Excerpt from To Verhaeren: And Other Poems

IT H the generosity of the young, Mr. Seymour has asked me to write a short preface to this his second volume of poems I avail myself of the privilege gladly, recalling, as I do, the grace and fresh ness of those earlier verses included in The Street of Dreams. It is not my intention to anticipate a critical judgment on these poems, nor - more especially - to indicate to a reader the particular quality of pleasure I may think he should derive from their perusal. Taste and the individual palate appreciate in their own fashion. My purpose is more simple. I propose to disentangle in my own mind, and to make clear to myself, the sources of the repeated pleasure Ifind in many of the verses in this book. Perhaps, even, Mr. Seymour may not relish the qualities for which I admire his work. You may praise a woman's hair, and find, to your dismay, that she is appreciative of her eyes; or you may venerate a saint for his zeal, to learn that he prides himself on the sweetness of his temper.

The distinctive quality most to my taste in these pages is their sense of beauty. The poems included here are mainly lyrical, and their movement is amongst lovely things. I do not know that Beauty is a quality with which artists are chiefly concerned in our time.

It is obvious that music, painting, poetry, indeed art in all its chief manifestations, is occupied with other values. Art to-day (at least when it dares to turn its eyes from the war) is interested in the expression of emotion, in the science of its mechanics, in the message of which it seeks to be the vehicle. All these are good things enough, but - emotion, technique, beauty, these three, the greatest of these is Beauty. Carried away by undue stress of emotion the singer is liable to strain his voice. An overmastering preoccupation with his message may cause a writer to be more concerned with the dynamite in the cart than with the smooth running of the conveyance. He is tempted to imitate Herrick - Herrick the reverend divine, not Herrick the poet - who, finding he could not keep his congregation awake, threw the manuscript of his sermon at their heads.

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