes the might of heaven and hell And the everlasting Love as well, Little child.'"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And they heard the old tales over:
"And 'See-Saw; Margery Daw,' we heard a rollicking shout, As the swing boats hurtled over our heads to the tune of the roundabout; And 'Little Boy Blue, come blow up your horn,' we heard the showmen cry, And 'Dickery Dock, I'm as good as a clock,' we heard the swings reply."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
Then at last they found their little brother Peterkin in "The Babe of Bethlehem."
And if this were not enough to make the reader see how completely and wholly and sympathetically Noyes understood the child heart, hear this word from his great soul:
"Kind little eyes that I love, Eyes forgetful of mine, In a dream I am bending above Your sleep and you open and shine; And I know as my own grow blind With a lonely prayer for your sake, He will hear—even me—little eyes that were kind, God bless you, asleep or awake!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
MANHOOD AND ITS VIGOR
Virility like unto steel is the very mark of Noyes. But as this study of Childhood has shown, it is a virility touched with tenderness. As Bayard Taylor sings:
"The bravest are the tenderest, The loving are the daring!"
And this is Noyes. Noyes knew Manhood, he sang it, he challenged it too, he crowned it in "Drake"; he placed it a little lower than the gods. Hear this supreme word, enough to lift man to the skies:
"Where, what a dreamer yet, in spite of all, Is man, that splendid visionary child Who sent his fairy beacon through the dusk!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
This tribute to Marlow—how eaglelike it is! How suggestive of heights, and mountain peaks and blue skies and far-flung stars!
"But he who dared the thunder-roll, Whose eagle-wings could soar, Buffeting down the clouds of night, To beat against the Light of Light, That great God-blinded eagle-soul, We shall not see him more!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
Then he makes us one with all that is granite and flower and high and holy in "The Loom of the Years":
"One with the flower of a day, one with the withered moon, One with the granite mountains that melt into the noon, One with the dream that triumphs beyond the light of the spheres, We come from the Loom of the Weaver, that weaves the Web of the years."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
From "Drake" again this ringing word:
"His face was like a king's face as he spake, For sorrows that strike deep reveal the deep; And through the gateways of a ragged wound Sometimes a God will drive his chariot wheels From some deep heaven within the hearts of men!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
CHRISTHOOD AND ITS CALVARY
From childhood to manhood through Christhood to Godhood is a progression that Noyes sees clearly and makes us see as clearly. Somehow Christ is very real to Noyes. He is not a historical character far off. He is the Christ of here and now; the Christ that meets our every need; as real as a dearly beloved friend next door to us. No poet sees the Christ more clearly.
First he caught the meanings of Christ's gospel of new birth. He was not confused on that. He knows:
"The task is hard to learn While all the songs of Spring return Along the blood and sing.
"Yet hear—from her deep skies, How Art, for all your pain, still cries, Ye must be born again!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And who could put his worship more beautifully than the poet does in "The Symbolist"?
"Help me to seek that unknown land! I kneel before the shrine. Help me to feel the hidden hand That ever holdeth mine.
"I kneel before the Word, I kneel Before the Cross of flame. I cry, as through the gloom I steal, The glory of the Name."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
Christ's face, and his life experiences, here and there slip out of the lines of this English poet with an insistence that cannot but win the heart of the world, especially the heart of the Christian. Here and there in the most unexpected places his living presence stands before you, with, to use another of the poet's own lines, "Words that would make the dead arise," as in "Vicisti, Galilee":
"Poor, scornful Lilliputian souls, And are ye still too proud To risk your little aureoles By kneeling with the crowd?
* * * * *
"And while ye scoff, on every side Great hints of Him go by,—Souls that are hourly crucified On some new Calvary!"
* * * * *
"In flower and dust, in chaff and grain, He binds Himself and dies! We live by His eternal pain, His hourly sacrifice."
* * * * *
"And while ye scoff from shore to shore From sea to moaning sea, 'Eloi, eloi,' goes up once more, 'Lama sabachthani!' The heavens are like a scroll unfurled, The writing flames above— This is the King of all the World Upon His Cross of Love!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And there in the very midst of "Drake," that poem of a great sea fighter, comes this quatrain unexpectedly, showing the Christ always in the background of the poet's mind. He uses the Christ eagerly as a figure, as a help to his thought. He always puts the Christ and his cross to the fore:
"Whence came the prentice carpenter whose voice Hath shaken kingdoms down, whose menial gibbet Rises triumphant o'er the wreck of Empires And stretches out its arms amongst the Stars?"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
Then in "The Old Skeptic" we hear these of the Christ in the concluding lines:
"I will go back to my home and look at the wayside flowers, And hear from the wayside cabin the kind old hymns again, Where Christ holds out His arms in the quiet evening hours, And the light of the chapel porches broods on the peaceful lane.
