Part 12

That defect does not appear in "The Last Abbot," which is also engaged upon the thought of the universal soul. Here an old monk, knowing that he is drawing near the end of life, quietly talks to the brethren of his order about life and death and after-death. There is no argument, no discussion even. No other voice is raised to interrupt the meditative flow of the old man's message, which is, in fact, a recantation. And, as a consequence, the poem has a unity of serene reflectiveness, rising at times to lyrical ecstasy. He is thinking of his approaching death--

Oh, I, with light and airy change, Across the azure sky shall range, When I am dead.

.....

I shall be one Of all the misty, fresh and healing powers. Dew I shall be, and fragrance of the morn, And quietly shall lie dreaming all the noon, Or oft shall sparkle underneath the moon, A million times shall die and be reborn, Because the sun again and yet again Shall snatch me softly from the earth away: I shall be rain; I shall be spray; At night shall oft among the misty shades Pass dreamily across the open lea; And I shall live in the loud cascades, Pouring their waters into the sea. ... Nought can die: All belongs to the living Soul, Makes, and partakes, and is the whole, All--and therefore, I.

So much then for the poet's cosmic theory, presented more or less directly. This explicit treatment may, as we see, give individual passages where thought and feeling are completely fused, and the idea gets itself born into a shape sufficiently concrete for the breath of poetry to live in it. But the final effect of such poems is apt to be dimmed by the shadow of controversy. A subtler method is used, however, justified in a finer type of art. In "Don Juan in Hell," for instance, there is a symbolical presentment of the theme: a conception of life which is a corollary from the poet's theory of the universe. Don Juan is here an incarnation of the vital forces of the world, of the positive value and power of life which is in eternal conflict with a religion of negation. And, a newcomer among the shades in Hell, he turns his scorn upon them for the lascivious passion which found it necessary to invent sin.

Light, light your fires, That they may purify your own desires! They will not injure me. This fire of mine Was kindled from the torch that will outshine Eternity.

.....

Proud, you disclaim That fair desire from which all came; Unworthy of your lofty human birth, Despise the earth. O crowd funereal, Lifting your anxious brows because of sin, There is no Heaven such as you would win, Nor any other Paradise at all, Save in fulfilling some superb desire With all the spirit's fire.

The same idea is woven into "Moon-worshippers," with delicate grace. It constitutes a precise charge, in the poem "To Tolstoi," that the great idealist has forsworn the 'holy way of life'; and, recurring in many forms more or less explicit, culminates in the charming allegory called "Children of Love." This is a later poem, mature in thought and masterly in form. The theme is by this time a familiar one to the poet: he has considered it deeply and often. And having gone through the crucible so many times, it is now of a fineness and plasticity to be handled with ease. It runs into the symbolism here so lightly as hardly to awaken an echo of afterthought, and shapes to an allegory much too winning to provoke controversy. The first two stanzas of the poem imagine the boy Jesus walking dreamily under the olives in the cool of the evening:

Suddenly came Running along to him naked, with curly hair, That rogue of the lovely world, That other beautiful child whom the virgin Venus bare.

The holy boy Gazed with those sad blue eyes that all men know. Impudent Cupid stood Panting, holding an arrow and pointing his bow.

(Will you not play? Jesus, run to him, run to him, swift for our joy. Is he not holy, like you? Are you afraid of his arrows, O beautiful dreaming boy?)

.....

Marvellous dream! Cupid has offered his arrows for Jesus to try; He has offered his bow for the game. But Jesus went weeping away, and left him there wondering why.

That may be taken as Mr Monro's most representative poem. On our theory, therefore (of this work as a link with the older school), the piece might serve to indicate the point which contemporary poetry has reached, advancing in technique and in thought straight from the previous generation. Not that it is the most 'advanced' piece (in the specific sense of the word) which one could cite from modern poets. Many and strange have been the theories evolved on independent lines, just as numerous weird technical effects have been gained by breaking altogether with the tradition of native prosody. But Mr Monro's poetry continues the tradition; and whether it be in content or in form, it has pushed forward, in the normal manner of healthy growth, from the stage immediately preceding.

The new technical features are clear enough, and all owe their origin to a determination to gain the greatest possible freedom within the laws of English versification. Rhyme is no longer a merely decorative figure, gorgeous but tyrannical. It is an instrument of potential range and power, to be used with restraint by an austere artist. In "Children of Love" it occurs just often enough to convey the gentle sadness of the emotional atmosphere. But very beautiful effects are gained without it, as, for instance, in another of these later poems, called "Great City"--

When I returned at sunset, The serving-maid was singing softly Under the dark stairs, and in the house Twilight had entered like a moonray. Time was so dead I could not understand The meaning of midday or of midnight, But like falling waters, falling, hissing, falling, Silence seemed an everlasting sound.

