SOME 1925 VERSE

The Espalier. By Sylvia Townsend Warner. (Chatto and Windus. 5s. net.)

THE-cuckoo has changed his note, the nightingales, like Norman Douglas' orioles, are tending to give but perfunctory perfor- mances with a hint of tired bravura. August, in a word, is upon us, and we have space during that hot and holiday month to regard the song with which the spring of 1925 has presented us. Is the war and post-war revival of poetry spent ? Is its place being taken by new ardencies ? Or are we ap- proaching the cyclical poetic depression, upon which no Royal Commission has ever sat ?

Well, there is no complete answer to any of these questions in the volumes under review, which, with the exception of Miss Sitwell's Troy Park, already reviewed in these pages, are a reasonably representative premier era 1925. But there is at least a partial answer to the first, if not to all three questions. The war-revival in its curious savage, brooding intensity is spent, was bound to be spent, nor perhaps was the confirmation afforded (in different ways) by Mr. Shanks, Mr. Turner and Mr. Elton necessary. But whether necessary or not, it is there.

Mr. Shanks was a poet deriving from war-ferment, not indeed in the same way as Mr. Sassoon, but none the less finding his afflatus in the hot breath of Ares. Something in his delicately poised sensibility was stripped by horror, and being laid baire, responded unexpectedly not to ugliness, but to beauty. The first bitter sting has gone out of the wound, and with healing has, it seems with Mr. Shanks, come, perhaps only for the moment, insensibility. It is not that Mr. Shanks has lost the capacity to write unusually, and now and then still to overhear the undertones of immortality. But the endearing freshness has gone out of his art, and the undertones are in- creasingly muffled. " The old fiery fount is further off," and Mr. Shanks has the air of straining to catch a glimpse over his shoulder, forgetting that to stand still in verse is to lose the way altogether.

Mr. Turner and Mr. Elton are different manifestations of the same change, though with them bitterness is the substitute for weariness. There is no mere " Chimborazo Cotopaxi " for Mr. Turner, but hatred, clamorous, wild and shaking, as it speaks, for the muddle of life. He can, for example, with a shriek of self-derision, write :-

" In the loves of hippopotami there are pathetic moments."

And in the bitterness of a sensitive imagination we might add that, in attempting to turn its back on the world, it is turning its back on Olympus. Mr. Elton, too, is reacting to the impulse to hate—a good impulse, since it is the poet's sovereign business to expose war. But a poet cannot live by hate alone, and we await from Mr. Elton more in the mood of the last poem, which promises, or at least suggests, that he is escaping back into love.

New Ardencies ? These emphatically are not present, either with Mr. James Stephens or Mr. Abbott. Mr. Stephens has either definitely gone over to the prosaists, or is keeping back his best stuff for his own private purposes, because among these few and slender pieces there is hardly ever a memory of the Stephens who wrote :—

" Little one, oli,little one,

I am searching everywhere."

Or perhaps it would be truer to say that there is nothing but memories—that seem to be in someone else's mind. There are some of the tricks of that Stephens, and a few of his words, and not any of his genius. Must we conclude that the depres- sion has set in ? Mr. Abbott, of the School of Edmund Blun- den, does not answer the question. If we urge that all barren ages turn to pastoral poetry, because it is the easiest superfici- ally, Mr. Abbott can reply that Collins inaugurated the rebirth of verse. And Mr. Abbott is close to the earth, so close indeed that sometimes the mud gets into his words, as, for example, " the pightle grass," " twindly," " swindgels," " bever-time," " hedgebetties," " staddles," " hoppet," and many others. But, nevertheless, though if we walk with him, we have to stamp our boots hard on coming home, we have had an invigorating walk. And perhaps (who knows ?) to- morrow he may intend to take us out of Essex up to a hill-top and show us a view over seven counties.

There remain Mr. Day-Lewis and Miss Warner. These are both new poets, and both, though necessarily with some doubt, assert that the impulse is still fresh and strong. They are both still under the influence of the poets they have greatly loved, Mr. Day-Lewis of Yeats, Miss Warner of Hardy, but both, though Miss Warner much more certainly, indicate that they will presently break free into the open of their .owp imagination. Mr. Day-Lewis says :—

" Were I this forest pool—

And you the birch-tree bending over, Your thoughts in shaken leaves could drop upon my heart."

And Miss Warner, of " The Scapegoat," writes :—

In the town, from sin made free, Righteous men hold jubilee. In the desert all alone

The scapegoat dances on and on."

They have both seen a glimpse, and for both it is before them and not behind. Miss Warner will certainly make for the fire, even if she burns her wings in the attempt. Mr. Lewis will certainly wish to reach it. And, if we may belieire that they are typical rather than isolated figures, then we need not, perhaps, conclude, though we cannot affirm, that the depres- sion is not yet.