Part 16

In the same scene, however, occurs this fine passage, compact of hopelessness, and having in it the whole heart-history of Perth, who speaks it. He is urged by the friar to hasten that they may join the expedition as it passes the walls:

PERTH. It would be useless.

UBEDA. In what way?

PERTH. If to go would be an ill, I need not hasten; it will come to me. And if a good, they will have gone too far; I could not overtake them.

This passage recalls another memorably fine,—that in which Perth upon his release would return to his dungeon, being oppressed by the light:

I seem to have to bear the sky’s whole arch, Like Atlas, on my shoulders.

This is divining a sensation with subtle sympathy. But to return to the consideration of the literature of Mr. Torrence’s drama from the standpoint of his characters. Beatrix is a natural, elemental type of girl, untroubled by subtleties. Impulse and will are one in her understanding, and she counts it no shame to follow where they lead. The love that exists between herself and Coronado discloses no great emotional features, no complexities; but it is not strained nor unnatural, and in the scene where Beatrix discloses her identity to Coronado, as he in desperation at the failure of the quest for _El Dorado_ is about to throw himself over the cliff,—while the situation itself has elements of melodrama, the dialogue is wholly free from it, and indeed contains some of the truest poetry in the play. Coronado, with distraught fancy, thinks it the spirit of Beatrix by whom he is delivered, and fears to approach her lest he dissolve the wraith, whereupon Beatrix, among other reassurances, speaks these lovely lines:—

Have the snow-textured arms of dreams these pulses? Has the pale spirit of sleep a mouth like this?

The counter-passion of Mr. Torrence’s drama, in which its tragedy lies, the passion of Perth for Beatrix, is so manifestly foredoomed on the side of sentiment that one looks upon it purely from a psychological standpoint, but from that standpoint it is handled so skilfully that the dramatic feeling of the play centres chiefly in this character. The Friar Ubeda is also strongly drawn, and one of the motive forces of the drama. It is he who reveals to Perth that he has a son born after his incarceration who is none other than the young leader of the expedition, Don Francis Coronado, although his identity is not revealed by the priest, and only the clew given that on his hand is branded a crucifix, as a foolish penance for some boyhood sin. Many of the finest passages of the play are spoken between Perth and Ubeda.

The temptation to Shakespearize into which nearly all young dramatists fall, Mr. Torrence has wholly avoided, nor has his verse any of the grandiloquent strain that often mars dramatic poetry. It is at times over-sustained, but is flexible and holds in the main to simplicity of effect. Such a passage as the following shows it in its finest quality. Here are feeling, consistent beauty, and dignity of word. The lines are spoken by Perth in reply to Coronado’s parting injunction to remember that the Font is there, pointing in the direction of their quest:

O God, ’tis everywhere! But where for me? Youth, love, or hope fulfilled, Whatever dew distils from out its depths, Sparkles till it has lured my eager lips And then sinks back. ’Tis in his desolate heart— And yet I may not drink. ’Tis in her eyes— And yet my own cannot be cooled by it. The wilderness of life is full of wells, But each is barred and walled about and guarded.

* * * * *

The Source! Can it be true? Oh, may it not be? May it not at last await me in that garden To which we bleed our way through all this waste?— One cup—some little chalice that will hold One drop that will not shudder into mist Till I have drained it.

Passages of this sort might be duplicated in _El Dorado_, were they not too long to quote with the context necessary to them.

The passage cited above holds a deep suggestion in the lines:—

One drop that will not shudder into mist Till I have drained it.

Here is human longing epitomized; and again the words in which Coronado speaks, as he thinks, to the shade of Beatrix,—

No, I will no more strive to anything And so dispel it,—

are subtly typical of the fear in all joy, the trembling dread to grasp, lest it elude us. That, too, is a fine passage in which Coronado replies to Perth, who seeks to cheer him with thought of the Water of all Dreams:

Ah, that poor phantom Source! I never sought it. I have found the thing called Youth too deadly bitter To grasp at further tasting.