"And there I shall hear men praying the deep old foolish prayers, And there I shall see once more, the fond old faith confessed, And the strange old light on their faces who hear as a blind man hears— 'Come unto me, ye weary, and I will give you rest.'
"I will go back and believe in the deep old foolish tales, And pray the simple prayers that I learned at my mother's knee, Where the Sabbath tolls its peace, through the breathless mountain-vales, And the sunset's evening hymn hallows the listening sea."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
GODHOOD AT LAST AND SURELY
He finds God. There is no uncertainty about it. From childhood to Godhood has the poet come, and we have come with him. It has been a triumphant journey upward. But we have not been afraid. Even the blinding light of God's face has not made us tremble. We have learned to know him through this climb upward and upward to his throne.
At first it was uncertain. The poet had to challenge us to one great end in "The Paradox":
"But one thing is needful; and ye shall be true To yourself and the goal and the God that ye seek; Yea, the day and the night shall requite it to you If ye love one another, if your love be not weak!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
For he knew the heart hunger for God that was in every human breast:
"I am full-fed, and yet I hunger! Who set this fiercer famine in my maw? Who set this fiercer hunger in my heart?"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
From "Drake" comes that scintillating line: "A scribble of God's finger in the sky"; and an admonition to the preacher: "Thou art God's minister, not God's oracle!"
Nor did he forget that man, in his search for God, is, after all, but man, and weak! So from "Tales of a Mermaid Tavern":
"… and of that other Ocean Where all men sail so blindly, and misjudge Their friends, their charts, their storms, their stars, their God!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
Even like unto "Bo'sin Bill," who was and is a prevalent type, but not a serious type—that man who claims to be an atheist, but in times of stress, like unto us all, turns to God. And what humorous creatures we are! Enough to make God smile, if he did not love us so much:
"But our bo'sin Bill was an atheist still Ex-cept—sometimes—in the dark!"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And again from "The Paradox":
"Flashing forth as a flame, The unnameable Name, The ineffable Word, I am the Lord!"
"I am the End to which the whole world strives: Therefore are ye girdled with a wild desire and shod With sorrow; for among you all no soul Shall ever cease, or sleep, or reach its goal Of union and communion with the Whole Or rest content with less than being God."
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
And thus we find God, with Noyes. And I have saved for the last quotation one from "The Origin of Life," which the poet says is "Written in answer to certain scientific theories." I save it for the last because, strangely, it sums up all the journey that we have passed through, from childhood to God-hood:
"Watched the great hills like clouds arise and set, And one—named Olivet; When you have seen as a shadow passing away, One child clasp hands and pray; When you have seen emerge from that dark mire One martyr ringed with fire; Or, from that Nothingness, by special grace One woman's love-lit face…."
* * * * *
"Dare you re-kindle then, One faith for faithless men, And say you found, on that dark road you trod, In the beginning, God?"
Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes.
[Illustration: JOHN MASEFIELD.]
VII
JOHN MASEFIELD, POET FOR THE PULPIT [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from the following works: The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street, Salt Water Poems and Ballads, and Good Friday, published by The Macmillan Company, New York.]
To climb is to achieve. We like to see men achieve; and the harder that achievement is, the more we thrill to it. For that reason we all have a hope to climb a Shasta, or a Whitney, or a Hood to its whitest peak, and glory in the achievement. And because of this human delight in the climb we thrill to see a man climb out of sin, or out of difficulty, or out of defeat to triumph.
From "bar-boy" to poet is a great achievement, a great climb, or leap, or lift, whichever figure you may prefer, but that is exactly what John Masefield did.
Perhaps Hutton's figure may describe it better—"The Leap to God." At least ten years ago John Masefield, a wanderer on the face of the earth, found himself in New York city without friends and without means, and it was not to him an unusual thing to accept the position of "bar-boy" in a New York saloon. This particular profession has within its scope the duties of wiping the beer bottles, sweeping the floor, and other menial tasks.
