LAND \XI> WATlilv 
December 30, 1915. 
II 
m 
can tr..!;-late bcautv to Us, bring it home to us in words 
iiiai;icaliy ra.^liionccl. stcei)od in music and rhythmical 
metre. "It follows at once from the fact that our eyes are 
now open that we can no longer tolerate shams, travesties, 
sentiinentalism ; we do not want our senses to be lulled 
to >lcei). N\'e desire earnestly now to live every moment 
of uur lives to the full, to experience whate\er may befall 
u\ the sure knowledge that true experience i)urities and 
l>urges the mind of all rottenness and uncleanness. 
We are lilled with an insatiable craving, we scarcely 
know for what ; we refuse to shut our eyes to evil as if it 
did not exist ; we cleave our way through ugliness in the 
pursuit of the beautiful : if the truth is not in us we 
will pmsue our (piest until we lind it. W'e have all 
l)econie adventurers, cast adrift from the world of 
safe conventions and arm-chair pugilism. Once out of the 
harbour we find ourselves buffeted and tossed by every 
wayward blast/ but we arc happier battling on so than 
we" ever were in the old days in our anchorage, rusting 
through disuse. 
The poets are our chart : to them we turn for guid- 
ance in our new-found liberty. There lies over the land 
a f^'reat sorrow, the sorrow of separation, of bereavement. 
We iie\ cr reair\- understood how niuch we loved our fellows. 
.\ll life lay before us : we were in no hurry to a\ail our- 
selves of "even our dearest one's eternal companionship. 
Later on would do ; a passing glance a word, an hour 
of ecstasv, and back we went to the nmltifarious interests 
of the hour, to the sordid business or the dull routine, 
forgetful of the heart's unsatisiicd longing, wilfully refus- 
ing to hear her crj'. And now for some of us it is too late. 
We want inspiration, consolation, comfort, and in our 
bitterness of heart we know not where to turn. Some 
one repeats a line of a new jjoeni ; we are arrested by the 
astounding reality of it. Wc say "What the writer nuist 
have felt who could have coined such a phrase." We begin 
U) read the new poets ; and here we lind '" sore labour's 
bath," the " balm of hurt minds," for which wc were so 
earnestly looking. 
And lastly we of to-day require directness of expres- 
sion, the simplicity of diction of a Blake or a Wordsworth. 
Poetry to so many of us nreant a rich haunting music made 
up out of exotic names with no meaning ; " Vallam- 
brosa," " Cathay." " Hesperian" : these were the words 
we associated with poetry. So long as there was beauty 
of craftsmanship and musical rhythm we demanded no 
depth of thought or philosophy ; but now we demand 
more, much more of that which has come to be the chief 
nuurisher in life's feast. Our modern poetry, to satisfy 
our inmost cravings must be simple, direct, musical, 
lilk-d with a love of the beautiful and a hatred of the 
ugly : the poet must, in Lord Dunsany's words " feel 
the pain of others as if it were his own, he nmst understand 
all mankind as we understand perhaps one individual in 
the world." He must be the translator of our finest 
dreams and be able to transport us into the Land of Heart's 
Desire : he must be able to guide us in our pursuit of the 
True, the Lovely, and the Lovable and help us to detect 
and destroy the Lying, the Base, the Glittering Sham. 
And now the cjuestion arises, does the new poet do 
all this for us ? Unhesitatingly 1 answer, Yes. 
All the finest and most lasting poems of our time are 
gathered together and garnered for us by the indefatigable 
labour and love of ,Mr. Marsh. Li icjia he gave 
us " (ieorgian Poetry. iqii-iyi2. " which by May, i()i4, 
had run into its tenth edition, and now he has still more 
surely shewn himself to be a jmblic benefactor by producing 
a second volume: "Georgian Poetry, iqi^-iqi^." All 
the young school of creative artists is here represented 
and within its 240 pages is contained the cream of our 
age. The fust thought that crosses our mind on putting 
the \olume down is that we' thank God that we live in 
an era that can vie with any other in the history of our 
literature. Think of this description of (ioncril moaning 
over her mother's death bed : 
Come back, come back ; the things I have not done 
Beat in upon my brain from everv side : 
I know not where to put myself to bear them : 
If I could have you now I could act well. 
