in fiction.

Poetry or drama may take its place. Or we may see the present high level surpassed and topped with some new peak of genius, some Shakspere of the novel.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

How do you account for the generally high level of construction in modern fiction?

What can you say about the rules that govern the making of fiction to-day?

What is the peculiarity of this age regarding ideals and principles of conduct?

Why are discontent and agitation healthy signs?

Explain the remarkable increase in short stories. Where have
they developed most abundantly and with most finished form ?
Why do boys and men of action like Stevenson's stories? Why do
critics who admire refinement of style also like them?
Compare Treasure Island with the Master of Ballantrae or Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Which do you like the more? Why?
Compare Treasure Island with Scott's novels, with Cooper's, with
Dumas's. In what does each excel?

Read Kipling's Soldiers Three, his Brushwood Boy, his Wee Willie Winkie, his Jungle Books. Why do you feel sure you will remember them? Is there any quality that reminds you of Browning? Does Kipling care more for books or for life? What do you think of his power of creating character?

Why would only a part of the readers that like Stevenson or Kipling care for Conrad?

What kind of student would be interested in Henry James? What can one get from him?

What kind of story does Galsworthy write?

Why do most students like Wells's novels? What meaning underlies his scientific romances? What other types of novel has he written?

What kind of novel is written by Arnold Bennett.

Read De Morgan's Joseph Vance or Alice for Short. What can you say of De Morgan's use of plot, of his method of reporting conversation, of his depiction of the richness and variety of real life?

CHAPTER XIV

RECENT POETRY

POETRY since the death of Tennyson and Browning has been comparatively barren. It is possible, of course, A Barren that some great poet of to-day will be Prospect discovered by a later generation. Present poetry, however, so far as we can see it, shows talent, skill, and gleams of inspiration, but no remarkable genius. Probably this is owing, as has been said, to the absence of idealism and of inspiring convictions. Possibly a new enthusiasm, a new awakening one cannot foresee the

effect of the World War - may inspire new poets.

The chief English poets of the early twentieth century are Rudyard Kipling, Alfred Noyes, and John Masefield. Each has written some poems that will live. Kipling Of the three, Kipling has the most rugged power, Noyes the most lightness and grace, and Masefield the most spiritual sense of mystery.

Kipling has remarkable control of verse form. It is far from equal to Swinburne's, but it never, like Swinburne's, distracts from the meaning of the poem. His thought, in fact, is so original that his technical skill gets too little credit. Every student of poetry should read aloud and study carefully the best poems in the Seven Seas and the Five Nations.

To get a good idea of Kipling's poetry, the student should read some of the Barrack-Room Ballads, - Mandalay, for instance, and Danny Deever. Some of the longer character poems (in a spirit not unlike that of Browning)

- Mulholland's Contract, McAndrew's Hymn, and the Chant Pagan - should be read also. The student should read too some of the more abstract reflective poems, especially those in The Seven Seas and The Five Nations. The following passage from A Song of the English (Seven Seas) pictures the spirit of the pioneers who died to make the way clear for others.

We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town;
We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down.
Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with the Need,
Till the Soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead.
As the deer breaks as the steer breaks

graze,

from the herd where they

In the faith of little children we went on our ways.
Then the wood failed

dried

then the food failed

then the last water

In the faith of little children we lay down and died.

On the sand-drift on the veldt-side - in the fern-scrub we lay, That our sons might follow after by the bones on the way.

Follow after follow after! We have watered the root,

And the bud has come to blossom that ripens for fruit!
Follow after we are waiting by the trails that we lost
For the sound of many footsteps, for the tread of a host.
Follow after follow after for the harvest is sown:
By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own.

An element to be especially noticed is Kipling's use of detail, his ability to put the soul into reality, to give a sordid fact and then transfigure it. Observe this in the following from A Dirge of Dead Sisters (Five Nations):

Who recalls the noontide and the funerals from the market (Blanket-hidden bodies, flagless, followed by the flies)?

And the footsore firing party, and the dust and stench and staleness, And the faces of the sisters and the glory in their eyes.

With Swinburne and Masefield, Kipling shares the honor of being one of the few poets who have written about the sea as a sailor sees and loves it. He does not talk vaguely about its billows and "terrors." He brings out the mystery of its spaces and the joy of its motion.

His lighter songs develop into art the "topical songs" of the music halls. They may be vulgar, in a way, but they go through the surface vulgarity

of the sailors and soldiers, and strike at eternal human feeling beneath.

Alfred Noyes is a poet who writes much and easily. He has written many adNoyes

mirable short poems

and a number of very long poems
and dramas. His verse lacks
condensed force and sustained
passion. It is musical, enchant-
ing, rapid, yet leaves, perhaps, the day.
too little abiding impression. He

has remarkable control of double rhymes and complicated and lilting rhythms, and he surrounds everything he sings with a magic atmosphere. One of his best long poems is his Tales of the Mermaid Tavern, a series of idyls, one might say, dealing with Shakspere and his contemporaries. A charming passage in it is the account of Kemp's dance to Sudbury, and his meeting with his "Companion of a Mile." Noyes's play Sherwood, though more suited for reading than for acting, is filled with romantic and mystic beauty. In his Drake, a long narrative poem, occurs his finest lyric, the song with the refrain, “Let not

love go too." One of his most popular poems is his Barrel Organ.

Go down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;

Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!) And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer's wonderland; Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)

The cherry-trees are seas of bloom and soft perfume and sweet perfume, The cherry-trees are seas of bloom (and oh, so near to London!) And there they say, when dawn is high and all the world's a blaze of sky The cuckoo, though he's very shy, will sing a song for London.1

John Masefield is a new writer. He, like Kipling, loves to use "prosaic" detail and glorify it with imagi

nation. That

Masefield

seems to be a new tendency in poetry, to move further along the lines opened by Wordsworth and Coleridge, to try to bring out the poetry in everything that can possibly arouse it. Some ideas habitually call up unpoetic associations. Yet, by his art, a great poet can make common things shine with wonder. He does not "put this poetry into his subject," does not "make it A leading modern poet. He poetic." He only brings to light the poetry that underlies reality. Masefield writes chiefly of the sea and ships, not only of the sailing ships of romance, but even of the modern

JOHN MASEFIELD

1 Reprinted from Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes, by permission of the publishers, Frederick A. Stokes Company.