e, more dear than they.
'And always I ask and wonder
(Though often I do not know it)
Why does this water not smell like water?...'
To leave the question of reminiscence aside, how the delicate vision of
Mr de la Mare has been coarsened, how commonplace his exquisite
technique has become in the hands of even a first-rate ability! It
remains to be added that Mr Squire is an amateur of nature,--
'And skimming, fork-tailed in the evening air,
When man first was were not the martens there?'--
and a lover of dogs.
Mr Shanks, Mr W.J. Turner, and Mr Freeman belong to the same order. They
have considerable technical accomplishment of the straightforward
kind--and no emotional content. One can find examples of the disastrous
simile in them all. They are all in their degree pseudo-naives. Mr
Turner wonders in this way:--
'It is strange that a little mud
Should echo with sounds, syllables, and letters,
Should rise up and call a mountain Popocatapetl,
And a green-leafed wood Oleander.'
Of course Mr Turner does not really wonder; those four lines are proof
positive of that. But what matters is not so much the intrinsic value of
the gift as the kindly thought which prompted the giver. Mr Shanks's
speciality is beauty. He also is an amateur of nature. He bids us: 'Hear
the loud night-jar spin his pleasant note.' Of course, Mr Shanks cannot
have heard a real night-jar. His description is proof of that. But
again, it was a kindly thought. Mr Freeman is, like Mr Squire, a more
interesting case, deserving detailed analysis. For the moment we can
only recommend a comparison of his first and second poems in this book
with 'Sabrina Fair' and 'Love in a Valley' respectively.
It is only when we are confronted with the strange blend of technical
skill and an emotional void that we begin to hunt for reminiscences.
Reminiscences are no danger to the real poet. He is the splendid
borrower who lends a new significance to that which he takes. He
incorporates his borrowing in the new thing which he creates; it has its
being there and there alone. One can see the process in the one fine
poem in _Wheels_, Mr Wilfred Owen's 'Strange Meeting':--
'It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one
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