The verse is not now commonly marked by an exact number of syllables or feet, nor the stanza divided into a regular number of verses, except where the subject requires precision of effect. An order of recurrence does exist, however, giving the definite form essential to poetry. But it is determined by factors which make for greater naturalness and flexibility than the hard-and-fast division into ten-or eight-foot lines and stanzas of a precise pattern. The ruling influences now are various--the thought which is to be expressed, and the phases through which it passes: the nature and strength of the emotion, the ebb and flow of the poetic impulse.

Thus, while metrical rhythm is retained, it has been freed from its former monotonous regularity, and has become almost infinitely varied. The dissyllable, dominant hitherto, has taken a much humbler place. Every metre into which English words will run is now adopted, and fresh combinations are constantly being made; while upon the poetic rhythm itself is superimposed the natural rhythm of speech. In most of these devices Mr Monro, and others, are presumably following the precept and example of the Laureate; but in any case there can be no doubt of the richness, suppleness, and variety of the metrical effects attained. Most of the pieces in this little chapbook illustrate at some point the influence of untrammelled speech-rhythm; and in one, called "Hearthstone," it is rather accentuated. I quote from the poem for that reason: the slight excess will enable the device to be observed more readily, but will not obscure other characteristic qualities which are clearly marked here--of tenderness, quiet tone, and delicate colouring.

I want nothing but your fireside now.

.....

Your book has dropped unnoticed: you have read So long you cannot send your brain to bed. The low quiet room and all its things are caught And linger in the meshes of your thought. (Some people think they know time cannot pause.) Your eyes are closing now though not because Of sleep. You are searching something with your brain; You have let the old dog's paw drop down again ... Now suddenly you hum a little catch, And pick up the book. The wind rattles the latch; There's a patter of light cool rain and the curtain shakes; The silly dog growls, moves, and almost wakes. The kettle near the fire one moment hums. Then a long peace upon the whole room comes. So the sweet evening will draw to its bedtime end. I want nothing now but your fireside, friend.

Thus the technique of modern poetry would seem to be moving towards a more exact rendering of the music and the meaning of our language. That is to say, there is, in prosody itself, an impulse towards truth of expression, which may be found to correspond to the heightened sense of external fact in contemporary poetic genius, as well as to its closer hold upon reality. Thence comes the realism of much good poetry now being written: triune, as all genuine realism must be, since it proceeds out of a spiritual conviction, a mental process and actual craftsmanship. That Mr Monro's work is also trending in this direction, almost every piece in his last little book will testify. And if it seem a surprising fact, that is only because one has found it necessary to quote from the more subjective of his early lyrics. It would have been possible, out of the narrative called "Judas," or the "Impressions" at the end of _Before Dawn_, to indicate this poet's objective power. He has a gift of detachment; of cool and exact observation; and to this is joined a dexterity of satiric touch which serves indignation well. Hence the portraits of the epicure at the Carlton and the city swindler in the rôle of county gentleman. Hence, too, poems like "The Virgin" or "A Suicide": though here it is unfortunate that imagination has been allowed to play upon abnormal subjects. The result may be an acute psychological study; and interesting on that account. But if it is to be a choice between two extremes, most people will prefer work in which fantasy has gone off to a region in the opposite direction. There is one poem in which this bizarre sprite has taken holiday; and thence comes the piece of glimmering unreality called "Overheard on a Saltmarsh."

Nymph, nymph, what are your beads? Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them? Give them me. No. Give them me. Give them me. No. Then I will howl all night in the reeds, Lie in the mud and howl for them.

Goblin, why do you love them so? They are better than stars or water, Better than voices of winds that sing, Better than any man's fair daughter, Your green glass beads on a silver ring.

Hush I stole them out of the moon.

Give me your beads, I desire them. No. I will howl in a deep lagoon For your green glass beads, I love them so. Give them me. Give them. No.

But in his more representative work, the intellectual realism which comes from an acute sense of fact is clearly operative. We have seen, too, from the earliest published verse of this poet, the continual struggle of what one may call a religion of reality--belief in the sanctity and beauty and value of the real world--for spiritual mastery. In the later poems the two elements become deepened and are more closely combined: they are, too, seeking expression through a technique which is directed to the same realistic purpose. And as a result we get such a piece of quiet fidelity as "London Interior"; or a tragedy like "Carrion," in which the logic of life and death, controlling emotion with beautiful gravity, is suddenly broken by a sob. It is the last of four war-poems; a series representing the call of battle to the soldier, his departure, a fighting retreat, and finally, in "Carrion," his death--

It is plain now what you are. Your head has dropped Into a furrow. And the lovely curve Of your strong leg has wasted and is propped Against a ridge of the ploughed land's watery swerve.