“The thing called Youth” is often “deadly bitter;” and Mr. Torrence has well suggested it in the revulsion from hope to despair which follows upon the knowledge that El Dorado is but a land of Dead-Sea fruit. The atmosphere with which Mr. Torrence has invested the scene where all are waiting for the dawn to lift and reveal the valley of their desire is charged with mystery and portent; one becomes a tense, breathless member of the group upon the cliff, and not a spectator.

Mr. Torrence is occasionally led into temptation, artistically speaking, by the seduction of his imagination, and is carried a bit beyond the point of discretion, as in this passage taken from the scene where the expedition awaits the dawn on the morning when its dream is expected to be realized. Perth and Coronado are looking to the mist to lift. Perth speaks:

And now in that far edge, as though a seed Were sown, there is a hint of budding gray, A bud not wholly innocent of night, And yet a color.

COR. But see, it dies!

PERTH. Yet now it blooms again, Whiter, and with a rumor of hidden trumpets.

Buds in the common day do not usually bloom with a “rumor of hidden trumpets.” In the same scene Coronado asks:

Can you not see The gem which is the mother of all dawn?

PERTH. There is some gleam.

COR. It waits one moment yet Before it thunders upon our blinded sight!

It is at least a new conception that _gems_ should _thunder_ upon one’s _blinded sight_! In another scene Mr. Torrence has the “devouring sun” deepen its “wormlike course” to the world’s edge. Again, his heroine’s mouth is a little tremulous “from all the troubled violets in her veins.” We are a bit uncertain, too, as to the significance of a “throne-galled night;” but these are, after all, minor matters when weighed with the prevailing grace and beauty of Mr. Torrence’s lines.

The last act of _El Dorado_ has to my mind less of strength and beauty than its predecessors, and dramatically one may question its conception and construction. In a general study of Mr. Torrence’s plot it seemed that the situations were all developed to the best advantage, but an exception must, I think, be made in regard to the last act. One of the vital requisites of drama is that the suspense of the action shall hold to the end; there may be minor _dénouements_, but the plot must not be so constructed that the element of mystery shall have been eliminated ere the close, and this is exactly what has been done in _El Dorado_. The two great scenes have already taken place: _El Dorado_ has been proven a myth, and Beatrix has been united to her lover; there remains but one thread to unravel, the love of Perth for Beatrix; and of that the audience has already the full knowledge and clew, having seen her rejoined to her lover. The only motive of the last act is that the audience may see the effect upon Perth when the revelation of his loss is made to him; and it is more than a question whether a scene depending so entirely upon the psychology of the situation could hold as a climax to the play.

There is a revelation, however, logically demanded by the premises of the plot, in expectation of which the interest is held, and in whose nonfulfilment I cannot but think that Mr. Torrence has lost the opportunity for the most humanly true and effective climax of his play,—the disclosure to Coronado of his parentage. Ubeda, earlier in the drama, has enjoined Perth not to reveal his identity to his son, lest it injure his public career; but in the hour when the supreme loss has come, when Beatrix, as the wife of Coronado, rejoins the homeward detachment of Perth and his friend, and the mortal stroke has fallen,—then Ubeda should have declared the relationship and placed to Perth’s lips ere he died the one draught that would not “shudder into mist” ere he had drained it,—the draught of love from the heart of his child. The bird of hope and light should hover just above the darkest tragedy,—should brood above it with healing in its wings. This is partially realized in the lines in which Mr. Torrence has chosen to veil, and yet hint, the relationship which Coronado does not understand:

PERTH. At last I see! always I seemed to know That one day,—though I knew not when,—some hour, I should behold and know it and possess it,— The Font!

COR. No, it is snow and wine.

BEAT. He wanders!

PERTH. I had not thought to find it so at last, Yet here, and here alone, it has arisen Within these two—my only youth! Yes—now! Upon this hour and place at last! The Source! It is a barren place—yet flowers are here, Those which for certain days I seemed to lose; A desolate tender fatherhood has here Found growth, and bears, but all too piteously, A futile bud.

