But most of these ballads, as their t.i.tle suggests, are nothing more than the very sea foam of which they speak, and whose tale they tell; as compared with that later, deeper verse of Christian hope and regeneration.
And then pa.s.s those ten years; ten years following the period of "The Salt Water Ballads"; and ten years following the time when he was a "bar-boy" in New York; ten years in which he climbs from a simple "social consciousness" to a social consciousness that has the heart beat of Christ in its every line. The poems he writes in this period are all of the Christ. "Good Friday," perhaps the strongest poem dealing with this great day in Christ"s life, is full of a close knowledge of the spirit of the Man of Galilee. But it is in "The Everlasting Mercy" and not "The Story of a Round House" that we find Masefield at his big best, battering at the very doors of eternity with the fist of a giant and the tender love of a woman, and the plea of a penitent sinner.
Something had happened to Masefield in those ten years. A man"s entire life had been revolutionized; and his poetry with it. He still feels the want and need of the world, and the social injustice; but he has found the cure. In a word, he has been converted. I do not care whether or no Masefield means to tell his own story in "The Everlasting Mercy,"
but I do know that he tells, in spite of himself, a story that fits curiously into, and marvelously explains, the strange revolution and change in his own life from "Salt Water Ballads" to "Good Friday."
II. CONVERSION
It is an old-fashioned Methodist conversion of which he tells, which links itself up with the New Testament gospel of the regeneration of a human soul in such a fascinating way that it gives those of us who preach this gospel an impelling, modern, dramatic putting of the old, old story, that will thrill our congregations and grip the hearts of men who know not the Christ.
1. _Conviction of Sin_
Saul Kane was an amateur prizefighter. He and his friend Bill have a fight in the opening lines of the tale, and Saul wins. This victory is followed by the usual debauch, which lasts until all the drunken crowd are asleep on the floor of the "Lion." No Russian novelist, nor a Dostoievesky, nor another, ever dared such realism as Masefield has given us in his picture of this night"s sin. He makes sin all that it is--black and hideous:
"From three long hours of gin and smokes, And two girls" breath and fifteen blokes, A warmish night and windows shut The room stank like a fox"s gut.
The heat, and smell, and drinking deep Began to stun the gang to sleep."
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
But this was too much for Saul Kane. He had still enough decency left to be ashamed. He wanted air. He went to a window and threw it open:
"I opened window wide and leaned Out of that pigsty of the fiend, And felt a cool wind go like grace About the sleeping market-place.
The clock struck three, and sweetly, slowly, The bells chimed, Holy, Holy, Holy; And in a second"s pause there fell The cold note of the chapel bell, And then a c.o.c.k crew flapping wings, And summat made me think of things!"
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
There it is: sin, and conviction of sin. Perhaps he thought of another man who had virtually betrayed the Christ, and the c.o.c.k crew and made that other "think o" things."
Then came the reaction from that conviction; the battle against that same conviction that he must give up sin and surrender to the Christ; and a terrific battle it is, and a terrific description of that battle Masefield gives us, lightninglike in its vividness until there comes the little woman of G.o.d, Miss Bourne (a deaconess, if you please), who has always known the better man in Saul, who has followed him with her Christly love like "The Hound of Heaven." And how tenderly, yet how insistently, how pleadingly she speaks:
""Saul Kane," she said, "when next you drink, Do me the gentleness to think That every drop of drink accursed Makes Christ within you die of thirst; That every dirty word you say Is one more flint upon His way, Another thorn about His head, Another mock by where He tread; Another nail another cross; All that you are is that Christ"s loss.""
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
These searching words were beyond defeat. They went home to his already convicted heart and mind like arrows. They hurt. They cut. They awakened. They called. They pierced. They pounded with giant fists.
They lashed like spiked whips. They burned like a soul on fire. They clamored, and they whispered like a mother"s love, and at last his heart opened:
2. _Forgiveness_
"I know the very words I said, They bayed like bloodhounds in my head.
"The water"s going out to sea And there"s a great moon calling me; But there"s a great sun calls the moon, And all G.o.d"s bells will carol soon For joy and glory, and delight Of some one coming home to-night.""
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
And then came the consciousness that he was "done with sin" forever:
"I knew that I had done with sin, I knew that Christ had given me birth To brother all the souls on earth,"
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
which was followed by two "glories"--the "Glory of the Lighted Mind"
and the "Glory of the Lighted Soul." I think that perhaps in our preaching on conversion we make too little of the regeneration of the "mind." Masefield does not miss one whit of a complete regeneration.
3. _The Joy of Conversion_
"O glory of the lighted mind.
How dead I"d been, how dumb, how blind!
The station brook to my new eyes Was babbling out of Paradise, The waters rushing from the rain Were singing, "Christ has risen again!""
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
And then the soul glory:
"O glory of the lighted Soul.
The dawn came up on Bradlow Knoll, The dawn with glittering on the gra.s.ses, The dawn which pa.s.s and never pa.s.ses."
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
But that wasn"t all. Masefield knows that the other self must be completely eradicated, so he makes Saul Kane change his environment entirely. He goes to the country. He plows, and as he plows he learns the lesson of the soil and cries:
"O Jesus, drive the coulter deep To plow my living man from sleep."
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
And more word from Christ as he plowed:
"I knew that Christ was there with Callow, That Christ was standing there with me, That Christ had taught me what to be, That I should plow and as I plowed My Saviour Christ would sing aloud, And as I drove the clods apart Christ would be plowing in my heart, Through rest-harrow and bitter roots, Through all my bad life"s rotten fruits."
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
And so it is, that beginning with his poems of youth, John Masefield starts out with a sympathetic social consciousness, but nothing more apparently. He brothers with the outcast and frankly prefers it. Then comes the great regenerating influence in his life, which we surely find in his expression of faith that the soul is immortal, and finally that upheaval which we call conversion with all of its incident steps from conviction of sin to repentance; and then to the consciousness of forgiveness; to the lighted mind and the lighted soul; and then to the uprooting of evil and the planting of good in the soil of his life. And so through Saul Kane we see John Masefield and have an explanation of that subtle yet revolutionary change in his life and his poetry, pregnant with ill.u.s.trations that, to quote another English poet, Noyes, "Would make the dead arise!"
VIII
ROBERT SERVICE, POET OF VIRILITY [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from the following works: The Spell of the Yukon; Rhymes of a Red Cross Man, published by Ba.r.s.e & Hopkins, New York; Rhymes of a Rolling Stone, published by Dodd, Mead & Co., New York.]
A STUDY OF HIGH PEAKS AND HIGH HOPES; OF WHITE SNOWS AND WHITE LIVES; OF SIN AND DEATH; OF HEAVEN AND G.o.d
A preacher once preached a sermon, and in the opening moments of this sermon he quoted eight lines, and a layman said at the conclusion of this sermon, "Ah, the sermon was fine, but those lines that you quoted--they were tremendous; they gripped me!" And those lines were from Robert Service, the poet of the Alaskan ice-peaks, of the Yukon"s turbulent blue waters, of the great silences, of the high peaks and high hopes; of men and gold and sin and death.
And the lines that gripped the layman were:
"I"ve stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow That"s plumb-full of hush to the brim; I"ve watched the big husky sun wallow In crimson and gold, and grow dim; Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming And the stars tumbled out neck and crop; And I"ve thought that I surely was dreaming With the peace o" the world piled on top."