And now John Masefield has within recent months come to New York city to be the lauded and feted. Newspaper reporters met him as his boat landed, eager for his every word; Carnegie Hall was crowded to hear him read from his own poetry; and his journey across the country was just a great triumph from New York to San Francisco.
Something had happened in those ten years. This man had achieved. This poet had climbed to God. This man had experienced the "Soul's Leap to God." He had found that Man of all men who once said, "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me." He always lifts men out of nothing into the glory of the greatest achievement. Yes, something had happened in those ten years.
And the things that had happened in those ten years are perfectly apparent in his writings if one follow them from the beginning to the end. And the things that had happened I shall trace through this poet's writings from the first, boyhood verses of "Salt Water Ballads" to "Good Friday"; and therein lies the secret; and incidentally therein lies some of the most thrilling human touches, vivid illustrations for the preacher; some of the most intensely interesting religious experiences that any biography ever revealed consciously or unconsciously.
I. THE SOUL PSYCHOLOGY OF HIS YOUTH IN "SALT WATER BALLADS"
One may search these "Salt Water Ballads" through from the opening line of "Consecration" to "The Song At Parting" and find no faint suggestion of that deep religious glory of "The Everlasting Mercy." This book was written, even as Masefield says, "in my boyhood; all of it in my youth." He has not caught the deeper meaning of life yet—the spiritual meaning—although he has caught the social meaning, just as Markham has caught it.
1. Social Consciousness
Even in "Consecration" we hear the challenging ring of a young voice who has wandered over the face of the earth and has taken his place with the "Outcast," has cast his lot with the sailor, the stoker, the tramp.
"Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road, The slave with the sack on his shoulders pricked on with the goad, The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load. "Others may sing of the wine and the wealth, and the mirth, The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth; Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust, and the scum of the earth!
* * * * *
"Mine be a handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould. Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold— Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tales be told. Amen."
Salt Water Poems and Ballads.
And it is a most fascinating story to see him climb from his boyhood, purely social, sympathetic interest in the outcast to that higher, that highest social consciousness, vitalized with religion. Here, seems it to me, that those who possess true social consciousness must come at last if they do their most effective work for the social regeneration of the world. Many have tremendous social consciousness, but no Christ. Christ himself is the very pulse beat of the social regeneration. Without him it must fail.
One feels, even here in his youth poems, however, a promise of that deeper Masefield that later finds his soul in "The Everlasting Mercy."
2. Faith in Immortality
In "Rest Her Soul," these haunting lines with that expression of a deep faith found in "All that dies of her," we find a ray of light, which slants through a small window of the man that is to be:
"On the black velvet covering her eyes Let the dull earth be thrown; Her's is the mightier silence of the skies, And long, quiet rest alone. Over the pure, dark, wistful eyes of her, O'er all the human, all that dies of her, Gently let flowers be strown."
Salt Water Poems and Ballads.
But most of these ballads, as their title suggests, are nothing more than the very sea foam of which they speak, and whose tale they tell; as compared with that later, deeper verse of Christian hope and regeneration.
And then pass those ten years; ten years following the period of "The Salt Water Ballads"; and ten years following the time when he was a "bar-boy" in New York; ten years in which he climbs from a simple "social consciousness" to a social consciousness that has the heart beat of Christ in its every line. The poems he writes in this period are all of the Christ. "Good Friday," perhaps the strongest poem dealing with this great day in Christ's life, is full of a close knowledge of the spirit of the Man of Galilee. But it is in "The Everlasting Mercy" and not "The Story of a Round House" that we find Masefield at his big best, battering at the very doors of eternity with the fist of a giant and the tender love of a woman, and the plea of a penitent sinner.
Something had happened to Masefield in those ten years. A man's entire life had been revolutionized; and his poetry with it. He still feels the want and need of the world, and the social injustice; but he has found the cure. In a word, he has been converted. I do not care whether or no Masefield means to tell his own story in "The Everlasting Mercy," but I do know that he tells, in spite of himself, a story that fits curiously into, and marvelously explains, the strange revolution and change in his own life from "Salt Water Ballads" to "Good Friday."
II. CONVERSION
It is an old-fashioned Methodist conversion of which he tells, which links itself up with the New Testament gospel of the regeneration of a human soul in such a fascinating way that it gives those of us who preach this gospel an impelling, modern, dramatic putting of the old, old story, that will thrill our congregations and grip the hearts of men who know not the Christ.