The impression left upon one by _El Dorado_ is that of poetic distinction, and the drama in its character drawing, plot and action is an augury of finer possibilities in the same branch of art.

XVII

GERTRUDE HALL

MISS GERTRUDE HALL is a poet of the intimate mood, the personal touch, one who writes for herself primarily, and not for others. One fancies that verses such as these were penned in musing, introspective moments in the form in which they flitted through the mind, and were indesecrate of further touch. They are as words warm upon the lips, putting one in magnetic _rapport_ with a speaker; and their defects, as well as distinctions, are such as spring from this spontaneity. Frequently a change of word or line, readily suggested to the reader, would have made technically perfect what now bears a flaw; but these lapses are neither so marked nor so frequent as to detract from the prevailing grace of the verse, and but serve to illustrate the point in question,—their unpremeditated note and freedom from posing.

One is not so much arrested by the inevitable image and word in these lyrics of the _Age of Fairygold_, as by the feeling, the mood, that pervades them. It is not a buoyant mood, nor yet a sombre one, but rather the expression of a varied impulse, a melody of many stops, such as one might play for himself at evening, wandering from theme to theme. The poems convey the impression of coming in touch with a personality rather than a book, the veil between the author and reader being impalpable; and this, their most obvious distinction, is a quality in which many poets of the present day are lacking, either from a mistaken delicacy in regarding their own inner life as an isolated mood not of import to others, or in robbing it of personality and warmth by technical elaboration.

One may confide to the world by means of art what he would not reveal to his closest friend, and yet keep inviolate his spiritual selfhood; but to withhold this disclosure, to become but a poet of externals, is to abrogate one’s claim to speak at all; for a life, however meagre, has something unique and essential to convey, and while one delights in the artist observation, the vivid pictorial touch, it must not be divorced from the subjective. The poems of Miss Hall are happily blended of the objective and subjective; here, for illustration, is a lighter note bringing one in thrall to that seductive, tantalizing charm, that irresistible allurement, of the Vita Nuova of the year:

I try to fix my eyes upon my book, But just outside a budding spray Flaunts its new leaves as if to say, “Look!—look!”

I trim my pen, I make it fine and neat; There comes a flutter of brown wings. A little bird alights and sings, “Sweet!—sweet!”

O little bird, O go away! be dumb! For I must ponder certain lines; And straight a nodding flower makes signs, “Come!—come!”

O Spring, let me alone! O bird, bloom, beam, “I have no time to dream!” I cry; The echo breathes a soft, long sigh, “Dream!—dream!”

The beautiful lyric,

“Ah, worshipped one, ah, faithful Spring!”

tempers this blitheness to a pensive strain, though only as one may introduce a note of minor in a staccato melody. In another bit of verse celebrating the renewing year, and noting how joy lays his finger on one’s lips and makes him mute, occur these delicate lines:

Thrice happy, oh, thrice happy still the Earth That can express herself in roses, yea, Can make the lily tell her inmost thought!

One nature lyric of two stanzas, despite the fact that its cadence halts in the final couplet, is compact of atmosphere; and to one who has been companioned by the pines, it brings an aromatic breath, full of stimulus:

The sun in the pine is sleeping, sleeping. The drops of resin gleam…. There’s a mighty wizard with perfumes keeping My brain benumbed in a dream!

The wind in the pine is rushing, rushing, Fine and unfettered and wild…. There’s a mighty mother imperiously hushing Her fretful, uneasy child!

These lines give over pictures of mornings in the radiant sunlight of the North, that cloudless, lifted air; and “The drops of resin gleam,” has the same touch of transmutation that some suggestion of the brine has for the exiled native of the seaboard.

Miss Hall’s themes are not sought far afield, but bring, in nearly all the poems, a hint of personal experience; nature, love, spiritual emotion, blending with lighter moods and fancies, comprise the record of the _Age of Fairygold_. We have glanced at the nature verse; that upon love is subtler in touch, but holds to the intimate note distinguishing all of her work. The second of these stanzas contains a graphic image:

Be good to me! If all the world united Should bend its powers to gird my youth with pain, Still might I fly to thee, Dear, and be righted— But if thou wrong’st me, where shall I complain?

