EVERLASTING MERCY, The. (The Everlastng Mercy> (1911), by John Masefield, is a poem of some 1,800 lines, telling the old story of a man's degradation and redemption. Life, while ruthlessly bringing every man's sowing to the harvest, 'is always merciful enough to keep open the way that leadeth out of evil. Masefield prefers the familiar simile of the Christ knocking at the door of one's inner self. It is the story of one Saul Kane (the name is suggestive of two biblical char acters and incidents), who at the age of 20 "was tokened to the devil." The crisis in his depravity is hastened by the fight with Billy Myers, precipitated by a poaching adventure and succeeded by a drunken debauch at "the Lion." After "three long hours of gin and smokes" with every nerve on edge and mind a-swirl in a tumult of accusing thoughts his reason reeled and a madness that was not wholly from "Hot Hollands punch on top of stout" seized him. Throwing boots and torn clothes and glasses through the window he leaps out and rushes through the street, A naked madman waving grand A blazing lamp in either hand He wakens the sleeping town with a furious ringing of the fire bell. When the firemen rush toward him he flees and they, because of his nakedness and his wild yelling, I'm fire of hell come up this minute To burn this town and all that's in it.
think him an escaped lunatic. Having shaken his pursuers he returns to "the Lion" and sleeps. On waking a second spell of madness rushes him to the street. On seeing "old puffing parson," with exaggerated rudeness he bars his path and pours out a scathing criticism of the established religious and social order, not spar ing even the parson: 0, what are you, and what you preach. And what you do. and what you teach Is not God's Word, nor honest schism, But Devil's cant and pauperism.
Masefield is at his best when criticizing the social order, but the sanity of his spirit is well disclosed in the parson's pointed and effect ive reply. Saul Kane drunk and exaggeratedly
boastful in his degradation is not bad all through. Before the fight began he looked at The five and forty human faces Inflamed by drink and going to races, Faces of men who'd never been Merry or true or live or clean.
It is a man's sympathy rather than a drunkard's that prompts Kane to comfort little Jimmy Jag gard who has lost his mother in the market place. Jimmy's mother hurries to the scene as soon as she is warned that "Saul Kane, the drunken braggard," is talking to her Jimmy, and in her crude, unlettered and forceful way she pictures Kane to himself and to the as sembled crowd with pitiless accuracy, so that he confesses that This old mother made me see What harm I done by being me.
And Summat she was, or looked, or said, Went home and made me hang my head. I slunk away into the night Knowing deep down that she was right.
Put thus to shame before himself and the peo ple he drowns the mortification he felt in deeper drunkenness which spurs him to a more brazen assertion of depravity as exhibited in the insult offered to Miss Bourne, who regularly visited the saloons "To bring the drunkards' souls to grace," an act which shocked even his com panions in drunkenness. This insult recoiled upon him with such force from the clean soul and simple word of Miss Bourne that it caused something to snap inside his brain. The re maining part of the poem describes his wander ing "out into darkness, out to night," merging into the dawn of a new day, the birth of a new self, and the finding of the ((everlasting 'mercy, Christ.) The whole poem grips and holds the reader with the intensity of its realism and speed of action. One forgets that it is verse and feels the touch of flesh and blood.