

E-text prepared by Richard Tonsing, Suzanne Shell, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images
generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
(http://archive.org/details/americana)



Note: Images of the original pages are available through
      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
      http://archive.org/details/studiesofcontemp00sturrich


Transcriber's note:

      In the original text, a row of spaced periods was used to
      separate extracts where lines of the poems were omitted.
      In this version these are represented as "....."

      Greek text has been transliterated and enclosed by equal
      signs (example: =eithe genoimen=).





STUDIES OF CONTEMPORARY POETS

by

MARY C. STURGEON

Author of "Women of the Classics" etc.







[Illustration]

New York
Dodd, Mead & Company
MCMXVI

Printed at
The Ballantyne Press
London, England




TO

PROFESSOR W. H. HUDSON

IN GRATITUDE AND ESTEEM




_Acknowledgment_


The author begs to offer warm thanks to the following poets and their
publishers, for the use of the quotations given in these studies:

Mr Masefield and "John Presland"; Mr John Lane for the work of Mr
Abercrombie and Mrs Woods; Messrs Sidgwick and Jackson for the work of
Miss Macaulay and Rupert Brooke; Mr A. C. Fifield and Mr Elkin Mathews
for the work of Mr W. H. Davies; Messrs Constable for the work of Mr de
la Mare; Mr Elkin Mathews, _New Numbers_, and the Samurai Press for the
work of Mr W. W. Gibson; the Poetry Bookshop for the work of Mr Hodgson;
Messrs Max Goschen Ltd. for the work of Mr Ford Madox Hueffer; Messrs
Maunsel and Co Ltd for the work of the members of "An Irish Group" and
of Mr Stephens; the Samurai Press and the Poetry Bookshop for the work
of Mr Monro; and Mr William Heinemann for the work of Mrs Naidu.




Contents


                                                                   PAGE

  LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE                                              11

  RUPERT BROOKE                                                      36

  WILLIAM H. DAVIES                                                  53

  WALTER DE LA MARE                                                  72

  WILFRID WILSON GIBSON                                              87

  RALPH HODGSON                                                     108

  FORD MADOX HUEFFER                                                122

  AN IRISH GROUP                                                    137

  ROSE MACAULAY                                                     181

  JOHN MASEFIELD                                                    197

  HAROLD MONRO                                                      217

  SAROJINI NAIDU                                                    235

  "JOHN PRESLAND"                                                   248

  JAMES STEPHENS                                                    282

  MARGARET L. WOODS                                                 301

  BIBLIOGRAPHY                                                      327




Lascelles Abercrombie


In the sweet chorus of modern poetry one may hear a strange new harmony.
It is the life of our time, evoking its own music: constraining the
poetic spirit to utter its own message. The peculiar beauty of
contemporary poetry, with all its fresh and varied charm, grows from
that; and in that, too, its vitality is assured. Its art has the deep
sanction of loyalty: its loyalty draws inspiration from the living
source.

There is a fair company of these new singers; and it would seem that
there should be large hope for a generation, whether in its life or
letters, which can find such expression. Listening carefully, however,
some notes ring clearer, stronger, or more significant than others; and
of these the voice of Mr Abercrombie appears to carry the fullest
utterance. It is therefore a happy chance that the name which stands
first here, under a quite arbitrary arrangement, has also a natural
right to be put at the head of such a group of moderns.

But that is not an implicit denial to those others of fidelity to their
time. It is a question of degree and of range. Every poet in this band
will be found to represent some aspect of our complex life--its awakened
social conscience or its frank joy in the world of sense: its mysticism
or its repudiation of dogma, in art as in religion: its mistrust of
materialism or keen perception of reality: its worship of the future, or
assimilation of the heritage of the past to its own ideals: its lyrical
delight in life or dramatic re-creation of it: its insistence upon the
essential poetry of common things, or its discovery of rare new values
in experience and expression.

This poetry frequently catches one or another of those elements, and
crystallizes it out of a mere welter into definite form and recognizable
beauty. But the claim for Mr Abercrombie is that he has drawn upon them
more largely: that he has made a wider synthesis: that his work has a
unity more comprehensive and complete. It is in virtue of this that he
may be said to represent his age so fully; but that is neither to accuse
him of shouting with the crowd, nor to lay on the man in the street the
burden of the poet's idealism. He is, indeed, in a deeper sense than
politics could make him, a democrat: perhaps that inheres in the poetic
temperament. But intellectuality like his