The Irish Tribune, 1926-12-03 Book Reviews "THE BEGGAR'S RIDE." "The Beggar's Ride." A Play, by Edward Shanks CONTEMPORARY VERSE J.H MYSELF Myself. Good evening. I had begun to hope you would come, for I need help. A few days ago I read a review which you had written of a book of contempory prose, and the review, I thought, was little else than a general condemnation of contemporary poetry. Perhaps you would be of assistance to me in reversing the process, for I in my turn had rather write of the general judgement than fill a column with my opinions on the book I have before me. John. Is it so bad then? I will not believe that it is any worse than the book of essays which I wrote of. Myself. My dear John, you are not a poet and hence you can know nothing of the agony which one faulting line can inflict upon a poet. Did you know this you would be in a position to pity me who have even now read close upon three thousand such lines, lines latin, lines limp, lines corrupt and deceitful lines such as one imagines reading the advertisment for a wholesale drapery department. Let me quote you four such lines, and since we have adopted the jargon of the merchants, assure you there is a clearance sale of the other two thousand, none hundred and ninety-six. O my heart, my dearest heart, My love, my dove, come hither in my arms. And put your head against my sunken breast. Hush, hush, no tears--- John. I begin to suspect ... Myself. Whom? John. Rubert Brooke, John Drinkwater, Lord Alfred Douglas, Alice Meynell, Gilbert Murray, The Evening Echo, John Freeman, Lord Gorell, Edward Shanks, Evelyn Underhill and J. C. Squire. Myself. Thou hast said it. John. Is there nothing which could draw in the net for one? Myself. Nothing. Unless it be a telling passage like this: A miracle? Life is a miracle, and death, and love, And the smallest word that issues from man's mouth, for we are wonderful creatures. Be not amazed. John. And still are you agnostic enough to sneer down thirty thousand such words as though they were commonplace! Myself. John, a profound and excellent wit is yours; I have sworn to it even on darkest Montnottee. But now tell me, you who so briliantly traced back the absence of poetry to the decline of pottery, whence comes it that men can no longer suffer in art a phrase like Kiss me-- indeed, I blush for the words myself even as I speak them, for does not the lady in my book say: O David, If anything a virgin may bestow Can give you double strength, ask it of me. Or rather I will offer. Take my lips... John. As a mere character in an imaginary conversation I would not usurp your privilege of saying what is to be said. Do not consider my feelings, I pray you. Myself. Beshrew me, John. but thou hast good sense. Well, if I may...I had just intended to remark that the middle classes who have already succeeded in laying waste the province of peasant and aristocrat, in turning field into factory, manor into minature Monte Carlo, university into technical institute, have begun to invade the domain once ruled by deepbrowed Homer. They have been assisted by their own fell arts of print and publicity; their yoke is an easy one for they ask of a man no more that he shall discard his brains---an easy task to most--and his sensibilities---easier still, for have they not provided us with wars in which men are no more regarded than ants. They have set up professorships of poetry that there may be no more poetry, and professorships of drama that there may be no more drama. Aristocracy which is merely an assurance of the permanance of what is best, they have supplanted by their own dizzy craze for novelty, so that in sculpture there is now a succession of fancies like fashions, and in verse a regular whirligig of disintegration, Let me quote for you a few---no not exactly stanzas---from the work of an American poetess. of ice. Deceptively reserved and flat, it lies "in grandeur and in mass" beneath a sea of shifting snow dunes; dots of cyclamen red and maroon on its clearly defined pseudopodia made of glass that will bend--a much- needed invention--comprising twenty- eight ice fields from fifty to five hund- red feet thick. Now there is a difference between my first quotations and that which I have now made. In the jargon of heraldry, one is couchant, the other rampant. Couchant middle classes are those which still suffer from the effects of compulsory education; rampant middle classes are those which make others suffer. Couchant middle classes quote Shakespeare; rampant they cut Shakespeare. I had hoped that Ireland would, when she had flung off the effects of civil war, have put the middle classes in their place; for Ireland as you know is a land of aristocrats and her art is an aristocratic art. I have gotten into the habit of immersing myself in it when some too flagrant piece of shopkeepers poetry has stricken me down. Perhaps you remember that lovely poem which Grania made for Diarmuid when they fled into the mountains from Finn? Whether or not let me read it for you, for I think that soon all art will come to this, that two or three distainful souls shall come together and read beautiful verses to one another. John. But tell me, do you think we may yet be able to build a wall about Ireland and give the seed of poetry a chance to grow again? Myself. I think we have already built the wall, for all orthodoxies are walls, but the wall is about the seed and the seed will perish for want of light and air. Mr. Conor MacDoal is a good wall in himself, a wall that is all eyes. Or ever the poor bulb has shown itself above ground, he would scrutinise it and see if it fully and properly resemble the bulbs brought to light by Cannon Sheehan. If not he will fall in upon it and crush it. Pleasant enough as a wall, but--- would you not say, coming back to him as a human being,--well, rather thick? Listen... FRANK O'CONNOR  LULLABY OF ADVENTUROUS LOVE The Sleepsong that Grania made for Dermot when they fled into the mountains from Finn. Sleep a little, little yet, little love, who needs may fret; you I give my heart to keep now as ever, therefore sleep. Sleep a little. Let night pace out unhindered, for your grace, for your boyish grace and you, I shall see the darkness through. Blessings on you, sleep-beguiled, be to-night but as a child in this land above the lake where the darkened torrents wake. Sleep thou then the eastern sleep of that great voice whose songs we keep, who from Lord Conall for his prey took Morann’s lovely child away. As in the northern land, sleep sound the sleep that starry Fincha found, who from the house of Falvey won the bright-eyed Slaney for his own, Or that fair western sleep he slept, who from the narrow causeway stept in Dernish, guiding in the night his lady by the torches’ light. Or Dega’s sleep, who in the south laid his mouth on Coinehenn’s mouth, all forgetting as the dead in that sleep what arm he fled. Light beyond the light of Greece, I am watching. Sleep in peace. Were we parted, for your sake what should the heart do but break Were we parted, then might part children of one home and heart, and soul and body too, were we parted, I and you. Now that the hounds are up and out and the watchful spears about, thee no deathly love come near, nor in the long sleep hold thee dear. The stag lays not his side to sleep for bellowing from his mountain steep; he walks the woods and yet no glade lures him to sleep within its shade. Sleep comes not upon the deer who calls and calls her young to her, from crag to crag she may go leap, and climb her hills. She will not sleep. Nor sleep will they within their house who flutter through the twining boughs, and start from branch to branch and peek among the leaves. They will not sleep. The duck that bears her brood to-night may furrow the wide waters bright or e’er to any nest she creep; among the reeds she will not sleep. The curlew cannot rest at all within his wild wind-haunted hall; his voice is near us, loud and deep; among the streams he will not sleep--- Sleep a little. Irish Tribune, 1926-12-03, pp. 20-21