.....

You are fuel for a coming spring if they leave you here; The crop that will rise from your bones is healthy bread. You died--we know you--without a word of fear, And as they loved you living I love you dead.

No girl would kiss you. But then No girls would ever kiss the earth In the manner they hug the lips of men: You are not known to them in this, your second birth.

.....

Hush, I hear the guns. Are you still asleep? Surely I saw you a little heave to reply. I can hardly think you will not turn over and creep Along the furrows trenchward as if to die.

_Sarojini Naidu_

Mrs Naidu is one of the two Indian poets who within the last few years have produced remarkable English poetry. The second of the two is, of course, Rabindranath Tagore, whose work has come to us a little later, who has published more, and whose recent visit to this country has brought him more closely under the public eye. Mrs Naidu is not so well known; but she deserves to be, for although the bulk of her work is not so large, its quality, so far as it can be compared with that of her compatriot, will easily bear the test. It is, however, so different in kind, and reveals a genius so contrasting, that one is piqued by an apparent problem. How is it that two children of what we are pleased to call the changeless East, under conditions nearly identical, should have produced results which are so different?

Both of these poets are lyrists born; both come of an old and distinguished Bengali ancestry; in both the culture of East and West are happily met; and both are working in the same artistic medium. Yet the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore is mystical, philosophic, and contemplative, remaining oriental therefore to that degree; and permitting a doubt of the _Quarterly_ reviewer's dictum that "Gitanjali" is a synthesis of western and oriental elements. The complete synthesis would seem to rest with Mrs Naidu, whose poetry, though truly native to her motherland, is more sensuous than mystical, human and passionate rather than spiritual, and reveals a mentality more active than contemplative. Her affiliation with the Occident is so much the more complete; but her Eastern origin is never in doubt.

The themes of her verse and their setting are derived from her own country. But her thought, with something of the energy of the strenuous West and something of its 'divine discontent,' plays upon the surface of an older and deeper calm which is her birthright. So, in her "Salutation to the Eternal Peace," she sings

What care I for the world's loud weariness, Who dream in twilight granaries Thou dost bless With delicate sheaves of mellow silences?

Two distinguished poet-friends of Mrs Naidu--Mr Edmund Gosse and Mr Arthur Symons--have introduced her two principal volumes of verse with interesting biographical notes. The facts thus put in our possession convey a picture to the mind which is instantly recognizable in the poems. A gracious and glowing personality appears, quick and warm with human feeling, exquisitely sensitive to beauty and receptive of ideas, wearing its culture, old and new, scientific and humane, with simplicity; but, as Mr Symons says, "a spirit of too much fire in too frail a body," and one moreover who has suffered and fought to the limit of human endurance.

We hear of birth and childhood in Hyderabad; of early scientific training by a father whose great learning was matched by his public spirit: of a first poem at the age of eleven, written in an impulse of reaction when a sum in algebra '_would not_ come right': of coming to England at the age of sixteen with a scholarship from the Nizam college; and of three years spent here, studying at King's College, London, and at Girton, with glorious intervals of holiday in Italy.

We hear, too, of a love-story that would make an idyll; of passion so strong and a will so resolute as almost to be incredible in such a delicate creature; of a marriage in defiance of caste, a few years of brilliant happiness and then a tragedy. And all through, as a dark background to the adventurous romance of her life, there is the shadow of weakness and ill-health. That shadow creeps into her poems, impressively, now and then. Indeed, if it were lacking, the bright oriental colouring would be almost too vivid. So, apart from its psychological and human interest, we may be thankful for such a poem as "To the God of Pain." It softens and deepens the final impression of the work.

For thy dark altars, balm nor milk nor rice, But mine own soul thou'st ta'en for sacrifice.

The poem is purely subjective, of course, as is the still more moving piece, "The Poet to Death," in the same volume.

Tarry a while, till I am satisfied Of love and grief, of earth and altering sky; Till all my human hungers are fulfilled, O Death, I cannot die!

We know that that is a cry out of actual and repeated experience; and from that point of view alone it has poignant interest. But what are we to say about the spirit of it--the philosophy which is implicit in it? Here is an added value of a higher kind, evidence of a mind which has taken its own stand upon reality, and which has no easy consolations when confronting the facts of existence. For this mind, neither the religions of East nor West are allowed to veil the truth; neither the hope of Nirvana nor the promise of Paradise may drug her sense of the value of life nor darken her perception of the beauty of phenomena. Resignation and renunciation are alike impossible to this ardent being who loves the earth so passionately; but the 'sternly scientific' nature of that early training--the description is her own--has made futile regret impossible, too. She has entered into full possession of the thought of our time; and strongly individual as she is, she has evolved for herself, to use her own words, a "subtle philosophy of living from moment to moment." That is no shallow epicureanism, however, for as she sings in a poem contrasting our changeful life with the immutable peace of the Buddha on his lotus-throne--

Nought shall conquer or control The heavenward hunger of our soul.