My inward life, deeds that you ha\'e not known. 
I burn to tell you in a sudden dread 
That now your ghost discovers them in me. 
It is clear and pellucid as crystal, magically arranged, 
like those unforgi.'ttablc lines in "King Lear": — "Her 
i ,. WIS ever -oil, ^enllo and low, an excellent thing 
' , -m '^ Thev senn to have fallen into the line 
arsoine of Donnes lines fall-straight from heaven: 
I loiv tu talk v.ilh some old lover's ghost 
Wiio'died before tlic God of Love was born. 
This simplicity is, perhaps, the most striking feature 
of the book There are fourteen poets represented in the 
volume and each of them relies solely on Anglo-Saxon, 
monosvllabic words for his effect: it is the sign of the 
success of the revolution against the honey-sweet. And there 
can be no doubt that this terseness f)f diction has accentua- 
ted the beauty in this book: certainly "Beauty and Beauty 
meet all naked, fair to fair. " The tpiest for beauty 
underlies every poem : 
The song of each and all who gaze 
On Bcautv in her naked blaze, 
The song of all not wholly dark. 
Not wholly sunk in stupor stark 
Too deep "for groping Heaven. 
The beauty of the body is the subject of Wilfrid 
Gibson's " Hoops " : 
r\e always woishii>i)i''l tlif body, all my life, 
Tlie body", quick with the perfect health which is beauty, 
Lively, lissom, alert and taking its way 
Through the world with the easy gait of the early gods. 
The beauty of all life is the theme of Lascelles 
Abercrombie's " End of the World " : 
Life that has done such wonders with its thinking. 
And never daunted in imagining : 
That has put on the sea and the shining night, 
The flowering of the earth, and tides of the sea, 
.\n I irresistible rage of fate itself. 
All these as garments for its spirit's journey. 
The beauty of the creator is the raison d'etre of John 
Drinkwater's " Carver in Stone " : 
Slowly out of the dark confusion, spread 
By life's innumerable venturiiigs 
Over his brain, he would triumph into the light 
Of one clear mood, unblemished of the blind 
Legions of errant thought that cried about 
His rapt seclusion. 
The beauty of all material things and the liorror of an 
abstract Heaven underlies Rupert Brooke's " Tiart 
Taliiti." He cannot bear the idea of losing: 
Miri's laugh, Teipo's feet. 
And the hands of Matua . . . 
And . . . Mamua, your kn'elier head . . . 
How shall we wind these wreaths of ours. 
Where there are neither heads nor flowers ? 
Oh, Heaven's Heaven I — but we'll be missing 
The palms, and sunlight, and the South ; 
And there's an end, I tliink, of kissing. 
When our mouths are one with Mouth . . . 
Nothing that has been written about or during the 
war will outUve the same writer's sonnet on " The 
Soldier." There is imbedded in it all that has upheld 
the lighting men through thirst and hunger, heat and cold, 
horror and agony. The thought that their bodies wher. 
dead will enrich the foreign soil and cause to spring up 
in after years happiness, peacefulness and laughter of a 
kind learnt lonq ago under an English heaven is the finest 
and truest thought that we ha\e heard since August 
1914. It is little wonder that copies of Brooke's poems 
are to be found in nearly every otliccr's and many men's 
l)ockets out in France, and everywhere else where men 
are fighting. The war is not a thing apart from the poet's 
life as some strany;e people have imagined it to be. The 
true poet is himself a fighter, in the Army or Navy if he 
is strong enough, " against spells and ghouls more dread 
t)y far than deadly seas and cities are" — all his life lonii. 
He knows too, no one better : 
The song of courage, heart and will 
And gladness in a tight, 
Of men who, face a hopeless hill 
With sparkling and delight. 
And it is for this reason if for no other that all our soldiers 
and sailors to-day read oar new true poets in order to gain 
fresh inspiration, to renew their courage, and to revive 
their drooping spirits. 
Printed by J. G. Hajuw.vd & Co., Liiutkb, 32 30, fleet Lane, London K.C 