1. Conviction of Sin
Saul Kane was an amateur prizefighter. He and his friend Bill have a fight in the opening lines of the tale, and Saul wins. This victory is followed by the usual debauch, which lasts until all the drunken crowd are asleep on the floor of the "Lion." No Russian novelist, nor a Dostoievesky, nor another, ever dared such realism as Masefield has given us in his picture of this night's sin. He makes sin all that it is—black and hideous:
"From three long hours of gin and smokes, And two girls' breath and fifteen blokes, A warmish night and windows shut The room stank like a fox's gut. The heat, and smell, and drinking deep Began to stun the gang to sleep."
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
But this was too much for Saul Kane. He had still enough decency left to be ashamed. He wanted air. He went to a window and threw it open:
"I opened window wide and leaned Out of that pigsty of the fiend, And felt a cool wind go like grace About the sleeping market-place. The clock struck three, and sweetly, slowly, The bells chimed, Holy, Holy, Holy; And in a second's pause there fell The cold note of the chapel bell, And then a cock crew flapping wings, And summat made me think of things!"
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
There it is: sin, and conviction of sin. Perhaps he thought of another man who had virtually betrayed the Christ, and the cock crew and made that other "think o' things."
Then came the reaction from that conviction; the battle against that same conviction that he must give up sin and surrender to the Christ; and a terrific battle it is, and a terrific description of that battle Masefield gives us, lightninglike in its vividness until there comes the little woman of God, Miss Bourne (a deaconess, if you please), who has always known the better man in Saul, who has followed him with her Christly love like "The Hound of Heaven." And how tenderly, yet how insistently, how pleadingly she speaks:
"'Saul Kane,' she said, 'when next you drink, Do me the gentleness to think That every drop of drink accursed Makes Christ within you die of thirst; That every dirty word you say Is one more flint upon His way, Another thorn about His head, Another mock by where He tread; Another nail another cross; All that you are is that Christ's loss.'"
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
These searching words were beyond defeat. They went home to his already convicted heart and mind like arrows. They hurt. They cut. They awakened. They called. They pierced. They pounded with giant fists. They lashed like spiked whips. They burned like a soul on fire. They clamored, and they whispered like a mother's love, and at last his heart opened:
2. Forgiveness
"I know the very words I said, They bayed like bloodhounds in my head. 'The water's going out to sea And there's a great moon calling me; But there's a great sun calls the moon, And all God's bells will carol soon For joy and glory, and delight Of some one coming home to-night.'"
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
And then came the consciousness that he was "done with sin" forever:
"I knew that I had done with sin, I knew that Christ had given me birth To brother all the souls on earth,"
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
which was followed by two "glories"—the "Glory of the Lighted Mind" and the "Glory of the Lighted Soul." I think that perhaps in our preaching on conversion we make too little of the regeneration of the "mind." Masefield does not miss one whit of a complete regeneration.
3. The Joy of Conversion
"O glory of the lighted mind. How dead I'd been, how dumb, how blind! The station brook to my new eyes Was babbling out of Paradise, The waters rushing from the rain Were singing, 'Christ has risen again!'"
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
And then the soul glory:
"O glory of the lighted Soul. The dawn came up on Bradlow Knoll, The dawn with glittering on the grasses, The dawn which pass and never passes."
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
But that wasn't all. Masefield knows that the other self must be completely eradicated, so he makes Saul Kane change his environment entirely. He goes to the country. He plows, and as he plows he learns the lesson of the soil and cries:
"O Jesus, drive the coulter deep To plow my living man from sleep."
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
And more word from Christ as he plowed:
"I knew that Christ was there with Callow, That Christ was standing there with me, That Christ had taught me what to be, That I should plow and as I plowed My Saviour Christ would sing aloud, And as I drove the clods apart Christ would be plowing in my heart, Through rest-harrow and bitter roots, Through all my bad life's rotten fruits."
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
And so it is, that beginning with his poems of youth, John Masefield starts out with a sympathetic social consciousness, but nothing more apparently. He brothers with the outcast and frankly prefers it. Then comes the great regenerating influence in his life, which we surely find in his expression of faith that the soul is immortal, and finally that upheaval which we call conversion with all of its incident steps from conviction of sin to repentance; and then to the consciousness of forgiveness; to the lighted mind and the lighted soul; and then to the uprooting of evil and the planting of good in the soil of his life. And so through Saul Kane we see John Masefield and have an explanation of that subtle yet revolutionary change in his life and his poetry, pregnant with illustrations that, to quote another English poet, Noyes, "Would make the dead arise!"