It is as though, realizing that the present is the only moment of which we are certain, she had determined to crowd that moment to the utmost limit of living.

From such a philosophy, materialism of a nobler kind, one would expect a love of the concrete and tangible, a delight in sense impressions, and quick and strong emotion. Those are, in fact, the characteristics of much of the poetry in these two volumes, _The Golden Threshold_ and _The Bird of Time_. The beauty of the material world, of line and especially of colour, is caught and recorded joyously. Life is regarded mainly from the outside, in action, or as a pageant; as an interesting event or a picturesque group. It is not often brooded over, and reflection is generally evident in but the lightest touches. The proportion of strictly subjective verse is small, and is not, on the whole, the finest work technically.

The introspective note seems unfavourable to Mrs Naidu's art: naturally so, one would conclude, from the buoyant temperament that is revealed. The love-songs are perhaps an exception, for one or two, which (as we know) treat fragments of the poet's own story, are fine in idea and in technique alike. There is, for example, "An Indian Love Song," in the first stanza of which the lover begs for his lady's love. But she reminds him of the barriers of caste between them; she is afraid to profane the laws of her father's creed; and her lover's kinsmen, in times past, have broken the altars of her people and slaughtered their sacred kine. The lover replies:

What are the sins of my race, Beloved, what are my people to thee? And what are thy shrine, and kine and kindred, what are thy gods to me? Love recks not of feuds and bitter follies, of stranger, comrade or kin, Alike in his ear sound the temple bells and the cry of the _muezzin_.

There is also in the second volume the "Dirge," in which the poet mourns the death of the husband whom she had dared to marry against the laws of caste; and which almost unconsciously reveals the influence of centuries of Suttee upon the mind of Indian womanhood.

Shatter her shining bracelets, break the string Threading the mystic marriage-beads that cling Loth to desert a sobbing throat so sweet, Unbind the golden anklets on her feet, Divest her of her azure veils and cloud Her living beauty in a living shroud.

Even here, however, the effect is gained by colour and movement; by the grouping of images rather than by the development of an idea; and that will be found to be Mrs Naidu's method in the many delightful lyrics of these volumes where she is most successful. The "Folk Songs" of her first book are an example. One assumes that they are early work, partly because they are the first group in the earlier of the two volumes; but more particularly because they adopt so literally the advice which Mr Edmund Gosse gave her at the beginning of her career. When she came as a girl to England and was a student of London University at King's College, she submitted to Mr Gosse a bundle of manuscript poems. He describes them as accurate and careful work, but too derivative; modelled too palpably on the great poets of the previous generation. His advice, therefore, was that they should be destroyed, and that the author should start afresh upon native themes and in her own manner. The counsel was exactly followed: the manuscript went into the wastepaper basket, and the poet set to work on what we cannot doubt is this first group of songs made out of the lives of her own people.

There is all the hemisphere between these lyrics and those of late-Victorian England. Here we find a "Village Song" of a mother to the little bride who is still all but a baby; and to whom the fairies call so insistently that she will not stay "for bridal songs and bridal cakes and sandal-scented leisure." In the song of the "Palanquin Bearers" we positively see the lithe and rhythmic movements which bear some Indian beauty along, lightly "as a pearl on a string." And there is a song written to one of the tunes of those native minstrels who wander, free and wild as the wind, singing of

The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings, And happy and simple and sorrowful things.

The "Harvest Hymn" raises thanksgiving for strange bounties to gods of unfamiliar names; and the "Cradle Song" evokes a tropical night, heavy with scent and drenched with dew--

Sweet, shut your eyes, The wild fire-flies Dance through the fairy _neem_; From the poppy-bole, For you I stole A little, lovely dream.

In its lightness and grace, this poem is one of the exquisite things in our language: one of the little lyric flights, like William Watson's "April," which in their clear sweetness and apparent spontaneity are like some small bird's song. Mrs Naidu has said of herself--"I sing just as the birds do"; and as regards her loveliest lyrics (there are a fair proportion of them) she speaks a larger truth than she meant. Their simplicity and abandonment to the sheer joy of singing are infinitely refreshing; and fragile though they seem, one suspects them of great vitality. In the later volume there is another called "Golden Cassia"--the bright blooms that her people call mere 'woodland flowers.' The poet has other fancies about them; sometimes they seem to her like fragments of a fallen star--

Or golden lamps for a fairy shrine, Or golden pitchers for fairy wine.

Perchance you are, O frail and sweet! Bright anklet-bells from the wild spring's feet,