Chapter 4

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.

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.

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.