I am the dove a random shot surprises, That from her flight she droppeth quivering, And in the deadly arrow recognizes A blood-wet feather—once in her own wing!

In her poem called “The Rival” human nature speaks a direct word, particularly in the contradiction of the last stanza. The lines have the quality of speech rather than of print:

This is the hardest of my fate: She’s better whom he doth prefer Than I am that he worshipped late, As well as so much prettier, So much more fortunate!

He’ll not repent; oh, you will see, She’ll never give him cause to grieve! I dream that he comes back to me, Leaving her,—but he’ll never leave! Hopelessly sweet is she.

So that if in my place she stood, She’d spare to curse him, she’d forgive! I loathe her, but I know she would— And so will I, God, as I live, Not she alone is good!

The ethical inconsistency of the above stanza, “I loathe her,” and “Not she alone is good,” is so human and racy with suggestion of these paradoxical moods of ours, that the stanza, together with its companion lines, becomes a leaf torn from the book of life.

In its spiritual quality Miss Hall’s work shows, perhaps, its finest distinction: brave, strong, acquiescent, inducing in one a nobler mood,—such is the spirit of the volume. Its philosophy is free from didacticism or moralizing; indeed, it should scarcely be called philosophy, but rather the personal record of experiences touching the inner life,—phases of feeling interpreted in their spiritual import. These lines express the mood:

Then lead me, Friend. Here is my hand, Not in dumb resignation lent Because Thee one cannot withstand— In love, Lord, with complete consent.

* * * * *

Lead. If we come to the cliff’s crest, And I hear deep below—O deep!— The torrent’s roar, and “Leap!” Thou say’st, I will not question—I will leap.

The last stanza, in its vivid illustrative quality, is an admirable expression of spiritual assurance.

Another brief lyric rings with the true note of valor, declaring the eternal potency of hope, and one’s obligation to pass on his unspent faith, though falling by the way:

Could I not be the pilgrim To reach my saint’s abode, I would make myself the road To lead some other pilgrim Where my soul’s treasure glowed.

Could not I in the eager van Be the stalwart pioneer Who points where the way is clear, I would be the man who sinks in the swamp, And cries to the rest, “Not here!”

From an Eastern Apologue Miss Hall has drawn a charming illustration of the power of influence and association:

“Thou smell’st not ill, thou object plain, Thou art a small, pretentious grain Of amber, I suppose.” “Nay, my good friend, I am by birth A common clod of scentless earth…. But I lived with the Rose.”

In the poems of a blither note, Miss Hall excels, having a swift and sprightly fancy and a clever aptness of phrase, which, in _Allegretto_, her collection of lighter verse, reveals itself in charming witticisms and whimsicalities. Her children’s poems are delicate in touch and fancy, and quaintly humorous. Her lines, “To A Weed,” in the second collection, tuck away a moral in their sprightly comment; indeed, a bit of philosophy as to being glad in the sun and taking one’s due of life, despite limitations, which renders them more than the merry apostrophe they seem:

You bold thing! thrusting ’neath the very nose Of her fastidious majesty, the rose, Even in the best ordainéd garden bed, Unauthorized, your smiling little head!

The gardener, mind! will come in his big boots, And drag you up by your rebellious roots, And cast you forth to shrivel in the sun, Your daring quelled, your little weed’s life done.

* * * * *

Meantime—ah, yes! the air is very blue, And gold the light, and diamond the dew,— You laugh and courtesy in your worthless way, And you are gay, ah, so exceeding gay!

You argue, in your manner of a weed, You did not make yourself grow from a seed; You fancy you’ve a claim to standing-room, You dream yourself a right to breathe and bloom.

* * * * *

You know, you weed, I quite agree with you, I am a weed myself, and I laugh too,— Both, just as long as we can shun his eye, Let’s sniff at the old gardener trudging by!

