Art of Letters — Georgians: The Group

such as will, we are confident, give him a permanent place in English literature.

(2) THE GROUP

The latest collection of Georgian verse has had a mixed reception.

One or two distinguished critics have written of it in the mood of a challenge to mortal combat.

Men have begun to quarrel over the question whether we are living in an age of poetic dearth or of poetic plenty--whether the world is a nest of singing-birds or a cage in which the last canary has been dead for several years.

All this, I think, is a good sign.

It means that poetry is interesting people sufficiently to make them wish to argue about it.

Better a breeze--even a somewhat excessive breeze--than stagnant air.

It is good both for poets and for the reading public.

It prevents the poets from resting on their wings, as they might be tempted to do by a consistent calm of praise.

It compels them to examine their work more critically.

Anyhow, "fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil," and a reasonable amount of sharp censure will do a true poet more good than harm.

It will not necessarily injure even his sales.

I understand the latest volume of _Georgian Poetry_ is already in greater demand than its predecessor.

It is a good anthology of the poetry of the last two years without being an ideal anthology.

Some good poets and some good poems have been omitted.

And they have been omitted, in some instances, in favour of inferior work.

Many of us would prefer an anthology of the best poems rather than an anthology of authors.

At the same time, with all its faults, _Georgian Poetry_ still remains the best guide we possess to the poetic activities of the time.

I am glad to see that the editor includes the work of a woman in his new volume.

This helps to make it more representative than the previous selections.

But there are several other living women who are better poets, at the lowest estimate, than at least a quarter of the men who have gained admission.

Mr. W.

H.

Davies is by now a veteran among the Georgians, and one cannot easily imagine a presence more welcome in a book of verse.

Among poets he is a bird singing in a hedge.

He communicates the same sense of freshness while he sings.

He has also the quick eye of a bird.

He is, for all his fairy music, on the look-out for things that will gratify his appetite.

He looks to the earth rather than the sky, though he is by no means deaf to the lark that Raves in his windy heights above a cloud.

At the same time, at his best, he says nothing about his appetite, and sings in the free spirit of a child at play.

His best poems are songs of innocence.

At least, that is the predominant element in them.

He warned the public in a recent book that he is not so innocent as he sounds.

But his genius certainly is.

He has written greater poems than any that are included in the present selection.

_Birds_, however, is a beautiful example of his gift for joy.

We need not fear for contemporary poetry while the hedges contain a poet such as Mr. Davies.

Mr. de la Mare does not sing from a hedge.

He is a child of the arts.

He plays an instrument.

His music is the music of a lute of which some of the strings have been broken.

It is so extraordinarily sweet, indeed, that one has to explain him to oneself as the perfect master of an imperfect instrument.

He is at times like Watts's figure of Hope listening to the faint music of the single string that remains unbroken.

There is always some element of hope, or of some kindred excuse for joy, even in his deepest melancholy.

But it is the joy of a spirit, not of a "super-tramp."

Prospero might have summoned just such a spirit through the air to make music for him.

And Mr. de la Mare's is a spirit perceptible to the ear rather than to the eye.

One need not count him the equal of Campion in order to feel that he has something of Campion's beautiful genius for making airs out of words.

He has little enough of the Keatsian genius for choosing the word that has the most meaning for the seeing imagination.

But there is a secret melody in his words that, when once one has recognized it, one can never forget.

How different the Georgian poets are from each other may be seen if we compare three of the best poems in this book, all of them on similar subjects--Mr. Davies's _Birds_, Mr. de la Mare's _Linnet_, and Mr. Squire's _Birds_.

Mr. Squire would feel as out of place in a hedge as would Mr. de la Mare.

He has an aquiline love of soaring and surveying immense tracts with keen eyes.

He loves to explore both time and the map, but he does this without losing his eyehold on the details of the Noah's Ark of life on the earth beneath him.

He does not lose himself in vaporous abstractions; his eye, as well as his mind, is extraordinarily interesting.

This poem of his, _Birds_, is peopled with birds.

We see them in flight and in their nests.

At the same time, the philosophic wonder of Mr. Squire's poem separates him from Mr. Davies and Mr. de la Mare.

Mr. Davies, I fancy, loves most to look at birds; Mr. de la Mare to listen to birds; Mr. Squire to brood over them with the philosophic imagination.

It would, of course, be absurd to offer this as a final statement of the poetic attitude of the three writers.

It is merely an attempt to differentiate among them with the help of a prominent characteristic of each.

The other poets in the collection include Mr. Robert Graves (with his pleasant bias towards nursery rhymes), Mr. Sassoon (with his sensitive, passionate satire), and Mr. Edward Shanks (with his trembling responsiveness to beauty).

It is the first time that Mr. Shanks appears among the Georgians, and his _Night Piece_ and _Glow-worm_ both show how exquisite is his sensibility.

He differs from the other poets by his quasi-analytic method.

He seems to be analyzing the beauty of the evening in both these poems.

Mrs. Shove's _A Man Dreams that He is the Creator_ is a charming example of fancy toying with a great theme.