The London Mercury, Vol. I, Nos. 1-6, November 1919 to April 1920Various
General
The London Mercury, Vol. I, Nos. 1-6, November 1919 to April 1920
Various
English literature -- Periodicals; London (England) -- Periodicals
If we say that in all these it is possible to perceive reality
imaginatively seized and transfigured by passion, even if we add a
general curiosity to penetrate behind the appearances of things to
their substance, we say no more than we ought to say of any poetry
which we are disposed to praise. Perhaps if we could say much more we
should distinguish the literature with which we are dealing as one
which has forsaken the proper traditions of the art for qualities of a
merely temporary interest. It is not necessarily the business of new
poets to discover new objects for poetry; it is their business to bring
to bear on the old objects their own new personalities and whatever has
accrued both to the language and to general human experience. We are of
opinion that the "Georgian" poets are doing this; and though to give
them that title still requires something of an act of faith, it is one
much easier to make than it was seven years ago.
The survival of the word as the name of a period is, of course, not
yet assured. Many of these writers are still extremely young. Some of
them will develop in ways which cannot yet be foreseen. Mr. Nichols and
Mr. Turner, both of them capable of grandiose conceptions and engaged
in making a style to sustain them, will very likely attempt the drama,
where an empty throne is waiting. Mr. de la Mare, who is probably the
oldest of the distinctively Georgian writers, grows every year deeper
and solider, and it is impossible to say what will become of him. Mr.
Robert Graves is producing a body of work almost every line of which is
as sweet and sound as a nut, and is an influence against the obscurity
from which a good many of his contemporaries suffer. The author of _A
Ballad of Nursery Rhyme_, which begins:
Strawberries that in gardens grow
Are plump and juicy fine
But sweeter far as wise men know
Spring from the woodland vine.
No need for bowl or silver spoon,
Sugar or spice or cream,
Has the wild berry plucked in June,
Beside the trickling stream,
may perhaps have done a service by writing these lines at the same time
as Mr. Turner was writing such a fine but involved stanza as this from
_Death_:
That sound rings down the years--I hear it yet--
All earthly life's a winding funeral--
And though I never wept,
But into the dark coach stept,
Dreaming by night to answer the blood's sweet call,
She who stood there, high-breasted, with small, wise lips,
And gave me wine to drink and bread to eat,
Has not more steadfast feet,
But fades from my arms as fade from mariners' eyes
The sea's most beauteous ships.
And others no doubt will appear who are now no more thought of than
were Mr. Nichols or Mr. Graves or Mr. Turner in 1912.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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