In the art of compression, in consistent and restrained imagery, in clearness and simplicity, and in freedom from affectation, Miss Hall’s work is altogether commendable. In technique she makes no ambitious flights, employing almost wholly the more direct and simple forms and metres, but these suit the intimate mood and singing note of her themes better than more intricate measures. Technically her chief defect is in the disregard which she frequently shows for the demands of metre. I say disregard, for it is evident from the grace of the majority of her work that she allows herself to depart from metrical canons at her own will, with the occasional result of jagged lines which may have seemed more expressive to Miss Hall than those of a smoother cadence, but which are likely to offend the ear of one sensitive to rhythm. These lapses are not, however, so frequent or conspicuous as to constitute a general indictment against the work.

The reflective predominates over the imaginative in the _Age of Fairygold_, notwithstanding the suggestion of the title. Indeed, there is a subtly pensive note running through the volume, which remains in one’s mind as a characteristic impression when the lighter notes are forgotten. They are not poems of vivid color, imagination, nor passion, though touched with all. They are not incrusted with verbal gems, though the diction is fitting and graceful. They have no daringly inventive metres, though the form is always in harmony with the thought,—in short, the poems of Miss Hall are such as please and satisfy without startling. They are leaves from the book of the heart, and admit us to many a kindred experience. These lines, in which we must take leave of them, carry the wistful, tender, sympathetic note, which distinguishes much of her work:

Though true it be these splendid dreams of mine Are but as bubbles little children blow, And that Fate laughs to see them wax and shine, Then holds out her pale finger—and they go: One bitter drop falls with a tear-like gleam,— Still, dreaming is so sweet! Still, let me dream!

Though true, to love may be definéd thus: To open wide your safe defenceless hall To some great guest full-armed and dangerous, With power to ravage, to deface it all, A cast at dice, whether or no he will,— Still, loving is so sweet! Let me love still!

XVIII

ARTHUR UPSON

WHEN a volume of verse by Mr. Arthur Upson, entitled _Octaves In An Oxford Garden_, was first brought to my notice by a poet friend with what seemed before reading it a somewhat extravagant comment as to its art, it evoked a certain scepticism as to whether the poet in question would be equally enthusiastic, had he read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested some eighty or more volumes of verse within a given period, thus rendering a more rarely flavored compound necessary to excite anew the poetry-sated appetite; but Mr. Upson’s Octaves proved to be a brew into which had fallen this magic drop, and moments had gone the way of oblivion until the charm was drained.

The volume consists of some thirty Octaves written in Wadham Garden at Oxford in the reminiscent month of September; and so do they fix the mood of the place that one marvels at the restfulness, the brooding stillness, the flavor of time and association which Mr. Upson has managed to infuse into his musing, sabbatical lines. One regrets that the term “atmosphere” has become so cheapened, for in the exigent moment when no other will serve as well, he has the depressing consciousness that virtue has gone from the word he must employ. Despite this fact, it is atmosphere, in its most pervasive sense, that imbues Mr. Upson’s Octaves, as the first will attest:

The day was like a Sabbath in a swoon. Under late summer’s blue were fair cloud-things Poising aslant upon their charméd wings, Arrested by some backward thought of June. Softly I trod and with repentant shoon, Half fearfully in sweet imaginings, Where lay, as might some golden court of kings, The old Quadrangle paved with afternoon.

What else than a touch of genius is in those three words, “paved with afternoon,” as fixing the tempered light, the drowsy calm, of the place?

The Octaves are written in groups, the poems of each having a slight dependence upon one another, so that to be quoted they require the connecting thought. In many cases also the first or the second quatrain of the Octave is more artistic than its companion lines, as in the one which follows, where the first four lines hold the creative beauty:

As here among the well-remembering boughs, Where every leaf is tongue to ancient breath, Speech of the yesteryears forgathereth, And all the winds are long-fulfilléd vows— So from of old those ringing names arouse A whispering in the foliate shades of death, Where History her golden rosary saith, Glowing, the light of Memory on her brows.