striving to winnow the chaff from the wheat in the harvest of life. Poets of his calibre are rare indeed: so many of those who showed promise of great things, like Francis Ledwidge and Rupert Brooke, are now silent. It will be the fervent wish of all those who read Mr Sassoon's work that he may be spared to fulfil the prophecies which the critics have ventured upon with regard to his powers, and continue to sing even more sweetly, more surely now that peace has returned. Even now, above the tumult and the din of the aftermath of war, his voice rings out, irrepressible, strangely elated and clear : The world's my field, and I'm the lark, Alone with upward song, alone with light. Are we not justified in hoping for even more haunting melodies, even grander poems when quietude descends upon the land? I IV ROBERT NICHOLS N any discussion or criticism of modern art it is impossible to avoid imagining what the artist would have achieved had he not been swept into the swirl and eddy of war. In the Napoleonic era it seemed possible to pursue one's craft as though no world-shaking conflict were taking place. Not so to-day. Far too many of our most promising young writers have been killed, cut off in the middle of their song. No man can pretend to view life as he saw it a few years ago whether we like it or not our very souls are altogether changed, in many instances not for the better. It is, however, a truism that the poet thrives best when he is suffering most; consequently not a few whose names were unknown in 1914 found themselves on the battlefield and leapt into fame as poets. High among these I would place Robert Nichols. So new a poet is he that you will search in vain for his name in any anthology published before Mr Edward Marsh included some of his work in the third volume of Georgian Poetry (1915-1917). But in the volume of poems called Ardours and Endurances there is sufficient warrant for my assertion that he is one of the major poets of the day. At the end of the most ambitious poem of the book (it occupies nearly seventy pages), A Faun's Holiday, he writes: In other words, like so many other poets, he recognises that he is one of those rare beings chosen to voice the delight of life, and that he is bound to fulfil his mission before death can claim him. 66 Beauty, be thou my star!" he sings in another poem. Not that he need have said so in so many words, for dull must he be of vision who cannot realise from the very first pages of this book that he pursues his one aim with a persistent zeal and a wealth of diction that will ensure his reaching heights undreamt of by most other poets of our time. But he warns us that Those whose love but shines a hint Know what any bird may mean, Meteor in my heart shall rest, Spelled on my brain blaze th' unguessed Words of the rainbow's dazzling sheen. The volume is divided up into three books: the first dealing entirely with the war. In Part I he tells of the summons: Honour it is that calls: canst thou forget Once thou wert strong? Listen; the solemn call Sounds but this once again. Put by regret For summons missed, or thou hast missed them all. Then comes the approach, the distant boom of the guns: These last four lines sum up the gospel of the soldier before his initiation into war more aptly and perfectly than many volumes of so-called battle psychology have been able to. When the soul has been made worthy there appears to the proved soldier a vision: he becomes articulate. He discovers what war really means, which is not at all what he expected or the civilian would believe. All these young men have given utterance to what they have seen, and in each case it is the same. We have, for instance, the testimony of Hugh Walpole (perhaps the most brilliant novelist of our time), who says: "War is made up of a million million past thoughts, past scenes, streets of little country towns, lonely hills, dark sheltered valleys, the wide space of the sea, the crowded traffic of New York, London, Berlin, yes, and of smaller things than that, of little quarrels, of dances at Christmas time, of walks at night, of dressing for dinner, of walking in the morning, of meeting old friends, of sicknesses, theatres, Church services, slums, cricket-matches, children, rides on a tram, baths on a hot morning, sudden unpleasant truth from a friend, momentary consciousness of God... That is the vision vouchsafed to the prose-writer, but the poet goes even deeper. Robert Nichols only voices the general feeling of all the war-poets when he writes: Now that I am ta'en away, And may not see another day, What sound rings in my stricken ears? Or eyes beloved-world-without-end, But scenes and sounds of the countryside The gorse upon the twilit down, The English loam so sunset brown, The bowed pines and the sheep-bells' clamour. The wet, lit lane and the yellow-hammer, The orchard and the chaffinch song, Only to the Brave belong. And he shall lose their joy for aye If their price he cannot pay, But in Fulfilment he has penetrated even deeper than the rest of his school, and left an imperishable memorial of the effect of war upon one great soul : Was there love once? I have forgotten her. Other loves I have, men rough, but men who stir |