However that may be, it is true that when war had with its usual foul impartiality murdered good and evil alike, it was to Brooke and the poets of release that the world for a moment turned. Brooke burst into fame with his War sonnets consecrated by his death in that Greek island. He became for the moment the expression of the youth of the world, gladly offering itself to wholesale assassination. But behind that momentary mag nificence were the more enduring meadows of Grantchester. In these the wracked world might find peace. In these—or by the trees, whose whisper Freeman overheard, in the long wholesome stretches of Drinkwater's Cotswolds, by the harsher northern up lands of Wilfrid Gibson, in Harold Monro's most endearing con solation of the country cottage, or with the birds and the moon of Squire. This was a corporate offer to the world, and it was eagerly accepted.
For the moment. Because it was the habit of the War to make and break its idols almost simultaneously. Hardly had the new recruits flocked to the banner, hardly had Edward Shanks and Martin Armstrong added their conspiracy of release, when the poets of hatred burst upon the world like an angry shell. Robert Graves, Robert Nichols, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon one after another blasted the romantic assumption that war was the consecration of youth by fire. In tile teeth of a world staggering under its weight of stupid ugliness, these poets flung the single word "Murderers." The other poetry grew for the moment strangely dim and pale. Men were listening to this new and abominable accusation—and even the fields, the birds and the moon could not distract them from it.
The name of Edward Thomas should be mentioned in this connection. Thomas was a much older man than the other poets here mentioned, and had written much before the War. But the War in some way released his response, and his reputation— growing and deserved—is wholly post-War. Because of the circumstances in which he wrote Thomas was entirely a poet. for posterity. He could do nothing to arrest the doom of silence which the exhaustion of the War was suddenly to impose. Relentlessly this poison-gas of despair advanced till a period that had seemed to be most fertile since the Elizabethan, ended choking in the fog of the spirit that denies. By the end of the decade which had seen its origin Georgian poetry was spent, and the war poetry with it. Because it seemed that the poets, who had exposed its horrors and cursed its originators, were content to forget, or at least to live back into peace. Wilfred Owen was quiet for ever, Robert Nichols turned to prose and play writing, Siegfried Sassoon at long intervals reminded the world of his genius. Only Robert Graves remained to write new forms of verse in the desperate hope of escaping from the memories he had per manently established in traditional shapes.
the war-period is over. There have been two later revolts, one known as "the Imagist" headed by F. S. Flint, with Transatlantic sanction, another led by Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sit well. The first revolt like the poetry against which it protested has apparently ended. Flint, Richard Aldington and the Ameri cans "H. D." and Ezra Pound, have contributed some ravishing melodies in free verse. They seem now to be replaced by verse not so much of freedom but in dissolution. They cannot compete, and they are wisely content to let the beauty they have made speak for itself. The Sitwell family on the other hand, and in a world of denial, affirm that with a slight shifting of the vision, a little readjustment of values, living beauty can still be restored. At a time when verse was in active danger of dying of suffocation, they breathed new life into it. Their work at least is not dead.
For the rest of the most recent work there should be mentioned Edmund Blunden and Humbert Wolfe. Blunden, though associ ated with the Georgian school, has lived at first hand with his fields and his farms. To read him is not like paying a visit to the country but like living there. Humbert Wolfe attempted both satire and verse that is accused of a facile romanticism. His Requiem was in some quarters regarded as making an advance on his earlier work; but with him, as with the Sitwells, for the mo ment we must be content with saying that he continued the attack.
Two things have still to be said. Among the greatest of the names in contemporary poetry are the Irish poets, who have only been mentioned, but not discussed. That was for the reason given above, that Yeats created the new Irish poetry and had far less effect on purely English verse than Housman. But the body of English literature is one and indivisible, and though it is possible in the light of the strong impulse given by Yeats to see Irish verse of the century separately, it must at least be men tioned here. All of it, as it was bound to be, is informed by a passionate consciousness of Ireland. But if the matchless rhythms of Yeats turned back to legend for consolation and hope, if "A. E." plunged into a mysticism as profound as Blake's, though, unlike Blake's, regulated by a sweet humanity, James Stephens was already looking forward. He has found truth through laughter, the laughter of a thrush. He has probably more than the other two influenced the latest developments of Irish verse. Padraic Colum and Seumas O'Sullivan are not of the same order as these, though b.)th are poets of distinction. Colum has the quiet dignity of the inspired peasant, while O'Sullivan writes in the im mediate shadow of Yeats. There remain Francis Ledwidge, who died young after an early lyric promise of almost torturing love liness, and Bertram Higgins and Austin Clarke who are going steadily forward in the paths laid down by Yeats and his peers.