tionist knows the turning of the wheel does not necessarily imply progress. As a matter of fact the wheel is turning all the time and revolution never ceases: but progress, which may be accompanied by change of form, depends upon the awakening of the soul to new activities. Evolution is spiritual awakening, an endless process including countless revolutions, in the course of which innumerable civilizations have been utterly destroyed, while vet the wheel turns on. Let us not be disturbed at the apparent breakdown of the existing form of our dramatic art, but rather let us steadily maintain our efforts to awaken in the world a yearning for the light of true beauty and for the dawn of a new golden age, in which we may see music and the drama rededicated to the noble work of guiding evolution and of awakening the slumbering human soul. It may be that the present revolution in dramatic art may bring back the long-forgotten Religious Drama; but it must be conceived in a new way; the old forms may be so modified by the new spirit of evolution as to be new in the best sense, though the Spirit of Art cannot be new or old; only its modes of self-expression vary; and time may reveal forgotten arts fit for the expression of a higher wisdom. So it is in no retrogressive spirit that we look for a rebirth of the undying spirit of the drama even if we use the word 'religion' for lack of a term more nearly fitting the occasion. The word so often has been used for forms and formulas, for rituals and dogmas, that it has almost lost its true signifi cance, and has come to be denounced by men who in truth are naturally and actually religious, that is to say men who perceive the struggle of the human soul to free itself from the fetters of outworn traditions, and who feel, without understanding it, the awakening of their spiritual na ture. So when we speak of the dawn of the religious drama we do not look for a mere revival of the mysteries, but for a new expression of the very soul of drama in new forms more capable than the old of carrying the current of spiritual morality than the world has yet known. Changes must come, for Life is change, and death is but a variation on the theme of life. It rests with man to raise the revolution that disrupts the fixed routine of life, and give it that upward movement that distinguishes evolution from revolution, ethics from morality, spiral motion from circular, progress from repetition, living drama from dead. -R. M. NEW OUTLOOK John Masefield Poet Laureate And Humanitarian JOHN MASEFIELD will be 75 on June 1, and the next day the second Coronation Poem of this prolific writer of English verse will be published to honor the youngest and most beautiful queen of modern British history. One of the most exacting, and least rewarding tasks of a poet laureate is to compose verse for memorable public occasions. Few who held this signal honor are remembered for such compositions; most poets laureate have been named after they passed their peak, on past performance, one might say, and in the case of Masefield there was the additional rumor-whispered, it is true that he backed into the job because Rudyard Kipling, more favored with the British masses at the time, had been rude enough to publish an impolite ballad about the "Widow of Windsor." Be that as it may, little that Masefield has done in his official capacity is likely to long endure (who can now remember his verse in honor of King George's coronation?), but Albert Croissant he won laurels enough with the poe- ever a John Masefield's childhood in Herefordshire was marked by personal suffering; his reticence will not allow him to explain this period. But it is clear that from an early age he was aware of the great contrast between the beauty of the countryside and his inner wretchedness. When he was only fifteen he went to sea in a sailing ship and wandered for several years. He then held various lowly jobs in and near New York, but while working in a carpet factory he was set afire by Chaucer. From then he was dedi cated to the reading and writing of poetry. On returning to England he became a journalist in Manchester NEW OUTLOOK and London and wrote millions of words on murders and tripe, while he developed his feeling for rhythmic expression. His first book of poetry, Salt Water Ballads, published in 1902, was an immediate success. The opening poem, A Consecration, expresses the lofty, humane credo that has guided him ever since: "Not of the princes and prelates with periwigged charioteers Riding triumphantly laureled to lap the fat of the years Rather the scorned-the rejected-the men hemmed in with the spears; . Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth, The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth— Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and the scum of the earth! Theirs be the music, the color, the glory, the gold; Mine be a handful of ashes, a mouthful of mold. Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold- The sensitive Masefield has never forgotten the harsh aspects of life he had encountered; his warm feeling of brotherhood for the underdog and all humanity has never flagged and this makes him a welcome anti-dote to the cold, obscure intellectualism of the Ezra Pounds and the T. S. Eliots who have in recent years developed a cult of unintelligibility and frozen the "genial currents of the soul." Though Salt Water Ballads appeared more than half a century ago, it is still popular, especially such poems as Sea Fever, perhaps the most widely loved poem today. Who does not know the memorable lines: I must go down to the seas again to the lonely seas and the sky, And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sails shaking, People all too often think of Masefield as primarily a poet of the sea because of his Salt Water Ballads and Dauber and Mainsail Haul and verse like A Wanderer's Song: A wind's in the heart of me, a fire's in my heels, I am tired of brick and stone and rumbling wagon wheels; NEW OUTLOOK Actually, he has written much more poetry about the English countryside, which he loves and describes with the joy of a Wordsworth. In 1911, with the publication of The Everlasting Mercy, Masefield achieved immense fame. Many realized that Masefield was perhaps the finest storyteller in verse that England had produced since Shakespeare. But he was also a moralist, as he held that all poets should be. He said of Shakespeare, the leading influence in his career, that "the great poets have agreed that anything a that distorts the mental vision, anything thought of too much is danger to us. Passion . . . is a form of destruction. In its action as destroyer, it is the subject of Shakespeare's greatest plays." a Masefield continually implies that materialism, sensuality, even intel lect itself, apart from spiritual control, breed chaos. Gilbert Thomas, in his excellent study of Masefield, has said, "His philosophy, deriving essentially from the Sermon on the Mount, lays its main emphasis upon clear-sighted and spiritualized love. The adage that 'Love is blind presents to him the last lie in hell. Love, the mild servant, makes a drunken master' is the whole burden of The Window in the Bye Street and The Daffodil Fields. Love, the greatest force in the world, most needs a spiritual helmsman. . . . Masefield's narrative poems are conceived in a spirit as noble and sincere as any poetry in our tongue." Not even Browning and Shelley showed ebullient joy in life and courage in adversity. In our own age of tepid sophistication and confusion, it is heartening to look back on Masefield's Tomorrow with such stirring lines as these: Oh yesterday our little troop was ridden through and through, But tomorrow, By the living God, we'll try the game again! Or, in the same robust, rollicking vein, the much-quoted So we must laugh and drink from the deep blue cup of the sky, Laugh, and battle, and work, and drink of the wine outpoured NEW OUTLOOK |